Guild Wars 2

I think it’s a good game and I got my money’s worth, but it doesn’t really meet its potential, and I’m not sure it will…

Nokaru.7831:

This exact same thing can happen with a two-player vote-kick. Just change it to “three friends start a dungeon” and “two guildies join.”

Not a problem when the party leader has control, two guildies can’t kick the leader. Assuming that party members can still initiate a vote-kick on non-leader, even if they kick the leader’s friends, they will be kicked, and the friends will be invited back.

Hijacking problem solved.

Nokaru.7831:

It’s really pointless trying to bring up examples of objective good and evil. “Two good guys versus three bad guys!” There is no perfect system where it ties up all loose ends.

Strawman argument, I never claimed to have a perfect system that’s sunshine and rainbows for everyone. I showed you an example where the majority is the problem, because you believe this:

Nokaru.7831:

This to me is an issue because it gives this power to the minority of a group.

Nokaru.7831:

This is a debate with regards to…

Are you trying to dismiss my points by implying that they lie outside of the “proper debate”? You tried to do that earlier with empty words like:

Nokaru.7831:

That’s why I said “I believe” because it’s just an opinion. This debate is about who should have power over a party.

Don’t do that.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Actually, a better system might be no vote kick at all. That way, if someone is disinclined to continue with that group, they leave and the group either fills their spot or not. We can’t do that, though — that would be inconvenient!

How would you organize groups with requirements then? Anyone can blatantly ignore LFG requirements (or implicit requirements like “Don’t be a kitten”), and the worst that could happen is the existing members have to leave.

Nokaru.7831:

This debate is about who should have power over a party.

I think most dungeon runs go reasonably smoothly, that is the common case.

But when disputes arise, I think the cleanest and most effective option is to give power to a party leader with absolute control, who can clearly set rules and expectations for the party, and reliably enforce those rules, instead of distributing the power amongst a possibly arbitrary mishmash of players with conflicting goals.

It is fair to give this power to the initiator of a party, all subsequent members could see the party description, can read initial comments by the host, and joined voluntarily. They are free to leave anytime.

The “loser” is free to create his own “kingdom”.

It is most conducive to allowing like-minded people to play with each other and avoid people with conflicting goals/natures.

With a majority vote-kick rule, it is still possible for a LFG with 1 or 2 players to get hijacked.

Nokaru.7831:

I personally think it’s ridiculous that two players can purge the other three, and that there is no cooldown or any restriction on this vote kick.

Two friends start a dungeon run. They advertise “LFM all welcome”. Three guildies join the party and proceed to insult the two friends, threaten to kick them unless they change builds. Is it ridiculous for those two players to kick the three?

Nokaru.7831:

That being said, I believe vote kicking should be revised so that if a party consists of five players, it should take three votes to kick them instead of two. For other party sizes, two votes is fine.

Sometimes, the majority is the problem.

Etienne.3049:

A problem I could see with your system (voidwater’s, that is) is that there would be a huge incentive to be the party leader. I could see that leading to far more parties being created but never filled, as everyone would demand to be the party leader (under the current system I’ve never felt a need to, under your proposition I might well never join a party I didn’t create).

I considered that point, and my thoughts are:

There will still be many players who will join parties, simply because they don’t care to create/manage the party themselves, or because some existing group has already been put together and it’d be faster than waiting, or a group has already made some progress in the dungeon.

For party joiners, similar risk of unjustified kicking exists already. Right now, it’s probably not uncommon to join a party with two or three friends or guild mates who could kick someone arbitrarily. And many PUG runs still form and go without problems, so I’m not sure having an absolute party leader would cause an epidemic of kicking.

Seera.5916:

I still don’t see why an exploiter should be immune from losing all progress but the honest players should not.

My basic premise is that there needs to be someone with absolute control over the party. I think it is the most effective way to allow PUGs to have some decent level of party organization/composition.

The system does not preclude “no rules, all welcome” parties, because as a party leader you are free to enforce such a “rule set”.

If you made a “no rules, be nice to all” party with a friend, and 3 jerks who want “zerk meta speedrun” showed up and kicked you, that would be very annoying. And vice versa.

Or let’s say you rolled swamp for fractals alone, put up a post for “Fractal LFM, <insert requirements here>”. Some people don’t meet those requirements but join anyway, when you complain, two or three guys kick you out of spite.

So I think party leader immunity is a must.

Assuming that, if the system allows “exploiters” to be kicked, then anyone can be kicked maliciously.

If the system were intelligent enough to automatically detect “exploits” and only allow party leader kicks in that situation, then it could simply autoflag the offending player and let Anet deal with it.

If you don’t have such a check, then it is up to the players, and you now allow problematic kicking again (with self-sacrifice, sure, but that’s not an absolute obstacle).

Seera.5916:

Then while I would have to repeat the dungeon if I kicked the exploiter, the exploiter does too. Same with the jerk. Same with the person with the stupid rule.

So:

You make a party.

An exploiter, jerk, and guy with stupid rules joins.

These three people vote to kick you, and they haven’t invested any time in the run, having just joined, so they may not care if the instance shuts down. They just don’t like you.

What now?
————————
I would think of it like making an ad-hoc temporary “guild” for the purposes of doing a dungeon. The guild leader sets whatever requirements, people are free to join and leave.
————————
Separately, I am not so opposed to boss AI/terrain exploiters.

It’s not an exact analogy, but I wouldn’t slash someone’s tires just because I saw them speeding.

The exploits are not “morally” wrong, TOS be kittened, and I applaud the cleverness/luck/experimentation of the first people to discover the exploits.

If someone insists on exploits when the rest of the party doesn’t want to, they’re a jerk, but I don’t really see a dire, pressing need to kick them out of their instance. If I were the absolute party leader, I’d kick them for that, but otherwise:

“Let the cops deal with it.”

Seera.5916:

So if I’m in a party of leader who has decided he wants to exploit the final boss of the fractal, I’m just supposed to leave and waste an hour of work to redo the fractal but the exploiter is allowed to keep his progress?

The guy who is literally violating the TOS gets the better end of the deal?

Pretty much, that would be the correct thing to do. Report him and leave if you feel so strongly, let Anet deal with it. What good is his reward if he gets punished later? Many people are okay with such exploits, e.g. I often see people try to do some funny water thing with Mossman (and always fail) Which is why you should’ve created your own “No Exploits” party.

If you were the party leader under the system I proposed, you could simply kick him if he demands that the party uses the exploit. regardless of how many friends he has with him. You’re the boss. Block him and never play with him again, otherwise.

Seera.5916:

The guy who decides because he’s got immunity from kicking that he’s going to be a right jerk and hope that most stick with the group too long to want to leave on their own before they get fed up with his rudeness?

The correct thing to do here, again, is to leave as soon as you see the guy is being a jerk. I’m sorry if you don’t value your own dignity and decide to stay, thanks for encouraging bad behavior by staying.

If you had created your own party under my proposed system, you can simply kick the jerk and get another player. You’re the boss. Block him and never play with him again, otherwise.

Take on a bit of party management responsibility and you can have peace of mind. Isn’t that nice?

Seera.5916:

People who aren’t jerks and don’t exploit and don’t have stupid rules don’t need immunity from kicking. And by stupid rules I mean the immature kids who would be party leader to force people to dance or be kicked (The smart immature kid would wait until they were well into the dungeon to announce that under your system. He can’t be kicked and doesn’t need anyone else to confirm his kick), not the person sick and tired of hour long runs who has decided he wants to have a party of all meta experienced players.

The party system cannot distinguish between “stupid” rules and “good” rules., that is entirely up to players.

Some people consider “zerk meta” a stupid rule, and they will join such parties and cause conflict. I’ve seen it before.

Different segments of the player base have entirely different ideas about how dungeons should be run. It is folly to force them to play together, let them cleanly separate.

I would probably hate the builds and playstyle that OP chooses, but I do agree that there needs be a good way to enforce “party rules”, so that it is possible to have semi-organized PUG groups with specific criteria.

If you’re against the ability to specify party requirements and enforce them, you’re probably a bad leech (i.e., you need others to carry you).

Maybe something like this could work:

• Have a clearly designated party leader role (i.e., someone opens party interface and ‘creates party’, they are now the leader of an 1-person party)
• Party leader can leave and dungeon instance will not disappear
• Party leader cannot be kicked at all
• Party leader can kick anyone, no other votes needed.
• Retain party chat logs after a player leaves party to make it easier to report obvious abuse (e.g., party leader kicks someone at end of dungeon before they can get reward, invites friend)
• Some way to use the blocklist to avoid playing with problem players in the future. (Maybe some warning when you are about to join/accept someone on your blocklist)

If you don’t like the rules someone made for their party, you are free to create your own; you will have the same authority, and you can make your party an “open” party.

Pennry.9215:

Third, a much better solution would be that when a player (any player) is kicked, they get prompted that they were kicked and and if they would like to stay in the instance. If they chose to stay, they are there at the point they were kicked (or some checkpoint system close to it) and can freely repopulate another group to finish said instance. Yes, this is entirely a huge undertaking to make possible, but IMO is the best solution to this kicking problem as a whole.

Not inherently bad, but very exploitable as presented:

1. Make 5 person party, get to end of dungeon
2. Kick 4 people out, remaining player sells 4 dungeon slots
3. Three of the people who were kicked sell slots for their instance as well
4. Fourth “kicked” instance is used to repeat the cycle

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You would satisfy your own desires if you got what you wanted, but where would that lead the GW2 community as a whole if everyone suddenly had something that was ultra rare?

I am not even trying to get a legendary, I am happy enough with my black lion skins and fractal weapons that I got from evil, capricious RNG. But I take serious issue with your mindset.

It makes no difference to me if everyone has ultra rare skins, I can still fight in WvW, do dungeons, the periodic Living Story stuff, whatever. Why should I care about your skins? I’m sure many people share my opinion.

Would it not be interesting to see what everyone would make their characters look like without skin unlock restrictions? Then you can see their true aesthetic choices.

Everyone would be happier, except the people who must rely on the relative deprivation or inferior rank of others for self-validation.

If someone enjoys playing the game for its own sake, then removing the legendary grind will only make them happier. They can go and do dungeons and events and whatever with their friends, while enjoying their fancy skins. They’ll get new goals periodically anyway, like new backpieces or weapon sets.

If the legendary grind is the main or only thing that compels someone to play the game, then I argue they’ll be happier if you just let them get it over with and move onto something else.

You say that people are “entitled”; I could say that you are being vain and masochistic.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

But you need to take a step back, and look at the situation from a perspective that’s beyond just yourself.

Okay, let’s step back even further, and look beyond the game. Let’s make legendaries easy to get. If even a small number of people stop grinding for legendaries, and go do something more productive, is that not beneficial for society?

Is it socially beneficial to have games with psychologically addicting and frustrating grinds that eat up a large amount of time? Is that good for people’s mental health? If you look broadly enough, it becomes quite hard to say whether something is good or bad. You like to ride the values and morality horse, go ride it all the way to town.

You keep trying to make some moral argument about entitlement by equating the virtual economy with real economies. In the real world, we must deal with the harsh scarcity of resources. This simply doesn’t apply to virtual items with potentially infinite supply.

If scarcity were not a constraint in the real world (e.g. free energy, magic duplication devices, and robot servants), I see no compelling argument for making goods/services artificially scarce.

Since this a game, fun and enjoyment are what matters. Scarcity is introduced to add a fun and interesting challenge, give you some context. Find the point where the effort of getting a legendary is just right. Too easy, and it’s not fun (boring). Too hard, and it’s not fun either (anger and frustration). It is certainly valid to argue that it is too hard to acquire a precursor right now. You could set a price ceiling on precursors by having some NPC sell them for X gold, for example.

You make your arguments so you can tell yourself how gritty and hardworking you are, compared to all the lazy and entitled people. Others just want their skins. What makes one arbitrary value of item supply morally superior to others?

Azrael.4960:

Rather than just allow fractal weapons to be farmed, they should be rewarded based on a great feat performed in fractals. Something like take down a boss within a time frame or perform a series of moves on a boss, or complete a certain boss fight within a time frame without anyone going down.

The skins should be rewarded based on merit not just time spent in there farming.

I think an achievement-based unlock like that would be fun, probably the best way IMO.

If that’s considered too restrictive, I think another reasonable way to get them could be to have some repeatable achievement, like:

Maximally Fractal

• 0/50 level 50 runs completed
• Reward chest: Fractal Weapon Box

I think it’d be fair to give someone a fractal skin of their choice after they do 50 runs (or maybe a little bit lower) at the max level.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

It’s called “living within your means”. If you can’t afford to eat steak and lobster, eat tuna sandwiches instead. If you can’t afford Dusk, and really want a Legendary, buy Venom instead.

People can want what they want, all they want. But they also have to understand that they can’t get all they want all the time either. I would love to drive a Tesla Model S, but can’t afford it, so I’ll buy a Hyundai Sonata instead.

Unlike real world items, the supply of precursors is artificially scarce.

Suppose the government could conjure an infinite number of Tesla Model S at little to no cost. Ignore IP ownership and such because similar concepts don’t exist for precursors. People petition the state to make it easier to get a Tesla Model S. Do you think those people are entirely unjustified?

Suppose there’s a government monopoly on clothing production. The government clothing company also happens to have a magic clothing duplicator, able to create a copy of any type of clothing at very low cost. Is it wrong for people to complain about the prices of clothing? I think this example is closer to the situation than your steak/lobster or luxury car examples.

You try to make the point that people are arguing against market forces, but they are really arguing against"state policy".

Extending the car analogy, would it not be good if Teslas were affordable to all people? I think the premise of exclusivity is flawed to begin with.

Why can’t people appreciate something on its own merits? Throw away the useless social metadata (how many other people own my item? Am I ‘special’?).

If you buy a Tesla only because you want to impress other people, to draw envy, I think you buy it for bad reasons.

If you buy a Tesla for its design and features, you buy one for good reasons.

I think some changes that could help alleviate kick-griefing are:

• Anet needs to step up and consistently ban people for doing this
• When a player tries to join/merge from LFG, the existing party must confirm, don’t automatically put them in the party.
• Use the blocked players list to allow users to prevent griefers from joining any future party the user creates.

Elrey.5472:

voidwater.2064:

I’d play it if the ooze puzzle were removed.

Funny… i’d stop playing aetherpath if the ooze font were removed. Why? because i love puzzles, positioning and people synchronized on teamspeak or chat.

We value very different things, then.

Puzzles are not really that interesting once you know the solution.. Put the triangle block in the triangle shaped hole. Now what about the star block? Good job!

It’s just mechanical repetition of a solution, no quick tactical thinking required, no challenges to your physical abilities.

Having to drag ooze around is okay when you’re fighting Sparki/Slick, but I’d rather not have a puzzle centered around that mechanic. Also, at some level it’s a visceral contempt for what the player is asked to do in the puzzle.

Combat is the core of the game. I would not mind if all dungeons had their puzzles removed and replaced with difficult, exciting boss fights. Boss rush all the way through is fine with me.

The most interesting content for me would be complex boss battles with lots of twitch gameplay. By twitchy, imagine something slightly less difficult than “multiplayer Touhou”.

Bosses should be twitchy enough such that even if you know the process for beating the bosses, executing those plans successfully is far, far from guaranteed. Fights should spam you with harmful things that demand your constant attention.

Obstacles should not come from team synchronization/communication requirements. Difficulty should arise simply because it’s hard to avoid death in fights, not because you have to chat with people.

Elrey.5472:

A dungeon is a place to go with a team. A place where you actually need to play with people. Not a place to solo content along with 4 more players that are just taking care of themselves.

I see nothing wrong with the “5 soloers” model, just make it pretty hard for the individuals to stay alive, and the content will be fun for me. The types of “teamwork” in RPGs that I find most interesting are skill/build synergies, not action synchronization and communication.

Elrey.5472:

makes no sense to me.

Basically, I like the fights, but I don’t like the puzzles. The puzzles have to be completed to reach the fights. I wish the puzzles would go away.

Elrey.5472:

Like Blaeys said, we need more dungeons like this one. But the rewards must be increased for it.

That said, I’d agree with this, upping the rewards to match the effort involved for Aetherpath would attract more people.

Hitman.5829:

voidwater.2064:

Hitman.5829:

Are you kidding me? Who builds adrenaline and does not use it? Not even a single warrior does that!

DPS-oriented warrior builds in PvE generally won’t use the burst skills.

Well, that is not an excuse to not fix the traits in PvP. Keep in mind that if a warrior does not use his burst skills he will die to condition damage. In other words, he will not be cleaning the constant conditions that are like a plague in PvP. If the warrior is constantly using his burst skills that means that the warrior cannot take advantage of those traits. Sure, those traits are really good in PvE, but what about PvP? there are people who play PvP too you know.

lol, I expressed no opinion on the topic, you’re so eager to refute and argue

I’d play it if the ooze puzzle were removed, anything that involves herding NPCs is annoying, the fights are fine.

Hitman.5829:

Are you kidding me? Who builds adrenaline and does not use it? Not even a single warrior does that!

DPS-oriented warrior builds in PvE generally won’t use the burst skills.

DeWolfe.2174:

Whoa, let’s turn that around right now. You have 30+ players wanting to do an event. Yet, 3-5 players are preventing that event from ever occurring. So that makes the 3-5 righteous in your eyes??? I’m looking at several of them right now and they are all known to have grieved the QD train and Boss Blitz. Now, what is the excuse for Boss Blitz? One individual in particular would run circles and aggro mobs (especially Boom Boom) to attempt to prevent Gold. How is that not grieving? How is a pattern of behavior against fellow players excused?

That’s why fine, let’s turn off the protection mechanism’s that coddle these players.

Well, unlike some overly lawful-aligned people in the thread calling you “100% wrong”, I agree with you to some extent. You could say the people who intentionally try to ruin the farm are “just playing the game”, but really, they’re being bad people.

If I saw a large group farming an event, I would not go out of my way to ruin their farming. I think that’s human decency. Doesn’t matter if the farming is “not intended by the developers.” Even if I were the hypothetical “pure player” that just wants to complete the event, I think it would be more civilized for me to let the farmers be, move on elsewhere, and successfully complete some other event.

That said, your proposal is a terrible idea (unless you like open world PvP, which could be fun…), it would be a godsend to bandit/gangster wannabes. You would be turning the game world into Mad Max, just so you can kill some dudes who caused a disruption in the supermarket checkout. Something like that.

In this case, I’d say the farmers just have to put up with the event-succeeders; you’re acting against “state” policy, so to speak, so you cannot really expect help from the devs. They’ll probably nerf your farm sometime anyway.

I would have something like this:

• Change the big laser cutscene so that Zhaitan’s wings are mostly destroyed, causing him to crash, taking the big ship with him
• Party is sent to a huge open battlefield where Zhaitan has fallen, guarded by many squads of undead, with some veterans/elites; new waves will periodically spawn
• Players would have Destiny’s Edge NPCs and ~40 Pact allies helping them
• Zhaitan would be a giant boss with multiple points to damage (e.g., arms, head, heart, etc.), casts big dangerous spells and big melee swings (can disable certain attacks by destroying corresponding body part)
• Zhaitan would summon legendary bosses in phases as he takes damage (e.g. a trio of Eyes of Zhaitan at 75%, something at 50%, a reduced HP Lupicus at 25%)

Perhaps make the fight a separate explorable instance.

Well, I’d be in favor of new armor that can be obtained in PvE, “prestige” or not. More skins good.

The essence of the fancy PvP armor’s “prestige” is that it is skill-gated. You must have enough skill to win a PvP tournament. It is not based on time spent, RNG, or money.

The closest thing to a skill-gated skin in PvE would be green/yellow SAB weapons. You have to beat the not-nice platformer, you cannot get it with little or no effort by being lucky, no one can carry you through it.

If an item must be exclusive/difficult to obtain, I think skill-gating is the best way. Straight-forward grind is not as good. RNG is the worst. For example, it’s good that they added a way to get amber weapons via PvP now.

Hm, it should probably have a cloud-riding skill….

I view account-bound RNG drops as a very non-ideal mechanism for extending content lifespan. If RNG is used, it should be ‘limited’; I think it’s desirable to place a definite cap on the amount of effort/time needed to attain a desired item.

For example, the fossilized bugs should be available from merchants for some fixed number of geodes (or maybe a significant amount of gold), or non-account bound. Another alternative would be to keep a “maximum failures” limit for a particular class of drop. e.g., if I open 99 chests in a row and don’t get a fossilized bug, I will be guaranteed to get one on the 100th chest.

The same applies for Fractal weapons.

RNG does not respect my time, skill, and effort, so I do not respect RNG.

I like the new Mordrem mobs, they’re more fun to fight than most other types. I think the Husks could be buffed to be more dangerous…

I think GW1 had a larger set of “optimal” and “near-optimal” builds than GW2 does.

There were also many more exotic/gimmick builds that were somewhat viable, which I thoroughly enjoyed making/using. I can’t think of any wacky builds in GW2 like touch rangers, for example…

I suppose that’s expected, since GW1 had more skills, a more flexible skill bar, and dual professions.

Azhure.1857:

voidwater.2064:

If implemented, disease should apply to allies without any racial restriction. I think making race a cosmetic choice instead of a significant functional choice is a good decision and than should remain. It’s not good to interfere with the fashion game.

Yes, race is currently only a cosmetic choice. However there are certain races that are receiving far more attention from the devs that others are. Inequality already exists because of admitted laziness. Race treatment equality already = work, effort by the devs. Too much apparently.

1. Yes, it’s currently a cosmetic choice, and it’d be terrible design, very annoying, to suddenly make that choice have a significant functional impact. I am not going to reroll any characters, or switch characters because the party just happened to have some mix of races.

2. You are wildly exaggerating if you say the races are very unequal right now, racial skills are weak and there is little functional difference between the races. If you mean some minor stuff like armor clipping, that’s not relevant in any functional sense.

Azhure.1857:

As for the racial effect on disease. If you consider how its being applied throughout a closely stacked group of people – the racial effect would help to keep it from going entirely out of control. If there was no racial effect, it would be like greek fire spreading throughout a static zerg in an impressive time. Stacking on itself quickly too. The racial effects potential protection against disease is greater than the possibly discrimination that may come of its implementation.

You could also simply set the disease transfer chance to something like 20-35% to limit the spread, instead of introducing mechanics that depend on some arbitrary cosmetic choice.

The race dependency is just bad, it may sound like an interesting concept, but it would just be arbitrary and annoying in practice. I do not want any reward/punishment for my personal aesthetic, it properly stands alone.

It’d be like putting in some condition that only harms people that use specific dye colors, or an anti-male/female condition. Why do you care about the racial distribution? It honestly sounds like you just want to punish people for choosing popular races (e.g. humans).

Azhure.1857:

Griefers have been brought up a few times in this thread. I do not discount it, hell I even added it to the CONS list because I understand its validity. But I don’t see how it would be possible for a griefer, or duo of griefers, to stay alive long term while diseased.

I’m looking at this from a “fun” cost/benefit perspective:

Disease does not really add that much fun or interesting gameplay.

• From the disease caster’s perspective, disease would just be another “Best used against groups” damage action.
• From the receiver’s perspective, it’s just another degen condition, it’s less harmful than something like chill or weakness, counter it with healing, regen, aoe cleanse (which happens very often in zergs). I think the “stay a distance from allies or use aoe cleanse” counter mechanic is not as deep or interesting as you present it to be.

I consider it just some “flavor”. Low benefits. I’d rather see the developers spend resources on new WvW maps, new weapons, skills and traits that create new types of builds, new classes, rather than spending resources trying to balance yet another degen condition.

What are the costs? They are not insignificant, but not catastrophic either. The griefing doesn’t have to be continued to be annoying.

Azhure.1857:

In a sense…. they would kill themselves in their continued efforts to troll other players.

If they manage to maliciously infect allies before dying, they have succeeded in griefing. Also, if the disease condition is strong enough to overpower the griefer’s healing and kill them, then it can also do tremendous damage to the griefer’s victims.This is not fun.

Azhure.1857:

We, as the other players, could heal/cleanse and then sit on their faces after they die.

That’s not satisfying at all, only their death by my hands is appropriate.

Also, I have to react to their dumb actions and waste skills. Thus, I have been griefed. This is not fun. I would be annoyed.

In a friendly fire setting, the real potential for revenge/punishment would balance things out. Also, you could do something interesting like design disease in such a way that it’d be sometimes beneficial to kill the diseased ally and sometimes beneficial to try to cure them (disease would be fairly strong and non-trivial to cleanse, in this example)

So I don’t support disease being added. I don’t think it’s beneficial in terms of “fun”, nor is it a good use of developer resources at this point.

The living story NPCs are really cheesy, like they come from a bad school anime…

If implemented, disease should apply to allies without any racial restriction. I think making race a cosmetic choice instead of a significant functional choice is a good decision and that should remain. It’s not good to interfere with the fashion game.

Also, I would only support its addition in some hypothetical game mode that allowed friendly fire. The ability to punish diseased players/griefers that fail to cleanse disease would add interesting gameplay.

Otherwise, disease would add very little in the way of interesting gameplay (there’s already plenty of AoE degen) but would result in annoying griefing.

Rieselle.5079:

And the answer can’t be “Everything should be rewarding”, because that means nothing is – wealth is relative. Unless you prefer a game without an economy where everyone earns personal rewards.

Everything and nothing should be rewarding. I’d be fine with a game where every item is unlocked by default. The economy is just a sideshow, that’s not where my fun comes from. I don’t care how many NPCs, the legions of pseudonymous internet folk, have the same items as I do.

What i’m really interested in is fun, engaging, repeatable content. The game itself is the reward. For example, if I’m playing an FPS, I don’t play for loot, I play because the game is fun. Shooting down helicopters and attacking bases are interesting, hoarding hats and unlocking weapons are not.

Does one need to be paid to enjoy a game of basketball or chess?

One suggestion would be to add a 4-ring or 3-ring+item mystic forge recipe that does something useful

For example, you could have a 4-ring recipe that generates a token, and another recipe with N tokens + exotic item that yields an ascended item of the same type and stats.

I think the game could benefit from more “high end” dungeons (e.g. Arah, stuff hard enough to cause people to pay for runs), dungeons with larger team size, and PvP content, the things that I consider “end game” content.

I think resetting a dungeon because of excessive deaths would be fine. Outside of dungeons, I don’t see a need for more than a monetary penalty or temporary debuff for PvE.

Death penalty is not needed in PvP.

Death penalty can make the game harder, but a better and more direct way to increase difficulty is to simply make death more likely, e.g. stronger/more enemies, environment hazards, projectile spam, reduced attack telegraphing time…

Also, there are reasons to play a game beyond material reward/punishment/value/risk, such as aesthetic appreciation/attachment, the joy of customizing a character and seeing it in various settings. The intrinsic competitive thrill of victory/shame of defeat in PvP.

Fafnir.5124:

I liked my minion DP. On death become a random dragon minion based on the map you are on and now we got open world pvp

Well, I’d be cool with that, but mainly because of the open world PvP, not the death penalty part…

Some rough thoughts:

• Dissociate your WvW team from your home server. Instead, there would be 3 WvW armies/empires that players can choose to join (and switch between with fees/penalties), regardless of what home server they belong to.

• The game is divided into “seasons” and has a Risk-style world map:
  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Risk_game_map_fixed.png

• At the start of a season, the three armies are randomly assigned starting regions, with some minimum distance from the other armies.

• There is a playable map for each country, where the armies involved fight towards some victory objective to claim the country , e.g. destroy all of the enemy bases, hold x% of the map + key points for some duration, kill N enemies from each team, etc.

• Regions closer to an army’s “homeland” would give advantages to that army over the other two teams.

• The season ends when a time limit is reached, or when one team claims the entire world map.

Realist.5812:

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Nothing about selling dungeon paths is an exploit, and if Arah wasn’t such a gigantic poorly-balanced pain in the kitten there wouldn’t be a market for it.

Arah > noobs.

So just because some terrible players are used to faceroll 1 mashing the rest of PvE, they shouldn’t have to learn how to actually play better? Ever?

Dat logik dough.

Well, noobs generally don’t get to sell Arah paths…

I don’t see why path selling offends you. It’s not so different if four good players decide to bring a fifth friend who’s a noob and let him AFK through Arah.

Would you demand that they kick their fifth useless friend? What goes on in their dungeon run is not your business.

Lord Kuru.3685:

voidwater.2064:

Or you just slightly change the code so that all 4 weapon slots are considered “equipped” regardless of land/water status so there is no “unequip” event to remove the bloodlust stacks on the land/water transitions.

This is exactly what they wanted to remove in this latest patch.

Then they should revert it.

If one insists that the stacks should be tied to weapon (I don’t agree with that premise), then this is how I would implement sigil stacks:

- Track kill counts per weapon with a stacking sigil, for both land and water.
- Your total stack count is the sum of the sigil-kill counts across the weapons you have equipped
- Removing or changing out a weapon in your inventory will reset its kill counter.
- Kill counters for the sigil weapons stop increasing once you hit the stack cap.

e.g.

• I have an axe, hammer, and spear, each with bloodlust.
• I get 5 kills with axe. My count is 5.
• I get 8 kills with hammer, my count is 13.
• I go into the water, my count is still 13.
• I get 2 kills with spear, my count is 15.
• I go onto land, my count is 15.
• I open my inventory and switch my hammer with GS, my count is 7
• I unequip my spear, my count is 5.

Olba.5376:

If your land weapon had a sigil, that means that you’re getting Bloodlust stacks while underwater, without having a Bloodlust sigil on your underwater weapons.

That sounds fine to me, no need to prevent it. The important thing is that you did the work to kill X enemies with a bloodlust-equipped weapon to get the buff. I don’t think of water combat as something completely separate and different, the water weapons are merely weapon sets 3 and 4.

Olba.5376:

The reason why you lose the stacks is simple: It allowed you to have an extra sigil effect in battle.

I don’t agree with that design, if it’s intended (it’s not ‘simple’ to guess at developer intentions). Bringing stacks acquired on land into the water seems natural to me, and it worked before. Few if any complained, this is not some obvious fix for an obvious error.

Conceptually, I think of the sigil effect, “gain buff on kill”, as a property of the weapon, but the buff applied is a property of the character. The buff stacks should remain on the character until the character is downed, regardless of weapon changes (as it was pre-patch).

If the applied stacks were property of the weapon itself, then conceptually the stacks should only be present when the weapon that generated them is active (e.g., I get 5 bloodlust on an axe, I switch to hammer and the stacks disappear, I switch back to axe and I have 5 stacks again)

Olba.5376:

“Fixing” this would be a very messy effort, as you would end up having to add some kind of memory to the stacks: You would have to lose your stacks when you change terrain from land to underwater or vice versa and get them back when you return.

Or you just slightly change the code so that all 4 weapon slots are considered “equipped” regardless of land/water status so there is no “unequip” event to remove the bloodlust stacks on the land/water transitions.

Dean Calaway.9718:

This reminds me, a week or so ago I read a post here of someone saying “with this change we’ll be less willing to run dungeons with people not in zerker”.
I have a sneaky suspicious pretty soon that kinda player is gonna be asking for tank/healer in the LFG…

No, zerker groups will just take maybe 5-6% longer for runs (sigil changes will probably add some DPS). Or even less change, because some part of dungeon time is spent out of combat.The game hasn’t fundamentally changed, though I like the sigil improvements.

You seem to believe that zerkers need to kill fast or die. This is only true for players that execute poorly, good zerkers can avoid getting hit too much (and one must, to keep the awesome 10% scholar bonus, and stacks…).

Mondo.5029:

There is really no way for me to outperform a zerker build with a condition build as a ranger. Period.

You make some good points about condition damage and destructible objects, but I don’t agree with your premise, that condition builds should have damage parity with full zerker.

Two points:

1. The gear/stat system doesn’t support such a change. All of the gear sets with condition damage have defensive stats, except for Rampager (hybrid offense set). Dire lets you be as tanky as Soldier’s, while getting max condition damage. Condition damage only requires 1 stat (maybe some precision for certain builds).

Zerker damage on the other hand requires total stat investment in 3 separate offensive stats, you must go all-in offense to hit the direct damage ceiling.

2. Condition skills are also generally less risky than direct damage skills. For example, a zerker will probably be in melee range for PvE, while a condition necro can safely smack things with a scepter from 900 range, or use 1200 range AOE marks and such.

If you made condition damage equal to full glass cannon damage, then you’d have a lot of tanky, ranged builds doing glass cannon damage. The game would not be balanced at all.

I think the developers said the existing condition stack limits were from technical limitations on the server side.

Drakent.9605:

Secondly I have play a zerker build as ranger,guardian,necro , and enge and is why by experience I know how easy and mind numbing the play style is and I also know its weakness which as a zerker you on a timer and if you don’t down the boss fast you in trouble which is the reason classes that aren’t build for fast dps are shun out of the group

You have room for improvement then, I never feel pressured to kill a boss within a certain time when I play zerker, bosses cannot kill me if I play wisely.

What would you change your zerker gear to though?

I don’t like the crit dmg nerf, but I think the sigil changes should make up for some of the lost DPS (and more effects are good…), so I don’t really care that much now.

Aeolus.3615:

Zerker gear + dungeon bug exploits.

Without this 2 requirements it is really hard to get a “pug” team to make dungeons, player gona be flamed and droped from party.

If I feel like doing a dungeon, I typically join/make PUG teams in LFG with no description beyond the path number(s).

The party fills up very quickly, most runs go pretty smoothly. I don’t think everyone or even most are running full zerker, but I rarely see someone who complains about what builds others are using.

If you join an ‘experienced’ run or something similar, people tend to be pickier, but that’s expected.

My anecdotal evidence is pretty different, it seems…

Cool, I look forward to making new builds

uknortherner.2670:

Anets’ biggest mistake it seems was creating these forums in the first place. Those people enjoying the game will probably never bother posting here, so all that’s left is a lot of noise from people who think the devs should cater solely to the conspiracy nuts, gankheads and the so-called “hardcore”.

Since you’re here as well, which of the three are you? Conspiracy nut, gankhead, or “hardcore”?

I think conspiracies are fascinating.

And I would bet that most people posting here enjoy the game to some degree, otherwise they wouldn’t care enough to post things like suggestions/complaints.

If you mean that only people who enjoy the game 100% have valuable opinions, then you are more deluded than any conspiracy nut, gankhead, or hardcore. For example, shouldn’t it be obvious to you that many posters are people who like the game but feel it’s not meeting its potential?

As for the topic, I wouldn’t be surprised if people leave; if you don’t really care about Living Story in PvE, then the game hasn’t changed much over the past year. The PvP modes feel neglected, and the “high end” PvE crowd is somewhat neglected as well.

For example, look at the frustration with the ‘Account Bound WXP’ change in the WvW forums: a relatively minor change that is very unlikely to be a big effort from a technical standpoint, with very strong demand from players, hasn’t been implemented for months (And to preempt any arguments about how I don’t know their code, I’ve worked on big scalable software, I can estimate the difficulty of a problem).

Try a zerker staff ele, you’ll have enormous AOE damage, and AOE CC.

lol, I would have my Sylvari character rejoin Mordremoth, if that were an option…

Hawke.9013:

As I have been saying and will keep saying, the holy trinity may not need to come back, but at least put in place some sort of organized combat where everyone has their set role, and the roles are different from player to player, rather than everyone being ful zerker and dpsing the whole time.

I don’t see the value of rigid roles.

Everyone has a mix of roles: do DPS, and use CC and support when appropriate. Big tanks and healers are removed, replaced by action gameplay.

Your gear/traits determine the distribution of the three roles on your character.

Faster runs require a good team composition, use of coordinated team support, CC, lots of non-DPS, team stuff.

And not everyone is running full zerker, I regularly see many people who aren’t.

Full zerk is popular and meta in PvE because there will always be speedruns in every game. Most people will want to run dungeons fast, they’ve done them repeatedly. That, and I don’t think the game is physically challenging enough.

Full zerk does not mean no team, no support, no CC.

Hawke.9013:

The game has no difficulty levels other than the primary mode of dungeon grinding. What do you do once you have aced that?

In the first post of this topic, you complained about being killed by a boss, and repeatedly mentioned how troublesome dodging was.

Have you really aced this game?

The entire LS arc felt like it didn’t really acknowledge the existence of the Personal Story.

Hawke.9013:

As a thief, it is very frustrating to have a boss turn around and one shot you in a split second.

Hawke.9013:

I don’t know about others, but while forming groups for dungeons there is always a need of a tank

Hawke.9013:

Dungeons are the farthest you get, even then as a melee you’d be constantly hopping back to dodge a backswing, that you might as well re-roll Mesmer.

OP, it sounds like you just don’t want to dodge, not a problem with the game.

Hawke.9013:

theres no “WTF” unless it’s your fault because you didn’t move out of the bad

That’s exactly what’s happening, you aren’t moving out of the bad. The game gives you plenty of dodges and active defense to “move out of the bad” or negate it. There is no trinity tank or healer to keep you alive, you’re on your own, use your reflexes. I see this as a good feature.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Running high toughness or high healing holds the entire group back. The way the game is now, those stats are simply not needed if you can kill fast enough. And guess what? They WON’T be able to to kill fast enough if two, or even one, person decides to be a special snowflake.

That’s not really the case, if the zerkers are any good, they’re not going to die because there’s one or two tanky guys with low DPS.

Let’s say you multiplied all the monsters’ HP by 5×. The good zerkers still won’t die.

You don’t generally play zerker DPS by standing still and trading hits with the enemy, hoping to kill them before you die.

You try to dodge and position yourself intelligently or evade/block/reflect or use CC on enemies, so you do not get hit at all, and it doesn’t matter how long the fight lasts.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I agree that the holy trinity is great, and I also agree that GW2’s lack of that is exactly why we have stacking.

Stacking happens because the AI is dumb and runs to one spot if they can’t LOS the players.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

So you’d rather play as anonymous DPS #2354 than as a role where you press something other than 1?

You horribly oversimplify the game if you think doing DPS is just mashing 1.

And yes, I only play DPS roles, I’d rather not have to depend on some tank or healer. I don’t miss the trinity at all.

Star Ace.5207:

Give evidence that all Berserker’s gear players “know how to play.” Indeed, some people buy it because of the status it gives them ("I have the “right” gear for GW2; I am pro!"), not because they do particularly well with it.

I think the proposition was more like “good players typically don’t choose something other than berserker for PvE”, not “all berserkers are good”

Astralporing.1957:

voidwater.2064:

Minos.5168:

It’s basically getting rewards for zero effort.

ArenaNet has banned people for a Wintersday crafting/salvaging “exploit” in the past… And I’d argue that the AFKing is worse.

Well, setting morality aside, I think few exploits are as dangerous as economy hacks, I’ve seen more than one game that was swiftly destroyed by hyperinflation or other economic trauma…

And yet Anet does absolutely nothing about market players, that are the one of the main causes of accelerating wealth differential between the haves minority and average have nots players.

If you mean successful speculators or investors, that’s not cheating/hacking, and doesn’t break the economy.

Think duping or money printing. Quite fun if you can keep it to yourself, but totally destructive if enough people know how.

Minos.5168:

It’s basically getting rewards for zero effort.

ArenaNet has banned people for a Wintersday crafting/salvaging “exploit” in the past… And I’d argue that the AFKing is worse.

Well, setting morality aside, I think few exploits are as dangerous as economy hacks, I’ve seen more than one game that was swiftly destroyed by hyperinflation or other economic trauma…

AFKers, while negative, have a much more limited, contained impact on the game.

FenrirSlakt.3692:

I see people using the words bad design, poorly designed AI and flawed mechanics so much that it makes me believe that most of them have no idea what constitutes a good or bad AI/Mechanic.

What is a good AI?

Suppose you put a group of skilled human players in control of a group of enemies. What strategy and tactics would they use? If an AI can somewhat replicate that, I would call that good AI.

Would human players run to stack in one spot like idiots when they can’t LOS the target? What if instead, a mob, when it saw you stacking behind LOS, forms a tactically sound position and tries to lock down and nuke the ball of players?

Human players would attack more often, dodge, use their skills more intelligently (e.g., not wasting CC skills on targets with stability or blocking), scatter from AOE, choose targets more intelligently (e.g, everyone switches targets to CC and burst down a weakened player).

Personally I think the game should be more twitchy.

I also think making the mobs more trinity-like would be useful. Suppose some mobs had strong healers, their healing and damage mitigation being so strong that you must CC and/or burst them down before you can kill the rest of the enemies. These healers would constantly kite you as well.

If you try to target the healers, the rest of the enemies will switch focus to you and slam you with CC, debuffs, and nukes.

That would be a more interesting type of fight.

I don’t mind homosexual relationships, but the romance feels rushed. Also, I just don’t care much about the characters.

I didn’t create them, I didn’t pick their build, I don’t control them at all. My interaction with them is minimal beyond forced cutscenes and dialogue. You could swap them out with randomly generated warrior/ranger/mesmer/necro and I’d be fine with it.

In an RPG where I control multiple characters, even if I don’t really care for a character, there is still some sense of personal attachment from the process of using the character, leveling it, developing its build. Without that, if I don’t have an affinity for a particular character, there can only be indifference at best.

The characters are totally external to me, I have no attachment to them.

I actually care more about the charr NPCs in the Ascalon fractal… they don’t feel so arbitrarily imposed on me, and they’re quite helpful.

Sometimes it feels like these NPCs exist in their own little world, separate from the human players. It’s like the narrative is all about the NPCs, with the player being a mere generic thug, hired to do the physical work. But in the actual gameplay, these NPCs have no role at all.

Take the Scarlet’s End instance for example.

You could take the player character out of the initial scene completely and it’d be the same, the player has no role at all, it’s all about the NPCs.

But in the previous big zerg fights, these NPCs had barely any role. Why do they show up now, looking so important? Where’d the big zerg, my real comrades, go?

My player avatar knows how I feel about Braham and Marjory. When they get injured, my character doesn’t even turn around to look at them in the cutscene.

As characters in isolation, I think the living story NPCs are alright, but they shouldn’t be the centerpiece NPCs. They seem so weak, expendable, they’re not very epic. They’re unique, but not irreplaceable. My dissatisfaction with their unnatural prominence in the story outweighs any charm the characters have.

They’d be more appropriate in low-level starting content, or as side characters, not as the main characters in a big story arc.