IMO, the most useful things in this sense are the things that you should have access to, if I understand you correctly. Namely, the ability to answer the following questions:
- Has $ckittene $dungeon story, and thus can open explorable mode?
- Has Account done $dungeon $path, or is it left to do for Dungeon Master?
- How many times has Account done $dungeon $path since reset?
These are all things that can help inform your gameplay. It’s annoying to discover that you can’t open the dungeon for the group at the last second, since you haven’t done story on that character. Similarly, knowing what you have left for Dungeon Master can be a godsend when you just see that you’re at 4/5 on Arah…. but haven’t run a path in months. People can remember which path is which after several runs, but not after their first. And the last is kinda obvious. I’ve certainly be caught at times where Saturday afternoon I forget that I’d done a path the night before.
Knowing that you’ve run CoF p1 9,563 times seems pointless, so I don’t mind at all that you can’t tell me.
Re-zone with the items in your inventory to convert them to the new itemtype.
Thanks for the work around.
Would still like a proper bug fix, though. :-(
I had 4 Gifts of Exploration in my bank from many months back. With today’s change on WvW, I’m finishing mapping on other characters. However, the new Gifts of Exploration do not seem to be stacking with the old ones. Is this intentional? It’s rather annoying to have a second bank slot taken up for these long haul items.
Trying to keep this fairly concise:
https://github.com/arenanet/api-cdi/commit/c0aa094cebd52d1c9ce5040825be900e011ec3d9
Bank:
- Transmuted to a new skin?
- Is soulbound/account bound? (can change from base item)
- If soulbound, to whom?
- Uses left on harvesting tools/salvage kit.
- If armor, is damaged/broken?
https://github.com/arenanet/api-cdi/commit/5fe9d1470f54e7fcbeb36c2c635217f55aa1ec7b
Commerce:
- You have created timestamp, how about filled?
- Any tracking for cancelled orders?
- Have the gold/items been collected? (should I log in to grab my fat loot?)
- Perhaps walk through what we’d see if we post a buy order for 250 ecto, 150 fill in various sized batches, and we then cancel the remaining order of 100.
https://github.com/arenanet/api-cdi/commit/7224da8e3c930f9635a902ce9f2592b34fb038b9
Skills:
- Without information like cooldown, aftercast, damage, boons, conditions, target type, number of targets, range, etc. the utility of this endpoint will be very limited.
- Will ‘categories’ be canonical in determining which traits can mutate it? I could see Phantasmal Berserker have several categories to support trait processing: “phantasm”, “illusion”, “greatsword”. Having the client build this list from “weapon_type” and a hierarchy of categories seems expensive and error prone. Exactly what does the Shrapnel trait apply to again?
How far down your list is /v2/account/wallet?
Will I have a server side portal to review and revoke security tokens?
(edited by rodadams.5963)
By no means have I read all 500 posts in front of me… Just way too much to read.
Overall, here’s my feedback:
Schedule
I love the idea of a schedule, and syncing the Mega Server to it. I generally don’t even bother attempting any world events within 3 hours of reset, because I know there’s a 90% chance of hitting overflow and missing it.
I’ve also had plenty of times where I’ve logged in, felt like hitting some world events… pull up the timer… and there’s nothing for an hour or so.
My concerns with it, however, is how prime time is dominated by the mega-events. IMO, each event happening once per day, and having each time zone rotate which it gets daily, makes seems like a good balance. So something like 7pm PST would be the N.Amer mega event, and they’d rotate through them. For those who really love them, and want more, you’re offering the guild mission path.
I’d also put the non-mega events on a rotation, but a planned rotation. I’m thinking something akin to the z-missions in GW1, where it was quickly established that you could look on the wiki and see what the next day/week/month had in store for you. The reason for this is that if I have a set window in which I play regularly, I’d prefer to not have it be the same battles night after night, but instead a psuedo-random mix up.
I have mixed feelings on the 1-15 zones being on the 15’s and 45’s. On the one hand, it lets someone keep a steady pace of these events going. On the other hand, it feels like these battles would get overplayed quickly.
Events not on the Schedule
Honestly, I have no idea how things like the Temple events are supposed to work on the Mega Server. Am I supposed to just hang around Orr until they pop? Personally, I can’t stand going to Orr except for the temple battles. I watch the timers, and when I see one progressing on my server, I’ll hop in. Judging by the population influx throughout the events, I’m by far from the only one doing this. Since temples remain the single best source of dragonite ore, this feels sub-optimal.
I also forsee some of the current patterns disappearing, It’s not unusual for the same pack of players to hop from one zone to another, and the temples come up. They’ll clear Melandru, then Dwayna, then Lyssa, then Grenth, perhaps. There’s two zone transfers in there, so there’s a decent chance that the team will get split up into different instances, since the population splits between the zones might be a bit different.
Dungeons (namely, CoF and CoE)
Me and four other guildies party up, and decide we want to go tackle CoE. We pop into Mount Maelstrom. If CoE is open, cool. If not we check the API, and one person guests to a server where it’s open. We not interested at that time in doing a 10-30minute event chain so we can do our 10-30 minute dungeon run… and then possibly come out and have to do it again if we want another path, since there was no one around to defend.
I view this as a similar concept to the very old favor system in GW1, where a given region had to win five PvP TA battles in a row, a feat that took several long matches to get up to where the battles even counted for favor. The result of the favor? PvE players were able to enter the elite missions of the Underworld and Fissure of Woe. I don’t think anybody, ever, said “hey, I want to play UW, but we don’t have favor. Okay, let’s get a team together, and go spend a few hours in PvP, so we can then immediately afterwards (before another region took favor back) go spend 1-3 hours in the Underworld!” Why? because when you want to PvP, you PvP. When you want to hit a dungeon, you hit a dungeon. When you want open world event chains, that’s what you do. You don’t want to have to do some format you’re not interested in right now, just so you can do what you want to. (There’s too much of that in real life. Games should be more fun.)
At this point, it would be far more damaging to change the spec and break everyone’s stuff, so I would prefer it if no changes were made. However, presenting a consistent format for all new APIs going forward would be a great idea.
The best way forward (imo) would be to go ahead and make the breaking changes, but make the improved APIs available alongside the existing APIs as v2/*.json. Then when everyone has migrated, perhaps a year later, they can take the old version offline.
And while we’re at it, get rid of the whole “when we refer to one thing from another, the reference is a string, but the key is an integer”, so you just have to go str→int in some pretty annoying places.
I’d like to hear some discussion on what progression should be account bound vs which should be character bound.
Character Progression:
- Level/XP
- Skill Points
- Skill Unlocks
- Map Completion
- Personal Story
- Gear, and the related effects.
- Crafting Level
Account Progression:
- Achievements & Achievement Points
- Crafting Level, in a sense, since there’s no benefit to multiple chars maxing out a profession.
- Laurels
- Glory, and well, basically everything in PvP
Things that used to be Character but are now Account:
- Currencies (gold, tokens, badges of honor, etc)
- In particular, karma, which was previously unswappable.
- Fractal level
- WxP (well, soon to be)
- Dungeon/Fractal rewards
Things that were Account based, and now Character:
- <crickets>
Clearly, there’s a trend to making more and more things Account based.
So, what if we just went all the way, and made all progression account based?
- Bought a berserker headpiece? All character can use it! Most equipment would be for unlocks.
- Unlock CoF explorables on your Ranger? Your warrior can charge right on in!
- Cleared a map zone? All chars have at least one waypoint in the map!
- Reach level 80? All your characters are L80!
- Got Armorsmith up to 500 on your Warrior, but you’re on your Elementalist? not a problem!
This is a fairly shocking concept, and I’m not sure I’m advocating something quite this extreme, but using it as a way to open discussion about where the boundary between character and account should be.
The core of this idea, though, would be to do away with the notion of “main” and “alt” characters, and instead view having different characters as a way of expressing different personalities or playstyles through different classes, looks, or buildouts. You could more readily have two Guardians: one for WvW, and one for Dungeons. I suspect that the freer people are to experiment with new ideas like this, the more character slots they will purchase.
I suspect the most contentious point of my idea is the leveling part. But for that, I’ll bring out the following points:
- Most of the ‘tutorial’ effect of leveling is in teaching the game mechanics. By my sixth character, I think I can handle concepts like “weapon swapping before level 7”.
- Besides, this system is effectively already in place in PvP.
- A L80 has far richer options in gear… All the stat combos, all the runes and sigils, etc.
- Basicaly, you’re not really experiencing a new class until you hit L80
If you’re wanting to “relive the experience”, then there should still be ways to replay most of it, just not in a progression manner.
Example: You should be able to “reclear a zone” for the fun and some reward, but not be forced to do guild mission only on the character that explored everything. The reclear idea could be done by talking to an NPC on the map, and asking him for a challenge on that character, and it would clear it all. You could talk to the NPC again at any time to cancel the challenge and get all the waypoints again.
And for those who really want to do it all again… get another account. Then you’d have your “main” (account) and your “alt” (account).
Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?
More ways to get them? Yes! Yes! Yes!
Does higher drop rates solve this? Not really. There’s 17 (stats) x 6 (slots) x 3 (weights) == 306 different possible pieces of ascended armor. Most people are going to want a perfect set of one of each slot, with a consistent stat and weight. Odds of having your first six drops match what you want? 1 in 1.14 trillion.
Exotic drops work, because people just toss them all into the TP or Mystic Forge if it’s one they don’t want. But, if you do that to Ascended, you lose most of the distinction.
What would work, however, would be to introduce something akin to Black Lion Claim Tickets and Scraps, only for Ascended gear instead. The Tickets and Scraps could then be acquired in several ways:
- dungeon tokens/relics
- badges of honor
- karma
- laurels
- world event chests
- champ bags
- something for PvP. (don’t play it, so can’t say what would be good)
Make the Tickets and Scraps account bound on acquire, and it’s something to earn, dispelling any of the “Gold Farmer”/“Gem Shop Hero” issues.
Note: there’s still the problem of stat lock in. Increasing accesibility does NOT solve this, as it precludes the ability to experiment. This is already cost prohibiting with Exotics, much less higher cost Ascended.
With limited ability to cheaply experiment, most players will read a few guides, and buy whatever the guide tells them to, and that’s it.
I think it would be cool if we can get a proposal together for treatment of stat based evolution as it currently stands in the game
I’m just tossing this out there to spawn thought, not sure I like it in the form I’m writing it, but I like the general direction.
There’s seems to be a lot of consensus that divorcing stat combos from gear is welcome.
So let’s take all the stat bonuses from gear, and toss it into a giant pool.
Then we allow people to pick how they split their stats up into Power/Precision/Toughness/etc. (oh, and have Critical Damage work like Precision where X many pts nets another 1%) However, we don’t want everyone roaming around with 100% of their points in Power, so we’ll borrow from GW1 Attribute Points , and how the points where split up there, and have a cap on each, and at the same have it where the higher you go, the less benefit you get from each additional point. (I leave the task of balancing the progression curves as an exercise for the developer.)
For the new player, this could be… overwhelming. So have pre-bundled distributions available to them, with familar names. “Berserker’s” would mean “40% Power, 30% Precision, 30% Critical Damage”, “Celestial” would mean “14% in everything”
How to Interface it? Well, go a step further, and separate the attr pts from traitlines, and toss them into the pool. (Every skilled player out there I know picks traits based on the traits, not the stats). Then have a couple different of the +/- sliders on the screen. One for traits, and one for attribute pts.
Wanna try a new build? Go to your local profession trainer, and pay your 3s50c.
However, we got a lot of gear out there, with stats already on them. We also don’t want to totally hose over the crafting system, where having the different stat splits are essential. So let’s have it where gear can have “pre-allocated” attribute points and “unallocated” attribute points. The ratio of pre-allocated to unallocated points would vary with item tier. Basic/Fine: 100% pre-allocated. Masterwork: 80%, Fine: 60%, Exotic: 40%, Ascended: 20%, Legendary: 0%. (Note: even in 100% Fine gear, a player would be able to learn the mechanics of the system since they’d have the attr pts from the traitlines to play with)
Example:
Zojja’s Reaver (Ascended Axe) would have 40/30/30pts allocated to Pwr/Prec/Crit and 400pts unallocated.
An Exotic Berserker’s Axe would have 80/60/60 allocated, 300 unallocated.
Thus, as a character progresses into rarer gear, they are less “locked into” a stat combo, but also assume more responsibility for their own fate. It’s also more of an incentive for people to acquire the gear.
A mystic forge recipe to convert one to another at even a 5:1 ratio would be a complete win.
(part 2/2)
Vertical Gear Progression leads to Build Lock-In
Aragorn has spent months (quite literally) getting geared up in all Ascended Soldier’s gear. And he’s a beast! He can smash dungeons hard! However, he keeps hearing about people smashing dungeons harder with Berserker gear, and he wants to check that out. Resetting his traits doesn’t bother him. He spends more getting to the dungeon than what it costs to reset traits. His gear, however… he would have to start completely over with his gear, and spend the next several months regearing, just to find out if he likes that play style. So he doesn’t bother. Later, a skill patch comes out, and again, there’s a different play style it opens up which might be interesting, but again, he’s looking at months of hard adventuring to try it out. Thus, he forever sticks with the choices he made early on, and doesn’t explore the various options other builds could bring him.
He considers buying a cheap set of lower tier gear, to test it out. However, he then sees that a full set of Rare Berserker gear has about the same Power as his Ascended Soldier gear… and considerably less precision. This will not give close to the same experience.
This example was Soldier’s vs Berserker, but it also extends to such things as “Conditions vs Power” and “Support vs DPS” and other major shifts in build style, which benefit greatly from the stats on gear.
At the Exotic level, it takes about a week to earn a full set of gear. However, then, you have to store all that gear somewhere…. 6 armor, 6 trinkets, several weapons, different food… it’s a full 20slot or bank tab.
Bearable in small amounts, but quickly becomes obnoxious.
Suggested Remedy: Be able to earn a method of divorcing gear tier from stats. At first glance, I see a couple different ways to do this.
All Ascended Gear Can Swap Stats Like Legendaries: This would give a very tangible value for someone to go through the effort of acquiring ascended gear. Once you’ve bought your warrior an ascended helmet, you’ll never have to buy her another. Legendaries would still hold value as having the Uber-skins (people were crafting legendaries before Ascended tier came out… for exactly just the skin). Spending a month earning a character the last set of armor they’ll ever need is worth it. Similar effort for something that devalues with shifts to the meta… not so much. For crafting, you could make people include like 25 of each T6 Rare material or something like that.
— or —
Follow the PvP model, where gear doesn’t have stats: For this, your gear would offer up “points” to a general pool, with more points per tier. Then you’d have a set of predetermined ways of spending those points. Berserker’s would say “38% power, 31% precision, 31% crit damage”. Changing your stat distribution could be done at the profession trainer, for a few silver. Thus you’re locked into your build for an adventure, but it’s trivial to reset in town. Add trainers to the WvW spawn camps so it’s available there to.
Playstyle Lock-in
To craft ascended gear these days, you need equal parts Bloodstone Dust, Dragonite Ore, and Empyreal Fragments. However, each of these are acquired through different styles of play in the game, and thus forces players into content they may not enjoy. This can also lead to scenarios where people have disproportionate amounts of one material over another… with no use.
Suggested Remedy: Add Mystic Forge recipes to convert Ascended Materials from one type to another. I could easily see a template of “1x{Material converting to} 250x{Material crafting from} 1xMystic Coin 10xPhilosopher’s Stone ==> 50 {Material converting to}” being something that would get used heavily.
(part 1/2)
Character Progression vs Account Progression
At present, Guild Wars 2 is pretty schizophrenic about when you’re progressing your character vs your account.
Example: Your character completes an event, and earns character experience, account gold, and account karma. That event happened to count towards a account daily achievement, which when completed will award the character experience and items, and the account a laurel, which can be used to progress gear for the character.
Notice how that everyday scenario went: character → account → character → account → character
This leads to games of “Legolas can’t go slay the beast in the woods this evening, because Aragorn hunted rabbits there this morning”. It’s almost as if my characters are griefing each other far harder than any other player could.
This is a major factor in people complaining GW2 is Alt un-friendly, and has personally led me to enjoying fewer characters than I’d prefer. (I have 8 L80’s, but can only really further progress 2-3 of them.)
Most of these all tie into the various “once per day per account” mechanics in the game (dungeon rewards/dailies/ascended crafting).
Suggested Remedy: Make most most of the “once per day per account” mechanics be “once per day per character”. Yes, this would mean that someone with 12 characters could run CoF1 12 times a day for max rewards. But so what? There should be some benefit to having progressed 12 characters to the point they can go dungeon running. Any yes, I’m talking about being able to do dailies on multiple characters a day, and getting multiple laurels from it. (though I’d limit you to getting the AP just once)
Content Doesn’t Progress
Apart from Fractals, the vertical progression of a character is not met with vertical challenge in content in GW2. Take a dungeon run, for instance. A player going in full Ascended gear has about 50% more effectiveness than one going in wearing full Rare gear. And thus, will have a /much/ easier and faster time of it.
This can be upsetting for both players. The player in Rare, who likely is still trying to figure out the dungeon at all, gets discouraged at how hard things are to do, all while hearing from his Ascended buddy “how easy it is.” Meanwhile the Ascended player, with both the better gear and the experience of having done the content over an over again
Suggested Remedy: Exotic gear is in a decent cost/benefit place for the majority of players. Limit the effectiveness of higher tier gear to exotics, but give other benefits to Ascended gear and above. For instance, the ability to change stats on gear at will out of combat. (perhaps limit to in town/mists/spawn area of WvW to limit abuses.) Legendaries would still be special with the uber-skins.
What do you Balance Against?
How on earth do you balance the effectiveness of slot skills vs weapon skills, when the latter is subject to such wide variance in power? (18.5% between rare and ascended) This becomes particularly acute in cases where slot skills replace weapon skills (eng kits, ele conjures, etc). This is also acute when game modes share skills, but not access to gear (No Ascended in PvP)
Suggested Remedy: It appears that Exotics were meant to be the standard to balance against. Leave it that way, and again, lower higher tiers to be on par with Exotics in effectiveness.
I think part of the point is there is currently zero incentive or reason to have more than one character progress any given craft. All the results are at worst account bound, and any limitations are also account bound.
Meanwhile, all the resourses it takes to get multiple characters leveled in a crafting profession are a very real cost.
Also, even with timegating, things like Spiritwood Planks only net the crafter 15s on a 3g36s. Deldrimor Steel is about the same. Elonian Leather is already selling at loss for crafting.
Simply put, the only thing the “one per day per account” limit is doing is annoying people, and perhaps taking some money out of the economy in the form of TP fees.
And the average story update length is 2 weeks, so how is is disappearing after 2 weeks, regardless of if you were abused with a new word, a surprise?
Actually, I’d say the average update is closer to 3 weeks, as some are 2 weeks, and some are 4 weeks. (and some are 6 weeks)
43 stacks of silk scraps for a set of armor is completely reasonable.
/sarcasm
btw, you could also consider just buying three more character slots, and role one of each. Then, as you waver between which class to play, you’re not starting from scratch.
While OAuth2 is coming (someday….), I have no idea where on the list of things to put out would be the ability to echo the combat log. That seems like such a different beast, and not really a good fit for the OAuth2 API model.
Things that seem a much better fit:
- Character List, with basic stats (level, skl pts, crafting levels)
- Other forms of Character Progress (zone completion, skill unlocks, etc)
- Inventory listings (Equipped, Character Bags, Personal Bank)
- TP Buy/Sell order status.
All of these are things which change rarely, and can be ‘pulled’ for the current values, and it holds relevance.
A DPS meter, however, would require pulling the combat log (which is still missing many things), and then computing it. For what people would want it for, that would mean making a hit to thier web API basically every second.
Let’s see:
Open World Solo: Warrior, Guardian, Ranger, Necro
High Dungeon Desirability: Guardian, Warrior, Elementalist, Mesmer
Subject to Boredom: Warrior
Able to wade into a pack of foes like a bad kitty: Warrior, Guardian, Necro.
However, a few notes:
- Any class can solo open world, some just have to work harder than others (mesmer, thief)
- Any class played well will be welcome to any dungeon, just some are seen to be more valuable than others.
Overall, though, it really sounds like you want to play a guardian. They may start off feeling a bit soft, but they become just beastly, able to tank more than most, with options to pump out buffs and heals… all while maintaining respectable DPS.
(edited by rodadams.5963)
I would think the stats would be the same.
except the armor values will be different.
Devon, et al:
Several times you’ve asked questions that leave the impression you’re looking for the easier fixes to the system, which don’t require the large investment to implement.
This begs the question, then, of how important does Anet view the ability to coordinate the battles of significant numbers of people? What types of projects would typically be deemed more important, (and thus devoted more resources sooner)? Which would typically be deemed less important?
What does Anet think the objectives and goals of providing such a coordination system?
By answering some of this (of course, not delving into specifics), it can help form the expectations of the community in terms of what forms solutions would serve the biggest benefit within a timeframe that we’d reasonably see results from. (i.e. There’s a big difference from “it takes six months to develop” and “oh, but we can’t start for another 18 months, so check back in 2016”.)
Perhaps the largest question I still have, how would everyone feel if the only changes to commander were the smaller scale ones? The other stuff is super interesting and has a lot of promise, but is also a major task and one I can’t make any guarantees about. I suppose the crux of the question is how priority is the rest of the stuff, if the smaller bits are taken care of? Would the commander system be functional enough with more markers, guild only tags, less suppression, better supplyinfo, and possibly additional marker shapes?
I would rank Guild Only tags as the single biggest low hanging fruit on the tree.
Past that, I don’t think you’re really solving some core issues:
- There’s no real advantage to having all the people join a squad.
- Everything that happens in this game with any amount of coordination has a hard reliance on VoIP. Consider: I doubt Tequatl 2.0 has been defeated with less than 90% participation in VoIP.
I would suggest making the goal of the commander system be that people could effectively organize and compete in large scale content (be it WvW, Teq2, Guild Missions), without reliance on external tools just as VoIP.
What’s left in this CDI?
It seems like there’s widespread consensus on the major features the community would like to see in the Commander System, and the only real items left at disagreement is how to do handle acquisition/advancement.
Perhaps Devon/Izzy/etc could give a bit more direction about what points of discussion would give them better insights?
(edited by rodadams.5963)
How big do you expect a squad to be?
I’ve been part of Guild Missions with 60-70 people.
Currently, it’s only manageable by having a special guild just for the missions, so you can just see who has orange nametags, and use guild chat to coordinate.
What kind of content is a PvE commander most useful?
Guild Missions (Except Treks)
Living Story Events where you need lots of people (Jubilee, Invasions, Tower of Nightmares)
Guild Events where you are trying to bring more than 5 people.
Larger world events like Teq…. if anyone ever did it.
Is money a good enough gate for commander tags?
No. It’s almost a bad one. Today I was in a dungeon with two people flashing their tags. I asked why people felt compelled to show it in a dungeon, to which one person responded “I paid my 100g, I want to show it off.” Thus, it’s almost viewed as a fashion accessory by many people.
How would it feel to have a system that gradually unlocked more commander abilities and icons, but that required dedication to WvW?
As a PvE commander, who accrues very little WxP, I’d be extremely displeased, since we’d have kitten to perform our kitten herding.
What is an acceptable amount of chat suppression for a commander?
To /d? none. people elected to be there.
To /s? a fair amount higher than now, since you’re commanding the local troops.
To /m? perhaps a moderate raise, but only in maps, not in town.
To some degree, however, I would ask John Smith to model if spending 100g for more lenient chat suppression would be cost effective for gold sellers. However, there’s little reason to not make the manual L80 anymore. This, however, goes WAY off topic for the CDI.
(edited by rodadams.5963)
First off, this post is from the perspective of commanders in PvE only.
I’ll use a format of listing perceived issues in bold, followed by suggestions in italics.
Anonymous Blue Doritos
In PvE, for the most part, you just see the doritos, and get very little name recognition. Also, if you are trying to follow a specific commander, it can be difficult to spot which one is which.
Put Guild Logo in Symbol:
Make the upper diamond of the symbol a small version of the person’s guild logo. Keep the lower blue chevron as a way to denote Commander.
Hard to Form Squads
Forming a squad today involves each and every person to click on the command, and select “Join Squad”. End result: pretty much no one does this.
Make Squad Membership Party Based
If one person in the party follows a commander, the entire party does. This makes it quick and easy to add large numbers.
Commander Can Invite to Squad
Much like inviting yourself to join a party, a commander can send an invite to a person/party, which they can accept/refuse
Where’s My Squad?
In many Guild Missions, and even in various open world zergs, there’s often the question of “Is everyone here?”, where the consequences of getting the answer wrong means someone gets locked out of a puzzle stage, misses a bounty, falls hopefully behind the zerg, etc. Currently, the only real solution my guild has for this is for everyone to be on VoIP, and we ask, pause, and hope someone shouted if they needed to.
Squad Members are Visible on MiniMap
You get party members in light blue. Make squad members light yellow or something.
/squaddistance command
Prints a quick table of squad members within 1200in, 3600in, further, but same map, same map, but overflow, off map. If fewer than 3 people are in a category, list the names. (this option should be much less bandwidth than the show on map option)
Overflows
You get your squad formed up in the Tower of Nightmares, you storm through part of the map, and then parties go in to tackle the instance… and all come out in different overflow. Cue party shuffling to reform the squad.
When selecting overflows, prefer ones with squadmates
Reuse the existing logic for keeping parties together, only with squad mates as well (goes well with the “join squad as party” option above).
Add “Join Commander’s Overflow” command
Same as attempting to join a party member, only attempting to join your commander.
Split Tactics
Many tasks which commanders could be useful for require the commander to split up their force and pursue multiple objectives at once. Currently, the only real support for this is the ability to place the Attack/Defend/Rally markers.
Party Based Lieutenants
For each party in the squad, let them elect someone to act as a lieutenant, and will show up on all squad member’s maps. Go ahead and set a limit of 5 lieutenants in the squad.
Give each Lieutenant a Color
When a lieutenant is elects, they can pick from a short list of colors, and become the “Red Lieutenant”, and everyone in their party is part of the “Red Squad” (with a UI tag somewhere showing this)
Each Lieutenant gets a squad wide Map Marker
This would be separate from their personal marker. The commander can move the marker, with a system much like the attack/defend marker selections. You can then do away with the attack/defend/rally markers.
Special Map Markers are Placeable on Minimap
Zooming out to the world map is a recipe for death in the middle of battle.
Expensive and Character Bound
Currently, I have to pick one class to play all guild missions and open zerging on, despite having eight characters I enjoy. But I’m not paying 800g.
However, I understand the desire to be able to establish reputation with a given commander name.
Ability to Impersonate another character on your account
Only one character on account needs to read the manual, but any other can form a squad. When they do, their name will become that of the Commander, only with the name in quotes.
Guild only Commanderships
A guild can spend influence in the Art of War line, and unlock the ability to have anyone with a new rank permission become a commander. However, squads formed with this privilege will only be visible to members of the guild, and only guild mates can join.
As for the “quick fix vs overhaul” question, I’d prefer to see a launch and iterate process, where the capabilities of a commander evolves over time, as with experience with changes informing the next iteration.
The danger with complete overhaul is that it could easy suffer some hidden fatal flaw.
Are we allowed to talk about how the Commander system impacts with PvE as well?
It’s just a very, very, very rare drop.
Having 20-40 lumped together, and then 40+ together is a bit off the mark these days.
I’d suggest:
1-10
11-20
21-30
31+
The first three, because they are the boundaries for getting daily rewards, and the last as a “with instability” feature.
The one thing we haven’t heard about is if an Omni infusion can go in the new AR slot type. I would find it rather disturbing if they did not, but it would make +1..+4 infusions useless for anything but raw materials for >= +6 infusions.
Of course, we’re going to need a lot of those fodder pieces if that happens. The cheapest way to get 5 more AR would be to take the back/ring/ring to +6/+7/+7, which will take 160 +1 infusions. (opposed to 512 for a single +10). Getting 10 more would be +9/+8/+8 for 512 +1’s (opposed to 16,384 for a single +15)
I think ya’ll might also be discounting a very large section of people:
Those who thought the Thaumanova fractal would be cooler than the Abaddon one.
I, for one, listened to the descriptions of both fractals, and decided to vote heavily for Kiel because of it.
As best I understand it (I’m ~90% sure this is what’s happening):
Currently, ascended items have one or more offensive, defensive, or utility slots. This will not change. Rings and backpacks with the (infused) suffix will lose their inherent +5AR rating, and instead gain an additional slot of type “Agony Resistance”. Off/Def/Util infusiona won’t fit into AR slots, nor AR type infusions into Off/Def/Util slots.
The +1 infustions, which can be combined into higher levels, at exponential cost, will be of the new AR type, and thus can only go into AR slots.
The existing infusions which include AR should keep their current values, but not be eligible for merging into higher levels. Those infusions which are of the “Omni” type (most notably the 75 relic +5 versatile infustion), can be put in any slot type, which presumably includes the new AR type slot.
Another way to look at it is to see what the part list would be from scratch.
For a +N infusion, you’ll need 2^(N-1) +1 drops, and 2^(N-1)-1 Thermo Reagents.
So, for a +10, you’ll start with 512 +1’s, and 511 TR’s512 +1’s & 256 TRs ==> 256 +2’s
256 +2’s & 128 TRs ==> 128 +3’s
128 +3’s & 64 TRs ==> 64 +4’s
64 +4’s & 32 TRs ==> 32 +5’s
32 +5’s & 16 TRs ==> 16 +6’s
16 +6’s & 8 TRs ==> 8 +7’s
8 +7’s & 4 TRs ==> 4 +8’s
4 +8’s & 2 TRs ==> 2 +9’s
2 +9’s & 1 TR ==> 1 +10btw, you’re gonna spend 7g65s on TR’s to make that +10.
PS – People often call Polynomial growth (n^c) “Exponential”, but this is proper Expontential growth (c^n), which just gets downright scary.
Image the cost of +20s :X
+20AR:
524,288 +1’s, and 7843g33s worth of TR’s.
Assuming you could somehow store all that in one go (it’s ~27x more than 8×20 slot bags), and crafting speed levels out to around 2/s after the first few, you’d be standing in front of the artificing station watching them go by for around 3 days.
Edit: messed up a decimal on gold cost.
(edited by rodadams.5963)
Another way to look at it is to see what the part list would be from scratch.
For a +N infusion, you’ll need 2^(N-1) +1 drops, and 2^(N-1)-1 Thermo Reagents.
So, for a +10, you’ll start with 512 +1’s, and 511 TR’s
512 +1’s & 256 TRs ==> 256 +2’s
256 +2’s & 128 TRs ==> 128 +3’s
128 +3’s & 64 TRs ==> 64 +4’s
64 +4’s & 32 TRs ==> 32 +5’s
32 +5’s & 16 TRs ==> 16 +6’s
16 +6’s & 8 TRs ==> 8 +7’s
8 +7’s & 4 TRs ==> 4 +8’s
4 +8’s & 2 TRs ==> 2 +9’s
2 +9’s & 1 TR ==> 1 +10
btw, you’re gonna spend 7g65s on TR’s to make that +10.
PS – People often call Polynomial growth (n^c) “Exponential”, but this is proper Expontential growth (c^n), which just gets downright scary.
Well, at 31+ you’re getting the new Instabilities, which is a completely new type of challenge, which your 30+ runs from before don’t equate to.
Altoholics will be pleased with this change since you don’t have to grind to 50 with 8 characters.
Not exactly.
Leveling up fractal levels was one of the few things that you could replay with alts.
It also sounds like the boss reward chest is going from daily per char to daily per account.
Remove the market, and appoint John Smith as our central planner.
After I’m elected, bribing me will be considered a “gold sink”
:)
My thought process involved cookies … but I guess not everyone likes cookies …
Cookie?
Confirmed! Guild Wars 2 to get Cookie Sinks!
My point is that neither the old nor new form appeal to me at all.
I was instead explaining what would make me spend gems on something in the theme.
I have eight characters, one of each class, and I play all of them regularly. The concept of a “main character” eludes me.
I view infinite gathering tools as a convienance item, with the main appeal of not having to keep spare tools and kits on hand. I could justify getting them if it were an account wide unlock, but not when it’s per character.
I see the move to making them account bound a step in the right direction… but only a minor one. I’d still have to shell out 8 * 4 * 800 == 25,600 gems ($320USD) at old prices to equip all my characters with pick, axe, sickle, and salvage kit… 32,000 gems ($400USD) with the newer prices. Such a price for convienence in a $60 game is ludicrous to me.
Alternatively, here’s something I’d buy within 24 hours of release:
Rejuvenating Mining Pick:
- 800 gems
- No special animations
- Can mine any ore.
- Available from vendor in LA to any character on account, like HoM portal stone.
- Charge 4c/use, same cost as Ori Tools.
Same for Axe and Sickles of the same type.
Good News.
One suggestion I’d make would be to launch OAuth with only a small set of APIs behind them, preferrably ones that are on the less sensitive side of the scale. Then release additional APIs later as they are ready.
This would allow the community to get the libraries and implementations working and well understood, as well as working through any unforseen issues with the OAuth layer. (When does /anything/ ever work at scale the way it did on the drawing board?)
Should there be any issues with security, then the exposure would be limited.
Not to mention, it would help build and keep excitement up. The lull of late has likely dampened the mood of several developers.
The status is almost certainly “it’s being actively developed”.
As for what you’re most likely looking for, some form of release schedule, well, this is ANet, and their overall policy is not to give public release times unless they are 100% certain about it.
I have a feeling that OAuth support, and the related APIs, will come as a “when it’s ready” release.
[pure speculation]
That said, they had that big maintenance downtime last night, where it looks like they may have updated the user account records. This could be a good sign, as this might have been prompted by adding support for OAuth keys or the like to accounts.
[/pure speculation]
So with all of this in mind it would be cool to carry on discussing around this area in much the same form as Nike has. Specifically brainstorming on top of the foundation of known systems and functionality. I do also want to point out that someone mentioned (sorry i forget who) the ability to potentially build forts etc and then gain new events, goals and rewards from them by protecting and nurturing your land. Wouldn’t that be awesome!?
Chris
Malchor’s Leap, Champion Risen Knight Event
Have three Pact members nearby, bickering over how to handle this foe.
- Vigil is a head first assault, much like it it now.
- Priory has some mystical potion which, if you complete a side event of collect 12 doodads, she gives you an environment weapon to put some massive debuffs on the knight.
- Whispers, on the other hand, knows of a cave nearby with a Troll/Grub/etc, which can come out and help attack, with the risk of having to kill both, much like in AC, where if the Troll spawns, you can have him and Kohler punch each other for a while.
Timberline Falls, Might Oouo
Alternative win mechanics:
- Be able to recruit/trick the grawl into attacking Fraiin.
- There’s a waterfall nearby, divert the stream to go through the skull for a bit. (Not sure how possible this is with current mechanics)
- Crawl up a hidden path (aka “jumping puzzle”) on the face of the skull, which takes you to a lever which makes the “Strange Energy” zap everyone inside.
A key thing these two ideas have in common is that it takes an event which currently requires a moderate group to complete, and while it’s up, it blocks people from progressing map completion. I guess the idea I’m going for here is that perhaps make several “group event” areas achievable solo though doing multiple side events. The two I mention above came quickly to me, as they have been a thorn in my side for zone clears on multiple occassions, forcing me to take Ash Legion Spy Kits, or bribe several guildies, just to get that last skill point.
I’m sure you keep statistics on which events get done how often, and how long they stay up. In particular, look for ones that ‘protect’ things someone solo would want to do. Start with those events, and find alternative solutions.
On “Failure Events”….
I’ve seen several comments on if you fail, the followup event should be harder.
I disagree. It really blows coming up on area, and seeing that the area is contaminated with the failure of some previous people, who have long since cleared out. You know that you could have cleared the initial event without much trouble, but this followup is too much hassle, so you move along and leave the mess for the next person, etc.
I’ve come across several events that spawned to a scale of a sizable group (things like “clear this village of Risen”), and then abandoned, only there’s still 5-6 veterns all on top of each other, which just isn’t worth it if you were just there for the merchant.
(edited by rodadams.5963)
I’m actually fairly intrigued with this notion of “Living Story as a TV Show” Metaphor. I think a similar metaphor could be a series of fiction books.
I’ll break my thoughts out into various features of TV stories.
Seasons or Books
At this level, you have an overarching plot, where you’re able to pick a new setting/cast of characters, and put the actors through the paces, with build up, climax, denouement, etc. You typically get an opening action sequence to whet your appetite and introduce you to the world, and then off you go.
You can buy the DVD box set, or the Book itself, and relive it as many times as you like, at your leasure.
For the most part, you can start watching Season 2, or reading Book 3, and follow along just fine. Sure, there might be some added insight or in jokes for those who followed from the beginning, but it gives a good anchor to “hook” in those new to it.
There’s also often reasonable time breaks between each season being aired or book being published.
Episodes or Chapters
This is a chunk of content that you can comsume in one sitting. It typically has a plot and development all it’s own. There’ll be some challenge or cause to overcome, and complete (or fail for plot reasons) by the end of the it. Some episodes will be “arc” ones, others will explore some subplot, and how the larger story affects them. An excellent example of this is the “Gropos” episode of Babylon 5.
It’s generally not expected that watching an episode in the middle of the season make complete sense, nor reading a chapter in the middle of a book.
Specials or Short Stories
These are things that typically come out between seasons or books, and are set in the same universe, but are generally just something to keep people going, and are usually fairly self contained.
Translating this to a Game
A Season/Book would be on par with what’s typically an “Expansion”. Moving to releasing at an episodic rate is fine, as long as a Season is of Expansion Heft.
Zhaitan could be considered “Season 1” of GW2. Scarlet is appearing to be “Season 2”.
Destiny’s Edge romp through the Dungeons might be a separate season, as well.
Episodes are individual releases.
During a season, the episodes should build on each other, expanding on the story, much as you attempting in the phases of Flame and Frost. Have a smooth progression, with perhaps the occasional side story thrown in (still very much part of the story, however).
A key thing to consider, however, is that people will want to play in the way things are now… but also go back and explore how they were. For this to happen in GW2, I’d suggest some form of “portal stone” or whatever, where a player can choose to go back to a former state of the map, which corresponds to the state of the universe back then. This could perhaps be handled like the overflow zones, where they are region wide, and spawn “as needed”, but still shared with other players. IMO, this ability only really needs to be available at a per-season level, and can wait for the end of the season to be able to “go back”. I get very annoyed how I’ve killed Zhaitan several times, yet he’s still spawning Risen all over Tyria.
After each season… take a break. Let people blow off steam. Have some of the non-story fun events, like SAB or Zephyr Sanctum. Maybe put out a teaser for the next season.
Big rewards should be for participating in the season. Each episode can contribute to the season progress, but you should be able to still “skim” some chapters. This allows you to still put out the nifty skins and back items, but at a slower pace, and give people time to build for them. How many back skins do we really need?
Where the Metaphor breaks down
People like having choices in games. TV/Books typically do not allow for this.
However, following the current personal story model, there could be 2-3 “paths” for any given stage, which diverge and contract at various time. Someone can play through once, and have “experienced” the story, but then later come and play through again, for some alternative flavor.
Okay, I’ll bring out a few of my issues with how the Living World has gone.
Repeatability
The living world is based almost entirely on account wide achievements. All too often, it seems like you can log in every other Tuesday, and click through most of the content. This is not a bad thing, per se. No matter how big the content release some people will storm through it in no time. (I think it took ~14hours for someone to beat Nightfall after it was released?) The larger issue is that once you’ve gone through the content once… there is very little reason to go do it again. Many times, it’s nigh impossible to do it again.
Many times, you can’t even see how the battle would go with a different class!
Where this gets particually ugly is when later in the week, people who have less flexible schedules come in to play, and all of the more active players have no reason to play with them in doing this content.
There’s no point in making permanent content (which everyone seems in favor of), if you can’t meaningfully play it again.
Then salt gets added to the wound, when every single character you have, even ones created after the event is over, get thank you letters from Lord Faren for something you can never do.
Jump It / Zerg It
Far too many of the LW installments quickly boil down to doing one of following things:
- Crazy mad jumping puzzles (SAB 1&2, Zephyr, Aether Retreat, various metas)
- Joining a juge zerg which just steamrolls any and everything (Jubilee, Clockwork, Labryinth, Karka)
Doing these things from time to time is okay, but there’s far too much of them, and frankly, it doesn’t appeal to everyone. I never set foot into SAB2, because I had no more desire for more jumping puzzles. Mad King Labyrinth? That is an incredibly solo/small group unfriendly area… and once I got my meta done, I haven’t gone back.
Part of the problem here I think is that in both of these modes, you’re not really playing your character. I can pick any class I want, and it doesn’t change how it plays out. The jumping is the same… zerging is just a question of which weapon you sit back and auto-attack with to tag the most foes.
Cohesion
One fortnight we’re zerging karka in Southsun. Then we have this detective story surrounding the LA assassinations, which does bleed into the Aetherblade attack, and there’s a bit of a seque to the Zephyr Bazaar and followup Election… and then poof it’s gone, and we’re riding Queen Jennah’s royal balloons. And when it’s time to reveal Scarlet, do we have some tie in where Majory had discovered a plot and told Logan, which led to Anise being prepared… but nope. Rox and Braham are just tagging along…
And then we just put all of that on hold, and go play in Moto’s box. WHAT?!?
And then Tequatl just instantly becomes harder to kill than Zhaitan. WHAT?!?
Oh Look! back to Scarlet!
Oops, forget Scarlet! Here’s Halloween!
This doesn’t feel like I’m reading a long novel, and getting one chapter a fortnight. I feels like several different books got put in a shredder, and now we’re getting random excepts from each book, but sometimes a page from another book tossed in the middle. Sometimes you get the next chapter in your story… a few months later.
Knowing What To Do
There have been a great many achievements and/or plot points in stories where quite frankly, the game provides essentially zero clue as to what you’re expected to do. Example: Flame and Frost’s “Lost and Found”, where you basically are expected to just wander all over the zone and “happen upon” these items? The clue is “Return 6 belongings to refugees”. Clockwork Chaos’s “Portal Invasion Closer” had /everyone/ confused, thinking it was five portal events, in particular because when the event completed, it said “Portal Closed” (or the like). And then the achievement for doing all 13 zones… with no tracker for which ones you’ve gotten credit for….
I honestly don’t know how we’re supposed to complete some of this content without something like Dulfy’s site. IMO, it’s rather poor game design to rely on external sites to fill in the blanks.
The World isn’t Changing
There’s still bandits raiding Queensdale. The Seraph and Centaur are /still/ going back and forth in Kessex. The Risen are still, well, everywhere, even though Zhaitan is dead. There’s only one new map, which seems to gain more reasons not to go there all the time. The world was changing in Flame and Frost… until it all just went away…
I’m not aware of any such thing existing.
I just ask that some consideration be given to not lighting the map in LA up like a christmas tree with 500 different ornaments floating around. It’s bad enough seeing all the blue diamonds there, covering up all the other symbols.
1) Mad King Says will only be available on 10/30.
2) You can do the Daily Events related to the LS (they have a different icon), and those will progress the meta, letting you get to 13 well before then.
Also, if you do the story, Tassi tells you to stand in the candy goo to get a buff so you can hurt the Bloody Prince, it’s the same candy goo that the Viscount throws down.
You mean the story you can do only after completing 13 achievments, amongst them, one for killing said Viscount?
Perhaps Engineers are only 10% in part due to the completely lame cosmetics they get in a cosmetic driven game.
1) Gearing multiple characters.
a) Single Character Gemstore upgrades (unlimited gather tools, etc)
b) “Once Per Account Per Day”.
c) Build “lock in” through expensive gear. (change from Zerker to Cleric’s == start over)
2) Boss Mechanics
a) Limit build deversity. (Stack + Reflect + Zerk == Win)
b) “Dodge or Die”
c) Defiance
3) Open World PvE needs Love
a) Class Balance
b) Toxic Champ Trains
c) Contested Waypoints
d) Group Events blocking Skill Points/etc.