Guild Wars 2

Did you guys not read the blog post? Ascended items have a chance to drop from chests that normally drop ascended crafting materials. The best part is you get to choose what stats go on that Ascended item.

On Twitch there’s Shinryu_*something* and BitCloud. There is also KaeyiDream, who used to be a huge supporter of ArenaNet and Guild Wars 2. Lately though she’s been playing a lot of other games. She never gave a reason for why she stopped playing Guild Wars 2.

Bacon.4918:

Strongly against the vertical progression system to be introduced in the upcoming patch.

It was introduced back in November. Once the Ascended armor is added then maybe they’ll stop there.

Brutal Arts.6307:

Desthin Sinkropht.4123:

Time Gated Crafting, ensuring that the vast majority of players can easily keep up.

Your post is perfectly agreeable, except this part.

I don’t want to be forced to go at a snails pace. If i want to put the effort or time or gold into smashing through content like a flood through New Orleans than I want the game to let me do that. Let me hold my phallus enhancing +20 sword of grinding high while others struggle. Not everyone wants to ride the care bear express to equality ville.

Achieving something at the same time as everyone else is no more of an achievement than having my hand held and crossing the street. I’m a big boy now anet, I can decide how fast I want to get something without you prescribing how much fun I should be having and when.

Fair enough. Let me ask you this. Do you think you should get an edge over everyone else because you have more gold to spend or more time to put towards your Ascended items? Do you feel proud of defeating someone even though you had an unfair advantage?

The introduction of Ascended gear, as controversial as it already is, necessitates the need for this so called time gating. Beyond just the time required to get an Ascended piece ,there’s also the staggered release of Ascended items. This was completely intentional. If ArenaNet decided to release all Ascended items at once then the players with too much time and/or gold on their hands would likely dominate both PvE and WvW. Sure, they won’t be keeping this edge indefinitely but the fact that they can at all will upset the balance of the game.

Doggie.3184:

They need to add at least 50 more permanant Jumping Puzzles around the world; each with an achievement for completing it.

If jumping puzzles was the most popular thing in the game I’m sure that’s what they would do.

projectcedric.6951:

Desthin Sinkropht.4123:

TL;DR: Gamers as a community have condensed legitimate game design concepts into buzzwords that trigger kneejerk reactions.

Of course this is fundamentally true, but game design concepts in their pure form have got nothing to do with gamers’ experience at all.

The average gamer generally doesn’t understand a game design concept as much as a game designer does, the same way that normal people don’t understand what an architect was trying to do with a building that they now live in for every day of their lives.

There is a gap between game design concept and user experience, and this gap is bridged by execution. In the end, it doesn’t matter if the designer has the most ideal of game design concepts, if the players do not feel accordingly or feel differently from what the game designer intended to do (hence, complaints), that means that there was a failure somewhere in the execution.

If only other game designers (like you) can see what a game is truly trying to do, that still means the game is poorly executed as a design. (As an experience though, it might not be necessarily so, because experience is personal.)

Now if we assume that game designers are gamers themselves then their design decisions would most likely reflect what they would like to see in a game. The average gamer is comprised of many groups of people, each with their own preferences.

Complaints occur when a game design decision upsets one group of players. The design fails to meet their needs or that it actually goes against what they feel the game should be. This occurs despite another group or groups actually liking this particular design decision.

While it is unfortunate that game designers have a tendency to lean towards one side or another, a good game designer would try to be as objective as possible in making design decisions. Rather than catering to one group of players or to as large of a portion of the player base as possible, a good game designer would go with what they feel is best for the game.

We know that in the past really good games have been created with minimal to no feedback from players. We know that players are often narrow minded and can only see issues that affect themselves. We also know that while incorporating player feedback can greatly improve a game, doing so carries the risk of making a game worse. The champion farming is an incredibly good example of this phenomenon in action. I’m not saying that ArenaNet should never have listened to complaints about champions having poor loot. I just think they, under enormous pressure from players and acting without making careful considerations, made a knee jerk reaction and made the loot a bit too good.

Becka Williams.4978:

The thousands of blues and greens no one sells on the trading post because it’s simply not worth the effort? Good luck. People already salvage rares. There’s no point in Anet giving people a reason to salvage rares. They’re giving people a reason to salvage blues and greens cause no one bothers right now. They’re basically junk you sell to a vender so you can make room for rares, and stuff you actually want.

I salvage blues and greens. I’ve actually gotten lots of orichalcum, hardened leather, and ancient wood from them. Now you know the secret.

silvermember.8941:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

zeromius.1604:

Crapgame.6519:

Out of the 11 or so “virtual” friends I’ve gamed with over the years dating back to StarCraft and Diablo online and started GW2, I’m the sole player to remain.

Couple went back to WoW, few others to console games and slowing down in general, few back to EQ2, Rift, and SwTOR…

It is what it is. If you ignore the fact they sold a bill of goods without every stating anything about ascended gear (saying Legendary and Exotics are it) you live in lala land. It wasn’t mentioned and thus the backlash. Now we are stuck and people will choose.

Plain and simple.

People chose to play games where there was more progression. Despite the backlash from Ascended gear, it actually still wasn’t enough for them. That’s why they left.

Well, to be honest, I think there’s actually more people playing Minecraft right now than games with progression.

A lot f people seem to think the few percentage of people that are mad somehow represent the majority of opinions. Somehow people seem to associate the less than 5% of players that on average visit game forums for the majority of players.

Arenanet had 1 year to decide if the gear was a good idea and since they are going along with it, it must be beneficial for them.

I’ll agree with your second paragraph. Seeing that ArenaNet has all the numbers, if they saw a sharp decline in concurrent players after the Ascended items were introduced with the Fractals, they would take appropriate measures and say that they will no longer have additional Ascended items added to the game. Apparently, even though we don’t get to see them, the numbers did not show a decline in concurrent players. If anything, I would assume there was a rise.

As for your first paragraph, you don’t actually have those numbers. Even if the complainers account for only a small percentage of the player base, how would you know that it’s 5%? How do you know it’s not 1%, 8%, 15%, etc? I also don’t know how much power the vocal minority has but they tend to have more than a lot of people would suspect.

There are no doubt people that are quitting and not saying anything. The vocal minority that complains about the game falls into two categories: those that want the game to improve and those that want the game to fail. The ones that want the game to fail are quite malicious. They could just quit the game quietly but then they need to tell everyone about it in order to get more people to join them. If they can’t get what they want then they don’t want anyone else to either.

Crapgame.6519:

Out of the 11 or so “virtual” friends I’ve gamed with over the years dating back to StarCraft and Diablo online and started GW2, I’m the sole player to remain.

Couple went back to WoW, few others to console games and slowing down in general, few back to EQ2, Rift, and SwTOR…

It is what it is. If you ignore the fact they sold a bill of goods without every stating anything about ascended gear (saying Legendary and Exotics are it) you live in lala land. It wasn’t mentioned and thus the backlash. Now we are stuck and people will choose.

Plain and simple.

People chose to play games where there was more progression. Despite the backlash from Ascended gear, it actually still wasn’t enough for them. That’s why they left.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Dante.1508:

This is pretty much it, I very much dislike Ascended and i use it because i’m forced to keep up, not because i want it..

I really do hope the populations decline again over this junk, not because i want the game to fail, but because i want Anet to get it through their thick heads that a lot (maybe a majority, not sure, seems so) do not want this stuff..

I guess time will tell..

I just hope they don’t pull another tier out until this time next year. 2 years is almost an acceptable timeframe, but then I don’t see them putting another tier in UNLESS there was an increase in level cap and new areas which would be harder.

A new tier of gear has already generated this much backlash. I can’t imagine ArenaNet wanting to release something above Ascended or have Ascended gear with better stats like tier 2 Ascended. It’s hard to say what they want to do with the level cap. If they raise it then it’s very likely there will be outrage over something called power creep and all the max level items becoming obsolete. It’s actually an ongoing problem with WoW expansions and I think ArenaNet needs to learn from this so they don’t make the same mistake.

ArenaNet’s way of storytelling has always been very open ended. They will provide subtle hints and allude to something more than what you see but they never quite get to that point where everything is revealed. I would imagine this is done on purpose so that things remain open to interpretation and it is up to your imagination to fill in the gaps.

As for dynamic events telling stories, it’s actually surprising how many people don’t realize there are strong story elements tied into dynamic events. The thing is when you get right into a dynamic event as it starts you’ve already missed a great deal of dialogue that occurs between the NPCs. Most players will wander into a dynamic event without knowing what the context behind it is. Most players will also leave right after completing a dynamic event and miss out on what happens with the NPCs afterwards.

The significant reveal can be anything really. It doesn’t have to be tied to a console port. It can be a new weapon types, new guild missions, new jumping puzzles, new dynamic events, a video of a work in progress Thaumanova Reactor, etc.

mrstealth.6701:

zeromius.1604:

You knew that they were going to add Ascended items to the other slots after they were first released in November. It’s not a big surprise that you were going to see Ascended weapons and armor. It would however be quite surprising if ArenaNet went back on their promise and introduced a tier above Ascended at some point in time.

Oh, none of this surprised me. I saw the blog posts when the ascended rings were first added. I’ve known since last November than full ascended gear was coming eventually. And ever since that, I’ve hoped that they would make start implementing ascended gear in some way that doesn’t punish alts and build variety. And every time another piece comes out with yet another timegated, alt-hating, way to acquire it, my desire to keep playing this game dies a little.

It’s pretty discouraging to know that the devs are working hard to completely destroy your playstyle…one that they previously claimed to uphold and encourage. I’m completely for the idea that some games aren’t suited or some people/playstyles, and that it can be best to find a game more suited to you…but GW2 was suited to me, and was marketed to this type of player. And now the game is changing to suit the demands of a different type of player, at the cost of destroying my preferred playstyle. Those that want this type of long-term time-gated progression have many game options, why try to turn GW2 into something it wasn’t supposed to be?

While I don’t necessarily agree with the so called time gating mechanism, one thing it does do is put everyone on a level playing field. This way, someone who has a lot more gold than most players can’t just simply buy his/her way into an Ascended weapon. This player won’t get their hands on something that will give them a statistical edge until everyone else does. Imagine stepping into WvW where someone with a full Ascended set just destroys everyone because he/she had a lot of gold to spend versus everyone else that had a lot less and were stuck with exotics. Such a scenario is less likely if this person was forced to attain their Ascended gear at the same pace as everyone else.

I’m not saying that ArenaNet should ignore your feedback but they should look at it more carefully. They do listen to feedback. Acting on that feedback however might not always be in the best interest of the game because it can have unintended consequences. Remember when people complained about the lack of rewards for champions and how ArenaNet finally acted on it? You know how that turned out.

You have players that have complained about the lack of progression on their characters and how there’s nothing to do. Nothing to do can’t be further from the truth since they can explore the world, run all explorable dungeons, do jumping puzzles, and yes level alts. They are stuck in this whole end game mindset where they only want to progress their mains. They don’t care that there are other things to do. You might say that ArenaNet should just ignore them because giving them what they want would ultimately make you unhappy. I don’t know if they made the right decision at the time but there was no way they were going to make both groups happy.

Now back to gearing up alts with Ascended gear. Similar to how someone with more time and gold on their hands could get better gear quicker, they could also gear up their alts quicker than other players that like playing with alts. If having an edge over everyone else wasn’t enough now they have an edge over everyone else with several characters. Time gating, while it forces you to log in every day, is a necessary evil that prevents that truly rich from outright dominating the poor.

It’s actually surprising that we haven’t seen more of this toxic behavior normally associated with LoL. Considering that the game has no subscription fees, it’s a testament to ArenaNet’s innovations in how loot works, how reviving works, how resource nodes work, etc. All of these things fostered cooperative play amongst players. Because there was no mob tagging you had a reason to help other players fight monsters. Individual resource nodes, individual loot, and other shared rewards took the every player is my enemy feeling away.

With all of that being said, most people who think that farming is contributing to the degradation of the community might be on to something. While not all farmers are bad people, the act of farming will induce sociopath behaviors in people that don’t normally display them. Farming requires efficiency and stopping to revive someone will slow you down. It’s not just a thought process; it’s a fact that doing so really will slow you down. It brings out the worst in people. You can blame ArenaNet but it was the players, most likely the farmers, that asked them to improve the rewards.

mrstealth.6701:

The OP’s suggestion is precisely what ascended trinkets should have been from the start. Stick with the combined stat+gem, and replacing the gem slot with the infusion slot. But make the base stat the same as an exotic piece+gem upgrade. It gives them great value and convience, without giving a combat advantage. And it promote variety and testing more radical builds.

I don’t know if I’m going to quit over it, but every new step down this ascended treadmill makes that so much more likely. There is no way to keep up with this on 8 characters and a love of build variety.

You knew that they were going to add Ascended items to the other slots after they were first released in November. It’s not a big surprise that you were going to see Ascended weapons and armor. It would however be quite surprising if ArenaNet went back on their promise and introduced a tier above Ascended at some point in time.

NewTrain.7549:

Ascended weapons and armor may be here to stay, but I’m not. Once a game becomes a chore, I tend to stop playing it. I’d advise others to do the same and move on to entertainment that’s…well…entertaining.

You’d have to move onto a game where there is no gear progression. There are quite a few out there but I wouldn’t call them MMORPGs. There’s a few that I would recommend: Planetside 2, Starcraft 2, Battlefield 3, Natural Selection 2, and Civilization 5. They’re all great games and they can be played with other players.

It could be due to greater demand and of course inflation. Now that people can get tier 6 mats more easily, they are likely hoarding those mats for themselves so that they can craft their legendaries. People that don’t have enough of them but have a lot of gold to spend are likely driving up purchases. Less supply due to hoarding and more spending due to demand would result in higher costs.

The OP is coming up with a solution on how to make getting Ascended gear more viable for people. He knows that ArenaNet isn’t just going to get rid of Ascended gear. I think most people would agree, given that Ascended gear is going to stay, that having the option to swap stats around would be good. The disagreement is between those who want Ascended gear and those that don’t.

Dante.1508:

Chuo.4238:

Mosharn.8357:

Will anyone bother buying them when they hit 10g per 100 gems? It seems really stupid how it just keeps going up and up. I should of had a cap at 5g. I know there are ppl with money buying gems all the time but that just makes buying something from the gem store for in game gold a dream for new/poor players.

They harder they are to come by with ingame funds, the more likely you are to spend real money. Technically they can say “you don’t have to spend real money to get gems”, but you can see where that’s less than ideal if they can make it a big grind.

Not technically true, the harder they are to come by the more players leave because they cannot get anything, this will bite Anet in the populations sooner or later..

If you cannot afford anything in game, most do not whip out their Credit Card, many leave.

By your argument, free to play games should not have any players at all since you wouldn’t be able to purchase anything from their cash shops without paying real money. Yet, they do have players playing their games still. At least in GW2 you have the option of using in-game money to purchase things that are in the cash shop.

Ashen.2907:

CobaltSixty.1542:

No one will understand the truth here.

It’s far easier for the dumbs to blame ANet or NCSoft.

To the uninformed masses someone at ANet or NCSoft is just sitting at a computer cranking a slider up laughing maniacally…

It’s funny, but I could just work an hour of overtime and make more gold converting gems to gold than I could possibly farm in that hour and this rate is only getting better for me.

I think that a lot of people, perhaps even most, do understand this. I expect that even those whining about exchange rates and the like understand it. But it is easier to complain for changes to benefit themselves than it is for them to adapt and overcome.

Some of them probably do understand it. I think most are part of the ignorant masses though. If they fail to look at things from the other side then they fail to grasp how things work. If they thought outside the box they would see that gold is actually really cheap right now.

Nuka Cola.8520:

right now its 18 gems for 1g… At these prices people defending gem store with their bs comments such as “Anet is giving you choice of buying stuff with dollars or in game money” becomes irrelevant, completely irrelevant. wtf will happen in 4 months? 3 gems for 1g? i mean what in the kittend of bullkitten is this? Anet is pretty much forcing you to spend real dollars if you want to buy anything on their store.

You do realize that you’re buying gems from other players that are buying gold with those gems right? You’re not buying gems from ArenaNet.

Tortonka.9105:

Look, I’m not trying to be entitled. I don’t usually post on game forums because I know how caustic the community tends to be. The only reason I’m posting this is because I really care about the game that I’ve been playing for a year now. Up until now, I’ve felt like Arena.net has really valued my time and treated me well.

This is the first time I’ve felt like there was an arbitrary restriction gating me from experiencing the Living Story. I thought it was worth bringing it up in case it could possibly affect their design discussions in the future.

If you’ve been playing consistently for a year then you would know it’s not their first time having created content that was time sensitive. We had the opening of the Mad King’s dungeon cutscene that was a one time event. The dungeon itself was open for only a few days. Then you had the one time karka event that could only be completed at the time it occurred. If you missed it then you were out of luck.

Scarlet’s invasions occur every hour. It’s really not quite as bad as things were before. I’m not sure if you’re just getting unlucky with the maps. Maybe within a 24 hour period they really do get back to the exact same map at the exact same time. Then again, you also have to factor in major world bosses too. Whenever a major boss like the Shatterer spawns, the invasions are put on hold. This only occurs before an invasion rather than before it.

adamaknight.9237:

Seems a pointless inconvenience.

You want random invasions then have a place for them, don’t cause them to give normal players aggro when they’re playing the game.

Think on it like this; how effing annoying is it when you wanna map to a waypoint in a hurry and it’s contested?

Oddly enough, the Scarlet invasions don’t cause the waypoints to go contested.

If Scarlet sues I think you’ll want to find a really good lawyer.

The humans in the game are not native to Tyria. That has been confirmed by the Canthan lore. The world they came from was probably facing a cataclysmic event that forced the humans there to flee to another world. This original world was Earth and the humans in Tyria were originally refugees. The thing is only a small fraction of the human population made it to Tyria yet they managed to flourish and prosper over time. Like the humans on Earth in their savagery and bloodlust, the refugees began conquering lands held by the natives and asserted their dominance over all the other races until the Charr fought back.

projectcedric.6951:

Actually, the differentiation is in the type of players, not in the genre of the games.

The GW2 farmers (or most mmorpg farmers) – their counterpart in Sonic are the people who dont really enjoy the gameplay as much as they simply want to beat Robotnik in the end finish the game (without cheating).

Similarly in Pacman, there are players who are content with playing the first 5-10 levels of the game. They enjoy the gameplay, and since the mechanics is generally the same for all levels (the same goal), there is really no reason to progress further. On the other hand, some people may or may not enjoy the gameplay as much, but they want to beat the highest level or the highest score, even if the mechanics is repetitive.

In player profile, these are the “Achievers”. You’ll be glad to know that most people are not like that. Interestingly though, most GAME DESIGNERS are in this category. So there is always some sort of bias -consciously or subconsciously- when designers design games.

The types of personalities are not exclusive: Achievers may also be Socializers. So people farm in different degrees of intensity.

Whichever the category, ALL kinds of players are driven by goals and rewards for playing a game. And that reward can range from prestige, sense of accomplishment, real world rewards, etc. But it can NOT be the gameplay itself.

I wouldn’t consider the farmers to be high achievers by any means. They find the easiest things that reward the most. The MMORPG farmers have no equivalent in Sonic, Mario, or whatever 16 bit era platformer because they would never play those kinds of games.

The achievers are the people who aim for 100% completion in games like Metroid or Castlevania. They play hard games because they are challenging, not because they get some shiny trophy at the end. This was before achievements ever made it in games and you could only brag to close friends about doing something crazy.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, farmers are addicted to farming. You might find it the most boring thing in the world but it doesn’t stop it from being addictive to some people. It’s like alcohol, caffeine, gambling, drugs, etc. Loot gives them that hit that they’re looking for. The so called phat loot gives them a really big hit. The fact that it’s all random is what helps drive this addiction.

Erasculio.2914:

projectcedric.6951:

IN GAMES, it is against human nature to be driven to do something without an end goal or simply “for the experience of it”.

I agree with the end goal, I disagree it’s the same thing we see in MMOs.

In many MMORPGs, I see a lot of people who don’t enjoy the experience of what they are doing, but they are doing it anyway because they want a reward in the end. We see this both in players who say it with all the letters, as well as in those who want the quickest, fastest path to whatever it is they want.

Comparing it with something else, let’s say… The first Sonic game, for example (Sega Genesis FTW!). I’m sure a lot of people had the goal of reaching the end of the game. But I doubt many people played the game if they didn’t enjoy it, just to get to the end. And, likewise, the game had a cheat we could use to arrive straight in the last level, but that wasn’t something everyone did, and I doubt very much it was something even the majority did.

There was a goal. The journey to that goal, however, was equally as important as the goal itself. I don’t believe the same thing happens in MMORPGs, when people claim they don’t want to farm but that’s the only way they will get the gold they need for the shiny stuff they want. This is what I believe happens in MMORPGs:

Genavelle.9516:

The whole point of legendaries is that you spend a lot of time doing crap nobody wants to do so you can get a special unique weapon that only people willing to do that much work can get. If you don’t want to go through that process, then don’t worry about making one.

I can’t help but think something somehow got broken in gaming due to MMORPGs.

It just comes to show you that even with all the innovations and the action combat style of gameplay, Guild Wars 2 still has a ways to go if people have gotten to the point where they don’t play it just the for the heck of it. Who played Elder Scrolls Skyrim, Tales of Xillia, Mass Effect, or Final Fantasy 7 for the phat loot waiting at the end? There are many that have played through these games multiple times even though there isn’t some legendary gear that can be attained through subsequent playthroughs. I’m not saying they’re better games nor do they have more replay value. What I’m saying is that Guild Wars 2 has the potential to keep people hooked in the same way these games did even without the phat loot. It’s just a matter of execution.

projectcedric.6951:

zeromius.1604:

At least with events their timers can be controlled. Yes, they intend on doing only the easiest events but then when they’re done they have nothing else. They’re forced to make a choice: they can either wait a really long time for these easy events to start up again or they can move onto other events. If you understand the farmer mentality you will know that they would prefer the latter. After all, time spent doing nothing could be better spent doing something even if it’s harder.

Oh I can understand farmer mentality very well. And yup, you’re right, they will opt to choose something better to do: not play the game.

Actually, this “ideal” has happened before – it’s the time between they dramatically nerfed CS farming and the new champ loots.

Personally, I cannot account to whether it made the game better or not because it was the time I left the game for a while to spend my time on doing other things I considered more rewarding.

I don’t know what your definition of rewarding is but for many the experience of the content is the reward rather than the end result of doing it. If you’ve done the content enough times then no doubt it becomes boring. This would hold true for many people but we know it doesn’t for everyone.

I actually don’t think that farmers actually hate farming and do it because they feel they have no choice. This is something that more moderate farmers like propagate. Habitual and frequent farmers are addicted to farming like an junkie would be to narcotics. Taken this into consideration we know that something doesn’t have to be fun to be addictive. There are lots of people addicted to slot machines for instance even when there are other more interesting ways to gamble like with Poker.

So if ArenaNet were to control the supply of their narcotics (the farming spots) it would probably make the addicts upset and quit. They would go play games were where it’s easier to get high. It’s the reason why games like Maple Story are so popular while offering so very little. It’s the addiction of farming and in many cases, grinding for better stats.

If you want something truly rewarding, play a really good single player game where there’s no loot. ArenaNet tries to create challenging and compelling content but the farmers don’t want that unless it comes with material rewards. They want to improve the rewards for jumping puzzles and mini dungeons. People who love this type of content will love the new loot rewards. People who hate this type of content because they don’t like jumping will hate it and complain about how it’s not fair for them. The great thing though is farmers will finally have something different to feed their addiction.

projectcedric.6951:

Giving champions better loot was a response to people complaining that champions drop crap relative to their level compared to normal mobs, which is a legit sentiment and the response was just as legitimate.

If you remove chests from champs, it goes back to the issue: what makes them different from normal mobs in terms of drops?

If you make chests attainable at event completion instead of champs, it doesn’t necessarily fix the farming “problem”. So what? People will just farm events instead. And they will find the most efficient events that give the best rewards, and they will harass anyone who don’t do the events as efficiently as the best way does. That means, new issues will arise: disputes over people not having the best gears for farming events, complaints about only certain events are done repetitively in certain maps because their the easiest relative to their rewards, etc.

What makes you think this lamentation will end there?

Giving better loot to champions was a good idea. ArenaNet wanted players to actually fight champions instead of avoiding them. The problem is that people found ways to game the system and increase champion profitability beyond what was originally intended.

At least with events their timers can be controlled. Yes, they intend on doing only the easiest events but then when they’re done they have nothing else. They’re forced to make a choice: they can either wait a really long time for these easy events to start up again or they can move onto other events. If you understand the farmer mentality you will know that they would prefer the latter. After all, time spent doing nothing could be better spent doing something even if it’s harder.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Direksone.3867:

Thank you Tobi. I’m gonna call you Tobi. ’Cause I like you.

Completely conjecture and pulled out of . . . I mean, fabricated based on what little we have so far.

Probably one of the better strengths of a story with few details being dropped rapidly is seeing what other minds come up with to fill the gaps. I mean, George Lucas made a killing off licensing his work out to do that

Which is also one of the greatest weaknesses of a story where a lot of details aren’t available: when they get filled it can sometimes be obvious there wasn’t any continuity with an original "plan’ despite what anyone says about it.

. . . anyway, who else is looking forward to hearing Moto explain how he came up with the SAB in great excruciating detail?

Tobi is one of the main villains in the Naruto series. His power allows him to phase through material objects. If Scarlet has a similar ability then that would explain why she is able to constantly elude death.

Alissah.9281:

I love it, but with 2 changes it would be much better:

1. Use our pvp finishers. People who only do pve would actually have a reason to buy gem store finishers
2. give the things downed health, so you can kill them by attacking or let them bleed out etc.

I think bosses could have a downed state too, but they only rally with 25% health or something and they accumulate downed penalty.

It would be really cool if mobs with CC tried using it when youre trying to finish a downed/broken mob, but only in dungeons because it’d be overpowered in open world ;D

Or have bosses with multiple phases where you complete each phase with a finisher of your choice. Bosses rallying could get annoying. In addition to having less health after subsequent downs they would also need to take more damage after a rally.

Direksone.3867:

I think this mechanic opens up a lot of cool ideas for boss fights!

You just reminded me of the Ancient Karka. You finish him off by stomping on the ground and he falls into this big lava pit. Even if it’s just for aesthetics I thin it would be pretty epic to finish a boss off with style.

DarkWasp.7291:

Sadly I think it’s done a little backward. The trash mobs revive while the big ones don’t seem to.

In open world PvE it’s not really a fight against challenging combat so much as it is a fight to snag kill credit on as many enemies as possible.

If you’re taking time to finish an insignificant mob, you’re missing out on kills.

However, if you needed to finish off a champion before he resurrected as a non-lootdropping champ or veteran, you’d be all over that.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a cool idea. It’s just that once players have repeated content a few times, they are in it mostly for the rewards if not solely from that point on.

I think right now ArenaNet is experimenting with this concept so it appears to be poorly implemented. We can actually take it one step further where these types of enemies don’t drop any loot until they’re finished off. Then people would be all over it.

Let’s actually take an additional step forward with the healing mechanic someone mentioned. Let’s say there’s a dungeon where every enemy is mechanical and any trash that you decide to skip will become spare parts for the last boss. In other words, the trash you skip will converge on the boss from all corners of the dungeon and sacrifice themselves to the boss in order to heal it. This doesn’t mean skipping trash won’t work because you can still kill them before they make it to the boss but it does produce a risk/reward kind of situation. Do you kill trash for a shorter boss fight or do you skip them and risk a longer boss fight?

HawkMeister.4758:

So Anet, you decided to make your weakest gameplay, Tha Zerg the new permanent content – seriously?
ATM I´m so disgusted with this “new” content that I´ve decided to take a break after one year of loyally logging in to this game.

Maybe I´ll be back..
Edit:I liked the original thread title “Zerg Wars 2” better, perfectly fitting for what this game has become.

They decided to add new big dynamic events to the game that many people, not including yourself, asked for. They’re constantly adding new things. Some of it is solo content while others require large groups. They’re not always going to make what you want.

I’m surprised no one has actually mentioned this yet. The new twisted minions can actually get revived by other twisted minions after going down. You have to apply a finisher to make sure they don’t come back to life. This mechanic makes a lot of sense because after all, the Watchknights and the Twisted Minions are really just parts put together. Oddly enough, there’s no achievement tied to finishing these guys off.

I think if this is implemented in future content it could add a lot to the game. If executed poorly it could do the opposite. Imagine how a boss could revive its minions after you kill them. During the time the boss is doing the revive it could be in a vulnerable state where you do extra damage to it; plus it won’t hit you back. Now of course, you may want to finish the minions off simply because it would make the fight a lot easier with only the boss to worry about. Having the player make tough choices like this in a fight is what is currently missing in the game.

The fact that PAX is even mentioned would indicate that there is at the very least some affiliation with PAX. I don’t think Penny Arcade would just let ArenaNet say their big tournament is held during PAX if they weren’t initially aware of it.

There’s nothing physically stopping you from farming CoF 1. It might not be as lucrative as before but you can still do it.

Lord Kuru.3685:

But.. but he fell down the big hole! I haven’t finished the new content (possibly never will as the zerging is just so tedious) so I guess I haven’t seen the part where they reveal he’s alive?

Too bad…. all my hopes crushed!

Don’t want to spoil anything so you’ll have to do the Funhouse to find out. It will be worth your troubles.

Azraeel.1238:

zeromius.1604”

In a few days that zerg is going to get a lot smaller. Maybe the events will be a lot harder as a result. You’ll then need to have a highly coordinated group of people that will split up into squads to tackle each event. The chances of you dying increases as well so it won’t be as mindless.

That’s what I thought when i first saw the Ember farm, the gauntlet farm, or any other farm. That eventually farmers will get bored. But farmers didn’t back down, they kept farming till the very last minute of the patch. After everyone get their shoulders, I’m afraid that people will start aiming to farm more than actually completing the event.

We can’t assume that everyone is a farmer now. Sure, the farmers will keep doing the events but then the others that aren’t farmers will likely stop. There are undeniably a lot of players farming embers but I’ve never been in overflow in Cursed Shore whenever I go there. Maybe it’s different for others but whenever you go into a zone that has an invasion and you’re a few seconds too late you find yourself in overflow. That’s because there are more than just farmers doing these invasion events.

A lot of people also don’t realize that they have to attack different groups for each of the three phases. The first phase you should be focusing on the Twisted Minions, the second phase the Molten Alliance, and finally the third phase the Aetherblades. Just going to random event won’t help at all. I’ve seen a lot of failures due to mindless behavior.

Let’s get one thing straight. A lot of these changes were a result of player feedback. Prior to the recent patches, there were lots of complaints about how fighting champions was unrewarding, how difficult it was to get good loot, how there’s no incentive to keep playing, etc. While you may not be one of those people, ArenaNet acted on them.

Champion loot was introduced to give people a reason to actually fight champions outside of dynamic events. The problem was that it worked too well. So well that people farm champions to the exclusion of everything else. The people that asked for this are happy about it. I’m not one of them but you can see how players can negatively impact the game now.

Players complained that dungeons were unrewarding so ArenaNet added a larger gold reward for completion. I doubt that it is as rewarding as farming champions but at least those who enjoy dungeons can feel like they’re appreciated. The daily reward wasn’t meant to nerf CoF 1 but rather to encourage people to run more than just CoF 1. Did it work? No, because people who ran CoF 1 over and over were just farmers and they never were into dungeons in the first place. You can probably find them in the big champ zerg trains.

As for the current living story arc, I think it’s there to give players the feeling that something big is going on. Some people might find all of this to be mindless but others actually enjoy being with a large group of players. It’s all about personal preference. Just note that the event is temporary although the invasions will continue in the future but to a lesser extent.

Keeping players interested in revisiting lower level zones has been a challenge for almost all MMORPG developers. If anything, ArenaNet has probably found the most success at getting people to do non-max level content. Level scaling, getting rewarded for doing low level content, big dynamic events like world bosses, etc. all contribute to this. Human nature will ultimately prevail. Why do lower level dynamic events when they don’t reward the same as higher level dynamic events? If they did give the same rewards, why do the high level dynamic events when the low level ones are easier? Do you see the dilemma that ArenaNet faces?

The Living Story has delivered a variety of content. You’ve seen new dungeons, jumping puzzles, mini-games, Super Adventure Box, scavenger hunts, individual skill based content like the gauntlet, and really big and epic dynamic events like the invasions. Not all of this content will appeal to everyone but there’s probably something there that will appeal to at least someone. So yes, I think ArenaNet is going in the right direction.

fulcrum.5203:

zeromius.1604:

Huge, epic, open world content may not be for everyone but there are definitely people that enjoy it. There is a reason why there are people that play WvW even though you don’t get the best loot from killing other players.

I agree, but the problem with ‘zerg wars’ are they’re quite chaotic. Do you really feel epic for mindless tagging/lagging fest?

I’ll be okay if this zerg wars are just to globally unlock some instances (i.e. dungeon), but in this case, zerg wars are basically a must to complete living world achievements >_> (quite many players are achievers I believe).

In a few days that zerg is going to get a lot smaller. Maybe the events will be a lot harder as a result. You’ll then need to have a highly coordinated group of people that will split up into squads to tackle each event. The chances of you dying increases as well so it won’t be as mindless.

Azraeel.1238:

And the zergfest continues!

Was it too hard to make a mini dungeon in every map, with the same concept, but champs scaled down to 5 people? Players can access it once when the event starts in the area.

What would you solve this way?

1- No need for high end computer to withstand the massive amounts of players.
2- No need for a HUGE internet bandwidth to support the massive amount of players. In other words, no lag.
3- No need to be stressed of whether you make it to the champion or miss out.
4- True team work instead of blindly zerging everything.
5- Everyone gets loot.
6- No one gets left out because of full overflows.

This is just an example, I’m pretty sure there are a lot of better ideas, but you should have known already that many people hate zergs. Those who love it, most probably do for the loot, which if you give it to them on a scaled down group, they won’t mind.

So please take it into consideration in the future!!!!

Huge, epic, open world content may not be for everyone but there are definitely people that enjoy it. There is a reason why there are people that play WvW even though you don’t get the best loot from killing other players.

ArenaNet has done a good job replicating the epicness of the karka event at Southsun without any of the culling issues. The events also force people to spread out in order to succeed. The last patch filled a niche of challenging individual player skill based content. The latest patch fills the need for huge, large scale, and epic content that involves large groups of players. ArenaNet doesn’t cater to one specific group of players. You might like everything that ArenaNet releases or you might only like some of it. I don’t think they’re actually doing anything wrong by not catering to your personal preferences all the time.

The Bazaar of the Four Winds wasn’t a zerg. Sure, there were a lot of people there but the content didn’t revolve around large groups killing stuff. Cutthroat Politics also didn’t have any zerg content. The Candidate Trials only allowed up to five players.

You should change the misleading title to Queen’s Gauntlet Gold Nerfed. Otherwise, people will think they made the Queen’s Gauntlet easier which is obviously not the case.

Just need to find a low population server to guest on. One that people claim are dying or dead. Of course, if we get knocked into overflow even then…

Yeah, getting kicked into overflow prevents you from stopping the portal invasions and as a result stops you from progressing the story steps needed to re-open the pavilion.

kokiman.2364:

zeromius.1604:

HiddenNick.7206:

zeromius.1604:

Are you looking for gear progression? Are you looking for something similar to Guild Wars 1 where you collect skills? The former isn’t really going to happen if you don’t count ascended gear.

And any other gear between level 1 whites and level 80 exotics…

I don;t know why people claim that this game wasn’t suppose to have gear progression when it did have it from the start!

You’re quoting me out of context. I was referring to gear progression beyond level 80 or max level. Ascended gear was supposed to have made it in the game at release but they held it back until the Fractals was released. I wouldn’t really consider it to be progression. Once all slots can be fitted with ascended equipment you’ll hit a wall where gear progression stops.

They introduced ascended gear to add another level of gear because they saw that people were reaching the exotic level way too fast.

So you’re saying that Colin lied about having planned on introducing Ascended gear since the beginning. I think that is a pretty bold allegation. Don’t take my word for it though. You can always look at his blog post that addresses Ascended gear.

Let’s also look at this logically. Assuming that Ascended gear was tied to the Fractals of the Mists, could ArenaNet have created all nine fractals in the span of two and a half months? Even two and a half months is being generous since the complaints about lack of progression didn’t come in until a bit later. That’s pretty much the time span from release of the game to the release of the Fractals and introduction of Ascended items. I think it highly unlikely. They would have been working on the Fractals months before launch.

HiddenNick.7206:

zeromius.1604:

Are you looking for gear progression? Are you looking for something similar to Guild Wars 1 where you collect skills? The former isn’t really going to happen if you don’t count ascended gear.

And any other gear between level 1 whites and level 80 exotics…

I don;t know why people claim that this game wasn’t suppose to have gear progression when it did have it from the start!

You’re quoting me out of context. I was referring to gear progression beyond level 80 or max level. Ascended gear was supposed to have made it in the game at release but they held it back until the Fractals was released. I wouldn’t really consider it to be progression. Once all slots can be fitted with ascended equipment you’ll hit a wall where gear progression stops.