Guild Wars 2

What ANet should have done is not to :
- create a new “most rare and most powerful loot you’ll RNG your way to”
- add in a second RNG roll right after the game gives you that item with a high change of “ah ah, sucker! the item is useless for you after all”

Instead, they should have reduced the loot chance from the start and make sure it’s always an useful item.

Some might say the current system is more alt friendly. Sure, except that all my alts use Berserk gear or Rabid.

A problem in PvE. Player defined roles fail a little because players are too polyvalent. If say, you have a fight where you need a well timed reflection or projectile absorbtion. Well, everyone can do it, they just replace one utility and it’s good. What did you lose? Nothing really. I have played many classes (as in, 7 so far :p) and in all cases I could spare one utility slot or two. Heck often all 3 even and it wouldn’t matter much for the build.

So hmm, what was I trying to say? Player roles in group PvE. There’s two kind of roles. Intrinsic roles and extrinsic. Intrinsic roles are stuff the players setup for specifically. Extrinsic roles are stuff the fights setups for them. For example, the AC path 2 lifter and puller roles with the ghostbuster rays.

Imagine a PvE boss with 5 different extrinsic roles to fill. Each player is doing something only he can do and contributing in his was to the fight. The roles are interdependent too so you need good coordination between players. The more you need, the harder the fight.

So, let’s assume we agree this is how the PvE should become at the most extreme : 5 players with distinct but interdependent roles in a fight. It’d be very easy for ANet to setup a fight with 5 extrinsic roles but it’s undesirable because it really feels like we aren’t even playing our char.

So we should be getting fights with 3-4 intrinsic roles to fill by players, to coordinate with each other. And there’s a problem here too. But contrary to the 5 extrinsic roles before, this one runs deep with the design of GW2 and is much harder to avoid. The problem I see is that, players do not have roles or very few.

There’s very little roles one player can fill that isn’t provided at 20% by each team mates like, for no additional cost at all. Need to keep a boss perma poisoned? Well the necro could maybe use that utility, gear up in poison duration and use a staff/scepter weapon set. But then again, the engineer will be applying many stacks too, the thief dagger autoattacks applies 2s poison every 1s and all like. They don’t even do it on purpose really, it just happens.

There’s a huge deficit in intrinsic roles for players to fill that aren’t just provided passively for little effort by the rest of the team. Boon removal is one, hard CC another and I suppose reflection too. Yet no fight requires boon removal, no fight requires hard CC and Defiant makes that a pain anyway, and long duration reflection cannot only be reached by making multiple players contribute a little.

How can ANet make a good fight like that? In the end, we all just stack together and dodge together. A rolling ball of utilities and roles all blurred together and dealing deathly damage to the boss.

youkai.2394:

Yeah well, just change the term to whatever fits better, but the fact remain the same.

More than that, in Gw2 there isn’t a really great challange at the moment….

Which is why adding more pure no-skill grind based statistics improvement makes sense right?

Zerk gear shouldn’t be nerfed because it’s the best. The issue goes a long way past that.

The issue is simple : there is no stat on gear that serves any useful PvE role other than more DPS. Healing power? We don’t need healers so we don’t need it. Toughness? We don’t need tanks and have no situations we have to facetank unavoidable damage so we don’t need it.

Do you need some reflect damage for that boss tricky part? No gear stat helps. You want to perma blind that pack of hard hitting trash mod? No gear stat helps. You want to CC lock that pesky silver mobs? No gear stat helps.

And you know what? I like it like that really. There is no fun in hunting 20 different gear sets for all situations, it’s mindless grind, even worse now that ascended was added. I’m pretty happy using a single zerk gear set and switching around my traits, weapons and utilities as needed for a fight. This is a LOT more fun for me because it’s open to experimenting whereas switching gear set is a huge grind that discourages experimentation.

It’s true that sPvP isn’t boring enough, we need tankier condition bombers.

Well, Destroyer bosses are immune to burning \o/

LHound.8964:

I remember the early times in CoF P1, we actually had to use [Poison] in the boss to prevent it from heavy healing (due to our lack of dps), or we could be there hours and still couldn’t kill him.

Why the game isn’t designed to use game mechanics?
Same old : [Hit, Hit, Dodge, Hit Hit, Dodge, Rez player, Hit, repeat]

/cheers

Because if a zerk team needs to poison a boss so that their ream damage is higher than the boss healing speed, no other stat composition in the game would be able to kill it.

The problem in the game is that the item system is bad. The different stat choices we got is useful for PvP only. For PvE it doesn’t make sense.

Why? Because ANet seemed intended in making PvE experience that can be beaten by anything in any gear. It was the point of the trinity removal see? So that you never have to wait for THAT class with that build.

But it does mean that any build can do any content, that there’s no need for healers so healing power is never required, there’s no need for tanks for toughness/vitality is never required.

This is just a consequence of the fail stat system in the game. The sheer fact that 50% of the prefixes in the game are plain useless is mind boggling, but it is so.

Josh Foreman.8250:

I think the fewer players you have the more old-school simulator it is. Solo play gets close to the difficulty of a an 8-bit platformer where you have to learn the levels really well and plan ahead.

Still, old school games didn’t start you with only one life usually XD

Well, if you put all your eggs in the same basket, don’t complain later. You could try using Rampager gear instead of Rabid next time.

Dogged march is a passive -33% condition duration. The CD is just for activating a regen effect.

Also, Warrior Sword #2 ability ignores cripple/chilled and works as an awesome escape.

Julius.1094:

I don’t, the main reason is that unlike direct damage and condition not being able to CC does not disable a someone’s ability to kill you. A hammer warrior is at a disadvantage against a target with stability for example, but if he stays on top of the target and keeps doing damage regardless he can still kill it. I think it’s fine as is.

And technically, if a warrior is immune to conditions (new conditions mind), your attacks still deal direct damage no? So you are at a disadvantage but can still damage and kill him.

If there’s no players, then the system cannot invent them on the spot.

Well, that’s because you got the crappy karma gear in Orr with all over the place stats and lots of wastage :p

Galen Grey.4709:

Assuming the players who dont like VP outnumber the ones that do.

Do you know that for sure?

Pretty sure the players that like social games (Farmville) outnumber those that like GW2, doesn’t mean you have to make every single game for that audience.

This situation is very well explained in that Extra Credits episode : http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/metrics

Metrics. Metrics that ANet uses to make their game appeal to a wider audience. It works, I’m sure of it. There is a catch though and for me it’s exactly the problem and the reason I like GW2 less and less. Sure, ANet gets more clients and more money, doesn’t mean I have to like the direction they take.

Short summary of the episode :

Metrics are great, they allow us to find what people like and what they don’t, what works and what doesn’t. But Metrics can ONLY conclude stuff about the past, about the already existent. If a game studio decides to use metrics and data for any new development, it’ll inevitably lead them to do more of the same than everyone else does, except maybe more polished, more shiny, but still more of the same.

GW2 for me was kind of a promise that it would NOT be more of the same. No Vertical Progression! If I wanted it, I’d just play WoW or Aion. Then metrics entered the game and GW2 is morphing slowly into more of the same.

Galen Grey.4709:

Tachenon.5270:

Vayne.8563:

Galen Grey.4709:

Hrithmus.2583:

353 replies and 7373 Views on this post and not one Dev Reply yet. Man they must be scared?

Because they know its pointless. Whatever they would say themselves has been said many times over by regular players. Did any of that chance a single opinion of either side?

A post by the devs would be counter productive. All it would do is cause more rage in the end.

This is true. Everyone paid for the game, I don’t see how devs taking sides would help at all.

They already did that, in regard to Ascended Gear. They took the side of the ‘most dedicated players’. Whoever the kitten that is.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear

This exactly what I am talking about. They didnt take the side of the most dedicated players, they created goals for said players. If they took the side of those dedicated players (who actually are meant to be those who go for VP) they wouldnt have come out and said this “We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/A-message-from-our-Studio-Design-Director-Chris-Whiteside/first#post721451

What they did is a compromise.

why do we have to take it as a crusade again non vp players?

A compromise means little to people who are set in their ways. What ANet should have done is add Ascended, then nerf their VP component somehow after. This would have been met with far less outcry after the nerf part.

Xae Isareth.1364:

After 450 you can just refine Ascended stuff up to 500.

I’m pretty sure you’ll not get to 500 by refining mats with a level 450 recipe. Not to mention that they are time gated and very limited.

Xae Isareth.1364:

You only need to make about 8 exotics to get to 450 from 400

Last time I checked, you need to be 500 in the craft to make ascended weapons, not 450.

My theory is that the itemization in GW2 is terrible, awful and that the problems with the game come in part because some players cannot live without VP, and in part because ANet didn’t understand how terrible their itemization is.

Look at the game at release, you quickly got your exotic set and people complained that there was nothing else to do. But there was supposed to be a lot of stuff to do beyond farming one set of armor! We were supposed to experiment with different stat sets, different runes, try other builds, make alts and for the longer term, farm some of the awesome skins in the game.

Unfortunately, those activities are at an odd with each other. Mostly, the longest term goal which is to farm the looks is at odds with experimenting with many stats. The problem is that switched stats and runes is far too expensive! So once you got one set of stats that works for you, you get the look you want, the runes you want. Those stages are very expensive. And then, what about another look? You cannot. You cannot because you either erase the first expensive look you got, or you duplicated the work you did to get the stats and rune again and keep two identical sets except for their look in your inventory.

And when ANet added ascended weapons, I had the slightest hope that they’d use that occasion to solve this big problem. Heck, they even got part of the requirements in their Legendary stat switching feature!

Getting the look you want on the stats and rune/sigil you want should have been three completely independent tasks of varying effort with no destructive interaction between them. Any such interaction is a deterrent in pursuing more activities for grinding more looks or more builds, which caused a perception that there was less stuff to do at level 80 than it should.

There’s nothing innovative in Ascended weapons really.

Galen Grey.4709:

No, your fault wasnt believing that gw2 would be the spiritual successor of gw1, your mistake was believing spiritual means identical.

in gw1 gear didnt matter cause you got done with it very quickly and you never had any new gear that was any more powerful

in gw2 gear doesnt matter cause whatever tier you choose, including common is good enough to do any content you choose.

The spirit of both games, Gear is not important is there. Its just the way that spirit was implemented that is different.

And your mistake here is to believe people would react the same to “getting the best stats is easy” and “getting good enough stats is easy”

That’s not the spirit of GW1, that’s a huge corruption of it’s spirit!

One thing for sure, the Dark Matters are NOT something I’d get naturally over time as people play the game. Those you need to get out of you way to grind.

The leaderboard we have is probably based around an ELO system. The problem with ELO is explained by Valve (about DotA 2) here : http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1imrnl/why_we_cant_see_our_matchmaking_rating_and_what/

Here’s the interesting part :

Just one last comment on this. Elo is a TERRIBLE way to give players a sense of “progress.” Many (most?) people reach a plateau, and their Elo stabilizes. It is simply not mathematically possible for Elo to keep increasing in general for players indefinitely as more and more games are played.

Given this reality, if players used Elo to measure “progress”, we would constantly be reminding them that they are NOT making any. That would be really bad.

The fact you aren’t making progress in the leaderboard might because it’s broken, but it’s also how it’s supposed to work in the first place. Most changes in the leaderboard people attribute to evolution are just natural fluctuations of your current ELO around your real ELO due to the way the system works.

eisberg.2379:

Collect the stuff yourself and it is significantly less than 200G

I’m not sure I’d want to follow money advices from someone that doesn’t understand the notion of Opportunity Cost.

Vayne.8563:

So what do you think they based their decisions on. You make it sound so glib. They just decided…based on nothing.

My guess is they have metrics you have no access to. Of course, that doesn’t mean they interpreted the metrics correctly but given that they have those metrics and you do not, I’m guessing Anet had better information than you do.

Metrics can be a good thing, they can also be a very bad thing. For me, ANet is following their metrics, and doing the bad decisions out of it.

I suggest once again an Extra Credits episode http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/metrics

Celestial craft isn’t in the same league as the other crafts since it’s so different. They said you’d be able to select a set of stats from similar source. Well you do get every normal craft as choice, but not the special time gated Celestial.

As for me, I had Dire as an available choice for my armor but not for trinkets.

Josh, about the rapids part. What I don’t like much is how random it feels between when you managed to jump again or when the rapids decide to chain knockdown you 4 times in a row. I think you should take a clue from old games and give us enough invulnerability frames after such a knockdown that say, we can stand around for just 1s in the water just to be sure we get some control before the next push. Same when we get knocked down into water by a monster.

It was part of the fun in Megaman to get hit and be allowed to walk a couple frames on instant death spikes thanks to the invulnerability frames :p

RyuuAkari.6589:

You are aware that you don’t even have to spend a single baubles to buy the continue coin. Simply if you do happen to die, leave the instance and come back again. what does this lead to?

Leads me to believe this game is completely unbalanced in difficulty between solo and groups. I do that kind of content solo mostly but I guess it was a mistake.

Btw, a hint for the raft section of w1z1 : use the whip. Use only the whip. Mobs won’t respawn until you kill the previous “wave”.

Those runes are exactly what I need in my HGH condi build (and necro might stacking build) XD Well missing 20 might duration but getting more useful cond damage and more stacks on heal usage. Hmm. Or I could get 4 and 2 of the old ones.

I didn’t expect it to hold too long. As for Treb mode though :p

Group? Do you think doing it as a group made it easier? It seems the multiplayer part and ability to go out to get more lives without spending continues could help yeah.

MikaHR.1978:

http://www.pcgamesn.com/wow/blizzard-talks-mistakes-training-players-hunt-quest-markers-and-how-pet-battles-won-hearts-community

there you go

Thanks. Very interesting. I like this part :

We shot ourselves in the foot when we removed the limit on the daily quests that you could do,” explained Chilton to us at Gamescom. “So there was a pressure to maximise everything… and that really leads [players] to burn out.”

This can be applied to so many things! Like :
- You don’t need ascended.
- But but but, better stats! But the grind sucks I’m sick of it :’(

You don’t need ascended, but people should recognize there is in many players a pressure to maximize everything. Skins are probably mostly exempt from that because we maximize efficiency, not looks which is subjective. Better stats are not, so people feel forced to get ascended and the grind is burning then which induces complaints.

Treborlavok.3504:

Yep, but it wouldnt have mattered because i had a stockpile of baubles and continue coins from the previous SAB.

I see. The pattern continues : everyone so far that said he enjoyed World 2 and/or Tribulation mode bought that item.

I blame the “1 life only at game start” decision (at least for non Trib mode :p)

Ah wait, I see. But it would be kind of insane ranged DPS once applied to group content or worse, zerg content :/ 5% more damage per conditions on a target with all of them would easily tip Unload DPS high above any other thief options, even melee ones no?

Did you buy the Infinite Continue Coin?

kekuso.5837:

The skins are dropping pretty regularly from chests in SAB.

That’s a new one. I never got a single skin drop in the first SAB run and I did open many chests :/

MikaHR.1978:

Even 1 WoW dev recently whined about players reacting in a certain way and not some other. Ironic thing is: WoW conditioned players for years to react that way, what did he expect lol

That’s interesting. Do you have a link for that?

All races are size scaled down to Asura standards inside SAB, it always have been like that too.

Luthan.5236:

Or they could just make the coins non bound so you could sell them at TP(but then probably nobody would buy the unlimited coins for gems anymore).

Yet people bought the infinite picks and co even though it’d take 3 years of mining to save gold with them :p

Xaphen.8670:

I love it how people are always complaining: “Uggh, GW2 has no true challenging endgame!”, and now when something actually difficult turns up, everyone is complaining thakittens too difficult. I mean, jeez, make up your mind, do you want it to be difficult or not?

When Difficult is Fun

Sorry but from my perspective, which is unspoiled Treb mode, I couldn’t commit to that. There was zero indication on how many lives you’d need to complete it and running out of lives means having to exit and lose all checkpoint progress. So, how many of those precious baubles should I have traded for continues? Knowing that I also need those to buy actual skins that matter :p

Fun fact : zerk amulet makes you harder to kill by conditions than Rabid amulet. It has always been like that

Treb mode is rather easy once you get infinite continues. If like me you entered it with a limited stock (I never farmed those in the previous SAB, it wasn’t needed and I consider them to be cheap) and found yourself stuck with only one life instead of 5 and having to leave the instance every two deaths, and waiting for the loading screen, and for all purposes playing as if there was no check point at all, yeah it was kind of hard.

If you progress through fractals by exploiting the fact you could avoid Maw agony attack before a patch, and that now you can move forward as long as you have in your party someone that exploited that bug, I think you are really dishonest.

Player Character.9467:

So they’re also mailing you a full set of legendaries and 3000 wvw ranks?

I don’t see the point. There’s this game called GW2, it just added new content because that’s what we want in a MMO nowadays, new content to enjoy. Except that this new content is hardly enjoyable unless I buy a cash shop item.

I can do the other content without a legendary (they are all ugly anyway). I can do WvW without 3000 ranks too even if a couple upgrades are borderline.

Ursan.7846:

The whole point of Tribulation mode is that the players derive enjoyment from the challenge itself. And part of the challenge, as Josh Foreman said on this forum, was to farm up resources in preparation to tackle the challenge.

They should include a disclaimer on the Infinite Continue Coin : warning, buying this item will deprive you of part of the enjoyment of the SAB tribulation mode by removing the need to grind continues before you tackle it.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Wow….every content release these posters show up with some twisted definition of what Pay 2 Win is (and how GW2 is now OFFICIALLY P2W).

Reasons it is not P2W:
1) Content you are “winning” is optional and not required to progress in the actual game.
2) “Paying” in this case gives you no actual gameplay advantage in the actual game itself.
3) Content CAN be completed without PAYING at all (so I’ve read….have no intention of entering SAB at all).

So this is NOT Pay 2 Win….at all.

1) By that definition, playing any game is optional, so no game can ever be P2W.
2) Infinite Continue Coin means : no need to “grind” beforehand continue coins or lives. No need to abandon the instance and lose all checkpoint progress to get more lives/coins if you died more than expected.
3) Pay2Win is bad but would be an all time low if it was just plain impossible to win without paying. That becomes more Pay to Play at this point :p

Continue coins are for the weak. Also, I’m pretty sure was promised I wouldn’t have to grind to enjoy the game somewhere.

anzenketh.3759:

I also have a feeling that if the game launched with this in game when we get to 80 it will not be so bad. Might try to get a ascended piece on an alt with no help from my main to see how it feels.

By “with no help from your main”, I hope you include leveling your craft on your alt from 1 to 500 without any gold or saved mats from your main :p

Yeah well, when they talked about Tribulation mode, I didn’t expect to find a mode where I’d be killed by random stuff every 10s and forced to exit the instance every two deaths and go back from the start, losing all the checkpoint progress, waiting for two loading screens, waiting for the vote to select TM difficulty etc…