Guild Wars 2

Housing and Hall of Monuments seem to slot fairly neatly into one another. Having areas within your (instanced?) home that can be populated with dummies for armour and clothing, display cases for weapons and valuables, a little garden for miniatures to run around in – I’d imagine that these sorts of things could be implemented by the art team without impacting on mechanics at all, depending on just how ANet manages its resources. Guild Halls could interact with player housing, perhaps offering an entranceway into your own housing instance within the hall? That’s not to say they’d be ‘easy’ to create, just that they won’t necessarily cause the waves that mechanical changes often do and by using a team that presumably focuses on an area of the game that is different to the team working on the changes to be made over the coming months.

PvP sandbox is an interesting idea – Colin mentioned custom arenas in his recent blog post, though it sounds as though you’re thinking of having customizable elements in WvWvW? That’s a bit trickier, but perhaps if elements can be refined in PvP and then branch out to WvWvW, that might be a more manageable way to examine how they could be implemented on a large scale.

SadieDeAtreia.8912:

Good post.

But, consider that, until you have passed the actual going rate for said precursor with your attempts in the MF, you have lost nothing. The next forge could yield the weapon and, if it does, you would have saved the difference between TP price and what you’ve gambled away up to that point.

Also, (and I’m not denying that this is probably the best option for most people, but) using your example of having spent 100g already, then deciding to cut your losses and rather save up, will effectively end with the 100g being added to total expenditure on the weapon upon date of purchase. So a 600g weapon would have cost you 700g, in effect. For a lot of people this is unacceptable, especially if there is a chance that the next forge will be the lucky one.

It is a broken mechanic that is taking advantage of human nature. Some will give up and go the gem store route, some will exploit or buy from third parties, others will come to the forums and complain because they love the game and want to see it fixed.

I’m absolutely not defending the mechanic. Just want to get that clear before I continue.

You understand that the basis of this behaviour is the old ‘one more go’ appeal of the thing. Frankly, there’s a decent amount of that in GW2 and in many other games, though it seems most prevalent in free-to-play games as a means of earning revenue. However, I don’t completely support the players in their complaints based on one thing – they are in control. They can decide when something is not worth what they’re putting into it. Hundreds of hours’ worth of gold risked to get a shiny sword that most people don’t have is something that people should acknowledge and appreciate, and while ANet is culpable for the mechanic, they are not the ones pressing the button over and over. If this is about the exploitation of compulsive behaviour, then that’s something that demands a whole new discussion beyond the implementation of Precursors in the game. It’s a big topic.

And you have absolutely lost something by throwing things into the Forge and not getting a Precursor. You lose time, you lose resources and you lose patience. The concept that it might be worth it in the end is the very thing that the whole deal relies upon, but so long as an outcome is not a definite, it’s generally not a good idea to bet on it. Never make a bet when you don’t have an idea of the odds and never forget that the size of the reward does not always justify the odds themselves.

TakaEagle.9486:

proxy.7963:

Legendaries are skins, not stats.

Legendaries have their own stats, they aren’t just the skin.

The stats aren’t particularly prestigious though, and there are far more efficient ways to gain weapons with the same stats. However, there is only one way to get their skins.

It’s true that Legendaries have been stated to always be considered ‘best in slot’, but it’s also been said that they’ll always be in-line with the highest tier of weapon. At the moment that’s Exotics and in the future it’ll be Ascended. While this scaling certainly makes for a decent investment for the implementation of new tiers of equipment, I wonder whether the effort to obtain even a combination of different tiers of the same weapon will ever match that needed to obtain a single Legendary.

Also what Riss said :P

I’m dead, typing this from the grave.

Graveyard’s pretty full, so I’m in Overflow.

Legendaries are skins, not stats.

SadieDeAtreia.8912:

For anyone ‘thinking’ this way:
“putting xxx gold in the mystic forge, oh no, you could have bought any precursor… "

You don’t buy or craft hundreds of gold worth of rares/exotics to dump in there in one go. It simply accumulates from the moment you’ve decided to pursue w/e legendary. It may be 10g at a time, maybe more, maybe less. It depends on how many items’s you have crafted on the day or how many buy orders got filled. Then, after a while you reach a point where you would have been better off just saving your gold to buy it outright, but RNG is RNG and there is nothing to do but continue in the hope that you get lucky.

And people do get lucky. Where else would these items come from? Certainly not open world or dragons. If not for the forge there wouldn’t be any precursors for the manipulators to sell back to us.

Kindly consider this before making any remarks like this in future.

I think we all appreciate that, but people should also be able to set themselves a financial limit at which they call their attempts a loss. If a Spark currently costs ~500g to buy from the Trading post, then one might decide that after attempting 100g’s worth of Forging, it’s worthwhile cutting their losses and going for the sure route. At some point, players should consider their relative success against the ongoing financial burden, else they’ll end up effectively losing money that could otherwise be spent on a definite outcome (ie; buying it from the Trading Post).

We all know it’s gambling. Players should appreciate when it’s time to cut their losses and call it a day.

GW2 is clearly speciesist. Please give us dog tonic – I want to be the St Bernard I am in my heart.

domxnik.1453:

Demeron.5423:

Like i said before Anet can post n say they are working on stuff like they said before now they said they are not loike w/e this game is done n boring for me i think im done with gw2 now ive put over 600g worth of Extoics into Mystic forge and still cant get my Precurser ur RNG System is Trash its not Rewarding and ive done dragon chests daily like 4-8 of em a day and this is beyond annoying and im beyond kitten Gold Farmers own ur Game now they sell precursers and Legendarys now they run GW2 now it seems

Thats my 2 Cents n Rant good day!

Nice run on.

If you put over 600g into exotics, why didn’t you just use that gold to buy the precursor?

I tripped and they all fell into the Forge, oh no!

Using the Mystic Forge to get a Precursor makes me think that it was an unintentional method that was left in as a ‘feature’ after it was discovered, as it’s a logical continuation of the promotion scheme but it just seems such a massive financial risk.

Spending 600g seems crazy, yo. I could probably buy one of every other (non-Legendary/Precursor/Ascended) item in the game for that much! Maybe. Possibly.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

knives.6345:

Semi-off topic

The so-called “grind” is subjective. What you consider a “grind” may not be a grind to others.

Chances are, you call what you are doing a “grind” if you don’t like it, but feel forced to repeatedly do it to achieve something (in my case, Legendary), or you’re just a spoiled kid who wanted to get things as easy as he/she could.

Grinding is grinding. Whether you like it or not, doesn’t change that.

Something that is a grind is defined as doing the same thing over and over to progress. Whether you like it or not does not change the definition. It is still a grind either way.

The negative connotations associated with the term are certainly subjective, and likely what knives was getting at. The concept of utilising grind in a game’s design is also a very divisive topic – just because something has a grind doesn’t make it inherently dissatisfying, and sensitive implementation can ease the time commitment.

Derail blurp.

We don’t know if anything’s RNG yet!

I’m guessing that this is related to the armour boxes? Just as we can presume that these will be RNG, we can also presume that they’ll be full sets of gear tailored for specific professions. Maybe cosmetic items only available via this new rewards system? Who knows? We don’t!

Being cautious is fine, but expecting the worst is just going to make your time miserable. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. So don’t take part!

SadieDeAtreia.8912:

Vilkata.4725:

The statements

you can earn precursors as rewards via new reward systems taking advantage of our open persistent world.

and

We’ve simply said we’ll try and find some other places to add a chance to get them to the game until we’ve implemented the eventual precursor scavenger hunt.

don’t conflict/contradict each other. The second statement is just less specific than the first. For all we know they’re reworking how loot tables work behind the scenes and that’s the new reward system he’s referring to, we just don’t have nearly enough information to make any assumptions at this point.

Yes, exactly, we dont have enough information, that is part of the reason for my post.
Why, please can anyone tell me, why is it so difficult for them to give us a definite answer on this? If they tell us that we wont see anything for the next 6 months its perfectly fine. Players can move on to some other activity in game like leveling alts or whatever or play something else while waiting on this feature. But statements like the one in the scavenger hunt thread had a lot of people believing that we would at least see some form of temporary fix in the coming update.

If they want to manage expectation give us an approximate timeframe and more information on what is planned.

Its seriously difficult to keep the kittens away

People ask for a more open level of communication with the Devs, and they got that when the Scavenger Hunt was originally mentioned. But a relaxed stance to the dissemination of information does not go easily with deadlines and the iterative process that development can be. The short of it is that the Devs may well just not know when certain projects will be finished until they are, because that’s just what iterative development is. The Hunt in particular could well be a big part of the game, requiring a lot of work – both conceptual and technical. It might be nice for someone to say that either this or similar long-term projects will be coming ‘within 6 months’, but imagine if this pet project were stalled for whatever reason, regardless of Dev’s wishes? Or shelved? Imagine the community feedback?

They’re kitten if they do and kitten if they don’t.

Warder.3491:

Agreed! Since release, ArenaNet’s communication has been pretty poor. I wish they’d ditch the overly “professional” attitude and just speak candidly with us about their plans, like they used to do.

It’s actually kinda hard to do this without misleading people and no-one wants to be the person who mentioned a personal project that was picked up and blown out of proportion, particularly if that project was then set aside/canned to focus on something else. Besides that, development can be a pretty iterative process with what can be an adjustable endpoint, and we’re never likely to be privy to the results of the boardroom meetings that decide what’s done and what’s not.

In many ways, I’m not convinced that any industry has to deal with customer involvement on such an immediate level and on such a large scale as the gaming industry today. Heck, the level of communication we have with ANet staff now is really rather remarkable considering how things were ten or fifteen years ago. They share jokes with us and stuff!

juno.1840:

I read it differently regarding achievement rewards. I think Collin is specifically referring to daily/monthly achievements… not your achievement “points” for all achievements available to you.

So it can be implemented cleanly, starting on day X everyone is on the same page — you get achievement rewards for the daily/monthly starting on that day.

That’s another option. I’d personally quite like to see some titles linked to our current achievements – some form of reward for accomplishments – but the concept of actually getting gear and such with them was more than I was expecting. I’m curious to see how well they gel with our current dailies. I’m consistently pleasantly surprised how well events tend to support the completion of Hearts in an area (which may be entirely unintended) and if that same kind of synergy could happen with these new daily achievements, it’d be much appreciated.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

proxy.7963:

Himei.5379:

Did you see the pic of some of the rewards to trade in to? 100 Tokens for a endless Cat tonic, haha. Must get!

I don’t even know what a Chauncey von Snuffles III is, but I want one.

haha, same. It was an instantly “want” item.

I have high hopes for that new reward system and the new dailies. It sounds promising!

As far as I can tell, it’s a little pet cat with a jaunty bowler hat.

It’s like they’re looking into my mind and making the thing I want the most.

Fozzik.1742:

It all sounds really good. The only thing that is a tiny bit frustrating is the TONS of achievements I’ve already completed and gotten nothing for. I wish I could do them over again once they are worth tokens. =\

I’d be amazed if compensating people for achievement points already earned wasn’t considered, especially as current achievements aren’t repeatable. Though I suppose this would depend on just what the new system consists of – perhaps it’s not intended for them to be tied to what we currently consider achievements? I guess we just have to wait.

Himei.5379:

Did you see the pic of some of the rewards to trade in to? 100 Tokens for a endless Cat tonic, haha. Must get!

I don’t even know what a Chauncey von Snuffles III is, but I want one.

Yeah, that’s a big post. Colour me embarrassed.

TL;DR – Blurf, horizontal progression is a nice concept but still open to gating issues, subjectivity; argument comes down to design and implementation more than philosophy.

I’m sensitive to the concerns of people who have bought the game on the basis of a design philosophy that they feel is being marginalised. I feel that the lengthy development time, coupled with any latent nostalgia around the first game may have coloured people’s opinions slightly (and introduced a form of bias towards what could be perceived as horizontal progression and a retention of certain values from the original, as might be expected from the followers of a franchise), but regardless I don’t feel that the concerns are invalid.

However, I question as to whether horizontal progression as a philosophy is quite as clean as it might seem.

‘Grind’ is inherently subjective. You cannot presume that one person’s definition of a grind is the same as yours, and some even delineate between a positive and a negative grind based on their enjoyment. It’s also worth noting that horizontal progression can involve just as much grind as vertical, and vice versa. It’s the way that each are implemented that seems important to me, because they both have the potential to be enjoyable. A wide range of critically-acclaimed games are based around vertical progression. Correlation does not imply causation.

Horizontal progression is not as open as some might paint it to be. Even when presuming that it is only VP at the maximum level that people are concerned about, focus on HP will likely gate content based on skill levels, group composition and game experience. This will still be promoting a level of elitism in the game whereby stringent requirements for efficiency will be expected – ones not softened by going about the relatively simple task of getting upgraded gear (not to the highest level, because we don’t currently need the highest level gear to play any part of the game besides repetitions of Fractals, and we’ve no sign that this will change). In this respect, VP could ease the transition from ‘inexperienced’ to ‘experienced’, whereby less-skilled players could still enjoy content that may otherwise be made inaccessible. I do not think that is a bad thing. I feel that everyone should have the opportunity to appreciate the content in a game, and it seems to me that HP has just as much potential for gating as VP if it is not implemented sensitively.

I personally feel that content gating is just as impacted by character level than equipment. I have completed most of Orr in a mixture of greens and yellows, but as a level 80 character – I know if I’d attempted the same as a level 60, with the best gear available to a level 60 character, it would have been far more difficult. That would be down to a mixture of available traits/points to make a decent build, lower HP pool, lessened ability to pick and choose skills I wanted (presuming that I had no skill points left, didn’t want to head to new zones to pick more up and needed to buy new skills to develop a build) and a presumably smaller pool of gold to work with. These are all aspects relating to level (but that could all be considered as separate points), but we seem far happier to simply expect that – we expect new players to have to play for dozens of hours to enjoy content that would still be gated with HP. That seems weird to me, but it isn’t a point that folks are arguing doesn’t exist.

It’s impossible for any of us to say just how much VP will effect the game. We can say that we disagree with its philosophy, we can say that it has ruined our enjoyment of other titles, and we can say that we are concerned that quotes by Dev members have made. But most of this seems to be more about concerns over implementation than anything. If the power curve being mentioned is so shallow that I can play the game I enjoy and progress on the curve without noticing it – if the design and the mechanics are solid enough that I can simply play the game and have the game subtly guide me along the curve, then I don’t think that has to be a negative thing. But the trick’s in the subtleties. I’ve achieved end-game content (exotic karma armour) while working up towards my end-game (World Completion), and it eased me into the expectations of an end-level character. There’s nothing to currently say that VP going forward won’t be similar and that the FotM introduction was an unfortunate blip.

If you read all that, have a cookie. If not, I don’t blame you.

Astralporing.1957:

Quotelinks Snip

Raine.1394:

Quotelinks Snip

Thanks for the links. It’s clearer for me where people are getting the conclusions that they seem to have now. I do think it’s worth pointing out that the development of the rarity tiers does not necessarily mean that new tiers will be added – development could occur within the existing tiers, much in the same way as the Agony concept was implemented (ie; Adding novel concepts to existing loot). I wouldn’t consider this VP, however, unless these changes were restricted to Ascended gear and limited your access to new content in the game, because increasing the variety within a tier does not necessarily result in a situation where you have to take advantage.

I won’t comment on the issue regarding Tier 6 materials and crafting, however, besides that I feel that these items were intended to be long-term goals for players that were implemented to a fairly controversial degree of success.

However, I will comment on the idea that you cannot have vertical progression without a gear grind. If you consider that certain areas of the game are particularly difficult to navigate without a certain quality of gear and character level before the introduction of Ascended (ie; Orr), and if you associate this mandatory gathering of loot in order to fully enjoy PvE available on release, I’ve reached that point without any grind at all. None of my actions constitute what I’d consider to be grind (and it seems that everyone has their own subtleties as to what this phrase means), as I’ve picked up the gear I need through my efforts to complete my major goal, which is World Completion. I’d be the first to admit that this is inherently subjective conclusion to make (‘I didn’t think I was grinding, so I wasn’t grinding, so there is no grind’), but the opposite is also true (‘I had to grind, so I was grinding, so there is a grind’). It seems that we have a significantly smaller issue with VP as long as there isn’t a grind, or when it’s so subtle as to be unnoticeable.

Considering that, I’d agree that FotM and Ascended gear were both added in a fairly slapdash sort of way, despite enjoying the dungeon the few times I’ve tried it. They’ve been fairly unsubtly shoehorned in as an alternative to the majority of the game instead of complimenting it. However, Devs have also stated that Ascended gear is planned to be obtained via other methods and, presumably, ones with greater variety (as what is the point in repeating a self-confessed mistake?). If these methods were reasonable and feasible, would people have an issue with the concept of this form of VP?

I found gaining my set of Exotic Karma armour a decent example of this. I gained my karma through playing the game, without focusing on gaining karma at all. It was an organic process, supported by various aspects of playing the game, and by the time I had personally reached Orr, I had enough to buy a set. It just happened, without me really thinking about it. To me, that’s ideal – I’d put in plenty of time and effort into the game and been rewarded in a manner that was worthwhile but not my major goal. If people could earn Ascended gear in a similar manner – through regular play that could be constituted a grind, but that probably would not be because it was based around other enjoyable activities – would there be as much concern? Is it the philosophy that’s the issue here, or the implementation?

Distaste.4801:

Have you played WoW at all? This game is just as much of a treadmill with fractals currently. Vertical Treadmill only implies that there is something with better stats. The grade of the power curve has absolutely nothing to do with it being a treadmill, only that it coerces(read forces) people into going for that next item. It could be 1 stat point or 20, but people want the best stats. As for content gating, what do you think Agony resist is? Content gating also does not change vertical progression. The treadmill is still there, you just have to wait to get on it.

The only ‘content’ one is gated out of by not acquiring agony-resistant equipment through Fractals is further levels of Fractals, the modules of which are not Fractal level-dependant ie; You see the same content in level 1 as you do level 30. The only difference that I’m aware of is a differing drop rate for equipment, but even this is only denying the opportunity for what could be considered a more efficient means to gather loot. I’d argue that is not ‘content’.

Distaste.4801:

Now I’m sure you want to bring up that there isn’t supposed to be another tier of gear above ascended besides legendary, but ArenaNet is clever you see. They are hiding their gear treadmill by staggering out ascended items. So instead of releasing a whole tier of gear at once they are trying to make it appear that they aren’t doing a gear treadmill by doing a few pieces at a time. After all the pieces are out then it will be infusions, we’ve already caught a glimpse of some of the infusions to come if I remember correctly. So technically there won’t be a tier of gear better than ascended but you better believe you’ll still be on the gear treadmill trying to get that next ascended item or an infusion. What about after infusions? My guess is upping the level cap so the whole thing starts again, JUST LIKE WOW.

The gist of this is just the prediction that a treadmill will occur. We already know that Ascended gear will be rolled out over time. Based on the current status of the game, we could make the presumption that acquiring it will allow us to complete current content more easily or that use of the Agony mechanic will be more prevalent in future content. We could also presume that Infusions will be introduced tailored to different but similar effects that Agony and Fractals currently share. But all of these are just predictions – you’ve no evidence that the game will progress in this way, just the fear that it will. I don’t even disagree that This Is a Thing That Might Happen, but you can’t base an entire argument, nor promote such scare tactics as I’ve seen some taking part in, around a hunch or your own personal experience in a similar scenario. It doesn’t wash.

Raine.1394:

*Ascended does not equal treadmill. Vertical progression equals treadmill. Consider the words making up the concept of game design. Vertical: the power level increases. Progression: it continually increases over time. The concept is not difficult to understand, nor are its implications. It is, by definition, a gear grind treadmill.

At the moment, you (and many others) seem to be using this point as evidence as to why a gear treadmill will be implemented; that Ascended is a sign of continual Vertical progression to come and associated gated content based upon it. However, I don’t consider even the addition of the remainder of the Ascended tier of equipment to be a sign of progression as, provided that it forms a single step, this is not progression over time. It is a single point of progression which, by design philosophy, was intended to form a step between Exotic and Legendary, keeping in mind that Legendary gear is intended to take a substantial time to earn.

I may be proven incorrect in my concept of how the game will be maturing over time, but so might you. And in this manner, both of us are equally open to critical views on our opinions, based as they are on incomplete evidence. And I’ve yet to see a rebuff on these grounds that do not make as many assumptions as I do in denying it.

Raine.1394:

The devs have said we will have vertical progression in the game moving forward. What is incontrovertibly true is that WoW has vertical progression and now GW2 has vertical progression. GW2 might have a treadmill that moves slower than WoW’s. That remains to be seen. But, WoW = GW2 with respect to actually having a treadmill.

Could you link me to where the Devs explicitly stated that vertical progression would be implemented into GW2? I understand that there was mention of the addition of Ascended gear, but I’m more curious to see an actual statement pledging to vertical progression by a Dev member, or the addition of further tiers of gear potency/efficiency over time.

Vasham.2408:

The price you pay for removing the trinity and catering to casuals.

Dang casuals stole my job and my wife! They’re not even from around here! They should go back home and actually work on making their own games a decent place to play, the border-jumping scum!

D:<

SneakyErvin.3056:

Only way an enrage time would work would be if its not based around x amount of time. Instead it should be based around x amounts of fails vs a certain ability. Like say, if you fail to break the earth shield say 4 times during the grawl boss fight he would enrage for 20 or 30 sec i.e each sacrificed prisoner would give him 1 enrage buff and at 4 he enrages. This would make the boss less forgiving, currently he only heals up.

Svanir boss would have something similar, for each person hit by the falling roof he would get one stack, at 5 stacks he would enrage or something. Same deal with power suit or something, each successful bombs adds a stack.

This could work for pretty much every boss, except the old dungeon bosses really need a revamp with some mechanics that are close to unavoidable.

Each fractal boss has some form of ability that could be tied to enrage, but a pure timer would be awful.

I like the idea that a timer/penalty could be placed on a fight if the player doesn’t manage to fulfil certain requirements during the fight. I wouldn’t say it’s entirely novel even then (a timer’s a timer, even if it’s imaginatively implemented), but it could promote more varied strategies and party compositions. And with professions able to fulfil most roles and access most broad abilities in some fashion (as far as I’m aware), this wouldn’t necessarily disrupt the design philosophy that anyone can find a place on a party regardless of profession. It’d also be relatively simple to sub into existing fights without undermining the core mechanics too much. The positive thing about Enrage is that it technically allows people to continue fighting as the odds are stacked against them, so it’s not a clear-cut pass/fail scenario. I much prefer that to a straightforward timer.

Saying that, ANet staff have said that they’re looking into tuning existing content. Perhaps we’ll see something like this come the new patch. I’d also hope (not expect, but hope) that they could come up with more imaginative solutions given their knowledge of the systems.

Borked.6824:

The best part about good players is that they actually recognize flaws and try to make change, whereas others like you just stagnate and pretend like it’s all good because it’s not kittenting on your lawn.

‘The best part about sharing ideas to improve a game is making the people who disagree with your ideas look like idiots’.

That’s kinda the take-home message I’m getting from this. Part of the reason that discussions like this don’t manage to get anywhere is because they’re not discussions – they’re lectures given by players who believe that their opinions hold sway over those held by other people, based on fairly arbitrary reasoning.

Enrage meters aren’t a novel idea, besides. Even something similar under a different name is essentially adding a timer to a fight – something that’s been in games for decades in a myriad of ways. I don’t think that’s change – that’s reversion to the norm when you’re attempting to put pressure on a player during a segment. I’d also argue that it actually promotes the complaint that GW2 is all about DPS (which I don’t necessarily agree with provided a player chooses to play otherwise), as the most efficient way to deal with a time limit on a fight is to win as swiftly as possible. Indeed it’s the only way, considering the majority of mechanics used in games such as this.

Borked.6824:

because of a hidden agenda makes me a little ticked off.

I’m not convinced that the concept of businesses existing to generate revenue is entirely a hidden agenda.

Hellkaiser.6025:

Then again, along with “envy” claim posts, the “play something else” posts are just as worthless and a waste of virtual space and with no offense intended to you or others, is all I’m expecting this thread to generate in abundance.

Fanboys will be fanboys

Not all complaints are of equal value, and your inherent bias against the current system is obviously colouring your appreciation of posts either in support of your own view or against it.

Complaints are far easier to consider based on quantification – if a system of numbers are poorly balanced, it is easily made clear – but a complaint based on subjectivity (‘I don’t think things should be this easy to do’) are much more difficult to justify. And honestly, I don’t see many people complaining about this topic basing their arguments on ground that’s any more diverse than ‘I don’t like this / It’s stupid / It unbalances the economy in some way / It encourages too much reliance on the Trading Post, which I don’t think should happen’. If you’re stating an opinion as fact, you come across as arrogant. Quantify your complaints and they’ll be more easily appreciated.

Also, there’s an irony in seeing someone complain about ‘worthless’ posts following up by calling people who don’t agree with your point ‘fanboys’. You’re not contributing to discussion and you’re failing to understand that without solid justification, complaints are just as pointless as blind praise.

digiowl.9620:

Ah yes, self-sufficiency. Then why the revive mechanic? Let those that are so fool that they get downed fend for themselves. Never mind that if you actually try to be a good samaritan you end up a aggro magnet.

Well, yes. Just because you’re not keen on a mechanic does not make it objectively bad. I don’t honestly understand your criticism here – is it that downed states aren’t as effective as you think they should be, or too much? Is it that you can help people who are downed, or can’t? I can’t quite sense your input through potential sarcasm.

digiowl.9620:

IMO the game is not fluid and reactive, it is dogpiled chaos. All these interrupts and dodges are fine and dandy when the fight is 1 on 1. But once it becomes group on group, never mind group on boss, it just devolves into a process of hitting hard, hitting fast, rinse and repeat.

Attempting to avoid the topic of Fractals, but the Dredge boss is a fairly interesting attempt by ANet to make fights more tooled towards specialised mechanics rather than relying on DPS. You simply cannot succeed in that boss by standing and hitting it until it falls over. Regardless of how successful the results are, I’d appreciate seeing more bosses like this in the future, though perhaps a little more forgiving.

However, in general I don’t agree. You can succeed in many boss fights by relying on DPS, but you don’t have to – and that’s the point. You aren’t being expected to fill any particular role and the game is made to be accessible by all sorts of players with all sorts of build types. And there’s nothing to say that ANet won’t build on this foundation in the future. Saying anything else, even based on evidence thus far, just strikes me as defeatist. And if you choose to limit yourself to a single role, for whatever reason, and find yourself dissatisfied, then change. Experiment. You have the ability to fairly easily and you don’t have to worry too much about tooling yourself to an extreme build to succeed.

Toxyn.9608:

You make a good point, Proxy. However, say someone is looking to lower the amount of threat they get in a dungeon. They have two main options; switch out some dps for Vitality or for Toughness. Luckily, I made the choice of Vitality without knowing this information. If I had chosen Toughness, I would be back at square one and wasted time/resources re-gearing.

Granted that’s a good point, and I find it interesting that one defence stat was apparently chosen over another in order to calculate aggro. I do see your point that for anyone spending time to devote themselves towards a particular role, their actions may unintentionally scupper them. However, I’d still argue that success in the game is less reliant upon preparation as much as it is upon reaction. In many ways, we’re encouraged to be able to respond to events rather than to generate a build that is tailored towards a certain role in the party – in your example above, I’d understand why a player might feel that they’d wasted their time, but a decent player should still be able to react effectively to additional aggro (particularly with the innate defence bonuses they’d earned for themselves). It’s the result of entering the game with the mindset you might apply to another title and going about the same activities rather than adjusting your expectations.

digiowl.9620:

The only real way to get any sanity into this would be if a group of people were willing to face down the same big mob repeatedly using a controlled range of setups of professions and gear to try and establish a baseline. Then approach a different mob with the same exact process and record any differences in behavior.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s no real need to figure out every minutiae of the aggro system. The current content does not require that a party take advantage of it in order to succeed, and the feeling that players need to know everything about a system in order to enjoy it just isn’t something I share.

There comes a point where a system can become so complex enough that, to an outsider, it begins to generate apparently random results. The current knowledge of the system has been enough to draw player’s ire, but an advanced level of knowledge about other systems has done the same – ANet really has nothing to gain by explaining it to us, and I doubt we actually need to know. With each character having the ability to be largely self-sufficient while also supporting the group as a whole, the only benefit that I understand to knowing the intricacies of the system is to players who either a) Want to use it to tank more effectively, or b) Want to use it to avoid aggro more effectively. But with the traditional trinity eroded by GW2’s design, there’s less reason to do that – it’s generally more fluid and reactive.

Oglaf.1074:

There’s actually an intricate aggro system in the game. For example, using melee weapons generate more aggro and a Shield on top of that generates even more. Toughness is also a huge factor; the more you have, the more aggro you generate.

However, the problem is that a lot mobs have their own aggro rules; some go for the squishiest target possible (Riflemen in CM explore, for example).

I’ve heard similar – it seems to be a system that’s complicated enough that folks still haven’t quite figured it out, which tends to lead to people presuming it’s broken in favour of certain things or just randomised to a degree. I haven’t really paid enough attention myself, though it would be nice to know – even vaguely – just what sorts of things can cause additional aggro on a player. Some professions seem to complain that they generate more aggro than they’d expect, when it may well be that they innately activate more of the factors that prioritise them over others.

Again, avoiding aggro when attacking would be another way of ensuring that you stay alive for longer, though have fun explaining that to your group.

Defences aren’t solely reliant on armour – there are many factors that contribute to a profession’s innate staying power. Elementalists can survive with the best of them, though many have said that they could use fine-tuning. Professions can be balanced towards defence in ways that don’t rely on the boost given via heavy armour – healing ability, attack negation/avoidance, debuffing the enemy to make attacks less effective – I’d argue that by making every armour possess the same innate defence stat, you’d risk marginalising other methods of defence that require a bit more thought than basic stat stacking, particularly given that you’d need to rebalance these skills in the wake of the defence increase.

Bots are removed in waves, after ANet has studied their behaviour. You can’t study something without a source of data, so the bots remain until whatever ANet does has been done.

Removing bots piecemeal is generally a more inefficient solution.

Standing desks are apparently pretty great. Even better is a standing desk on one end of a treadmill.

While you might feel less effective than in other games, I’m sure you’re aware of the ability to spec a profession in order to maximise healing and that some professions manage this more effectively than others. However, I’d argue that you’re still somewhat sidelined by the ability of other players to heal themselves and their reduced reliance on a traditional healer – even as an Engineer (a profession I wouldn’t particularly consider to be a strong native healer) without specialising in healing (which would make the profession more viable), I can still convert all of my conditions into boons approx. every 40 seconds with one skill and heal myself adequately enough that the compound effect of my own healing and the fallout healing of those around me can often keep me standing. I’d argue that this sort of independence has stymied the role of someone who wants to be a traditional healer, though a specialised healer will still allow others to concentrate on other things.

I’m happy that we’re not pigeonholed into roles – I like my independence, but also that I can fairly easily respec my traits and skills to suit a certain role (and some professions find this easier than others) and I like that this tends to support the philosophy of acceptance of others rather than cherry-picking roles for groups. There is less inter-profession synergy, sure, but that’s the cost of ensuring that each class can be a viable force when playing alone or with randoms. But even then, I wonder how effective a party would be if they purposefully chose to specialise in certain traditional trinity roles with suitable classes. The likelihood is that they’d be less effective than a mixed group or a specialised group from another game, but is it really effectiveness that people want, or is it the ability to fulfil a familiar role?

GW2 clearly has a different design philosophy to other MMOs, and it’s not for everyone. I’m fine with it, though.

Chuo.4238:

Since it took waaaaaaaaaay to long for them to develop this, I’ve kind of got the feeling that somewhere in the middle of the process something really big changed. Management philosopy, for one. Other major aspects of the game as well.

Sadly, we’ll never really know. But I’m quite sure that the team that built Guild Wars and started GW2 is different than the one that finished GW2, both in (some) personnell, and in general philosophy.

All speculation, I know…

That may well be the case. Any large-scale projects spanning several years cost significant amounts, and it’s incredibly rare for such projects to actually deliver everything they say that they will. That’s just the way that things are, and it may well be that ANet’s desire to appease the community and stick to principles actually resulted in them having to tighten belts years down the line. A lot of people seem to enjoy painting the development team in a negative light for results that failed to deliver – either what was promised or what was imagined to have been promised – without seeming to consider other implications or contributions.

In our bubble as consumers, we tend to see things in a very polarised light, and many seem to think that having certain things compromised due to tactful and occasionally painful business decisions are more akin to grievous treacheries by the developers. But we never had to mind the process, only the product, and that’s only a fraction of the story.

Gab Superstar.4059:

I seriously doubt many new skills will be introduced, and secondary professions won’t be for sure.

Why? It’s fine to doubt that something will happen, but I’ve yet to see any evidence that these areas won’t be built upon in the future. Presuming that no news means nothing will be done is more than a little defeatist.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Besides, even if they add say a new weapon, it STILL would not provide variety because the watered down combat system does not allow for complexity. Every profession is almost the same, interrupts are the same, there are no penalties for failing to time your skills, the condition system disallows Mesmers, Necros and Thieves to have a distinguished and unique role in the game.

You’re exaggerating. Of course all classes share the same core mechanics – this isn’t unusual for a game like GW2. Wanting complexity for the sake of complexity – for all classes to function in a fundamentally different manner – is unrealistic and likely to open up each individual class to even more issues than those currently identified by the community. It’s also inherently subjective to simply ask for systems that appeal to you based on preconceived ideas of how they should be. However, the act of designing of system with the ideal of promoting refined simplicity over complexity is not inherently wrong, and your dislike of the results is more down to your own preferences than anything else. There’s nothing wrong with liking different things.

Gab Superstar.4059:

You will almost never see an enemy and say “oh kitten, that was a kitten awesome build, I have never seen X profession do that before, he must have put a lot of thought into his character”, simply because there is no thought needed when creating a character, and the professions are simply not unique at all.

That’s largely because players tend to rely on other players to define builds for them for a variety of reasons, including the relative time needed to develop novel builds, a sense of community and their contribution to the wider metagame. GW2’s system may currently be more restrictive than some might like, and this generally promotes a more restricted pool of effective builds that players deem worthy of their time, but provided that ANet actually develops the game over the coming years, that will likely not remain the case. And there’s not much point in making predictions now because we’ve yet to see any fundamental changes to the game’s mechanics just yet, or given ANet or the community enough time to mature the game.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Yep, it was a nightmare to balance. Even after 7 years the game still has imbalances.

But god kitten it was worth it. It was so, so, so worth it, after seeing what GW2 combat turned out to be.

From a development point of view, I’d argue that it wasn’t.

As players, I’ve no doubt that the GW1 system was great fun despite the popularity of certain builds tending to marginalise experimentation when it came to finding spots in groups. The ideas being it all were interesting, and I’m particularly fond of the concept of beating a boss to get a unique skill. And I’ve little doubt that the apparent decreased complexity of GW2’s skill system has put some GW1 players off.

However, both systems are/were modular, and there’s absolutely nothing to suggest that GW2 won’t be introducing new skills and perhaps even dual professions in the future. Starting from a simpler foundation, however, makes building upon it significantly easier; by adding new skills, or combining existing skills from more than one profession, you simply impact on far less with a more basic system and are more able to create balanced mechanics from a pure design standpoint.

TLDR: GW1’s system, even at release, was rather complex and easy to disrupt when building upon it. By contrast, GW2’s system encourages development through its relative simplicity. There’s nothing to say that what we have now is all that we’ll ever see.

Chris Starflame.1023:

So is gw2 lacking in ‘things to do’?

And no, it doesn’t lack things to do. As ever though, your mileage may vary.

I’d argue that ‘endgame’ is whatever happens after you complete your major objective within a game. In a game as expansive as GW2, there are many points which a player may consider to be their major objective, whereas in a more linear, storyline-based game, the concept of the goal is generally more consistent amongst those who play.

If we’re defining the ‘endgame’ as the events that occur after the successful attainment of a goal, then many games simply do not have an endgame beyond a certain point as they’re finite. Some games also do not offer enough tangible milestones that appeal enough to players for them to consider them their major goal.

As an example of this, and based on the above definition, while a player of GW2 may consider gaining a complete set of Exotics to be their major goal in the game, their endgame would consist of any content they complete with that character following this point, such as gaining new skins, completing dungeons and finishing the storyline.

By this definition, ‘endgame’ is enormously subjective but generally holds elements that are consistent between players based on the relative popularity of certain goals.

I suggest that you stop;

- defining yourself by what others have, and;
- defining the value of what you want by its relative rarity

… and instead enjoy something based on either;

- its intrinsic worth, or;
- by what it means to you as an individual.

I am pleased that you are enjoying the game! I also enjoy the game – I’ve personally found it very rewarding simply working on world completion (64% and counting), and I’m actually thinking about making another new character to see if it still feels fresh the second time around. Maybe I’ll betray my Asuran roots and try a Sylvari? :O

While there are some people on the forums with legitimate gripes with the game that I’m wholly appreciative of, there are also some that seem to treat it like a lover that spurned them to be with someone else. Please do take the forums with a pinch of salt.

Happy travels!

Vasham.2408:

This game has so much potential and we’re watching it fall apart before our eyes in order to make casuals happy while the true gamers are left out in the cold.

Vasham.2408:

we’re watching it fall apart before our eyes in order to make casuals happy while the true gamers are left out in the cold.

Vasham.2408:

while the true gamers are left out in the cold.

Vasham.2408:

true gamers

I vomit a little in my mouth whenever I see someone describe themselves as a ‘true gamer’.

Design decisions made with the intention to be inclusive of all sorts of players are not inherently wrong and there have been plenty of games cheapened for me by attempts to cater to the ‘hardcore’ that have seemed misguided and poorly implemented as a person-that-plays-games-but-also-sometimes-not. If I enjoy a game and wish to support the developers, I don’t particularly appreciate it if they demand that I can only complete the thing by fighting the last boss with my feet.

Hey, the upset goes both ways, now let’s just hug (and possibly make out).

Lord Kreegan.8123:

The biggest problem with the jumping puzzles is the camera; too often, you can’t control it to see where you have to jump because the camera has a mind of its own. The second problem with the jumping puzzles is that you need to be somewhere back from the puzzle to see where you need to jump to begin with, but ANet likes to stick the stupid puzzles in the middle of high density mob areas.

Add to that the fact that PC controls aren’t exactly tuned for that sort of thing; i.e., you don’t always jumpt when you push the controls to jump; and you’ve got a messy mechanic in the game.

Super Mario Brothers with bifocals and a limp…

Are you using/able to use right click to control the camera? I found that makes things a lot easier when I started doing pumping juzzles.

I’ve a lot of fondness for Skipping Stones; I started playing after all of the jumping puzzles had been mastered by folk, and I had a lot of fun from attempting this one with a bunch of strangers on the night of its unveiling. This was also the first one I’d attempted to cause me significant trouble, and finishing it gave me warm fuzzies.

I also teamed up with a bunch of level 80s (I was ~60) to take out the Champion Reef Rider at the end and it was all nice and good times.

I just sighed such a deep sigh that I think a little part of me faded away.

Now I have to eat a lot of ice cream in order to fill that gap.

I wasn’t banned, but I’m sure you’re a nice person and you probably smell really good.

I play (and have played) a lot of solo PvE, and my Golem’s saved my tiny Asura butt more times than I can count. It’s a big old meat shield that can act as a distraction, weaken things for rallies and such and its damage isn’t negligible.

I’m not saying that they’re good, because what’s ‘good’ is down to you and how you play, but they’ve suited my playstyle just fine so far! Supply Crate ties me down to one spot too much for my liking. I wouldn’t rely on them, though, and neither would I expect them to be much use against Champions and other players. They also don’t have much synergy with Traits, Sigils, Runes and whatnot.

Keep in mind that I’m not great at the game :I Don’t go Asura because you want Golems to be wicked awesome – go Asura because they’re neat.

GoZero.9708:

How about a Supply Crate that sends the three Asuran Elite Golems instead of Turrets?

Drooling now. Golem orbital strike!

Asura’s Golem Elites say hello.

Endemonadia.8593:

So basically GW2 Xmas was good for people who like to dress-up but sucks for everyone else right?

The Wintersday events were essentially focused on dress-up and minigames – you sadly missed the Lost Shores event which (regardless of how successful folks say it was) focused much more on fighting giant crabs and getting sweet loot.

The Gifts were largely a means to get enough socks, hats and sweaters for you to get the skins, frames and recipes that you wanted – even the rarest gear you could pick up consisted of a minipet and a guitar hero-like bell to ring in people’s ears. The GW2 wiki as well as gw2db are good places to get information on events like this so you know what to expect.

And although I’m sure it’s a sore point, I do find it a bit ironic that you saved up your items to buy presents from which you had the significant chance to get more of the same items (though giving you a lower overall total). Not your fault, mind, but a little research could have saved you the headache.

Falunel.7645:

proxy.7963:

And, if you want both stats and looks, you can get away with getting a set of armour with good stats and use transmutation stones if you don’t like how it looks. Keep in mind that Rare and Exotic armours from dungeons look the same, so you can get away with getting a set of Rare armour and transmuting that if you want the looks but not the stats.

Doesn’t work this way, unfortunately. The Rare sets are a different skin altogether.

Really? That’s interesting – have you any links to any galleries that show the differences between both for each set?

Allowing achievements in Orr to last longer would certainly help the frustration level in the zones – combinations of a low playerbase, seemingly high respawn rate and the results of a successful DE being fairly quick to overturn can be irritating. I like the zone because I have to play well to get by and I’m not a great player to begin with, but for the apparent zone rewards to last as long as they do is a shame. If a group of people clear out a temple for the benefit of other players who want to grind or grab karma gear, said players should get a decent window to actually claim that benefit. ‘2-4 hours’ (from the gw2 wiki) is not a long time when you’ve other things vying for your attentions.

A lot of Orr is about momentum. A well-organised group can push a path through the DEs and make substantial headway, which in turn opens the route for other players. But if that momentum is stalled, as is often the case when the people in your group aren’t numerous, you can be easily pushed back again. While this isn’t exactly a waste of your time because of the loot and exp you pick up, I’m not convinced that it’s easily considered fun gameplay. Challenges can be overcome, but if being beaten is inevitable (and seeing your progress dwindle fairly swiftly is very common), it’s tough for people to work up the enthusiasm. With so much riding on that progress – from spawns, to vendors, to making the waypoints uncontested for other players (and to serve as a resupply point for any of your own group), it feels more of an uphill struggle than I think it was intended to be.