Guild Wars 2

I’d support lowering the requirement or increasing the number of LI you can get each week.

The 150 number by itself doesn’t really bother me, but the timegating feels too long, if you were to start from 0 now, it would take 17 weeks minimum before you can complete a set…

The name “Slothasor” reminds me of “Saloth Sar”…. in the jungle too…

If you want to use LFG, you can leave the squad and recruit the rest of your raid group via LFG, then tell them to /squadjoin on someone in the squad

I think there will be a third party raid LFG organizer eventually, if one isn’t implemented in game. The demand is there for sure.

If AR isn’t required, I’m sure you can just skip the ascended armor, just get the weapons for the base dmg increase and trinkets because they’re easy to get.

Should lessen the cost of gearing for raids if they’re tuned for full ascended stat levels.

BattleCat.2098:

That’s like going to McDonalds, ordering “whatever, just surprise me”, eating your food in a hurry and leaving again, just because you’ve been to McDonalds before. What’s the point in not enjoying the food?

Well, if you got paid to eat McDonald’s….

Jerus.4350:

Dusk is right, you can look around at businesses and clearly see that prestige sells. Right now I have a dozen boxes of Nike t-shirts in my warehouse. I happen to know that they simply buy the same standard shirts we keep in stock but simply change the label and mark them up 5X (not an uncommon practice).

I’m well aware of such things. I think we largely agree on this topic, and I may just be quibbling over semantics, but I would call that the “illusion of prestige”.

It may be wildly profitable for Nike, but the rebranded shirt will not make someone a better athlete.

Perhaps the Nike gear helps with first impressions, but one can’t hide behind the swoosh forever, one’s real status eventually becomes apparent.

It’s so awfully superficial. For that reason, I cannot say that the illusion of prestige “matters a lot”.

It’s a scam.

If one wants to argue that it’s important to cater to delusions of grandeur and create similar scams in a video game, then I can only agree to disagree.

Jerus.4350:

There’s a reason you go to a job interview in formal attire. There’s a reason most businesses require their employees (or at least those that deal with clients) to be clean shaven (this being either totally clean or at least well groomed, no big bushy beards).

First impressions mean something. Showing that you have something overly expensive usually gives the impression that you have money and style, or at the very least that you understand the impression it does have on some people. It’s a sign of social awareness.

There is an existing, inherited cultural expectation that an interviewee will dress nicely. Failing to meet that expectation could suggest the interviewee lacks social awareness or good judgement.

Similarly, a client may feel uneasy if they interact with an employee with an unkempt appearance. The employee represents the business, it could suggest a lack of professionalism in the business.

(Someone who is truly elite with major accomplishments in their field may not even need to search for jobs, people will go to them instead of the other way around. They don’t need a fancy suit.)

But these considerations are not really relevant in GW2, there are generally no such expectations. I can’t think of any common situation where the player is penalized for not having some “prestigious” skin.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen an LFG post that said “Use rare/expensive/grindy skins or be kicked”.

The dominant concerns are core functionality (meta builds only! ping zerk gear!) and competence/knowledge (exp only!).

Jerus.4350:

So you’re saying you never make an initial judgement on someone based on their appearance? You see someone dressed in basketball shorts, a t-shirt and flip flops and a guy dressed in a tailored suit and think they’re likely the same type of person? if so you’re a saint.

Hygiene probably, but not their choice of clothing.

For all I know, the flip flop person may own the company that the suit person works at; flip flop person is on basketball break. Maybe flip flop person has high status and “kitten you money”, so to speak.

There’s simply not enough information for me to make a solid judgement. It’s not really about being a saint but considering the range of possibilities. I don’t think clothing is a strong signal in modern society.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I mean, nope, rock what you like. All I’ll say is that just because a bunch of people in this one particular thread post that they don’t care about prestige doesn’t mean that it doesn’t still matter a lot.

Likewise, that there are people posting about how much they care about prestige doesn’t mean that it matters at all.

Purple is (not) better than orange, flowers in paintings are (not) important. We should (not) serve pasta at lunch instead of burgers.

Skady.5916:

I am talking about the fact that currently fractal weapon collection is a pure RNG and has no “time invested” requirement whatsoever. One individual can get lucky and obtain that collection in 19 runs (lets call it 10hr if he bought those runs) while another individual might never get it even thou he did thousands or even millions of runs.

With pure RNG, if you’re unlucky, you may never get a particular skin since the daily chests limit how many tries you get during the game’s life.

It also restricts how you can use your available time. If you have time for two level 50 runs on Monday, but no time on Tuesday, too bad. You can only run 50 once.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I do want to dispel this notion that “prestige is dumb”, however. Prestige matters a lot, and even if RNG is a factor (or the only factor), it plays hugely into how “cool” a person feels and how “cool” other people think that person is.

Well, I personally don’t care one bit about things like ‘prestige’, but I understand that player differentiation through items that take effort to acquire provides a “coolness” factor for some.

I think there are two separate camps of players (some care about item exclusivity, others are pretty indifferent). For balance, I would not make items super trivial to acquire, but I’m also against long non-skill gated grinds.

If an item is supposed to represent “elite status” through scarcity, I think the mechanisms behind the scarcity are very important.

I think it’s absolutely hideous to assign “elite status” arbitrarily, so RNG is not an appropriate mechanism at all for handing out “elite” rewards. Lottery winners do not deserve any extra respect or attention.

I also oppose long grinds, because I do not think that mere repetition grants merit. A player who did 500 Fractal 50 runs isn’t so different from someone who did 100 runs. At that point, they’ve already proven they can do Fractal 50. The extra “prestige” from the grinding is entirely outweighed by the frustration and disappointment that such a grind imposes.

I have no objection to highly exclusive rewards earned through things like PvP tournaments; the player differentiation there is very clear and obvious. A champion in a contest of skill against other humans deserves better rewards without any doubt. Exclusive trophies are fine.

I think the new fractal skin system has sufficient barriers to acquisition already, without a lengthy RNG-based grind or some enormous amount of pristine relics. You have to finish fractal 50, which probably means you had to go through the process of acquiring ascended trinkets + armor + weapons. You went through 50 levels of ascending difficulty. That’s enough already to restrict the items and make them “cool” by scarcity.

I also highly object to the idea that it’s wrong for Anet to lower the cost of “elite” items. If you decided to grind it out prior to the change, you had 2-3 years of “high exclusivity” already. No one is obligated to protect the perceived value of your time “investment”. The idea that anyone has a right to be protected from “asset devaluation” is ossifying and highly poisonous.

I think Mai Trin is one of the more interesting boss fights in the game, I wouldn’t support removing it.

It’s way more fun than Jade Maw…

Malediktus.9250:

Prestige sells in capitalism. Why do you think a lot of people trade 100s of currency to gems to trade for gold to buy legendaries with it? Or some super expensive Apple Watch in real life. The whole luxury good industry just works on the principle that people want things other people cannot have.

It is a psycholigical thing.

In GW2’s case everyone can grind or try to beat the RNG, but not everyone can be the most skilled person ever. And since Anet wants GW2 to be casual friendly we have to live with this kind of prestige.

Perceived value sells in capitalism.

It’s not the luxury good that grants “prestige” (although many businesses would be happy if you think that way). The “prestige” comes from the money and status that enable you to purchase luxury goods. The luxury good is just a signaling mechanism.

If you blow all your disposable income on some fancy car well beyond your means, you haven’t acquired any prestige, you just really like cars or you’re an idiot.

If you buy that fancy car with your profits as the founder of a giant multinational corporation, you already had social prestige, the car is just a signal. Or you really like cars.

Also, there are some people out there who can appreciate things for their inherent qualities without concern for what other people think or have. Luxury goods often have higher quality, so that is another reason to buy them. For such people, lower prices for “luxury goods” are good.

I can understand if Apple wants to sell you a watch for $10k (which is really low in the luxury watch market…), better margins for them, but I think a customer who would feel angry if Apple lowered its prices is a total fool.

And as you said, everyone can grind or try to get lucky with the RNG. The fractal skins don’t really signal much prestige, there is none lost by making them more easily available.

What does making them so tedious to acquire accomplish? Frustration for all, just so a few can say “I have this item and you don’t, nah nah nah”? There are many ways to encourage people to run fractals without extreme grinding, e.g.:

thrag.9740:

But maybe fractals could have unique, useful rewards. Like a repeatably useable once daily revive orb that. Not really that useful, but its something.

The whole idea of “exclusivity is prestige” in real life is dumb and exploitative (of the dumb), and I do not support extending it anywhere. It’s not about what you own, it’s about what you can do.

Malediktus.9250:

The concept of prestige in games isnt any more pathetic than prestige in real life.

No, there’s a very big difference, because there is absolutely nothing you can do in an MMO that I would consider prestigious.

Go solve some major world problems or amass huge amounts of wealth and power if you want prestige.

Malediktus.9250:

PvE in GW2 is made for the very bad people, so if you cant implement proper skill checks so casuals dont cry, you can only make grind and RNG checks

That, or chill out, play the games for fun, and stop trying to use them as a proxy for real accomplishment. Nothing you do in game will give you a higher place in the social hierarchy.

Malediktus.9250:

Remember E=mc² so everything is energy just in a different shape.

If you want to go that route… I think the natural conclusion is some form of nihilism (which I could agree with), but not something like “video game achievements are prestigious”.

20 relics, purchasable only after reaching scale 50, sounds very reasonable to me. Maybe 40 relics at most for a skin.

Gav.1425:

If you disagree, think about how cool your weapon will be when every one has them all across Tyria.

They’ll be just as cool as they are now, the skins don’t change their appearance based on how many people have them.

Gav.1425:

There was a time when PvP ranks weren’t worthless and seeing a shark or phoenix finisher would gather a crowd. It felt awesome to stomp a bunch of people in WvW and have pages of tells asking me how I got a shark or phoenix finisher. No one even had a dragon at the time. Now dragon finishers are trash and anyone who PvPs for over a month has it.

So, those people were too lazy to type “phoenix finisher gw2” into google?

That’s some really superficial admiration (if even that, and not just curiosity), not sure why it pleases you so much.

It sounds like you want respect and attention when you haven’t actually done anything to merit such things.

Do you really think that getting lucky with some RNG or grinding many hours in a video game makes you special?

If you sunk so much time into getting those skins that you feel offended when the requirements are loosened, that’s your fault for undervaluing your precious time.

If you were talking about an exclusive reward only given to an art contest winner or international PvP tournament winner, I would have more sympathy for the “keep it super exclusive” view, but getting the fractal skins was just a big long gamble with bad odds.

As others have mentioned, probably Thief since you have good mobility, damage, and stealth.

I did my map completion on warrior, that felt pretty quick too, you have good mobility and it’s easy to buff yourself.

Some general Revenant comments:

Damage and condition durations are too low, across the board

Some casting times should be reduced (e.g., mace #2), or those skills should be buffed

Maybe tweak some energy costs for big skills downward

There needs to be more utilities to select from, for every legend mode. In the current set, some skills are very situational (e.g. Unyielding Anguish), or they only work well with certain builds. The class really needs more flexibility here.

The class has a problem with melee/range flexibility. Regardless of what weapon you choose, you can only be effective at either melee or range, not both. If you pick a melee weapon, you can’t range. If you pick hammer, you lose a lot of damage in melee range.

Engi and Ele have more flexibility in this aspect. Engi has kits, and Ele staff and scepter don’t lose their effectiveness in melee range. The short-range Ele weapon, daggers, also have > than 130 range on the weapon skills. Rangers and Mesmers which also have distance-dependent weapon skills can weapon swap.

I don’t know if weapon swapping is the best way to address this, or if it could be handled through legends/utilities, but I think this is a major problem with the class.

As a fairly anti-social person, I’ve always wanted to solo dungeons with NPC heroes.

I tend to treat MMORPGs as solo/co-op RPGs, the other human players are there to be fancy NPCs…

Asuran Segway? I’d buy one.

Conner.4702:

Empathy is more and more becoming a rare commodity it seems. Ask yourselves those that are saying grow a thicker skin and the likes. If you lost family members within the last 2 weeks of this “joke” due to a plane going down, would you still feel the same, because if you do please see a doctor.

The scope/extent of information distribution channels does not turn a local tragedy into a global tragedy.

Empathy? The world is full of tragedy and suffering. Go paralyze yourself with empathy then.

No? If you refuse to be consistently empathetic, then you’re just an animal on a leash with your emotions tethered to the manufactured news cycle.

Stop trying to nerf the world, you will never succeed, go buff the individuals instead.

Yes, definitely.

Kanaxai! or some Abaddon stuff.

Why is “elitism” bad? We should all strive to be elite; mediocrity is not a virtue.

Nah, not really.

It would be harder for sellers to find buyers, harder for buyers to find the items they want, and makes price discovery much harder.

Maybe the quaintness appeals to some, but I think the TP is a much better system.

Ayrilana.1396:

And what happens when people have everything because the rare skins are all easier to obtain?

Some people believe that acquiring rare items is somehow meaningful, the main goal or purpose of the game. I am not one of them.

What I really want to see: new dungeons, continents, etc. Exploring new areas, fighting new epic bosses with the character I designed, seeing it all come together.

New content is a must IMO. PVE content inherently lacks replay value because it is static in so many ways. Stretching the PVE content out with long item grinds makes it “like butter scraped over too much bread”.

I do not care about amassing loot, feeling wealthy, virtual “achievement”. The game is simply a dynamic art experience, like a movie where I get to dress up my character and direct some of the flow of events. I do not view the game as a social status simulator.

Making it tedious to obtain some of the art only annoys me.

I would be more than happy to pay a big subscription fee to keep the game going, as long as Anet keeps the dynamic art coming.

Do not try to make me grind, that disrespects my time.

If items are to be gated by something, I prefer that it be player skill, and not time, e.g. giving you account-bound rare skins for completing stuff on “super hard” mode, or things like that.

insanemaniac.2456:

approaches infinity

Well, the game probably has a finite lifespan.

At some point, it will be shut down, or there will be so few people playing that you have great difficulty getting a Fractal group going, so you won’t be able to have infinite trials.

Real life schedules, commitments, and the length of Fractals itself also put a practical limit on the number of possible trials.

So for many people, I think there’s actually a significant chance that they will never get the skin they want.

Vagrant.7206:

Why is it that in almost every aspect of the game a person can work slowly towards large goals except for Fractal skins and precursors? Are Fractal skins akin to precursors? Why is there no means of working towards a skin outside of the RNG?

There have been many, many incarnations of this topic in the past and it has never gotten better. In fact they lowered the drop rates.

My guess is that they have no plans on adding any more Fractal content, and they believe the RNG will encourage players to continue running Fractals.

I have some Fractal skins, and some that I want.

I gave up trying to get the remaining skins. The Fractals can be fun, but the existing system has too little respect for my time, it feels insulting.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Oh but yeah of course “enjoy the trip, not the destination”

Well Anet, I hope you enjoyed your trip, because you are getting nowhere.

I never liked that sentiment. The “trip” and the “destination” are not always separable, they are deeply entwined and give each other reason for existence, especially in the context of “actions” and ’rewards".

Childish OP is childish.

Ohoni.6057:

If ANet is keeping the value of Legendaries artificially high to deliberately incentivize players to buy them using gems, then they have committed a grave pay2win sin and deserve no respect from any quarter.

I think that would actually be a good reason to not change legendary supply: if legendaries are responsible for a significant amount of gem sales, that helps sustain the game, to hopefully keep content coming.

The game doesn’t have subscription income to rely on.

It’s not like they’re selling weapons that have twice the stats of everything else, something that would be truly “pay to win”.

I did this achievement a night or two ago, seemed to notice a way to get the minions to spawn with a specific color:

If you let the minion spawn and wait for the boss to teleport the minion to a colored crystal, it always seemed to choose the crystal farthest from the player (I did this solo), so stand between blue/green to get it to use red.

I haven’t tested this extensively, but if you haven’t done the achievement, this may be helpful

Terrasque.8735:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

They should hire you if you can make code changes so easily.

I’d do it for free if they let me. I wouldn’t even need to change any code, just the data the code uses.

But that won’t happen, for many obvious reasons. So a pointless jab.

Well, Smooth Penguin is a bit of a TP fanboy, so it’s what you would expect.

It’s like what would happen if you said something negative about some whiny kid’s Xbox.

If I look at the matter strictly from an in-game TP perspective, Anet is not a “monopoly”. For any item there are multiple competing sellers, and Anet isn’t even a buyer/seller in the TP, the transactions are strictly between players.

But if I look at things from an “outer” perspective, viewing the system as a “market” where the MMO developer is “selling” items for some cost in terms of player time/effort, then I could argue that Anet has a monopoly on “items usable in Guild Wars 2”.

To elaborate: this is not Skyrim, I can’t just add my own modded content to the game to introduce “competition” with the official content. If players could add custom items to the game with no restrictions, I would expect the average price of “fancy items” to take a big plunge (perhaps to a price close to 0).

Of course, you could argue against that idea in various senses; for example, there are competing MMOs, and I am theoretically free to make a competing MMO that resembles GW2. Not exactly the same thing, but perhaps close substitutes.

In any case, I want to leave the following general sentiment here:

I think it’s more fruitful to look at this sort of topic in terms of “game design/balancing” and “fun”, instead of trying to draw conclusions by making faulty, imprecise analogies that attempt to equate game systems with real-world structures.

I would suggest a completely different rewards philosophy, one that is not centered around RNG at all.

RNG/grinding should never be the “primary” reward mechanism.

Desirable items/unlocks should be reliably given as rewards for successfully demonstrating player skill, for completing challenging content.

I offer the following definition for “challenging content”: content/achievements that are significantly difficult to complete, even when you know the optimal strategy/tactics, with the source of difficulty being proper and precise execution of fighting strategy and tactics (not some luck-based or puzzle-based difficulty, for example). When you play “challenging content” you would be pumped full of adrenaline and tension, always teetering on the edge of total failure.

A sufficiently skilled player (someone with innate talent and/or lots of practice) should never have to grind for anything, unless you think the process of improving skill was also “grinding”.

For the less capable, I think RNG and token grinding are acceptable mechanisms for making the content/items accessible to all. But these should be “secondary” reward mechanisms.

Try to encourage people to dodge the skeleton spawning move, that should make the fight more manageable.

Ohoni.6057:

Precursor crafting, without proper gates, would shock the economy.

Which is why nobody is suggesting they shouldn’t implement proper gates. Nobody is suggesting as an ideal goal that they should just let you craft infinite re-sellable precursors or anything.

Why can’t you engage on this topic without resorting to strawman after strawman?

I think Smooth Penguin resorts to strawmen and refuses to acknowledge the existence of a “middle ground” between the status quo and free precursors for all, because his arguments are generally weak.

He makes some valid points about economic stability. But then the ideas of a “middle ground” or “cautious gradual changes” are possible counter-arguments that make details complicated and murky.

It’s easier for him to pretend that such ideas don’t exist, and say that everyone just wants precursors for no effort. Also, he really likes saying that people are “entitled”, so that gives more opportunities to do so.

Much of the rest of his posts boils down to “status quo is good because status quo is good” and lecturing you if you don’t believe that deprivation is glorious and honorable.

Smooth Penguin possibly has beliefs along the lines of:
- Grinding builds character
- High prices are inherently good
- Rare items make you special and better than other people

Otherwise he wouldn’t say things like this:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Over supply of an item killed the demand. This is what’ll happen if the Entitled players get their way, and have everything they ever desired to drop frequently. More Dusk -> more Twilight -> less awe factor -> lower demand -> player demand for better greatsword Legendaries -> player rage when they don’t get their way.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Oversupply an item, and you ruin it’s value

He keeps saying “oversupply”, as if there were some proper price for everything. Prices must be kept high, if you don’t agree you’re an entitled weenie.

(Oh, sorry, I should capitalize the “E” in “Entitled”, for Emphasis and all)

And sorry, there’s no awe factor, the only thing that really distinguishes one player from another is combat skill. Who kills and who is killed? Your skins are not impressive.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Sure Anet has god-like powers over the economy. Look at what they did to some high end items such as the Mini Monkey King and Endless Monkey King tonics. Something that was 1500+ Gold due to drop rates got flipped completely upside down. I’m not taking a slight drop rate increase. I’m talking something ultra rare going to drops for players once every few rare boss kill.

Thanks for providing an example, glad you understand how much power they have. You can clearly see how the prices of items can be very flexible, based on how generous the developers feel.

The price is never right (or wrong). Only desirable/undesirable for different parties.

Why do you think the 1500+ price is “correct”, and not the lower one? Tried to speculate on the tonic and got burned? Found a tonic, and disappointed that you didn’t sell before the price drop?

If it were up to me:
- Make a new, extremely difficult, somewhat lengthy solo dungeon instance.
- Completing the dungeon gives you a choice of precursor. Make this the only way to get precursors, no mystic forge or random drops.
- Precursors and legendaries are account-bound.

ipan.4356:

That goes both ways.

Every dungeon run I’ve ever done I create my own party, and I typically put something along the lines of, “No elitism”, or “No zerkers – beginners only”, or “No Speed Clears” in my description line.

About half the time I get 1-2 people who completely ignore my description and start harassing other players or trying to kick them.

This happens when I create my own group.

So, let’s flip this around – should we also add some kind of meter that allows me to filter OUT zerker/elitists, aside from the LFG tool and part description?

Ya’ll are focused on only one side of the coin – a DPS meter that allows you to ensure that no one with sub-optimal gear will join your group.

ipan.4356:

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

Maybe we just need LFG upgrade so we can set which profession+armor(armor would be based on overall stats)can join.
Zerkers will have only zerker people , all welcome people just dont set lfg specification so everyone can join .

I am not opposed to this at all. This is a totally different kind of thing from a DPS meter.

Just to be clear, yes, the problem with people ignoring group descriptions goes both ways, and I fully agree if you want tools to effectively exclude zerkers and hostile elitists from your groups.

I don’t really care about the DPS meter either, I am just totally opposed to the idea expressed in this thread that LFG tool should be for “casual” runs only.

ShadowPuppet.3746:

My own personal experience has been that there is a segment of the game population who:

• Refuse to make their own parties so they can play how they like.
• Exhibit poor “skill” in dungeons (either through inexperience or willful ignorance).
• Expect to be allowed into any group and be carried through it so that they can earn the same reward to time ratio as someone who makes an effort to learn the most efficient way of doing a particular path.

That’s a good description, I’ve come across this type of person as well, they are truly the bottom of the barrel.

I think it’s likely that this mentality often drives the people crying about “discrimination”, the stupid “casuals are majority” non-argument, and statements like this:

ipan.4356:

If you’re PUGG’ing, you accept that you get what you get – if you want a tailored party you already have everything you need to get that – your guild, or your friends list.

LFG tool is not some auto-matchmaking thing that sticks you on a random team (perhaps this should be a feature), it is a party recruiting tool for helping players reach out to the entire population, to find people with specified similar goals.

Guild rosters and friend lists are much smaller than the game population and they are not an equivalent solution. There is a significant difference between placing an ad on craigslist and sending an email among your friends.

Some want to arbitrarily restrict the tool to only support one type of player. They are clearly not interested in designing a good system that can offer convenience for everyone (or as many people as possible).

Afraid of being left behind, even though plenty of group listings with no requirements regularly appear (I personally do most dungeon runs with such groups, and I almost never see problems)? Do you lack the trivial initiative needed to start your own party? Or just mad because some people don’t want you to leech?

hannah mee.7925:

voidwater.2064:

Why should only one type of player have to go through the hassle of manually searching for people?

Because they are a minority.

Citation needed. And I don’t feel like responding to you anymore, I think I have an idea of your beliefs now. There’s little common ground between us.

hannah mee.7925:

Yes, because the LFG tool isn’t merited by standards. Applying a set of rules to PUGs makes you a kitten, not someone ignoring those rules. If you want to control your party composition, join a guild. If you want to play without bad PUGs, join a guild. Applying personal standards to LFG tool is your problem to deal with.

No, that’s just some arbitrary personal belief you decided should apply to everyone. The LFG tool obviously supports group descriptions, and it’s an obvious social skill to respect other people’s postings and avoid joining groups where you don’t meet the requirements.

hannah mee.7925:

Elitists are toxic toward carebears because they lack social skills (not necessarily being antisocial, for whatever ungodly reason you made a red herring out of that ad hominem), that’s bare truth. They lack the social skills to generate a group to their liking and instead feel the LFG tool warrants segregation.

The LFG tool is perfectly capable of supporting “elitists”, “carebears”, and everyone else at the same time. People just need to respect group descriptions. “Zerk meta only” has the same weight as “casual run”.

It is not like groups and players are extremely scarce, that is the only thing that might justify forced grouping between players with different desires.

Why should only one type of player have to go through the hassle of manually searching for people? Few people have requirements so complex that they cannot be described completely in an LFG post.

Maybe I’ll I flip your stupid argument and insist that “casuals” be the group that needs to avoid using LFG? Should all the “elitists” join runs with descriptions like “casual run, friendly”, and start demanding speedruns?

You join a “knife only” Counterstrike server. You buy an AWP and start shooting people. You are kicked.

Who is the one that lacks social skills here? The admin? The players who use knives only in the server labeled “knife only”? Or the idiot who joined and started sniping? Are you going to complain that the AWPer shouldn’t have been kicked?

The only reason you would attack the concept of group requirements is your desire to leech and be disruptive. You show that you lack social skills more than others by making your argument.

ipan.4356:

Harper.4173:

Funky.4861:

@lhos- you want some ‘serious need for co-operation’? How about:
-karka queen
-Tequatl
-Triple trouble
-Marionette
-Assault knights
-TA aetherpath

…just off the top of my head.

Elitists who are impatient tend to have a perfectionist effect on those around them (and the game in general). We have them to thank for the ascended gear grind and lack of build diversity in pve; it’s play their way or you are inferior.

OT: We don’t need more methods of discriminating against casual players in a casual game.

And nobody wants that.
We want a tool through which we can spot and have nothing to do with the “casual players” not discriminate against them.

That is the definition of discrimination.

I am far more comfortable forcing elitists to play with casuals.

It will teach them much needed (and seriously lacking) social skills.

Speaking of social skills, have you never learned not to force yourself into groups where you are unwanted and unwelcome?

hannah mee.7925:

voidwater.2064:

Unless I know someone in RL, they are just a fancy NPC to me, not a human. I will treat you with some default level of respect, but I don’t care about you beyond your ability to help me complete content.

So you basically just admit to dismissing the humanity of other people because you’re a kitten?

The lack of self awareness in this thread is frightening.

lol, what makes you think that I am not fully aware of how some might perceive that statement?

If people are going to keep throwing out the word “elitist” as if it were a bad thing, then I will refer to those at the other end of the spectrum(s) as carebears

The carebears need to stop trying to force some “all-inclusive” attitude on everyone.

As for battle metrics, I don’t think they’re strictly necessary but I don’t oppose them either.

As someone else mentioned though, being able to see gear on your teammates would be desirable and useful.

Offair.2563:

That would create toxicity among the playerbase and people are being treated as a number, rather then a human being.

Unless I know someone in RL, they are just a fancy NPC to me, not a human. I will treat you with some default level of respect, but I don’t care about you beyond your ability to help me complete content.

Algreg.3629:

as always the adequate reply to this request is “other people´s stats are non of your kitten business”.

As long as you don’t join a group that has specific stat requirements clearly stated.

Maybe a heavy version of the engineer, focused on the use of technology, but with a more offensive/raw DPS bias. Rocket launcher kit, stationary machine gun kit, use the rifle as a sniping weapon with a low rate of fire, pistols as a mobile direct damage weapon, daggers with some martial arts, dunno what else.

Class mechanic could be like a hybrid of adrenaline and virtues, build up a meter using some mechanic to cast a set of skills limited by cost and some cooldown that provide team support, e.g. a nearby allies support skill that reduces cooldowns on currently recharging skills for the team, a support skill that extends active boons on nearby allies, summon an AI ally, a skill that increases damage on next attack for nearby allies.

…Commando?

I’ve been leveling a new character since the NPE was released, some thoughts (I haven’t leveled a new character in a long time, so maybe not all the changes I mention are recent…):

- The new rewards given on leveling are a nice touch, they’re certainly more meaningful and useful than before.

- I think the new story system with an arc of related story missions every 10 levels is not bad.

- At level 40, I seem to have fewer trait points than I remember, I think that is a step backwards from the old leveling system. I don’t mind the traits needing to be unlocked individually so much, since there are only a handful of traits I actually want to use and I have enough gold/knowledge scrolls sitting around. I want to be able to use more traits earlier though.

- I used a lv20 scroll, so I can’t comment on the early leveling.

- Leveling doesn’t really feel more troublesome than before, I still do my routine of story missions, hearts, dynamic events, and EOTM, feels roughly the same.

- The new TP makes it somewhat easier to buy the gear I want for the character.

- Overall it seems more polished than the old system. Viewed without comparison to the old system, I think the new leveling system is fine. I I still think the old system was totally acceptable, though.

Well, let me switch sides here, and post a couple of what I think would be valid arguments for keeping the precursor status quo:

1.) Assume expensive precursors are responsible for significant gem sales. Assume this effect is not negated by people leaving the game because of precursor prices. More profit for Anet, more funds for game longevity

2.) Various arguments based on concerns about disrupting the wider economy and game, the items/processes used to acquire legendaries, i.e., don’t go and alter the complex system in a big way suddenly.

Ayrilana.1396:

How is it “shot to heck”? I’ve stated that they influence the economy. That’s exactly what they did. No different than what a government’s actions have on an economy.

From the game economy’s perspective, the developers are more like a creator god than a government. They designed the “fundamental laws of the universe” and have the power to change them (and they do sometimes). I would think of it as a near-omnipotent god and independent visitors to that god’s universe.

For that reason, I don’t think “player-driven economy” is accurate; that description ignores the immense influence that the developers have and had, far more than what any real world government has over real economies.

Gimli.9461:

II won’t be surprised if next change will make levelling from 1 to 10 be a game where you are presented with left and right arrow, and have to press the corresponding arrow on your keyboard when one of them flashes green :P

DDR! Yeah!

I think it’s understandable if they don’t develop SAB further, but I don’t see any reason to disable the existing SAB content.

I think the art, combat, and game world are excellent. The ‘core’ of the game, that was mostly in place at launch, was great.

However, with an MMO, there’s often an expectation of content growth/expansion.

The game doesn’t feel like it’s really expanded that much. In a sense it feels like many of the updates are “running in place”, remixing old content or adding new systems around existing content, instead of truly expanding the game.

I would’ve liked to see more new combat additions (e.g. new skills, traits, weapon types, classes). I would’ve liked to see more permanent maps (new continents!) and dungeons added in 2 years. The PvP modes and “high end” instanced PvE still feel neglected.

I think the devs made mistakes from an opportunity cost perspective, in the features/content they chose to develop.

I’ve had a lot of fun with the game and still enjoy it, but there’s also a feeling of disappointment from what I think the game could’ve become.

For some reason, I’ve long suspected that the development team is significantly understaffed…

synk.6907:

The first time you head into the Mists, there’s a tutorial area that covers capture points, reviving downed allies, and finishing downed enemies. If sPvP didn’t have skills and traits unlocked and everyone already at 80, these activities would have also been an easy way to unlock weapon skills as you completed them.

Somewhat related to your point, when making new characters, I would go into the PvP lobby to learn about and experiment with the character’s class.

I think a thorough tutorial/practice instance with all skills/traits unlocked (hm, not too different from what’s in the PvP lobby already..) would have been more effective for teaching purposes than the level gating system.

I think the leveling system that existed when the game was released was fine.

The concerns about new players not understanding the game could have been simply addressed with a big optional tutorial instance. The instance could teach the player about all of the game mechanics and specifics for their class, demonstrate most of what they’ll need to know.

Harper.4173:

Neko.9021:

There is no prestige in RNG or in the fractal skins in general. They simply look very nice. If fractal skins didn’t have such a noticeable and unique effect, no one would care about them.

To those of us that run FOTM it matters.

I run FOTM and I don’t care about prestige either, they’re just nice skins.

Conncept.7638:

Protect Serene as she recovers crystals lost in the crash

• Serene is just as slow as mollasses in the dead of winter. Speed her up a bit so people don’t feel like they are sacrificing an unreasonable amount of time.

I’ve noticed a problem relating to general AI pathing with the Serene event, you may have noticed this AI behavior elsewhere:

1. NPC is walking on some preset path, e.g. for an escort event
2. Enemy appears and aggros NPC
3. NPC walks over to fight enemy
4. When enemy dies, the NPC does not head to the nearest path point relative to its current position.
5. Instead, the NPC will first walk back to the point where it was initially aggroed.
6. Only after reaching that original aggro-departure point will the NPC continue on its prescribed path.

This is problematic given the terrain in the Serene event and her slow movement speed, she ends up doing a lot of redundant walking.

I think changing the event so that Serene never attacks the enemies that spawn would improve the event; she wouldn’t keep getting dragged off her path.