So, this is how it works? Cherry pick ONE PERSON’s “list of things I don’t like”, while ignoring 40 pages of really good feedback and ideas? OK. I’m done with this thread.
From this response from JonPeters and his initial post it is obvious that Anet is not going to fix their new leveling process or trait system except the individual tasks themselves.
I’m discouraged since I used to like leveling new alts but can live with just playing my level 80s instead.
To be clear we are looking at the system as a whole but recognize that changing that will take longer than is satisfying and are looking for ways to improve the current system until a time at which we can make a better overall system from the ground up. Specific suggestions on what traits are poorly placed are helpful for #1, specific suggestions on #2 are also welcome but are going to be read but not responded too right now.
So, if I’m reading this right, are you saying, you’re looking for quick changes to make the system more bearable while not confirming or denying the possibility of a holistic revamp at some point in the indeterminate future?
Because knowing that would really settle some of my anxiety about the existence of this request for feedback.
Yup. and I would replace the word possibility with the word probability…
Unfortunately, unlocking traits in the open world generally causes one of the #1 things we never wanted in the game which is players in conflict. You want might the Balthazar trait but someone is about to complete the chain and leave you waiting. This is bad for the game, but I think right now only occurs this dramatically for a few of the traits.
That doesn’t make it okay! It’s shouldn’t be the case for any of them.
I get that you want to award traits 1 at a time to give players a better overview of what they have available. I can see the point of this – I personally found the trait list overwhelming on my first character. But not on my second, or third, and certainly not on my 10th. I don’t think you fully appreciate how cumbersome it feels to have to go through these unlock activities when they’re very time-consuming things that you’ve already done many, many times before.
If every single trait needs to be unlocked individually, the activities should be simple, quick and readily available! – like discovering areas or completing available events (either quickly respawning ones or hearts, preferably the latter).
WvW events (and I would argue dungeons as well) should absolutely not be on the list of tasks. Nor should map completion.
Ideally, you would have made 65 new events for trait unlocks and scattered them across the world in level appropriate zones (similar to how skill points are earned but perhaps a little more involved).
If he’s only saying this now then it’s surely not getting changed in the feature patch.
Yeah the timing seems a little suspicious to me…I doubt they could review all the collected feedback (starting NOW?), decide on a change and then implement those changes that quickly.
Then again, if they can’t, oh man is it going to be bad when those patch notes come out September lol.
It does very much seem like Izzy is trying to soften the impact of the inevitable sh**storm that’s going to hit them next week as they release news of the feature patch.
This doesn’t entirely remove the possibility that they’ve done SOMETHING to the trait system, but strongly suggests that any changes will be small (perhaps ‘insignificant’ is a more appropriate/realistic term).
The only parts that I consider ‘core’ and would think of replicating is the fluidity of skill movements, evade/block system and the general camera, movement and targeting systems. ie. few skills that outright prevent a player from moving. Though I would definitely adjust the risk of skill use. Mainly many classes would use a resource + cooldown and some higher impact abilities will slow movement during the channel.
Honestly outside of those basic controls there is a LOT of room for improvement.
Ps. Already have 3 working weapon sets coded and the rough control scheme within a month. It isn’t hard to make aside from the graphics and animations.
Slowed movement during skill usage is something I would have very much liked to see as well. It almost seems to be a necessity when allowing movement during casting, in order to put more focus on positioning and awareness.
You can’t change the risk of skill use without drastically altering the game. Skills already have risk. Burn your heal at a bad time your kittened, burn a dodge when you didn’t need to your kittened, burn a block or an evade at a bad time. Use your burst when your opponent goes invuln or blocks or reflects your kittened. I can probably go on and on like this….. so I’m gonna go ahead and say there is risk. And at no point in time should someone who can’t even make it out of the percentages be commenting on the balance of pvp….. if those people are wondering why I would say such a thing….. well its like this a youth football player gets to play the game but it’s pretty obvious it’s not even the same game as pro, college, or even high school.
Well, no. That’s the whole point. Understand that I’m not making suggestions to change the game – I’m trying to understand why so many people seem to enjoy a system that I personally find very flawed. This is not a balance discussion.
What you bring up is the concept of recharge management. Yes, it imposes some risk. But this kind of leads into another issue. You can always distinguish between overall “general skills” such as communication, understanding of gameplay mechanics, node rotations etc. – basic skills that are largely independent of the class you’re playing – and “individual skills” required to play a specific class. It is often said that GW2 has a low skill ceiling and this primarily refers to that of individual classes. The risk associated with recharge management, due to the straightforward nature of skills and their similarity across professions, is largely a “general” phenomenon.
General skills aside, do you find that you have good opportunity to keep improving on playing a specific profession?
now just because you do not like it, does not mean everyone else has to not like it too, yes?
Obviously. That’s why I’m asking.
If you’d indulge me, let me follow up on some points where I’m not too sure what your stance is:
Quite often, risk in skill usage comes from recharge- and resource management as well as cessation of movement. In GW2 it comes entirely from either recharge or resource management. Is this also a case of simplicity being better to you? Do you prefer the lower risk / more straightforward design?
You say simplicity of skills is a good thing and to a certain extent I agree with that, but it necessarily takes away from the “player skill” required to use it, no? (this being anything from individual timing/reflexes to team coordination).
I’m genuinely surprised by the number of positive comments on the combat system. Out of curiosity, what exactly do you like about it? I assume the fluidity is a major factor but that largely comes from the ability to use practically all skills while moving. Is that what keeps you happy?
What about the absolute lack of any inherent risk involved in skill usage?
The extremist approach, encompassing invulnerability and massive burst skills, as well as the huge divide between stat specs?
The simplicity of skills (few conditional effects), and their relative ease of use?
The abundance and ease of use of shutdown skills (stuns), gap closers and escape skills?
The relative few options you have of directly helping your teammates?
I consider all of these examples of design philosophy rather than balance,.
Off the top of my head these things, to me, are some of the biggest fundamental flaws and probably the main reasons I’ll never really enjoy the way combat works. But I’m genuinely interested in hearing thoughts on these things from people who do like it.
I’d say the brainchild behind this change hasn’t played GW. In GW1 (loose term) the collection of elite skills was all about choice, like I said above, this new guff is not. Magi Malaquire isn’t sitting on a hill here, instead we have consolised devs thinking “YipEEE! SAB!” while watching the Star Wars prequels and wishing Jar Jar minis were in the cash shop!
I’m pretty sure a few of the devs for GW2 have never, ever played GW1. Or even want to. Which is a shame, they could learn some valuable lessons from Old Glory.
I couldn’t help but chuckle a little when they announced the free respecs.
Guild Wars was launched with a respec restriction (refund points), which was removed 4 months after release because it interfered with experimentation and discouraged people from toying around with the large number of skills.
2 years later, Guild Wars 2 was announced. They wanted people to experiment. Try this, try that – see what happens! Every interview was about the almost sandbox nature of the game.
Upon release, once again, respecs were restricted, though thankfully less than in GW1 (refund points were pretty bad). 18 months later, the restriction was removed to encourage experimentation. Surprise, surprise..
I’m picking on this one sentence here, because it shows how little sense is in some of the comments against the new system: It would be a problem if I didn’t have the skill points but I do!!111
So… where’s the problem again?
Honestly, it takes a lot of good will to not just laugh in the faces of everyone arguing against the system as a whole.
Oh, and 10gold say it’s the EotM traits that were unlocked here ^-^v
You get 75 skills points from leveling.
Unlocking all skills, except the new heals and with only one 10SP elite, costs 78 points. You can add >100 to this figure if you want all your elites and heal skills.
You can create a build with your skills from this but if you want to buy traits you’re going to have to either farm skill points in open-world PvE or farm scrolls in a karma train (even if you include the few that you will inevitably get from the leveling process, however you decide to perform it). Or you can choose to only get SOME skills and also buy some traits, which would maybe allow you to put together 1 build.
Either way you’re severely crippled.
Really? I just had to place rocks onto the pressure plates (unless it was opened already) to unlock the door, avoiding the Elite Spider so to not aggro it. Then again, it’s been about a week or more since I was last there, so I’ll check again. Sorry if I got it wrong. :s
Ah ok. I think it just bugs out a lot then. I’ve done it twice recently and had to kill the spider both times (I could ignore the pressure plates completely).
Desperate Power (Increased damage under 25% health)
- Find the grand chest in Provernic Crypt in Gendarran Fields. This one’s nice, just go through a crypt, figure out how to open the door, get the chest and the trait. And it’s doable before the trait becomes available to you, so all good here. Too bad it never lasts…
Unfortunately, this one is either bugged often or has been stealth changed. You have to kill the Elite spider to open the door. I haven’t tried it with a level appropriate character but I imagine it’d be a bit of a mess.
What I would like to see:
- Toned down requirements and/or more variety in ways to acquire traits (i.e. more options for the same trait).
- Scrap the skill-point cost and leave the gold price as is, BUT only allow purchases once the specific trait (line and number) has already been “unlocked” on the account (acquired by any character/any profession).
This would
1: Put new players through the unlocking phase, forcing them to explore the world (but with more reasonable requirements). I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this as long as the tasks can be completed reliably.
2: Allow seasoned players who’ve already gone through the content a thousand times to unlock traits quickly (purchase) while still leaving open the option to unlock through tasks for people who like to do this.
Keeping the price relatively high (40g) would be an incentive to unlock manually but people would still have the option of instant unlocks.
Incidentally, this would resemble the GW1 system of regular skill unlocks, except for the fact that a specific trait number would be unlocked across all professions.
I think that the trait unlocks is the single worst game update that I’ve seen in my 9 years of following Anet.
I simply don’t see the reason. Why force people to do these things? Is it because all these events and areas were deserted? – if so, there probably was a reason (or several).
In other news I’ve now brought a character to level 70 in the new system, playing the way I find the least tedious – some crafting, some EotM train, a big part of the personal storyline (which, by the way, is bugged to hell in many, many chapters).
I have 7 traits. I play without them because they’re terrible and I’m better off slotting points into empty traitlines for the stats.
True as that may be, in a lot of cases the hatred towards the thief class is quite justified.
The only thing keeping thieves in check in PvP is that the whole game revolves around capture points. But the sad fact remains that shadowsteps are plain gimmicky because
1: they can go through walls
2: they don’t interrupt your current action
3: they’re name-locked (i.e. no aiming required)
Basically, they’re the epitome of a dumbed down combat mechanic insofar as they require very little thought from the user in regards to movement, positioning and general awareness, yet provide a massive advantage.
Stealth, while not a major problem in PvP at the moment, sadly suffers the same problems of being an inherently horrible feature, as is evident in other game modes (W to the v to the W).
Initiative is a little more tricky and probably the only thief feature that doesn’t have to be bad. Though in its current state, it’s not particularly mentally stimulating.
so all of the inexplicable thief hate by people who have no idea what their talking about or have a strong bias against the profession is now validated by you calling out shadowsteps?
yeah nice try, but no. there’s infiltrator’s strike, infiltrator’s arrow, infiltrator’s signet, steal, and shadowstep. and of these 5 shadowsteps, only 3 are targeted. targeted shadowsteps let you go through certain obstacles (not many) but have the huge downside of having to be targeted which makes them that much less viable for defensive use. you might as well complain about mesmer’s portal as that’s actually a real teleport, as opposed to running you on the floor really fast like an nintendo 64 game.
and i dont see how not interrupting your current action is broken, when there are plenty of other professions that have teleports that don’t do this either.
stealth isn’t that strong either. it’s very counterable in different ways. stealth only starts to get problematic with shadow arts, which s/d never runs on top of the fact that s/d only has one stealth skill that consumes large amounts of initiative and often misses.
well, thief continues to the object of misguided anger and frustration amongst hundreds of awful players, big surprise.
you guys should really put all this effort you put into whining and put it into actually learning how to beat builds you have trouble with because they don’t give you spoonfed wins. crazy idea isn’kitten
dear anet, “isn’t” and “it” are actual words, please fix your censor.
It would appear that you missed my point entirely.
Forget about specifics – shadowsteps and stealth are, for the purpose of competitive play, poorly thought out combat mechanics.
You’re right, shadowsteps being targeted doesn’t provide much in the way of defensive abilities (except when there’s a return function – Infiltrator’s strike), but it does create a situation where you can be woefully unaware of where your target is and still chase it down. The offensive implications are tremendous.
The reason why it’s bad that they don’t interrupt your action should be pretty clear – it allows you to use melee skills at range with little or no telegraphing. And yes, lightning flash etc. are in the same category – but that’s not the topic of conversation.
Please understand that I’m in no way trying to suggest that these skilltypes make a thief unkillable – not that this effect would necessarily be needed in order for the class to be labeled OP.
What I’m trying to get across is that the class is based on features which are fundamentally gimmicky. The hatred for the class pops up whenever there’s a situation/meta where these features are highlighted.
I don’t like this idea. The whole poitn is that they only use one weapon set, as they have attunements/kits. Getting out of combat is too easy, and it could give them huge advantage in all areas of the game.
I personally often play with my inventory open (scaled down and moved to the side of the screen it doesn’t take up much space) in order to quickly switch weapons out of combat. Whether it’s to grab some movement skills across different sets or stack might before a fight, it’s already very possible.
This would entirely be a (much appreciated) convenience feature.
True as that may be, in a lot of cases the hatred towards the thief class is quite justified.
The only thing keeping thieves in check in PvP is that the whole game revolves around capture points. But the sad fact remains that shadowsteps are plain gimmicky because
1: they can go through walls
2: they don’t interrupt your current action
3: they’re name-locked (i.e. no aiming required)
Basically, they’re the epitome of a dumbed down combat mechanic insofar as they require very little thought from the user in regards to movement, positioning and general awareness, yet provide a massive advantage.
Stealth, while not a major problem in PvP at the moment, sadly suffers the same problems of being an inherently horrible feature, as is evident in other game modes (W to the v to the W).
Initiative is a little more tricky and probably the only thief feature that doesn’t have to be bad. Though in its current state, it’s not particularly mentally stimulating.
Just for the record, regarding the financial side of the original Guild Wars.
From an interview with Eurogamer in 2007:
"
Eurogamer: Guild Wars has been supported with lots of new expansion packs, perhaps to make up for the lack of subscription fees. Is this something you want to continue to do in Guild Wars 2?
Ben Miller: The Guild Wars business model has worked really, really well for us. We’re blown away by the success of the first game. We were three guys with an idea and now we’re a 130 person company supporting one of the biggest online role-playing games in the market.
We’re certainly not going to turn our back on the business model that got us here. It was really refreshing for players and carved out a niche in the market that is completely unsatisfied by any other games. I think you’ll see us do a lot of similar things with Guild Wars 2.
"
The reason that they decided to do GW2 instead of more expansions was most likely entirely because they had a lot of visions for the game that just couldn’t be accomplished in GW. Sadly, the people who had those visions have since left the company.
The OP has a point.
It’s a general trend of “more, more, MORE” that Anet has decided to rely on with GW2. A fundamental idea that faster and stronger is always better. They flood the game with something, and then they flood the game with counters thinking it should balance everything out. Sadly, though, the end product is just a devaluation of the effect (in this case knockback). It adds no depth to combat, only serves to clutter it up. If they scaled everything back (stats, damage, healing, control effects and their counters), the game could actually end up much more complex (in a good way).
Your multiplayer experience is wrong. in dungeons you DO need to work togther and think about more then personal dps. Look at the flavor of the month dungeon ranger build, it generally brings redmoa/spotter/frost spirit to work together with other popular meta builds, it brings aoe buffs that are important to improving party dps and scale exponentially the more people you have.
I play an engi, and nothing is more satisfing then blasting 18 might stacks onto my party for 30 seconds and watching bosses melt. I think the multiplayer is AMAZING, you just are prolly zerging over world content which is as you said, mindless and not really meaningful, get in a dungeon and its a diffrent world where you need diffrent ideas and gameplay to win.
The problem isn’t GW2 have ZERO team work. We are not saying that. Of course GW2 have teamwork. I played though dungeons (including Arah) and tons of WvW. I know about fields+blast finisher. In fact back when I was a commander in WvW I made those calls on TeamSpeak. So yes I am (and many others are) fully aware that there is teamwork in GW2.
Here is the problem: People like me reached GW2’s skill ceiling way too fast.
That includes both solo skill ceiling and team play skill ceiling.
I tell you the truth. Even if I play my GW2 necro for 5 more years, I will not get much better with using her. Her skill bar won’t improve that much. Neither will her skill bar become unique.
Its like playing Mario. Let’s say this Mario game gives you LS updates. Well you might die when you enter a brand new stage. But as you play you will get more familiar with the new stages and eventually finish them.
But listen to this please: You got better by being more familiar with the new stages. You did not become better at using Mario.
Ok?
Mario is VERY easy to use. He pretty much only have ONE move. He just jumps. And jumps. And jumps. Using Mario isn’t the problem here.
GW2 characters are, of course, more complicated to use than Mario. But if you ask me, it is along the same line.
Team work, what we see today is what we get. Field+blast. Field+blast. Field+blast. The only thing hard about that is the lag and getting everyone on TeamSpeak, tbh.
I guess the thing is I play many other type of games beside GW2. I play RTS, which gives me some skill on multi-tasking. I play tons of action games and shooters, so my reflex is decent. And so things in GW2 just aren’t that hard, tbh.
Completely agree. Combat is just flat-out uninteresting.
In my opinion, making all skills usable while moving was a massive mistake (smooth as it may make the gameplay feel). All risk is removed from skill-usage – movement and positioning goes out the window, and spam ensues as it’s always in your best interest to use any skill. Couple that with the self-sufficiency of classes and a complete lack of any meaningful interaction with your team and you’re pretty much left with a bland single player experience in a multiplayer world.
3. Do not spend a single dime on cash-shop / gems as that only helps to push towards a cash-shop focus what is bad for the game. So as supporter I make sure I don’t steer them in the wrong direction. I don’t want to be part of the reason stuff go’s bad.
Sadly enough there are to many people who do buy many gems (falling for marketing tricks) helping the game come to the bad state it is in currently. Anyway, I did what I could to support this game.
Fully agreed.
Before I saw this thread I genuinely didn’t understand why Anet puts so much focus on arguable useless items in the gem store, simply because I couldn’t fathom any scenario where I would personally buy them.
It’s surprising to me to see how much some people actually spend. Can’t blame ANet on this one, though – if I could bring in piles of cash money by periodically launching game skins that I could cook up in a few days, I no doubt would. I do wonder what they’re doing with the rest of their time, though..
As far as the topic goes, I have not spent any money in the cash shop. Nor will I.
Guild Wars by far. There’s no way GW2 can entertain me for as long as the original did.
If they both had equal population today, I’d be spending all my time in GW1.
Chiming in for a +1 to the list of disappointed players.
After trying out the new system, I will not be making any more characters.
I don’t think any further explanation is required at this point.
I’m playing on NA servers from EU so the latency is fairly high but the only place I experience any kind of lag is in s- /tPvP.
Usually, it’s a 1-2 second lag on skills and weapon swaps but -only- while in combat. Out of combat everything is perfectly responsive.
