Hi everybody! Oft-accused White Knight Apologist here to discuss the tension between what players want and what ArenaNet wants for us. This is something that’s bothered me over the last few LW patches and after trying to do Boss Blitz last night, I feel like I’ve got to get this off my chest.
What ArenaNet Wants To Give Us
They haven’t quite said this, but ArenaNet seems to want GW2 “endgame” to be massive open-world content. I’d say they want to give us open-world raids. Difficult fights which require coordination… but in the open world, not in an instance. This has been obvious with megabosses, but other events – Marionette, Scarlet’s Knights/Holos, now Boss Blitz – follow the same pattern.
The problem is that this game had none of these mechanics at launch. They’ve also recognized this and are now trying to “teach” players how to do these events. (I think it was) Josh Foreman talked about this at one point, they are hoping to gradually scale up the difficulty level of these events.
What Players Want
Varies. Many players are chasing loot or chivos. Many players are looking for a challenge. Many players are just looking for a relaxing way to kill a couple hours.
Where I Think the Problem Occurs
I’m not a traditional MMO gamer. In fact, if we don’t count GW1 (because we shouldn’t), GW2 is my first and only MMO. <3 That said, raiding in other MMOs required huge amounts of coordination but worked because everybody had the same goal: kill the boss.
In GW2, players show up to the same events with drastically different goals. Just there for loot? You can AFK in the corner and get the top-end rewards like all the players participating. Want achievements? Hide in the corner where Scarlet’s holo can’t hit you with the gun. Want to kill the boss/complete the event? You’re stuck spending time in mapchat trying to convince people to play the content the “right” way (or perhaps the “coordinated” way) while being ignored/told that they are just “playing the way they want”/told “ArenaNet wouldn’t have done X if they didn’t want me to do Y.”
Inability to Take a Hint
How many of you had people doing Boss Blitz who thought the loot was bugged? Who didn’t realize the goal of Boss Blitz was to kill bosses, not farm mobs?
How many of you had commanders tagged up drawing most of the moths to the blue flame dorito? And 4 or 5 bosses with absolutely nobody?
How many of you, when trying to explain the event in mapchat, were told off by people “playing their way” or “farming” or “getting chivos?”
Pulling in the Same Direction
I understand that game design requires building content for multiple types of gamers, but I am continually astounded that ArenaNet doesn’t build content with this as a strict requirement:
For challenging content which requires coordination, all incentives should point in the same direction: completing the content to achieve the highest reward.
You can still provide reward for failure, but even here you need to be careful. Tequatl’s staged rewards are better than Wurm’s per-head rewards, for example. The Wurm rewards split players who would like to attempt to kill all heads from players who just want to kill one for the “Best Loser” reward.
These events eventually get better. That could be because players “learn” the encounters, but I think it’s because they finally get the achievements and start playing the content as intended. That means that people like myself who are more interested in completing the content than lootz/chivos are stuck headdesking for a couple weeks before we can “play how we want.”
I know this was super long, but PLEASE ArenaNet, if you’re going to give us hard content which requires coordination, don’t also dangle shinies in our peripheral vision.
(And this is an entirely separate topic, but we need better communication/coordination methods as well. Potential idea: Commanders can set a “Players Desired” number and the tag can report that as well as the players in the area. This will greatly ease the process of splitting players between multiple locations like in Marionette and Boss Blitz.)
While i gave suggestions for better organisation and messaging for the large scale events. I actually think IT IS A COMPLETE MISTAKE for this to be the major endgame content. It only appeals to a certain subset of players, they need to make more complex, interesting content for players who prefer lower man things as well. They also need to have open world things that are designed for solo/duo/trio players, and other group sizes.
tequatl was a great organizational fight, it was boring as tears when executed well, and pretty stupid. stand in the lag center of the universe, and take dmg while people endlessly res you until you cant be ressed anymore. I appreciate what it gives, but i wouldnt want that to be the main focus of elder game play
I’m more curious if players have any suggestions for how ArenaNet can better communicate how events work to players and whether properly-aligned incentives will work to drive people to the right goal.
I don’t really want this to be a discussion of whether GW2 should have raids. We’ve had that one before.
If we just accept that ArenaNet wants large open world challenging content, what can they do differently to make that content less painful for people who actually want to complete it?
But the answer is, that you can’t make it less painfull for people who actually want to complete it, as there is no option to filter those players from the others. You get a new random bunch every day, with people with random ideas what to do, if they do anything and are not afk.
The only solution would be to artificially select people for the events, aka known as instances for raids. This is the solution, the only one.
i disagree, i think you can filter players, there are a couple keys here
but as timmy said, they didnt design the game for this, in fact they designed the game around 5 man, then extended that to 20-30 players, when you get more than this, things begin to go wonky.
Essentially they need to design better ways for communication, that dont require a large team.
They also need to design systems that can keep players together, better
and they need to message the content better.
For example lets say they name these type of open world large scale events something like. “World Battles” then they make it clear world battles are content for organized large scale play in the open world. Now, just the name on top of the fight lets people know what to expect. People will begin to filter themselves out of this content, and approach it with a certain frame of mind.
Then better tools for communication, the commander tag cdi touched on this, but in order to develop these open world contents, YOU MUST add these tools. anet has decreased the predictability of who you play with. They have to give tools so that commanders can effectively lead even people who dont know everything about the fight.
So what type of tools are needed?
This is going to be complex, oh well, you make complex fights, in open world, you need complex tools
- You need squads to be larger, you have shifted your large scale paradigm from 30players to 150 players, how many people can be in a squad has to reflect this.
- You need commanders to be able to appoint sub squad commanders
- you need commanders to be able to create dynamic event like information, essentially, to create hot zones(circles) on the map, a short descriptive goal, and assign that to different sub commander groups.
- you need to have ways of assuring that your groups will stay together through various maps.
so short version
- better messaging of different styles of content, large scale organized events, on which your level of success determines your reward need its only classification, so people who dont like them can avoid them.
- better organizational structures aimed at allowing people who know what to do to better communicate to people who dont know what to do, faster, simpler, and without them having to join TS
- means for keeping these groups together once formed even on megaserver.
I doubt there will be a big run on FGS since they nerfed that one down to only 3 champs.
from when i played you can basically chain champs similarly fast, you just do 3 champs in rotation, and add the other two as they come, didnt really see much more waiting around than before. I guess the biggest factor was the champs scale to enemies thing, but that added karma to champion hunting, so ehhh. the real deal is EOTM is just way better than other things now.
So it will probably get nerfed (not saying that it should get nerfed)EoTM should not be nerfed, let us not forget it was designed to be a PvP environment. But the player base like in all things managed to turn it into a karma train, asking ArenaNet to fix problems created by the player base itself is extremely foolish in my opinion.
anets job is to solve problems created by the player base. Also i think you are underestimating how much what the playerbase does is dictated by game design. if you design a game that can be easily beaten in a way that doesnt make use of the mechanics you designed, then that is really your fault, not the playerbase.
the main reason i dont know if it should be nerfed is because people need to make money somehow, the whole endgame is based on money. As well, in general most nerfs end up effecting a lot of playstyles, not just the one they are trying to deal with. Also, i really cant think of any other reason to be in EOTM, the pvp is better in WvW and sPVP.
See, that’s an assumption you make. Nothing says that people that ran the train will now spread out to other areas. They might simply leave the game.
to be perfectly honest, it wasnt really an appopriate place for some sort of all game long farm place. And also, with monster difficulty changes, it was pretty much even easier than a regular train.
It needed to be changed really,
I doubt there will be a big run on FGS since they nerfed that one down to only 3 champs.
from when i played you can basically chain champs similarly fast, you just do 3 champs in rotation, and add the other two as they come, didnt really see much more waiting around than before. I guess the biggest factor was the champs scale to enemies thing, but that added karma to champion hunting, so ehhh. the real deal is EOTM is just way better than other things now.
So it will probably get nerfed (not saying that it should get nerfed)
Last night I got into a pavilion dominated by [AARM]. They had organized everyone around six tags and were coordinating on TS so all bosses were killed at the same time. Got gold a few times and for the six minutes taken it’s decent loot.
That said, the reason this was possible is that 95% of the map was [AARM] players. Including myself and a friend I saw maybe six people from other guilds. [AARM] hardcapped the map pulling their guildies in and it payed off for them. But we’re not all in huge guilds, so if most of us want to do this we have to contend with herding the randoms. I intend to tag up today and give it a shot, so we’ll see how it goes (expecting a Mari/knights repeat.)
As far as the loot, I get that decision. I actually prefer the loot to be tied to group success. But no XP? Come on, guys. Doesn’t count for daily kills, can’t level an alt, bloodlust sigil is useless. What’s the deal?
BTW – Gold loot was decent but it could definitely use a buff if you want to incentivize the majority of players to actually do this content.
ahh so its six minute time when done well eh? i suppose that explains the low loot drops somewhat.
Upscaling now does add significant complexity to China players, as their leveling curve and the points at which they unlock features and systems is completely different from the experience in NA/EU. The Labyrinthine Cliffs was absolutely designed with both territories in mind, and with those considerations, everything from the decorations to the content was geared towards providing a fun festival for everyone to enjoy.
But you up-scale them for the Queens Pavillion, right? Surely the same complexities exist there and are probably greater given that that is a purely combat zone and the Labyrinthine Cliffs is mostly about exploration?
yeah they basically said we got two major events, one will be really hard for level 16-50 players and one will be really easy for level 80 players.
Essentially if they find queens guantlet too hard they can go play zephyr.
if they were both hard, that wouldnt be as much of an option
Seeing China just got released I doubt you will see this downscaling past this event. We all know how fast you can level compared to a typical MMO so by the next event or LS2 there shouldn’t be an issue with level differences.
its not just an issue with china, its an issue in the relative difference in strength of players at various levels now, as well as monster difference. The living story going forward will always have to consider this more greatly than before now. Since the LS is supposed to be accessible to everyone.
Last year, the Pavillion awarded far too much loot (because it coincided with the introduction of champion loot bags). This was a BAD THING, because it caused severe inflation in the game economy.
ArenaNet is currently preventing that from happening again by regulating the loot from the Pavillion’s frequently-spawning champions.Last year, the Pavillion champions were most efficiently defeated with a single massive group of players that took down the bosses one at a time, and never had to pause in between. This is a BAD THING, because killing the same series of pushover bosses over and over again with 150 players at once was not challenging, and gave out too many rewards. It actually discouraged play skill.
ArenaNet is currently preventing that from happening again by encouraging players to split up during the Boss Blitz. Yes, a single zerg will spend 30 minutes killing all bosses one at a time. If players split up, the event can be won in a shorter time (because the bosses don’t scale up as far), and the reward will be bigger. In other words, it rewards smart play rather than follow-the-other-lemmings.So in short, the REAL PROBLEM was last year’s event for being too easy and too generous.
the real problem is this years event doesnt compete with most other means of playing the game in terms of reasons to do it, however it is a lot more difficult and risky in order to get less actual results.
lets take a look at marrionette, it also had very few drops from enemies, but, you got exp, you drops which allowed you to open chests which usually had rares and special chances for special recipes, the further you got, the more guanteed look you got at the end. for spending 15-30 minutes, you got rares, loot, chances at special items. If you beat the full event, you got much better loot for that same time frame, and more chances to open more chests.
the reward design encouraged winning, and at the same time encouraged participation, the minimal reward wasnt horrible, and the maximum reward was pretty good.
this time the minimal reward is a loss, the maximum reward appears to be 2 champion bags and some greens. thats pretty bad for 20-30 minutes of organized gameplay where the minimal reward is a loss.
its essentially a problem with reward structures. Reward structure is a major part of designing a game, you cant divorce the two.
The level drop on the map from 80 to 15 was definitely done so as to not throw our new players from China into the “deep end of the pool” just a few days after the game opened to all on 5/15.
What “deep end”? Up-scaling or down-scaling would add 0 complexity for them? Aren’t they up-scaled to 80 in WvW and the Queens Pavillion anyway?
Seems like a pointless change made because you I don’t believe your player base is capable of handling simple concepts.
as i said before, there is a much larger difference in level 80 and level 16 monsters than there used to be, and players from 1-66 are likely to have a lot less tools and options than they used to have. So actually we will see more of this in the future, with group events, they will either have to make them for level 80s, or make them for low levels. Essentially, thats probably why queens guantlet is 80 and this one is 16, so you can choose one or the other depending on how you want it.
maybe with more dev time, they can make multiple instances with different level caps since megaserver can put people where they need to be.
I find it odd that the NA/EU servers couldn’t have stayed at 80 while China stayed at 15.
And I also find it disappointing that China is now driving the development of the game instead of NA/EU.
China will continue to effect our development, ANET is still developing for both, so they will want to keep content as similar as possible. Also, whereas before this wasnt as big an issue, now, you must remember, an upleveled 80 tends to have a lot less traits/trait points than they used to. The difference between a level 80 and a level 50 is now super drastic.
this also means that even if it were a level 16 event last year, it would probably have been more challenging than this year. Because they nerfed mobs to compensate for a lack of skills available.
Then there is the effect of not getting the type of loot a level 80 prefers from these mobs.
yeah the why of it is fairly understandable, but since all of these why’s are basically caused by various design descions, i agree that its a disturbing trend
(edited by phys.7689)
From what i gather, one of the biggest problems with this design is the payoff is really bad. its a bad idea to increase difficulty, and then decrease payoff. Thats a surefire way to have no one taking on that task. They even increase losses here, for less payoff.
The second problem is, they still havent created the tools for leadership, and megaserver has decreased the ability to organize.
If they want to continue to do large group content, they need to greatly expand the organizational tools for a leader on the map, and create methods for people to more easily/reliably group.
PVE commanders need bigger squads, the ability to delegate sub commanders, some sort of limited ability to create objectives (similar to dynamic events) if this is supposed to work on a open world level. normally this type of stuff can be handled via voice, and the fact that everyone there is your guild(in other games).
Also commanders need to have at least some people who they know can lead, and communicate with them in order to lead masses, which means they need predictable ways to get people into the same maps, you also want to give regular pugs the ability to stick to the commanders they like, from map to map. This is why i suggest a grouping system whereby people can join one person, and be treated as one group for group movements between maps, by megaserver.
i think part of the problem here is that people (myself included) remembered turning over 100+ gold from the Pavilion last year, and figured it was going to be the same thing, and instead they aren’t getting anything near as much for as little effort as it took to do last year. I get its a bit annoying, but at the end of the day, when I get that final reward chest and it comes out with some decent loot from doing the champs in a more “challenging way” then I feel a bit “more” rewarded.
i hear even the best rewards dont really compare to what you get on a frostgorge train. but that was yesterday. How long does it take to complete when done properly, and how much rewards do you get?
In that case, the question that needs to be addressed is “why is ranged play inferior to melee range?” Having a class of players who the game favours mechanically over every other build is a sign of a badly balanced (at best) game, or a broken game (at worse). If there is absolutely no area of the game where melee characters cannot outperform ranged characters, what point is there in even having ranged options? ANet might as well just delete bows/rifles/pistols/staff/scepters and be done with it, the same way they just removed underwater combat from PvP.
The point is that ranged weapons come with less risk, that is why they exist in this game. This means your casuals and newbies can do content, while your experienced players can rightfully cut through it with melee weapons because they’re familiar enough with it.
Risk/reward
People are too quick to call things broken, but the risk/reward of melee vs. range is something that’s present in like every RPG ever, it’s not broken at all.
Eh, some of the Guild Bounty bosses can do stuff like that. It’s not exactly new.
For open world, whatever. I mean you have people being instantly killed there and everyone ranges, anyway. For dungeons though, no, things like that are not needed at all.
And I see nothing wrong with having bosses where attempting to use melee is almost impossible. We have bosses that are flat out immune to ranged attacks. Or that going ranged on them will result in the boss using extremely dangerous attacks that could wipe the party. If one side can have it, why not the other?
The whole point of anti-ranged mechanics is to force people out of their comfort zone. Melee is already risky enough that there doesn’t need to be specifically anti-melee mechanics besides the threat of being dealt damage.
If this ends up in groups with 5 Warriors using the tactics you mentioned for speed clearing, and you dislike that thought, then don’t join speed clear/PUG groups. The speed-clearers can kill the boss in under 30 seconds, while a PUG may take 3 mins; that’s really no different to what we’re seeing between speed-clear and PUG dungeon groups now.
I dislike it because it stagnates class diversity and encourages you to just brute force fights. Or you just go five staff ele and range it since staff eles at (close) range are insanely good damage. PbAoE conditions to discourage melee is honestly a terrible idea.
And what about bosses where one player needs to be at a distance for mechanical reasons? (e.g. the lever puller in Dredge fractal, or the fan monkey in Uncategorised) Are those players sitting at range not contributing just because they’re using a ranged weapon to deal what damage they can from their spot?
Players don’t need to be at a distance for either of those fights, I have no idea what you’re talking about.
You drop the lever in dredge, drop down and melee the boss with the group and kill it. With Old Tom, you run in, put either an earth elemental, bear pet or untraited wardens in front of the party and burst it within those ~10 seconds.
To be perfectly honest, stacking tends to ruin your point. stacking is actaully easier than kiting. while in a normal situation, melee is moe difficult, stacking negates this difficulty.
One answer i would say is smarter AI, with faster attacks, and less dmg from its faster attacks. (they wont kill you instantly, but they force you to back off, or at least attempt to avoid/mitigate them. The game is more balanced for PVP, and one of the main differences is PVP is frequency of attacks. Yes melee is harder, and should give more dmg, except right now it isnt harder due to stacking and super slow attacks.
the other factor is as weposu said, part of the attacks that you have to deal with or face greater dmg, that come more often.
I’m confused.
Champs are buffed to drop boxes/bags
Champs drop rare skins. Cool looking BTW!
Three major trains are established.
One is nerfed (understandable) due to players letting events fail
Two remain for awhile
Then champ drops are nerfed (especially those coins)
FG chain is partially nerfed (Trio)
QD nerfed too the ground (possibly to the center of the earth one might say)I’m not much affected. I participated a bit in the chains, but I would get bored too quick and got sick of the drama (especially in QD – /clap clap btw). So I can rightfully say I am not whining about these changes.
But What the Heck!. I’m confused, if you buff champ loot and then discourage trains. You encourage zergs/trains, but nerf the one most accessible. Was the intention all along to kill the occasional champ for loot and that ultra rare but ultra cool skin?? Should I participate in FG, Orr, EotM chains or are there nerfs incoming there too? Ban-hammers coming??
So what ANET is your vision about champs and farming them? What is your opinion of zerging and trains? Why encourage them through game design and then nerf?
I’m so confused??? 0_o
To be honest anet has a bad record with balancing rewards. I dont think one knows exactly what they will do, but all i can say, you probably wont feel very rewarded when they are done.
So now that the Queensdale train is dead I’m a wee bit worried that the anti-stack lobbyists might actually influence a future update. You guys, please, no. Just no. Stahp! We promise we’ll be good. Don’t let them take our meta awayyyyyy.
why would anyone be worried about queensdale, they just killed them for noobs, there will be new champion trains to pop up elsewhere, and to be honest EOTM is probably way better than champ train.
as far as killing stacking, if they replace it with a system where you pay attention and fight the bosses, and get rewarded for it, i think the game as a whole would be much better
my guess is, reward design is too heavily biased towards the economy. I perfectly understand they dont want to mess with the economy, but if thats the case, they will need to come up with some new reward structures that dont effect teh economy. People want to make progress towards their goals, and get something for what they do.
its ok, to make it have no drops, but then what you get for completing it at a high level has to be extremely good.
They took out EXP loot drops, and single event rewards, the payoff to balance it has to be huge.
So what is the max payoff?
also, i suggest for the megaserver system they create a new grouping tool, expiditions.
Essentially what an expedition would be, is a grouping tool that gives an entire group the same weight in megaserver, IE if you have 50 people who join the expedition, then when looking for a server it looks for one with 50 slots, if 100, then 100. this would help guilds, and server communities.
As far as the topic, hmmm guild wars 2, seems to be getting more casual, but is it that casual at its base? i dont really think so.
I also think GW2 will have to create a lot more high end content. hard modes, something of that nature, they dont really have anything that pushes you to achieve, or makes you feel like you need to get every last bit of stat available.
Now this doesnt need to be for everybody, but it can be for some.
I think SAB probably got it best, where they had a hard mode that gave a different color skin.
other options are giving greater rewards, much like domain of anguish hardmode gave you 4 times the amount of margonite on hard mode.
regardless, it needs some more difficult content, with greater risks, AND greater rewards.
Considering anyone can simply buy Dungeon Master title by simply paying (Way too often) a dude who used out of map exploits to reach the end boss skipping everything, this is truly the last thing I would be arguing about really… ._.
this is honestly not new to any game, and usually its easier to carry people in other MMOs. Any time an MMO has something you cant buy directly, some people will pay someone to get the drop. It doesnt really illustrate anything other than people who can will sell to people who cant. and people who cant will buy from people who can.
I swear, the most common complaint I must hear from the GW2 community is “I’m mad that ArenaNet removed this stupidly exploitative farming method”. Why do people keep expecting them to stay?
probably because most of the long term goals are based on gold, so when they nerf any revenue, its essentially making people feel like they are farther from thier goals.
our reward for that long, boring, lootless dredge of hitting one and particle effects
someone in map thought you get ten champ chests for gold completion, aka teq/wurm-level coordination for a tiny, generic reward
i see, so you get that for each event? how valuable are the festival tokens
its odd for them to have no rewards system at all for it. maybe its bugged?
i sold it because of the unfitting aura, not because i didnt like the sword itself.
the best i expected was a draw/proj fix … the said they got it in the bugtracker since somewhere 2012 .. nothing happend. nobody ever mentioned they will rework it completely… why the hell cant this be announced sometime in advance?
you made money, just buy it back. probably sold it for like 3.5k gold, did you spend all of that?
soooooo, i dont know who already saw eternity, but …
it has a totally new, unique aura, a seperate one for twilight and sunrise!
and totally new draw and projectile effects!
after all, it was a really demanded and needed update, but something really bugs me out …
i freaking sold twilight and sunrise combined as eternity because of a kittenty aura after the
wardrobe patch! why was there no simple message?
“hey folks we are not only fixing all the bugs, we are reworking the item completely!”yeah so …. what to do? can i ask the support to roll back my account some months?
buy it with the money you sold it for
What I meant was, if you’re having fun then you don’t (or at least I don’t) care about the rewards too much. Once I’m reward driven it means I’m not really having that much fun anymore.
+1….Kudos!
If it’s all about the “carrots”, is it actually still “a game” for you?
the best systems are about the game, and the reward. These will be the most fullfilling things you can do.
objective mistakes;
megaserver interferes with known systems and structures:
map waypoiint system
Dynamic event system
Guild grouping/guild events
Server grouping server events
guild chapters etcwhether you like it or not, the megaserver has effected all of these systems, and the current in place solutions are not integrated well or non existent.
A few more important points to be made here:
- If your world usually has a comfortable population on a given map, you’re unlikely to see much of a difference here until the map actually starts getting full. We’re not going to toss a bunch of people from another world into a comfortably occupied server and make it uncomfortable.
- But some worlds do fill up all on their own pretty regularly. The improvement from this perspective is that if you try to join a very full map, the system will find another instance which also contains people from your world rather than the old overflows which were much more of a mixed bag.
- If your world has a very low concurrency on a given map, we can put you and everyone else from your server into a map with a more comfortable number of players. The key term here is “comfortable.” There’s breathing room. Megaserver is not overflow in reverse.
- It’s very difficult to understand this situation if you’re not willing to look at the big picture. Similarly, you can’t really explain urban traffic by using a metaphor about seats at a dinner table. Server populations are big and they are not concrete. Players flow in and out all of the time, even when it seems like a map is completely full. The major change in the way the game is handling population is that it’s making better-informed decisions about where to direct you. If only my GPS did that.
- As the blog post mentions, we’ll be monitoring this very closely to make sure that the end result is positive.
We’ll also continue to monitor and adapt the megaserver system once it’s fully enabled to ensure it provides the best experience possible, so once you’ve seen it in action please make sure to leave comments, feedback, and suggestions as always!
Bonus: Red posts. That’s Anet up there. Dev communication. We have it.
So far that’s one thing, Megaservers… and it’s not even an objective problem. Most people like it. Many people asked for something like this.
They’re going to work on it and fine tune the system.
It came out what, barely a month ago? Beyond some valid quips with it (minor issues VS major issues), it’s working pretty smoothly overall.
There are other issues, which may be more opinion based, but seem to have a strong sentiment against the current implementation, like the trait system.
Come on now.
They didn’t even change how traits actually work, so much as added a few grandmasters, made point swapping free, and changed how it looks in the trait windows (‘30’ points in a line is now ‘6’).
You can’t even call that an issue in a non-objective sense. A quip with the aesthetics, maybe? lol
like i said, they talked there, but they have said nothing about the issues.
also i didnt say whether megaservers were loved or hated, i merely talked about some of the objective issues that they have created. Nothing you have posted shows what anet thinks is a problem, and what they dont think is a problem, and what, if anything at all, they plan to do.
As for traits, i didnt say it was an objective issue, i said the feedback appears overwelmingly negative, even for forums.
To call it a quip with aesthetics is a vast understatement, perhaps you didnt realize what changed? (it doesnt effect people who already hit 80)
you no longer get access to any trait points until 30. all trait skills are now unlocks for specific content. you dont unlock masters till 60 and grandmaster traits until 80. the balance of what level the content is per unlock is placed high, so for a decent amount of skills you get access to at level 36, you need to do tasks as high level as 60-80. some tasks are pve, and others are pvp.
that is in no way an aesthetic change.
it is a change in function
a change in economy
a change in structure
No, I’m not here to say “stacking is evil”. However, it is limiting. Therefore, I’d like to make the following suggestion for improvement:
Let all group buffs that are centered on the caster/user affect teammates regardless of distance (within the same zone, of course). If there are still potential targets left after the team has all been buffed, THEN radiate out from the caster to find other targets.
This would allow teams to spread out more, and share buffs nearly as well as if they were standing right next to each other. If someone wanted to stand back and fight at range while others go into melee, or if the team wanted to spread out to try to keep a target running in circles, it would be a much more viable tactic. In a large group (zerg), this would also mean that your buffs would go to your chosen teammates, rather than whoever just happens to be the closest to you.
Yes, this does mean you could get buffs from a teammate that’s half a zone away. But it also means that you might NOT get the buffs from a guy that’s right next to you, if he’s on a full team, so it should balance out over time. In dungeons and well coordinated PvP and WvW, however, it would add some real merit to being on a team.
the risk and playstyle of being a buffer in this game, is basically about positioning, your team mates have to work together to maximize the buffs (via positioning) and you as a buffer have to take calculated risks in order to deliver your buffs.
This is actually good and skillfull. Making buffs have large range doesnt make fights more interesting, it makes them less interesting.
I dont think stacking should be the best way to handle every situation, and i dont think the enemy should make it easy for players to gain this strong advantage, every time. However the key to remember its not really about people not standing near each other, its about making sure the fight is engaging, and requires player to actually watch, adapt and react to the fight.
It’s not all about information on new content. It’s about acknowledging mistakes. Anet has been blatantly ignoring their mistakes and even go so far as brushing them off as if they were nothing or worse intended. Successfully interacting with a customerbase is key to the longevity of any product. It is an integral part of making the product better and making it grow.
Sadly anet and the fanboys can’t seem to grasp this concept.
What objective mistakes are you on about? What are these glaring issues that everyone can agree is a mistake that needs amending and an apology?
Hint: Disagreeing with the feature patch system isn’t an objective issue with the game. It’s a disagreement on direction going forward.
If you disagree with this, you probably want a more traditional expansion system.
What communication issues does Anet have? They interact with the community more than most devs of any other company. What are Anet and the fanboys missing?
What is Anet missing? The fact that they’re going a new route with the feature patch system as opposed to the traditional paid expansion?
Anet used to do the expansion system. So they’re obviously not ‘missing’ anything. They know what they’re doing. It’s a choice they’ve made.
What makes one a fanboy in this regard? Someone who disagrees with you?
objective mistakes;
megaserver interferes with known systems and structures:
map waypoiint system
Dynamic event system
Guild grouping/guild events
Server grouping server events
guild chapters etc
whether you like it or not, the megaserver has effected all of these systems, and the current in place solutions are not integrated well or non existent.
There are other issues, which may be more opinion based, but seem to have a strong sentiment against the current implementation, like the trait system.
As for communications issues, anet has yet to identify to the players, in the wake of these large scale changes
What is working as intended
What is up for tweaking
What the overall direction will be going forward.
Not relating to these changes, anet currently has no info released on expected upcoming features, or even a rough timetable on when they expect to get some things working. While many people say this is not the norm, it apparently is the norm these days, i can go to FFXI, SWTOR, WOW, i can go to all of these sites and see what the next big update is going to be, what major features it is including, and either a rough estimate, or an actual date on when it is going to come out. Anet does interact with us a decent amount, but they say very little.
Now, they dont have to change anything, but i think they may be losing some peoples interests more from lack of communication of intent, rather than lack of desire to do something. Regardless, people are just saying what they think, what anet chooses to do with it is up to them.
It is absolutely true that the tp destroys GW2.
You present absolutely NO proof of this and thus it is ABSOLUTELY your opinion (which you certainly have a right to). Making opinionated statements SOUND like a fact does not actually make them one. PROVE that it destroys the game….and someone will listen to your claims.
You comparing D3s TP with GW2s TP actually PROVES you really don’t understand how either of them works or how both games treats high end equipment. D3s GOLD TP was FINE until the RL$ TP opened…..that’s what made the game deteriorate. D3 also had no way to allow in-game gold to purchase items on the RL$ TP (sans illegal gold/equipment selling). The comparison is simply not logical and trying to do so brings all your statements into question.
D3 killed the RL$ trade tp long before they killed the TP completely, the RL$ auction house had its own isssues, but the tp was working against the game design in and of itself.
now, in GW2 its not like the TP is inherently bad, its more a fact of the overall economy and reward system is designed to encourage people to desire gold. This is a logical design since they sell gold, but it creates the issue where the main method of achieving things in game is to get gold as fast as possible. For some, that is fun, for others, not so much.
If i understand things with “guesting” you can go to other worlds/realms and even join guilds. I at one stage must have been on Sorrows Furnace where i was asked to join a guild (which i did). Found it difficult to do guild activities and access guild bank but could send stuff to guild members. Eventually found out that they were on Sorrow’s Furnace and i was on Stormbluff Isle. Why does Arenanet allow “Guesting” but then punish individuals for joining guilds on different worlds? So since the Guild had allot of nice people in it and i was high up in it i wanted to remain with the guild. What a MISTAKE. They want to take your money $30.00 USD/2500 gems for World transfer then again punish you for moving to another world. Double dipping here we are. So to Arena Net i read you didn’t want to be like WOW have no fear in WOW you were never punished for a World change. Don’t give with one hand and take away with the other. I love the game and yes it is better than WOW except for this. Let people enjoy the game not suffer for being with friends.
Though this has been an issue for sometime, it is more of an issue now, with megaservers, as the above poster said, they intend to fix it, but no time soon.
As an aside, unless you want to play on a different WvW side, i dont suggest you switch servers at all, they essentially serve very little purpose now. The team needs to come up with some new messaging/functionality/concepts around servers now that they have megaservered.
I like the last boss in HotW P1. Rampages around the area with spinning attack prevents constant stacking. It’s not a genius fight, but sure as hell more interesting than stacking against a wall, chain blasting fire fields, and going thru a meta build rotation.
this boss is, imo pretty boring, and tedious. This isnt just about learning the fight, i thought so the first time i did HOTW.
Perhaps people should stop thinking about random easy anti stacking mechanics, and start thinking about interesting reactive fights.
the key isnt just to make people not stack, it is to make fights more interesting and reward players for paying attention and working together at the right times.
It’s not a genius fight, but sure as hell more interesting than stacking
I never said it was amazing. But it’s a fight that at least requires more than just pressing your 1-0 keys and the occasional dodge.
Having said that, I absolutely think we need more interesting fights. Those that require active cooperation, strategy, and possibly damage control. I’d love to see fights in dungeons with fail scenarios that lead to alternate subsequent phases, not just suppressing add spawns. I’d love to see bosses with skills/styles more akin to player professions. Quicker but lighter attacks with high movement and condition clearing. Wouldn’t that be fun for condition classes? Knowing the boss can cleanse would mean condition classes have a purpose, to constantly reapply those DoTs.
Any way you choose, the fights need more than 1 simple change or added mechanic to make them more dynamic and reactive. I don’t have the ultimate solution; that’s not my job. Unfortunately, I’m not very optimistic, given Anet’s recent update making kitten near everything in the world simpler. Dumbing down leveling and the difficulty of open world mobs is a bad sign in my book.
yeah, unless they are about to tell us about some sort of hard mode, or new difficulty progression system, they have essentially with the last patch made it less likely the average player will be able to handle any sorts of complex mechanics. The average player is going to gain the average amount of skill required to succeed, if the skill required to succeed is low, they will maintian an average low level skill set.
there is an even bigger jump in challenging experiences between a new level 80 and their most difficult content in game now.
I like the last boss in HotW P1. Rampages around the area with spinning attack prevents constant stacking. It’s not a genius fight, but sure as hell more interesting than stacking against a wall, chain blasting fire fields, and going thru a meta build rotation.
this boss is, imo pretty boring, and tedious. This isnt just about learning the fight, i thought so the first time i did HOTW.
Perhaps people should stop thinking about random easy anti stacking mechanics, and start thinking about interesting reactive fights.
the key isnt just to make people not stack, it is to make fights more interesting and reward players for paying attention and working together at the right times.
I find it hilariously pathetic how so many people are complaining about the lack of ArenaNet responses.
Go to any other official game forum, especially MMOs, and you will be hard pressed to see developer posts as common as ArenaNet’s amount of posts. Honestly, I prefer for them to post less. So that they don’t have to deal with the constant bull that is this and similar threads, and can instead save their brain cells.
many other developers post less, but they overall have a clearer message of what to expect.
They tell you what content updates are coming, what type of stuff they are working on in the content update, what their plan is for major issues, when the next expansion is expected, etc.
for example, at random i went to swtor website, and apparently they have a new content update/expansion or something coming june 10th, its going to add strongholds(player housing) and some narshadaa sky palace thingy, its also currently testable on the PTS.
FFXIV, the producer is about to put out a two part livestream, where he details exactly what to expect with the next patch, they have already outlined a completely new boss battle, a completely new dungeon, continuation of one of the main plotlines, hard modes for two older dungeons, a new enemy hunting system, and the art guy is going to field questions and present art on new hairstyles, enemies areas, etc.
So yeah The first two major MMO sites i went to, they are telling users whats coming up next, in fairly strong detail, they have actual dates for pushing out said content. So yeah, we know… we are getting living story 2, one day, and a season event tmr.
The problem of ‘hard’ content is that it’s not an objective thing. People thought TA Aetherpath was hard, then you got people breezing through it like AC P3. You say Tequatl is easy but looking at how most attempts end in colossal failure, I don’t know about that.
Very true. Considering the vast majority of players has yet to succeed on either of those bosses would imply the content is hard. The hard part of course is getting everyone to listen and follow directions, but isn’t that the hard part of all end-game/raid content? Organizing and getting everyone to do what they are supposed to do. Sure there are gear checks in games with treadmills (WoW), but hypothetically if everyone automatically got BiS gear when they started a raid, it will all boil down to following directions, that’s it. There’s a specific way this fight needs to happen to win, so you have to do it a specific way. Every single raid boss in every game boils down to following directions, with gear checks creating artificial difficulty (where some games make monsters X levels higher, thus reducing your damage, GW2 just adds on HP for the same effect).
Teq/Wurm are just as difficult as any other game’s raid bosses, these just require significantly more coordination because of the sheer number of players required to succeed.
those bosses are challenging content for large amounts of players at once. That just doesnt appeal to some players at all, and is primarily about a different skill set.
Those fights are more about large scale organisation rather than personal difficulty.
I think my takeaway from this poll is that, despite everybody feeling strongly about their particular preference, there is not a consensus from the community on the best way to handle future content updates.
Slightly more than half the votes are for some form of Living World, whether at the current pace or a slower one.
Slightly less than half the votes are for some form of paid expansion, whether a typical full box or smaller “gem store” expansions.
this is accurate. but what it also shows is a signifigant divide, essentially half the user base will be disatisfied.
The best way to please customers accoriding to this poll would be to continue two week updates and to give people the type of content they want in an expansion.
If this was thier descision, the best thing would be to announce with the release of the living world to also prepare for “Insert Expansion Name here” free expansion coming in q1 2015 or somesuch thing.
I don’t necessarily agree that stacking is an issue that needs fixing, but if it does, there are pretty simple solutions. Just have bosses deal a debuf that stacks for everyone within 5 yards or something. The debuf can be reduced damage, increased cast times, dealing direct damage or anything. If enough bosses did these, we’d soon spread out.
this is a bad solution, the problem is not that people ever stack, its that thats the only thing people do. Its also pretty cheesy, id rather solutions be fight mechanics, and enemy skills and abilities rather than arbitrary debuffs with no context, avoidability, or ways of dealing with.
i guess what some people say is right, it would be very easy to misunderstand peoples concerns with stacking, and think that the goal is simply to make it extremely bad to stand next to people. thats not really the goal.
(edited by phys.7689)
When I compare this game to others, sometimes I can’t help but wonder how foolish I was. A couple of my friends are returning to the other game that shall not be named. Even after a 10$ price hike, that 50$ expansion will have more content than what Guild Wars 2 had and possibility will ever have.
The other game is HOW much older too. WoW (that is the game you didn’t want to mention) is 8 yrs old, you can’t compare that game to this game which is not quite 2 yrs old.
Most of the major MMOs i have seen have a major content upgrade by 2 years.
No. I am not familiar with China’s legal system but I would guess that there the average person cannot sue for libel. In the USA alone, publishing a list like that would trigger a class-action lawsuit from hundreds of individuals claiming their accounts were stolen by hackers, banned for various reasons, then their online identities shamed in public through this list. Whether or not such a suit would be successful, it would cost Anet quite a bit of money in legal fees to fight it.
Not to mention the bad publicity – “Anet names and shames thousands of innocent victims of hacking.” There are cultural differences as well, and in the USA there is a presumption of innocence, so they would have to be absolutely sure the bans were legit before taking such an action. There are both legal and logical reasons why mods remove “name and shame” posts and why they are against the rules.
Victims of hacking accounts still have done X Y Z, thats all it says, its not libel to say this account did X. most likely i would assume they would remove such data once the person is cleared due to hacking.
Really its just a different style of doing the same thing. Na side prefers to be the unseen hand, China prefers to let people know they are being policed. There are advantages and disadvantages to both
Being able to always get maximum benefit from the team play mechanics is not good design whether that happens at close or at greater ranges.
why does everyone assume that everything people say is absolute.
Because in many cases it is? Because many posters in the endless debate about zerker, stacking, etc. break down to, “Stacking needs to die in fire!”
I dont think any one has a problem with the idea, that stacking together at key times can be advantagous. it makes sense. The problem is when for the whole fight you are going to go in stand in one place, absorb dmg you can avoid, to win 90% of the boss fights.
Short story, stacking at times is great, and synergistic, stacking as the way to deal with everything, and eating avoidable Skills, and standing in one place even when its not to your advantage. And not needing to see or react to what the enemy is doing in order to win is lame.
As you can see by the above line I’ve culled from the post that you quoted, I am not in favor of 100% uptime for team-play mechanics. I just don’t see that forcing people to solo range or solo melee regularly is better than what we have now.
Boss phases can be used regardless of stacking. AI can be tweaked to prevent overly simplistic encounters. What I’m against are suggestions like, “Make all boss melee attacks cleave, and one-shot the entire party if they’re stacked.”
yes, i agree untelegraphed 1 shot aoe dmg by bosses on a regular basis would be stupid, but im sure everyone knows that. That wouldnt just kill stacking, it would just make melee unfeasible 90% of the time, and not allow support of melee charachters.
While I understand the criticisms of stacking, I have considerations about the calls to “eliminate” or “fix” stacking, which are often, “I don’t like it, it needs to go away.” The main consideration is that I like synergy in games. I loved it in GW, I like it in GW2. Synergy in games comes from the interplay of various character skills and abilities as they interact with each other. In GW2, such synergy between characters always happens at short range. Always. Eliminate stacking, and you eliminate synergy, which severely restricts coordination and teamwork. I do not find this to be a desirable outcome.
Nor would it be desirable to change the synergistic mechanics to make them usable at greater ranges. Everyone free-lancing and kiting at range may be a desired play-style for some folks, but teamwork should require some effort. Greater range buffs and heals would remove the proximity requirement for coordination, and I don’t think that’s a good idea. Being able to always get maximum benefit from the team play mechanics is not good design whether that happens at close or at greater ranges.
Maybe I don’t often repeat the on-farm dungeons that everyone seems to base their comments against stacking on. My experience in dungeons has been that while there are similarities in mob design, and some dungeon bosses seem like big sacks of health that don’t do much, there are other bosses that punish the mindless stacking that gets folks upset. So, I’m not sure it’s fair to base an evaluation of stacking on bosses with simple AI or who lack AoE — because they aren’t all that way.
That’s not to say that AI in general couldn’t use improvement. However, taking away existing farm paths or turning them into harder paths that get under-utilized (TA AP, I’m looking at you) is not a good idea. Leave these paths alone, and generate new dungeons with different mechanics, and which might require some variety in tactics. Half the problem with dungeons is habituation anyway, so adding new paths would allow for both new challenges and new mechanics.
why does everyone assume that everything people say is absolute.
I dont think any one has a problem with the idea, that stacking together at key times can be advantagous. it makes sense. The problem is when for the whole fight you are going to go in stand in one place, absorb dmg you can avoid, to win 90% of the boss fights.
Short story, stacking at times is great, and synergistic, stacking as the way to deal with everything, and eating avoidable Skills, and standing in one place even when its not to your advantage. And not needing to see or react to what the enemy is doing in order to win is lame.
In trinity system, each classes has their unique strength and individual weakness. It require more cooperation but because of this, they are able demonstrate their unique strength and perform tasks that others can’t. Trinity system make you feel important, it make you feel like you are playing as a team.
In GW2 where everyone similar, it show how everyone is fragile and weak. You are the only one responsible for your survival. If you failed to dodge, you failed to dodge, there isn’t anyone covering for you. No tank face tanking for you or off tank cc or pulling aggro for you, no healer bringing your health back to full. Sure. They will pick you up, but that doesn’t mean they don’t think you are bad.
Actually, there is a lot of teamplay options in GW2, but most people dont realize it because most people solo most of the time.
lets take a look at a thief.
Some ones in danger?
*they can invisible the area/also loses agro
general defense for the team?
*access to multiple AOE blinds
*strong access to weakness
enemy chasing a glass charchter (if they werent stacking)
*access to chain immobilize
enemy using a strong skill
*access to chain stuns
You really arent alone in this game, and by working together you actually increase your strength/abilities greatly. Its just most people never learn these skills, and many other party members dont make it easy to use them.
Really i think it all comes down to having generally weak encounter design, the only way to make people play better is to make them fail if they dont.
What we have now is a system that is pretty deep, but the fights dont give any benefit to that depth. So people focus on DPS
Everyone who thinks what we got as dungeons in GW2 is fun and exciting must be new to the world of MMO dungeoneering.
Many games have flaws, but the combination of:
- buff stacking in a limited area
- no aggro mechanic for encounters
- no dedicated healing needed
- self-sufficient healing for classes
- zero mob AI
- bugging out mobs in corners
- abusive skills (fgs)
- easy combat rezzing for everyone (esp. down state)
- no collision
- reflecting full mob damage
- dodging (100% dmg avoidance + immunity)
- etcjust makes the dungeon experience in this game abysmally bad. It is the worst teamplay I have ever seen in a MMO in all my many years. It is why this area of GW2 is so disappointing.
If you like dungeons in GW2, you are not a player looking for challenges. You are looking for repetition, a one trick pony for everything.
Boooooring.
many of the things you are talking about wouldnt make combat deeper, it would make it less deep.
As much as people complain about stacking, it essentially rebirths the trinity.
Mob control aka tanking
everyone standing in one spot means the monster is attacking predictably,
Healing/support: now your heals hit everyone, which actually makes it worth it to heal, you can now give AOE protection AOE aegis, regen, multiple heals, etc
DPS yup, its there.
Let me tell you the truth, healing is not deep, healing takes inately less skill than predicting/reacting to what the enemy is doing like most of GW2 support/dodging. healing is either doing it after it is already done, ordoing it constantly. It allows every other player to play less skilled.
Tanking, i will say tanking can be deep, depending on the execution, however, tanking makes everyone else playing a lot less deep, embarrasingly so.
having to buff in certain areas actually tends to make it more deep, If people didnt stack 100% of the time you would have to consider timing, gathering at key times, surviving in key times, etc.
If simple aggro mechanics exist, they will be abused, the entire stacking phonemenon is essentially abuse of aggro mechanics. “we can make you stand here in the worst situation possible”
Your hatred of dodge doesnt really make sense, negating damage that you know is coming is not easier than totally negating all dmg by being the DPS who can stand where he will never get hit, and do damage.
let me be clear, stacking at all is not bad, its something you should do at times, and at others you change it up. it can be something you can do more, if your team is built for it, and reactive, but right now, its too easy for too many encounters. monsters attack too slowly, and dont have a lot of skills that can handle people doing this.
Guys, you keep forgetting that there is content and mobs in this game designed around anti stacking or intellignet AI…..usually that is the most reviled content in the game (arah p4, dredge fractal) or once the novelty goes away completely abandoned (aetherpath).
At the end of the day these dungeons must be run multiple times. Can you see yourself running molten facilty and aetherblade retreat, every day, multiple paths for tokens or money and not get fed up with the mechanics at one point? Cause that’s what happened with the aether path :P
I would say let them add new dungeons with your suggestions and wishes in mind but leave the core generally untouched, making those runs harder and longer will only hurt the ppl running them economically (see the hotw p1 and what the troll added there did to pugging) for no good reason, especially in the light of the recent farming nerfs.
The thing you’re forgetting is that different people have different views of what’s fun.
I find repeated ‘skip-n-stack’ speedruns hellishly boring and pointless, which is why I rarely do dungeons where this is the rule rather than the exception.
To a lot of us fun=challenging and interesting mechanics that are reactive rather than memorized. The closer the encounters get to PacMan patterns the farther I stay away from them.
That’s why i said they should add over dungeons tailored to your sensibilities as well, but keep the hellishly boring ones as well since they are a major source of income for a lot of ppl.
this is probably the best bet. not reworking the old content, but making new content thats a bit harder, probably the best bet is like hard modes in new areas that are clearly labeled as being harder
Running away and having to control the monster would be a good mechanic, for SOME bosses/enemies some of the time.
Yes its annoying, but the enemy is supposed to be trying not to get killed. A well executed running enemy, you get a thrill when you force them to take your burst. The thrill is catching them, and coordinating well enough that you get the best burst possible.
note this is not EVERY boss.It’s not thrilling.
The reduced dmg from a certain side mechanic gives more depth, because it makes it so the players have to adapt to what the enemy is actually doing. If he is facing you, your goal is to survive, and keep him facing you, so other people can do more dmg, if he turns from you, your goal is to do as much dps as possible.
Lupicus already does this without making the player facing him do zero damage. Your goal is to survive by dodging kicks and swipes while the rest of the party do whatever (until he switches aggro). You don’t need a damage throttle. Other examples – Mossman, archdiviner, svanir shaman in snowblind fractal. Just to reiterate – damage throttles aren’t necessary, and this “person holding aggro needing to survive” already exists.
Stacking is fine in theory, but the enemies play into it way to easily. Stacking can be the optimal condition, but if thats the case the enemies shouldnt ALWAYS allow you to easily maintain your optimal case.
And they don’t. Do FOTM 49 and try to mindlessly stack the shaman in snowblind, mossman, and archdiviner. It honestly just doesn’t work, you need to play it quite defensively with solid reflexes in case they switch aggro and smack you for like 15k damage.
—
So… you’re saying have to bring different utilities other than DPS ones is a bad thing? I don’t mean to sound rude, but that’s the way I perceived your response to that.
It’s bad because it’s pointless. “I guess I’ll take Throw Bolas and now kill this mob 3 seconds slower” is not a good reason for making me switch utilities.
There’s already mechanics in game to stop stacking, but they either just aren’t strong enough or you can just dodge to avoid them. For example, one of the bosses in SE has an attack where he puts fire AoEs beneath every party member’s feet, but it’s just nowhere near strong enough and the fight inst long enough with full zerkers to stop people just soaking the damage and burn him up.
And now remember that your average player isn’t going to have the DPS to endure the burning because they’re not optimised. People need to stop trying to think of obstacles for optimised teams, because all you’re doing is amplifying the difficulty for pugs and ramping it up to 11 while giving speed runners like a 2 second speed bump with these “anti-stacking mechanics”.
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Problems that would be solved:
Stacking in dungeons
People complained about the no-skill tactic of stacking in dungeons. That wouldn’t be possible anymore.Nope, try again. We will continue to stack.
Once again, people trying to identify a problem that doesn’t exist and offering poor solutions.
the example you show is a pretty crappy chase/fight. yeah if you make a sucky boring evading enemy it will be sucky and boring, the key is to design it in an interesting way.
As far as defense stuff, some fights do actually have mechanics for it, but you are talking about some of the more interesting fights, that are imo better fights. Point is more of this should be considered. without it having to be level 49 fractals, and without it having to instant kill you. Not good to make every fight trivial and boring except for one arah boss, and level 49 fractals.
as far as the ill just have to take throw bolas and take 3 seconds longer, thats slightly more engaging than i ll just take a banner and the enemy will sit there and die.
My whole beef with the reasoning you present is, by logical extension you want a fight where the enemy doesnt move, lets you do your max DPS and stands in the place thats going to hurt it the most.
Im just saying, thats boring.
Woa 6% drop rate.. that amazingly good..
Considering the absurd work /cost in cloth it takes to make a cloth armor- its well worth it to do fractals I see.
6% drop rate, but you dont select the stats, its also 1 per day, so 60% of people will get one random stat combination, for one piece of armor after 20 days of running fractals. you can buy everything ascended craft for like 20-60 gold. which is about 5-15 hours of dungeon running.
Also this thread has been moved to the dungeon, where it never sees light again.
Well we ll see this upcoming week how much they have to say, china officially released on the 15th.
I wouldnt expect too much if i were you.
I very rarely say this but in this particular case, if you don’t like the way the endgame plays out, then this game just isn’t for you sadly.
Anet has always said, even before launch, that the endgame starts at level 1. There is no ‘endgame’, just ‘the game’. The whole game is the endgame, what you want to do is up to you, and you set goals for yourself, the game doesn’t do that for you.
It’s like asking what the endgame in Skyrim was.
Whether goals are ‘meaningful’ is a very subjective thing. For example, on TSW, my guild leader played the game since launch, and he has never sat foot in a single dungeon, and is still geared with what’s basically that game’s equivalent of greens. Was he wasting his time? Who’s me or you to judge that.
Personally, a game is meaningful as long as you are having fun. Anet has stated that this is the way the game works, its very open, its super casual, and the endgame is just doing whatever you want. Well, if you don’t like that, then, I guess its just not the game for you :L
The MMO market is full to the brim with games where you get pulled around on a leash and where most of the content is irrelevant after level cap, can’t we just have 1 game where you can do what you want, instead of the game nudging you constantly towards a goal it set for you?
you can do whatever you want, you just get way less out of it. You could do a jumping puzzle, but you will get less than if you kill level 10 monsters in queensdale.
you could do a fractal, but your time is better spent following an ustoppable zerg in EOTM.
So really you are incorrect, you cant do anything you want, most things dont pay, the harder things pay even less.
But even regardless of paying well, they dont even have the type of content im talking about at all. Whether it pays well or not, there really isnt much content at all that requires any mastery at all in PVE.
Now hey, if thats the path they go, and thats what everyone wants thats fine, i will play less, but no big deal, i am only one dude. But the thread is asking what people want from endgame, so ill tell him what im looking for
Your complaint seems misdirected: You seem unhappy with how rewards are given in the game; TP has nothing to do with that. ;
Also, while Anet can reduce or increase supply they cannot directly control demand for items, and if the price for something is too high/low for an individual player’s tastes, messing with the supply without addressing demand is not a good long-term solution.
Once upon a time, the TP was stuffed with blue and green equipment being sold for around vendor price – 15% because too much of it was provided as a side effect of crafting and playing the game. Players ended up with way more gear than they needed and competition to sell it for whatever they could get reduced the prices to the point where it was better to vendor the items you crafted than sell to other players.
When they changed Magic Find to an account-wide stat they tied it to this gear by making it possible to increase MF through salvaging this otherwise useless gear. The TP quickly sold out of the cheapest items and for several months it was profitable to sell the gear on the TP. Ascended gear crafting, changes to runes/sigils and the addition of the wardrobe also shifts demand for certain items, but all of these are temporary situations.
Most rares and exotics are relatively cheap because they drop more often than people need them to. The majority get broken down for materials like exo globs, or forged in hopes of getting a specific item (precursors). They already provide methods guaranteed to offer these items so if you want more of them you need only do those activities that already provide them.
It’s simply not possible to constantly add new game statistics or gear tiers to fuel demand for these items and force prices up. Nor is it prudent to oversupply them and crash the markets because a few individuals don’t want to do the content that already provides them. The only thing you can do is decide on what your goals are within the game and look for ways to reach that goal that you enjoy. Realize that you share this game with hundreds of thousands of other people, perhaps even millions of other players, and that your own goals and experiences, while different from those other players’, are not more important or more valid than their goals and experiences.
The common thread to these complaints that I see is that those making the complaints do not seem to consider the experiences of other players. Statements like “I will never get a precursor to drop” ignores the fact that all the precursors in the game came from somewhere, the TP does not create them some other player pulled it from the forge or the bonus chest from a world boss kill or a random mob. Everyone has that chance every time he plays the game. It cannot get any more fair than this without crashing the game’s economy, so learn to work within the rules of the game instead of insisting that the rules be changed for your own benefit.
actually there are renewable methods for giving items value, But to be honest, they give out too many items too easily, and unintentionally, so they tend to have to do these massive destruction based mechanisms to generate demand.
even if when they do come up with items that can continue to suck out the supply, they generally have to make it with material requirements that dissuade people from even bothering.
But yeah there are ways, but it would cost money and development time, and they probably figure people dont care that much at the end of the day, which is probably accurate.
Hey this is my first post on the forums and it’s for an issue that’s bugged for a long time now.
The main complaint about guild wars 2’s “failure”. Is it’s lack of endgame content.
I’d like to ask the question, what is endgame content. I believe gw2 has the most satisfying endgame content I’ve seen. Most other games have grinds endgame content, I.e. Getting mounts, raids etc.
Why are these supposedly better than gw2? We have tried to stray away from all grind and we are punished for it. After the community begged for endgame content a slight gear grind was released, yet there was huge backlash against it. If you want to grind for cosmetics, there are dungeons and minis to collect. If you want pvp content there are tons of it?
What do you want?
to me, endgame doesnt mean grind, it means a set of goals and things to achieve while playing at a high level. however people want to be rewarded for it. What that reward should be is debateable.
For example, in WoW people say the end game is chasing a carrot, but thats not really true, the carrot, is merely the guide, the endgame is a series of progressively harder dungeons. Essentially they use the carrot to incentivize you to do the classic beat a level and go to the next one game mechanic, which i honestly never had a problem with (main issue if the number of times you may have to beat the same level to proceed)
The point is, GW2 has few real goals/systems in place to encourage people to play once they have all their skills, and favorite builds, there are few challenges, and goals at that point.
mostly its FOTM, Arah path and… as far as goals, its legendary.That endgame of harder dungeons sound like fractals to me. I just can’t see what we are missing besides grind :/
fractals is pretty small, and the grind is actually higher than WoW type games to get something. Also current data shows getting further gives you no higher rewards.
fractals are cool, but as a total endgame it doesnt have enough. Its basically equivalent to 12 mini dungeons and 3 bosses. comparing it to other games, or even gw2 dungeons, its probably equal to 2-3 regular dungeons. Also there is not a strong progression. If they had certain fractals that you only see at higher levels, there would be that feeling of achievement, exploration, and wonder when you get deeper in, but there is very little of that currently.
but its not just about dungeons, its about any type of goals, and gameplay that encourages mastery.
what do people do when they reach 80 in GW2? they kill easy things over and over, to get gold. Thats what endgame is here. Kill easy stuff over and over, use 1 or 2 skills.
They could have endgame jump puzzle challenges, beat X jumping puzzle in X time, maybe special challenges, for better/unique rewards – shows mastery of jump puzzles
exploration challenges, Get each of these places within this time, every enemy you kill or chest you get along the way extends your time, if you make it to final place spawn a rare enemy.
lore challenges, find hidden places/npcs, successfully answer their questions/riddles to unlock new lore, and lore related contents.
Survival challenges, how many enemies can you kill before being killed
point is, game needs more to do than kill easy enemies over and over with 2 buttons as the main activity post 79