Guild Wars 2

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GuildWarsPlayer.5608:

timmyf.1490:

…I’m not sure you understand.

Oh, rest assured, I do not understand at the moment lol.

Gonna read up right quick.

I’ll see if I can explain in as simple of a manner as possible.

Previously, one level = one trait point = 10 points/1% of a stat. Five trait points = one trait, minor or major.

Now, trait points do not come at every level, but each trait point = 50 points/5% of a stat and one trait point = one trait.

This means that trait points are worth 5x the power they were before… so you only get 1/5 as many.

Your build can stay exactly the same if you are level 80. If you are still leveling, you’ll get traits a little bit slower than before. They start at level 30, for example, not level 10.

In the end, at level 80, though, not much has changed.

That’s a simplification, but hopefully it helps a bit.

Karma gear is a good point, hadn’t considered that.

…I’m not sure you understand.

Yeah, you just need to reset them. People probably haven’t noticed.

Bravo, why not just salvage them off with a BLSK? I have tons of those left over from dailies and world completion. If you have new gear and the skins are in the Wardrobe, salvaging the old gear for runes/mats would be the obvious next step, right?

I’m surprised you didn’t bring up PvP reward tracks. As somebody who primarily plays PvE but likes to get in some PvP from time-to-time, I’m extremely excited that I can still earn PvE rewards while PvPing.

That’s something that pure PvPers probably won’t care about, but for any mixed-mode players seems like a real boon.

I wonder if all the people saying they took way more than a 10% damage nerf remembered to set their traits?

Somebody on another thread claimed his non-crit autoattacks were hitting for 25% less. That doesn’t seem possible since the Ferocity changes should only affect crits.

Don’t rush. The first leveling experience is one of the best parts about this game. Take your time, enjoy the world, and let the levels come as they will. This game isn’t about reaching “end game” as fast as possible.

If you unequip your weapon, you lose your stacks.

They said a 10% drop in DPS for full Zerker gear, not a 10% drop in Critical Damage. There’s a lot of assumptions that go into that estimate and you’re making them differently than ArenaNet did.

I created a separate thread that got deleted, but here’s what I had there:

On Megaserver
—-

Black Citadel
Rata Sum (I think – I didn’t ask, but it looked awfully full)
The Grove (thanks Riot Inducer)

Brisban Wildlands (thanks Xiahou Mao)
Fields of Ruin (thanks Xiahou Mao)
Timberline Falls

Apparently Not On Megaserver
—-

Divinity’s Reach (conflicting reports)
Mount Maelstrom
Dredgehaunt Cliffs

Nope. I have hundreds of skins and hundreds of dyes to unlock. I also might delete a character and start a new one to try the new leveling system.

I’ve heard people say DR was on Megaserver but then they backed it out. I asked and nobody responded in mapchat, so I’m not sure.

Hey guys. I created a separate post trying to get a list of Megaserver zones. I tested a few and got these results:

Megaserver: Black Citadel, Rata Sum, Timberline Falls, Heart of the Mists
Not Megaserver: Divinity’s Reach, Dredgehaunt Cliffs, Mount Maelstrom

Feel free to add zones on that thread. Should be on the front page.

Moderators: please do not delete this topic. This is not feedback on Megaserver. This is instead a list of zones which currently utilize Megaserver made so that players who want to try it can see how it works. There is lots of conflicting information out there, so this seems like a good way to clear it up.

On Megaserver:

Black Citadel
Rata Sum (I think – I didn’t ask, but it looked awfully full)
The Grove (thanks Riot Inducer)

Brisban Wildlands (thanks Xiahou Mao)
Fields of Ruin (thanks Xiahou Mao)
Timberline Falls

Apparently Not On Megaserver:

Divinity’s Reach (conflicting reports)
Mount Maelstrom
Dredgehaunt Cliffs

I only had a few minutes during lunch to try. If you guys have updates to the list (as they will be rolling it out to more zones) let us know here! Timberline is awesome, make sure you check it out!

Sunshine.4680:

The wardrobe is great but I do not like the limited dye options for town clothing etc. Didn’t like the change to transmutes etc but the wardrobe and dye system is fantastic.

I was PvPing in my Mad King outfit last night! Which I could dye for the first time! I thought it was great.

Sunshine.4680:

Zine.2136:

I had fun. Your milage may vary and our viewpoints likely will never be exactly the same since we are diffenent players, I’m cool with that. I don’t think fun was taken away from me. Where things changed I like what I see from my viewpoint. Even if I am in my own little fish bowl. This goldfish is happy as is adapting. Thanks for the update ANet!

I cannot adapt to broken traits or things not being fixed on the classes I play, I am happy with a lot of stuff the patch did and added but unhappy with a lot it did and didn’t do, I get annoyed at people insinuating that the complaints are nothing when that isn’t true.

I’m not denying that there are issues, I’m just asking about the fun stuff!

Blude.6812:

timmyf.1490:

You guys have your complaint threads. Please stay off mine.

All threads are open to all registered members to post, regardless if you disagree or not.
Btw, didn’t realise it was a complaint thread.

This isn’t a complaint thread. I’m asking about what content people found fun. I was hoping maybe the haters could stick to the dozen front page threads they already have.

You guys have your complaint threads. Please stay off mine.

This is satire, right?

Dahkeus.8243:

Eh, not to sure about the patch yet. I mean, it’s nothing terrible or anything, but it just seems like ANet sunk a ton of time into a patch that’s only really worked out to be a minor quality of life change for me, for the most part.

Seeing how full Heart of the Mists was makes me VERY excited for the potential of Megaserver.

I’m seeing tons of angry posts, I’d love to hear from some other people, like myself, who have enjoyed the patch so far! I spent about an hour last night looking through all my skins I’d unlocked… Collecting more dyes… Coming up with strategies for more dyes and more skins.

My guild decided to turn guild bank into a take-one-leave-one location for dyes and skins. Most of the dyes are pretty cheap on the trading post, but this is a nice way to expand our collections without paying the fees.

We then got a guild group together to go unlock some traits, ran AC with new grandmasters (I took the distortion-on-kill trait with Mesmer – combined with Blurred Frenzy, I have SO MANY EVADES), and played some PvP. Most of my friends left the Arah PvP track active, but I switched over to the Balthazaar backpiece. (Not that I need anymore back pieces!)

Anyway, I’m super-pumped tonight to switch up my Necro build and try WvW with the new heal-in-death-shroud trait.

Anybody else really enjoy the patch or find something cool last night?

The fact that people thought 14/14/14/14/14 builds were good are a great example of why this change needs to be made.

Celestial gear I understand. Celestial trait setup? No.

Stark, I feel like that’s always been a concern. With megaserver, you’re still more likely to be put with servermates than non-servermates, so I think that would help as well.

As far as your timelines…

1) When they’re done
2) When they’re done
3) When they’re done

ArenaNet usually only announces features like this when they’re finished or very, very close to being finished.

Can we just make a new GW2 region and give all these humorless folks free transfers away?

maxinion.8396:

This is a great post, and I think summarizes the concerns of high-difficulty players quite well. The example you guys came up with is also wonderful. A++ discussion!

I do very much appreciate this as the highest Fractal scale I’ve ever attempted/completed is 25. So thanks!

I’m a strong believer that our different perspectives, if used constructively, can build something better than each of us individually could build.

More minds means better ideas, but the CDI will require us to put down our swords and axes for a few moments and try to find common ground. Not normally the way we react to different opinions on online forums…

I’m especially interested in our next CDI on GUILDS! <prods Chris> You heard me? GUILDS! <prod prod> ;-)

dutchiez.7502:

timmyf.1490:

dutchiez.7502:

I like it, but how about this:

And now do this:

Scales 1-19: No turrets, no champs
Scales 20-39: Turrets, no champs
Scales 40+: Champs instead of turrets

Or something along those lines. Now you have an interesting fight with different mechanics that change (and become more difficult) as scale increases.

But noobs are still welcome at the lower scales. Even if they click the endurance bar to dodge. ;-)

I was just taking a shower and thinking about how I left this part out :P.
That’s exactly the kind of thing that could make for interesting mechanical scaling (changing the bosses/champions attacks, adding/replacing turrets and champions) and also numerical scaling (numbers on boss buffs).

I think, when talking about scaling, there are four things that are important:

1) Getting the right difficulty at the lower end so everybody can join
2) Getting the right difficulty at the upper end so elite players can differentiate themselves (with Fractals, you could argue there shouldn’t be an arbitrary upper end, but let’s leave that out for a moment)
3) Getting the right marginal difficulty so each scale up feels a little bit harder but not a TON harder
4) Potentially changing the mechanics as scale increases (or based on party comp or based on player choice) so that it always feels new and fresh

My concern – and I think the concern of a few others here – was about making sure #4 doesn’t break #1. The concerns of you fine rT and DnT folks is more around making sure that #1 and #4 don’t break #2.

I really do think it’s possible to hit all 4 of these points at the same time and hope that these things are strongly considered in future updates to Fractals.

dutchiez.7502:

I like it, but how about this:

And now do this:

Scales 1-19: No turrets, no champs
Scales 20-39: Turrets, no champs
Scales 40+: Champs instead of turrets

Or something along those lines. Now you have an interesting fight with different mechanics that change (and become more difficult) as scale increases.

But noobs are still welcome at the lower scales. Even if they click the endurance bar to dodge. ;-)

Let me give an example of a boss encounter that could incorporate player choice and skill and give multiple paths for completion. I’m not going to add lore or background or anything, we’ll just call this boss Boss.

Boss is like a normal boss but has two buffs which are being applied by some sort of magical turret devices on opposite sides of the room, let’s say at 1500+ range from the boss. Turret 1 applies a Toughness buff to the boss which, like the Husks in the Wurm fight, negates most direct damage. Turret 2 applies the Condition Reflect buff to the boss, like the one from Scarlet’s Knights.

Players can “turn off” the buffs by standing on a pressure plate at the turret, but by standing on this plate, adds spawn in the vicinity.

This means a few decisions: should we turn off 0, 1, or 2 plates? Do we need players defending the player on the plate(s)? Etc.

In advanced Fractal groups, the answer will most certainly be to only turn off the Toughness turret and that player shouldn’t need any defending leaving 4 players to DPS the boss. But the encounter would still be accessible and require coordination by lower-skill groups.

dutchiez.7502:

timmyf.1490:

Fractals get harder as you progress. That part is true. I get the feeling you just think the ceiling should be higher. I agree. That’s fine by me. Open up the next 10, 20, 30 scales. (And remove the unavoidable AR ticks.)

But increasing the skill ceiling in higher levels doesn’t mean you can’t also do the other things that have been suggested here.

I do think that the ceiling should be higher. But I do think this excludes some of the things mentioned in this thread. (Crafting, many boss ideas, puzzles that do not interact with combat or scale in difficulty etc.)

I imagine it’s been FOREVER since you’ve done a low-level Fractal, but I always thought it was cool how the Cliffside path changes between the 1-9 (or 10?) and 10 (or 11?) and up scales. Do you think that tying different options to scales could help?

I’d also like to point out that adding combat options as a way to skip existing puzzles would also work. Don’t like the Aetherblade puzzles? Maybe you can fight a boss to open up an alternate path to the final boss fight.

Having more moments where you say “Based on our party, do we want to do X or Y?” seems like a good thing to me.

dutchiez.7502:

timmyf.1490:

You’ll be pitted against a series of unique “fractal” mini-dungeons that get harder and harder as you progress, giving you unlimited levels of challenge! With great risk comes great reward, including new weapon sets, a back-slot item, new Ascended loot, and much more!

timmyf.1490:

Explore great moments from Tyria’s past and test your battle skills in this never-ending chain of dungeons that become more and more challenging the farther you go! Begin your battle through time and space in this infinitely challenging series of dungeons

timmyf.1490:

they’re like mini-dungeons which string together and present more of a challenge as you progress.

timmyf.1490:

unlimited levels of challenge, infinitely challenging, more of a challenge as you progress

Guess this is what put me on the wrong track.

Fractals get harder as you progress. That part is true. I get the feeling you just think the ceiling should be higher. I agree. That’s fine by me. Open up the next 10, 20, 30 scales. (And remove the unavoidable AR ticks.)

But increasing the skill ceiling in higher levels doesn’t mean you can’t also do the other things that have been suggested here.

dutchiez.7502:

Please remember everyone, that fractals is supposed to be the place where the top of the PvE community can come to test their skill. Lore/puzzle mechanics can work in the background, but they need to make way for skill-based encounters.

I’m curious for some dev feedback on this. Here’s what I see on the release pages…

Lost Shores – Original Release

“New Dungeon! Enter the Fractals of the Mists
Introducing a dungeon experience like no other—Fractals of the Mists! You’ll be pitted against a series of unique “fractal” mini-dungeons that get harder and harder as you progress, giving you unlimited levels of challenge! With great risk comes great reward, including new weapon sets, a back-slot item, new Ascended loot, and much more!”

Fractured Update

“Delve Into the Fractals of the Mists
Explore great moments from Tyria’s past and test your battle skills in this never-ending chain of dungeons that become more and more challenging the farther you go! Begin your battle through time and space in this infinitely challenging series of dungeons!”

Mistlock Blog – https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/upcoming-changes-for-the-fractals-of-the-mists/

“For those not familiar with the current structure of the Fractals of the Mists, they’re like mini-dungeons which string together and present more of a challenge as you progress. On average, a single fractal should take 20-30 minutes to complete, depending on your group and difficulty scale.”

I don’t have a ton of time to dig up more quotes, but I get the feeling the point of Fractals is that they get harder as you progress, not that they are for elite players only. There are – and should be – lots of reasons to play Fractals. There’s nothing wrong with creating content that might appeal to a wider player-base, though I agree that it needs to be done carefully. (For example, there’s no reason to force people to watch cutscenes.) Perhaps some of the alternative paths disappear in higher levels?

If you want Fractals to get more development attention, maybe a good start would be making them accessible to more players? If content is designed for 1% or less of the player-base, doesn’t that mean it will be mostly ignored by the devs?

Just a few thoughts.

EDIT: Ha, Chris responded while I was typing all this out. Thanks for preempting me, Chris…

If you previously argued that people shouldn’t complain about rolling because rolling doesn’t affect anybody but the people who are doing it, you should not be arguing against having two paths (Combat Path and Puzzle/Crafting Path) to complete parts of Fractals.

It’s the same story: it doesn’t affect you, you can still keep smashing face if you like.

Mandatory puzzles are a little different and I have mixed feelings about them. Sometimes these can be fun, but other times, it just feels like drudgery. I’ve never been a big fan of the spinning lasers in Aetherblade, for example. The Old Tom fight has tears which are an interesting mechanic.

I guess I’d say it this way: small puzzle mechanics that exist as a part of fights can make the fight more than a DPS race. Having puzzles that pull you out of the fighting for awhile until you complete them can seem like a chore.

Thanks Mark. I think it would be incorrect to call the “feature only” patch an “expansion-sized” patch, so I was wondering if there was something else that I missed.

Lishtenbird covered a lot of my feelings in the above post. But I also want to say:

I’m shocked that the same development team that figured out loot sharing and shared resource nodes and downscaling and dynamic events and all of the other “cooperate-don’t-compete” functionality would seem so lost when building new content and new mechanics.

I understand that your goal is to bring players together in game. You are (mostly) succeeding in bringing us to the same area, but when we get there, the result is toxic and non-productive.

I want to play with my friends and guildmates, but often I’m stuck playing with elitist jerks or AFKers or people who have no idea about the mechanics and seemingly no interest in learning them or straight-up trolls.

I’m not sure that the whole system needs to be thrown out, but it needs quite a bit of refinement.

Maybe I’m just ignorant, but when did they say there would be an “expansion sized” patch?

Colin said something similar a year ago, but I don’t remember anything recently. Help?

munkiman.3068:

While i don’t think it’s important the contributors to this thread understand the development costs, time cycle, etc. I think it would be important to direct some of the suggestions based around how difficult some feature/change might be.

We had (very briefly) discussed this earlier in the thread. My comment – and I think Chris echoed it, though I could be wrong – was something like this:

Even if the specific ideas have a huge development cost, they could serve as inspiration or background for the designers. So… user-generated content (hate to say this) is NOT going to happen. But if people seem to want it, that might make the devs look into other systems which give users more choice or control over the world.

To people participating in the CDI, my suggestion is to spend more time thinking about and explaining the REASONS you want particular features or functionality and less time thinking about the DESIGN of those features/functionality. But that, of course, is up to you.

Wethospu.6437:

Even that issue would be solved by my rework idea.

Yeah, it’s a totally solvable problem, but it hasn’t been solved yet.

dutchiez- I think the justification for artificial caps is this: the devs would like to leave themselves the option of adding new mechanics in the future. Suppose that it just has damage and HP scaling to infinity and a group spends the next 6 months getting to Scale 231, at which point it just becomes impossible.

Well, there’s nothing new or interesting between 50 and 231, so ArenaNet decides to add new instabilities or whatever starting at 50.

Do players at 231 keep their progress, essentially bypassing all the new mechanics? Or do you reset them to 50 and force them to do it again, negating all their hard work and causing them to post on every single forum thread with a red tag (and then some) demanding compensation?

The artificial caps, in my view, exist to give the devs the ability to change things up without having to do another progression reset.

Nage.1520:

Malediktus.9250:

I do it because I have nothing else left to do in this game. PvE dailies take 1-2 hour a day, PvP dailies 2-6 hours a day (2 if 100% win rate, 6 if 1/3rd winrate, SoloQ is highly random).
But I am nearing a GW2 burnout so I preordered TESO to get rid of this.

I wish Anet would have sticked with the original 4 dailies everyone could complete in 20 minutes.

Why, if you already have nothing to do?

Addicts usually can’t stop themselves, they need somebody else to stop them.

From comments I’ve seen here when they added the options for dailies, they DON’T see it as fun. They feel the irrational (to us, but rational to them) desire to get every chivo to be “the best.” They mostly feel like it’s a gigantic, horrible grind.

Yet they keep doing it.

I get the feeling that it’s just gaming addiction.

(Just my general sense of things, obviously does not apply to everybody.)

A positive change, even if people have gotten the achievements. It shows that they have both 1) recognized the leeching of rewards and achievements and 2) care to do something about it.

Thanks ArenaNet. Putting more cash into gems in 3…2…1…

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Note: Just got back from hospital and going to bed.

There is such a thing as being too dedicated to the CDI, Chris. Get some rest! We’ll catch up next week.

Iason Evan.3806:

Spoj The Second.7680:

@Orpheal

It really cant though. Why is that most players sit around in open world all the time? Because dungeons and fractals are too hard for them or they dont enjoy instanced group content. It makes no sense to put excessive amounts of lore in an area where the players who like challenging instanced content is dont care about it. And the players that want that lore would barely ever experience it. They would visit fractals once to get their lore fix and then never visit again. You cannot infect every aspect of the game with the wants of casual players. It doesnt work. You shouldnt lock away lore in an area of the game that many players who enjoy lore will not visit.

You can put lore into fractals, I dont mind that. But if it ruins replayability and brings down the challenge then im not going to be happy.

At that point I would just play high level Chess. What is the point of having the Fractals of the Mists be set in any time period if not to use it for lore? That is why it’s there Spoj. It’s there because ArenaNet can use it as a tool to tell any story for any era be it past, present, or future. You are missing the point of the Fractals if you don’t want them to have stories.

I might insert myself in the middle. I very much want Fractals to tell lore and stories, but we must also be respectful of HOW they do so.

Fractal lore is “through a teleporter darkly,” so to speak. It’s not canon. It’s slightly off from reality.

This is important! We want stories and background and curious things… we (or at least I) don’t want long cutscenes, unnecessary stops and starts, and time/completion-gating as part of it.

I can see how Scarlet’s appearance in Thaumanova starts to push people the wrong way. While I don’t think that particular dialogue is too much, I agree with spoj that it needs to be done carefully.

Drizzt.5867:

I rather have the 3-10 guys afk on my team than the 20-25 guys who have no clue what to do. There are a lot people doing this event who have no idea what to do. Even after explaining and other players trying to explain they choose to /ignore and run around. I have failed several times because of this. Do I get report those people who I deem not “good” enough to do this event. They wasted my time, I know what to do, so wouldn’t that be fair?

You are presenting a false choice. I cannot choose between 3-10 AFK and 20-25 clueless.

I get 3-10 AFK and 20-25 clueless.

The solution for the clueless is to politely try to explain, in chat, how the encounters work.

The solution for the (long-term, in it for the rewards, leeching) AFK is to politely ask them to contribute. And then report them if they do not. They are welcome to auto-attack while untuned and I will not report them for that.

Performance is not required. Participation should be.

I’d happily stop reporting them if I were asked to stop by anybody from ArenaNet. Until then, I will continue to report people I believe to be violating both the letter and the spirit of the Code of Conduct.

Anyway, as we’re really just talking circles around each other, I might move on to other conversations. It has been an enlightening thread, I’ll say that.

Azreell.1568:

When you design content that requires 50-60+ pug players that I have to rely on in order to get any rewards for an hrs time investment – Yes , people will get discouraged after wasting that much time.

I can play my heart out, do my rotation properly, maximize my dps and utilites, bring all required consumable food to ensure I preform at 100% , have the most optimal spec and gear and at the end of the day it will not effect the fight outcome at all since you have people who can’t even dodge as an example.

So yes I am using that as a defense as I can understand why people would sit afk in the corner.

Right, but idling in the corner just EXACERBATES this problem. Going AFK makes you considerably less reliable than people who are at least attempting to do the content.

Or rather, you’re reliably useless.

Azreell.1568:

After playing this content countless times now my suggestion to the GW2 player base would be worry about yourself first because I have never met a more skill less group of players in terms of pve then I have in this game.

Once again those cpl people sitting afk are not the reason you are failing the event. You are failing the event because the gw2 populous can’t see huge glowing circles on the ground or have no ability to dodge telegraphic mechanics. Add into the fact that apparently having to stand on pads to get 3 buffs is very stressful and confusing to most who play this game.

When you start loosing the event due to afk’ers then we can have a conversation.

Until then, You people should be looking in the mirror – not at other people.

Are you using “learn 2 play” as a defense for “I’m not playing, I’m just sitting in the corner so I can get rewards?”

You’re telling some people that they should learn to play better as a defense for not playing at all.

Algreg.3629:

I wish they never used that line and I am pretty sure that is the way they feel themselves (apart from being quoted out of context around here usually). So, know what, I love military simulation games, I WANT TO jump into an Apache Longbow and rain ASMs on Scarlet. What, I cannot do that? But you promised me I can play the way I want to! Unfair!

As somebody drawn to the concept of freedom of playstyle, even I am starting to feel like enough is enough.

Death to “play as you want!” It’s just an excuse for bad behavior nowadays.