Never say something is too hard,

[voltaicbore.8012]

@"zealex.9410" said:

Simply put 2 diff dificulties that cater to 2 diff demographics is whats needed.

I think this is ultimately the best long-term solution. The technology clearly exists, with the whole challenge mote system. I guess the real work would be in tuning the rewards for each mode to incentivize pushing for hard content as designed, versus significantly lowered rewards for those who just want to clear certain story/lore elements without the hassle of high-end combat.

Then again, I have zero game development background, so it might be presumptuous to say "real work" doesn't exist in designing easier modes. In my mind all it would take is a flat % reduction to all enemy HP, removal of key mechanics, flat % reduction to enemy attack damage, longer burn phases, etc. Once the baseline encounter is designed, I assume it would be easier to water it down as opposed to thinking of ways to make things more mechanically challenging.

[maddoctor.2738]

@voltaicbore.8012 said:I guess the real work would be in tuning the rewards for each mode to incentivize pushing for hard content as designed, versus significantly lowered rewards for those who just want to clear certain story/lore elements without the hassle of high-end combat.

Judging by the current rewards of strike missions compared to literally anything else in the game, this is the hardest part.

[Jables.4659]

@zealex.9410 said:

Disabilities are bad and i feel bad for ppl that have to live with them but i personally wouldnt want the game balanced around the skill lvl of ppl with disabilities. Not to sound like a prick, i believe the game should have something for everyone but i dont think the game should be balanced around say ppl with less fingers or with effectively one arm (like i was when i broke my arm 2 years ago).

I agree, which is why I was really confused when Arenanet created condition mirage. Back before they started nerfing core Mesmer traits to make up for the mistake that is mirage, I did quite a few WvW duels playing condi mirage with auto target on and my eyes closed. I won about 2/3 of those duels. I really hope Anet manages to steer the ship back onto the right track.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

The irony of all this disability talk is that I'm the guy you're talking about. I've got tremors, terrible wrist pain, and a condition known as "fibro fog" that makes it so I get dizzy and light-headed every time I try too hard. And yet, my greatest grievance with Boneskinner is that other people are the ones who aren't trying. See, the secret of this game is that the hardest parts aren't built around the 1%. It's balanced rather low. You can beat almost everything in the game with random comps and off-meta builds, so long as you know the mechanics and aren't purposefully built incompetent. The boneskinner isn't that hard. I do fractals on a daily basis that are harder.

The real question is why it is everybody else is so terrible. I mean, with the boneskinner you really only need to do three things: don't get hit, light the torches, kill the wisps. Everything else should come naturally. It's not rocket science. That's how terrible everyone is at the game, though, and I constantly ponder why. This problem runs deeper than bone... skinner. There has to be some mechanical or design issue that prevents the average player from developing any skill. If you can figure out how to solve that, then we'll be in business.

[titje.2745]

challenge is no problem aslong the loot feels rewarding. in guildwars 2 the loot is most times junk so i want easy fights. i don’t want a challenge mode fight for just 1 or 2 gold and not a nice skin. i don’t do bosses often because it’s just throw away game time. old strike mission always junk. new strike. mission i can’t open the chest so i don’t do that again. bad design to force do other content firsts and if i don’t do i can’t loot chests. in WoW you have addons to make it a bit easier. guildwars 2 have not such addons.

yesterday i did fractals on tier 1 and got a fractal i didn’t had before with a ship and we had to move a treasure in a maze to open door and then move to ship to get 4 cannons. we wiped for 30+ minutes so i got angry about the design. guildwars 2 has no holy trinity with tank healer and dps. and fights should be doable for dpssers only. but we get ONE healskill with 20 seconds cooldown in most cases. and reviving was no option because all red circles go to the reviver. and if want do use healskill you get interrupted first time. if get green circle you get push from the ship. so lots of damage we got and that for a kitten tier 1 fractal. so i asked to bring healer. so i came with my wvw scrapper healer and we killed the boss in first try. no one downed.so very bad design. tier 1 should be easy. i normally don’t do fractals it’s trash.

so it must be changed. saying guildwars 2 is dpssers only content and no tank or healer needed and then this much damage on tier 1.

[maddoctor.2738]

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:There has to be some mechanical or design issue that prevents the average player from developing any skill.

I think it's player expectations and player conditioning. Players are trained to feel good when open world events succeed even though they didn't do anything to help but others did everything in the encounter. Take for example the Nuhoch lane in Tangled Depths or South/West Octovine in Auric Basin. They require some more thought process to play than their counterparts and yet you will see where the vast majority of players will be. SCAR lane in Tangled Depths and East Octovine in Auric Basin, the "press 1 to win while semi-afk lanes". It's been years since the release of Heart of Thorns and I'm quite positive there are many many players that have no clue on what to do in the least popular lanes and still just press 1 on the easy ones.

Relying on others to do the content is what prevents the average player from developing any skill. Among other things, but that's a huge one and it translates badly in instanced content where personal responsibility is much higher, or can lead to squad wipes.

[Tiny Doom.4380]

@sokeenoppa.5384 said:

@Fueki.4753 said:

@zealex.9410 said:Usually you make up for the lack of talent with practice.And then you have people with natural physiological and neural disadvantages, like slower reaction times, in which cases practices won't help at all.Practise never is a 100% solution to anything.

And ppl like that are not the majority of this game. Should we set difficulty of every game in a lvl that my friend can play every part of every game? He is missing one hand btw.

Yes, we should. It's that simple.

[dodgerrule.8739]

@Fueki.4753 said:

@sokeenoppa.5384 said:

@Fueki.4753 said:

@zealex.9410 said:Usually you make up for the lack of talent with practice.And then you have people with natural physiological and neural disadvantages, like slower reaction times, in which cases practices won't help at all.Practise never is a 100% solution to anything.And ppl like that are not the majority of this game. Should we set difficulty of every game in a lvl that my friend can play every part of every game? He is missing one hand btw.

That comment was more about how practice is not guaranteed to make up for lack of talent.I never meant to imply a game should be balanced around handicapped people.But I equally disagree about a game being designed around the top 5% of players, nor should most instanced content cater to these outliers.People should know their limits and, based on that, choose the content they try.

The ideal solution would be different difficulties for instanced content, but Anet apparently isn't fond of that idea.

They are and it’s been in the works for a while the story instances for raids has been confirmed but no information has been given about it. Check on wiki upcoming updates

[sokeenoppa.5384]

@Tiny Doom.4380 said:

@sokeenoppa.5384 said:

@Fueki.4753 said:

@zealex.9410 said:Usually you make up for the lack of talent with practice.And then you have people with natural physiological and neural disadvantages, like slower reaction times, in which cases practices won't help at all.Practise never is a 100% solution to anything.

And ppl like that are not the majority of this game. Should we set difficulty of every game in a lvl that my friend can play every part of every game? He is missing one hand btw.

Yes, we should. It's that simple.

And all those games would be really fun to play. /s

[Zaklex.6308]

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@sokeenoppa.5384 said:

@"Arden.7480" said:Just adjust to the difficulty.

For the MMORPG GW2 has the best combat system and that should be shown with the creature fight design.

GW2 began to storm with flashy effects that make more harm than the bosses themselves, and now Boneskinner is pretty all about mechanics whicb reminds me of old, good times in which you had to use your mind to get the mechanics.

Instanced content should be all about different tactics, different approach, abundance of mechanics.

If you look at the WoW's Raid/Dungeon tabs which show all the bosses, you can also see so many mechanics to learn, so many things to know, and it's simply fun, especially on the higher level of difficulty.

It's cool, because there is fun in tactics as well, I mean that what makes instanced content unforgettable.

I could see that, after such a long time yesterday, when the Boneskinner was actually challenging, because it has tactics that you have to learn to notice, and all you must do is to adjust to them.

Proplem is this old gw2 phrase "play how you want."

Players think that it means that they can do any content how they want and success. Even tho that phrase has nothing to do with skill lvl of instanced content.

It's more nuanced than that: Arenanet didn't create any sort of defined roles, and still refuses to teach them in game on any level. On the flip side, you have players who have done just that, to the point where if you have a coordinated group much of the previous "group content" is a joke. so now arenanet has 2 groups of people to satisfy: elite players and ones that just play the game as-is. Take a healer into any T1 fractal and you can almost AFK it. Take a group without a dedicated healer and some of them can actually be challenging. Arenanet's refusal to acknowledge and/or teach roles makes skill moot. Whose skill is being tested and how? What is every player actually bringing to the table? How do you balance anything in that scenario? That's why the open world is so fun for so many people. It's really the only thing that works in this role vacuum.

People still don't understand that was the whole point of the "play how you want" mantra, ArenaNet wanted people to be able to do any content with any character and any build and be successful at it, that was the philosophy, the execution in that was the failing.

[Firebeard.1746]

@Zaklex.6308 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@sokeenoppa.5384 said:

@"Arden.7480" said:Just adjust to the difficulty.

For the MMORPG GW2 has the best combat system and that should be shown with the creature fight design.

GW2 began to storm with flashy effects that make more harm than the bosses themselves, and now Boneskinner is pretty all about mechanics whicb reminds me of old, good times in which you had to use your mind to get the mechanics.

Instanced content should be all about different tactics, different approach, abundance of mechanics.

If you look at the WoW's Raid/Dungeon tabs which show all the bosses, you can also see so many mechanics to learn, so many things to know, and it's simply fun, especially on the higher level of difficulty.

It's cool, because there is fun in tactics as well, I mean that what makes instanced content unforgettable.

I could see that, after such a long time yesterday, when the Boneskinner was actually challenging, because it has tactics that you have to learn to notice, and all you must do is to adjust to them.

Proplem is this old gw2 phrase "play how you want."

Players think that it means that they can do any content how they want and success. Even tho that phrase has nothing to do with skill lvl of instanced content.

It's more nuanced than that: Arenanet didn't create any sort of defined roles, and still refuses to teach them in game on any level. On the flip side, you have players who have done just that, to the point where if you have a coordinated group much of the previous "group content" is a joke. so now arenanet has 2 groups of people to satisfy: elite players and ones that just play the game as-is. Take a healer into any T1 fractal and you can almost AFK it. Take a group without a dedicated healer and some of them can actually be challenging. Arenanet's refusal to acknowledge and/or teach roles makes skill moot. Whose skill is being tested and how? What is every player actually bringing to the table? How do you balance anything in that scenario? That's why the open world is so fun for so many people. It's really the only thing that works in this role vacuum.

People still don't understand that was the whole point of the "play how you want" mantra, ArenaNet wanted people to be able to do any content with any character and any build and be successful at it, that was the philosophy, the execution in that was the failing.

Well i honestly like that mantra, but the reality is the evolution of the game created roles for elite players and two classes of player.

[DaFishBob.6518]

@Fueki.4753 said:

@DaFishBob.6518 said:I have anecdotal evidence that people playing this game just don't want deal with any setbacks. Went in to do a dungeon path for daily last night, as soon as a person died, they left. No patience with learning and giving it another try, must have went through about 10 people and got it done in spite of all the quitters. It wasn't even that hard, they just left without a word or complaint.

Were the leaving people left behind by the rest of the group, rushing to quickly get it done?If so, I'd blame the rushing people, not the dying ones.

Nope, the people in front were dying and then leaving from what I remember. Communication could have been better of course being LFG but I think I asked to do one of the harder paths because some people who stayed did ask why I wanted this path. I assume from that people might have preferred a more familiar path than the one I wanted.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Zaklex.6308 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@sokeenoppa.5384 said:

@"Arden.7480" said:Just adjust to the difficulty.

For the MMORPG GW2 has the best combat system and that should be shown with the creature fight design.

GW2 began to storm with flashy effects that make more harm than the bosses themselves, and now Boneskinner is pretty all about mechanics whicb reminds me of old, good times in which you had to use your mind to get the mechanics.

Instanced content should be all about different tactics, different approach, abundance of mechanics.

If you look at the WoW's Raid/Dungeon tabs which show all the bosses, you can also see so many mechanics to learn, so many things to know, and it's simply fun, especially on the higher level of difficulty.

It's cool, because there is fun in tactics as well, I mean that what makes instanced content unforgettable.

I could see that, after such a long time yesterday, when the Boneskinner was actually challenging, because it has tactics that you have to learn to notice, and all you must do is to adjust to them.

Proplem is this old gw2 phrase "play how you want."

Players think that it means that they can do any content how they want and success. Even tho that phrase has nothing to do with skill lvl of instanced content.

It's more nuanced than that: Arenanet didn't create any sort of defined roles, and still refuses to teach them in game on any level. On the flip side, you have players who have done just that, to the point where if you have a coordinated group much of the previous "group content" is a joke. so now arenanet has 2 groups of people to satisfy: elite players and ones that just play the game as-is. Take a healer into any T1 fractal and you can almost AFK it. Take a group without a dedicated healer and some of them can actually be challenging. Arenanet's refusal to acknowledge and/or teach roles makes skill moot. Whose skill is being tested and how? What is every player actually bringing to the table? How do you balance anything in that scenario? That's why the open world is so fun for so many people. It's really the only thing that works in this role vacuum.

People still don't understand that was the whole point of the "play how you want" mantra, ArenaNet wanted people to be able to do any content with any character and any build and be successful at it, that was the philosophy, the execution in that was the failing.

Well i honestly like that mantra, but the reality is the evolution of the game created roles for elite players and two classes of player.

It went down a bit differently from that. What really happened is the Berserker Meta emerged, wherein everyone figured out that you can do everything while in full glass cannon gear. All of the enemies could be easily gathered, blinded, and then burst down by DPS skills. The dungeon era was a strange one, in that enemies hit so hard that full PVT players would go down rather quickly, healing skills were all really bad at group healing, and most conditions didn't even stack. You weren't meant to eat attacks, you were meant to dodge them. Once all of the mechanics were figured out (stack and burst + blind), it was clear that the best way to play the game, in fact the only real way to play the game with any effectiveness, was to go full glass cannon and cut through enemies like a lawnmower. There were a myriad of roles in the game prior to this, but none of them were about gear diversity. Whether you were the projectile stopper, the blinder, the might stacker, etc. you wore berserker. It is only after much begging and protest that we received any purpose for gear prefixes aside form Berserker.

As for the "play how I want" mantra, I think that it is being misunderstood. If you compare GW2 to other games in the genre, there's two big differences in character creation between them. First, profession-locked abilities and roles. Second, race and sex-locked professions and stat distributions. Most other games, once you choose your race and your sex, the number of professions you could actually play shrinks significantly, let alone the number that could actually be played well. There would be no charr elementalists, no asura warriors, no male mesmers, no sylvari engineers, and so on. GW2 decided to buck the trend and make it so your character could be whatever you wanted them to be, lore and practicality be darned. Similarly, roles were profession-locked. If you didn't want to play a condi necromancer or a tank guardian, you were out of luck. In GW2, every profession has a multiple traitlines that let you make your own builds and roles. Granted, not all of them are good, but you can be a condi guardian if you want to be.

Since GW2 was designed PVP forward, it is doubtful that you were supposed to be able to win with a purposefully incompetent build. If someone's traits, gear, and abilities don't make sense, then of course they aren't going to win against somebody who is.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:There has to be some mechanical or design issue that prevents the average player from developing any skill.

I think it's player expectations and player conditioning. Players are trained to feel good when open world events succeed even though they didn't do anything to help but others did everything in the encounter. Take for example the Nuhoch lane in Tangled Depths or South/West Octovine in Auric Basin. They require some more thought process to play than their counterparts and yet you will see where the vast majority of players will be. SCAR lane in Tangled Depths and East Octovine in Auric Basin, the "press 1 to win while semi-afk lanes". It's been years since the release of Heart of Thorns and I'm quite positive there are many many players that have no clue on what to do in the least popular lanes and still just press 1 on the easy ones.

Relying on others to do the content is what prevents the average player from developing any skill. Among other things, but that's a huge one and it translates badly in instanced content where personal responsibility is much higher, or can lead to squad wipes.

I imagine that it is far more than just players getting used to being carried. If it was just that, then we'd expect to see the average faceless toon to do half the damage of the meta build, not 1/10th of it. In all my ponderings, I've identified many things that are different between GW2 and other games that would really inhibit how well players do. Part of these is fighting conventions from other games, and part of these is a lack of clear guidance from the developers.

1. DPS rotations have gotten harder and more complicated over time, leaving anyone out of the loop to suffer in performance.
2. There is no conveyance for what is a power skill or condi skill, and what are utility skills, or CC skills. They all do some damage, and "DPS" is a hard concept to grasp.
3. Most games have higher level/rarity armor simply being better, and fighting with gear prefix cohesion isn't a thing.
4. The fact that our base defenses are satisfactory and our offense is a point of arbitrary design, and there are many games where this is either opposite or not a point of concern. Players are more afraid of dying than being slow, so they'll naturally stack defenses.
5. There is no feedback that their build is terrible, let alone guidance on what to do. Most players can't tell how bad they're doing because of it, let alone how much they're being carried.
6. The prime motivation for experimenting with skills and builds is boredom. This might work for a platformer, but in a genre that is full of mind-numbing grind it doesn't work. An overly casual overworld just means people watch netflix while they grind.
7. Players don't understand that all professions are meant to do damage. So, they're perfectly content with not doing damage, while assuming it is their "role".
8. Likewise, players also assume that there are "ranged" and "melee" classes, and are fine with hanging back doing very little damage as it is their "role".
9. New mechanics are frequently counter-intuitive. I.E. pressing "f" on the environment in the middle of the fight is something completely unheard of for the overworld player. I had to explain many times during the boneskinner fight that you re-light the torch by pressing the interact button while standing next to it. Also, I had to explain what the special action key was.
10. There are players in this game that legitimately do not care about failure, and as such are happy to lose over and over again to the encounter for hours on end. Trust me, I've met them. Likewise, there are players who are indignant against meeting any expectations, and will actively fight against them.

There's probably more. The point being GW2 is in a unique situation where all players are incompetent by default, and there are many competing expectations that prevent players from improving.

[Fueki.4753]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:no charr elementalistsno male mesmersThese two make no sense at all.Charr in GW1 were one of the biggest prime examples of Fire magic users.There is no reason male Mesmers couldn't/shouldn't exist.

Also, I had to explain what the special action key was.

I can understand the special key being problem. Originally the button was labeled as S, which usually is the walk-back key. At first I didn't know where it was located either.Now, it gets labeled properly as the key to right of the 0-key. Seeing as most languages have different keyboard layouts, this key is a different letter/symbol for many different layouts.I don't know what it is on U.S.A. keyboards, but on German keyboards it is ß.

[Ashantara.8731]

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:As for the "play how I want" mantra, I think that it is being misunderstood. If you compare GW2 to other games in the genre, there's two big differences in character creation between them. First, profession-locked abilities and roles. Second, race and sex-locked professions and stat distributions. Most other games, once you choose your race and your sex, the number of professions you could actually play shrinks significantly, let alone the number that could actually be played well. There would be no charr elementalists, no asura warriors, no male mesmers, no sylvari engineers, and so on. GW2 decided to buck the trend and make it so your character could be whatever you wanted them to be, lore and practicality be darned.

"Practicality"? So you support the misogynist mentality of disgusting Korean MMOs where all women look like underaged lolitas, with high-heels, stockings and manga faces? Yes, in that regard those games really did a "great job" at "educating" young male gamers, limiting not only in-game choices but also their players' minds and shaping their sexist view of women. GG to that, in 2019. :s

P.S. And of course Mesmers "can't" be male, because that's an "unmanly" profession? Bravo...

[maddoctor.2738]

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

1. DPS rotations have gotten harder and more complicated over time, leaving anyone out of the loop to suffer in performance.

Rotations have been getting easier and less complex over time. Sure when the expansions hit the first rotations were more difficulty to master but at this point the only rotations that can be considered hard/complex are condition Renegade and condition Engineer. Even rotations that used to be known for their complexity like Chronomancer and Elementalist (any) are now a complete joke compared to how they were before. I think the balance designers figured this out already and are trying their best to simplify the rotations

5. There is no feedback that their build is terrible, let alone guidance on what to do. Most players can't tell how bad they're doing because of it, let alone how much they're being carried.

There is "feedback" when they fail certain story instances thinking it's too hard. Then come and complain on the forums and realize their build is simply terrible, I remember someone complaining that they could not beat the first instance in Path of Fire on their Warrior and turns out they were using a messy build using Shout traits but only slotted Signets. Or something similar to that. But the feedback only exists when players want to see it, and always outside the open world, as in the open world you might have the worst build in the world, but succeed in every fight because more competent players exist around you

6. The prime motivation for experimenting with skills and builds is boredom. This might work for a platformer, but in a genre that is full of mind-numbing grind it doesn't work. An overly casual overworld just means people watch netflix while they grind.

This is what I believe happened with Heart of Thorns. Season 2 was an excellent training experience for the expansion, and anyone that understood how to fight the story bosses and even the meta bosses in the Silverwastes should've had no problems adapting to the expansion's content (navigation excluded,that was new). Yet, we had almost 8 months (for some even more) of only following tags around SW, pressing 1 and F while watching netflix and the average community became terrible at playing the game, so when Heart of Thorns hit it was a wake up call. You could no longer roam around the expansion pressing 1 and F while watching netflix, the gameplay style many became accustomed to.

[Fueki.4753]

@maddoctor.2738 said:at this point the only rotations that can be considered hard/complex are condition Renegade and condition Engineer.Whether a rotation is complicated or not depends on each individual player.After all, complexity is subject to opinions.

[maddoctor.2738]

@"Ashantara.8731" said:P.S. And of course Mesmers "can't" be male, because that's an "unmanly" profession? Bravo...

Yep Mesmers can't be male, after all we never had male Mesmers in Guild Wars lore/story. Oh wait.Dunham was the Mesmer henchman from Guild Wars and Norgu was one of the Mesmer heroes in Guild Wars.In fact up until Eye of the North (we got Gwen) there were no female -playable- Mesmers in Guild Wars (Lady Althea was a trainer)

[maddoctor.2738]

@Fueki.4753 said:Whether a rotation is complicated or not depends on each individual player.After all, complexity is subject to opinions.

Being complex or not for an individual player it's really the point. The argument was that rotation have been getting more and more complex, I presented that the opposite it true. You can objectively (regardless of the player) compare the old Chronomancer rotation with the newer Chronomancer rotation and figure out that the rotations have been getting easier and simplified and not more complex. The fact that some will find the newer versions confusing/complex is hardly relevant

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:As for the "play how I want" mantra, I think that it is being misunderstood. If you compare GW2 to other games in the genre, there's two big differences in character creation between them. First, profession-locked abilities and roles. Second, race and sex-locked professions and stat distributions. Most other games, once you choose your race and your sex, the number of professions you could actually play shrinks significantly, let alone the number that could actually be played well. There would be no charr elementalists, no asura warriors, no male mesmers, no sylvari engineers, and so on. GW2 decided to buck the trend and make it so your character could be whatever you wanted them to be, lore and practicality be darned.

"Practicality"? So you support the misogynist mentality of disgusting Korean MMOs where all women look like underaged lolitas, with high-heels, stockings and manga faces? Yes, in that regard those games really did a "great job" at "educating" young male gamers, limiting not only in-game choices but also their players' minds and shaping their sexist view of women. GG to that, in 2019. :s

P.S. And of course Mesmers "can't" be male, because that's an "unmanly" profession? Bravo...

That is a lot of pent up rage you just dumped on me. Quit overreacting. There's nothing wrong with artistic freedom, and people aren't being brainwashed by Korean MMOs to believe that men and women are different.

What I am referring to when I say "practicality" is stuff like pixie warriors and gnome barbarians. In a fantasy setting, an Orc or a Troll has more muscle in their left calve than a gnome has in their entire body, so the idea of a gnome barbarian is silly. Proportionally their weapons wouldn't reach, and they wouldn't have the strength or stamina to compete with a towering monster who could kill a gnome by accident. This would be the same case in GW2, wherein an Asura wouldn't be capable of holding any profession that demands physical prowess, and a Charr would lack the spirituality to hold any of the scholar professions. This is translated into MANY games, where the different races have different stat bonuses, and any class freedom is an illusion because that race can only do one or two things well.

Personally, I like the GW2 system. All real differences between the sexes aside, I've always hated being race and sex locked into certain professions. I consider my characters superheroes; the exceptional few. It doesn't matter if most mesmer NPCs are women, I'm playing one of the few male mesmers.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@Fueki.4753 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:no charr elementalistsno male mesmersThese two make no sense at all.Charr in GW1 were one of the biggest prime examples of Fire magic users.There is no reason male Mesmers couldn't/shouldn't exist.

Also, I had to explain what the special action key was.

I can understand the special key being problem. Originally the button was labeled as S, which usually is the walk-back key. At first I didn't know where it was located either.Now, it gets labeled properly as the key to right of the 0-key. Seeing as most languages have different keyboard layouts, this key is a different letter/symbol for many different layouts.I don't know what it is on U.S.A. keyboards, but on German keyboards it is ß.

Charr in GW1 were essentially the flame legion of today, worshiping the titans who gave them power. Charr in GW2 are atheists, and thus lack the spirituality and drive to learn magic. They brag about their engineering and technology all of the time, and most of the Charr NPCs you meet in game are thieves, engineers, and warriors. Mesmers in Gw2 heavily emphasize beauty and deception, wherein most men are for strength and direct confrontation. Also, men would lack the multi-tasking skills to maintain multiple illusions of themselves. In game, most mesmer NPCs are women as well. Hell, they're also aristocracy, so think of that what you will.

These are not hard examples. I am not arguing this is the way it is. I am not arguing this is the way it should be. I am arguing that this is the way it would be if Anet decided to lock professions behind race and sex. Or, something similar, depending on how they felt each profession would be restricted.

[mindcircus.1506]

@"Zaklex.6308" said:People still don't understand that was the whole point of the "play how you want" mantra, ArenaNet wanted people to be able to do any content with any character and any build and be successful at it, that was the philosophy, the execution in that was the failing.That wasn't the point of the "play how you want" thing at all.It comes from this articleAnd it was a statement about not making players jump through hoops in game modes they dont enjoy to achieve best in slot rewards. It was about offering the player choice in how rewards are earned. That if there are 4 activities for a reward, for example you only have to do two and can choose the two you like.You've misinterpreted and misrepresented this message pretty heavily.Why?

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

1. DPS rotations have gotten harder and more complicated over time, leaving anyone out of the loop to suffer in performance.

Rotations have been getting easier and less complex over time. Sure when the expansions hit the first rotations were more difficulty to master but at this point the only rotations that can be considered hard/complex are condition Renegade and condition Engineer. Even rotations that used to be known for their complexity like Chronomancer and Elementalist (any) are now a complete joke compared to how they were before. I think the balance designers figured this out already and are trying their best to simplify the rotations

Expand your scope a bit. I'm talking about since launch, wherein the DPS rotations were using just a handful of skill. I.E. when raids were launched, the engineer DPS rotation was just bomb kit + rifle turret, at launch the elementalist rotation was just lava font + fireball, the original herald rotation was just upkeeps + whatever sword skill was off cooldown, the original mesmer DPS rotation was 3 phantasms + auto attacks, etc. The word that gets thrown around every balance patch is "skillfull," which really means harder to manage and more punishing to mess up. The last "skill" update made it so range-variable skills scale dynamically, drastically reducing the window for maximum damage. Also, Chronomancers lost Illusory Persona, which certainly didn't make them any easier to play.

Any time Anet changes a passive to an active, or reduces the window of activation, or makes it require more precision, or requires keeping track of yet another invisible cooldown, or it requires pressing more buttons in a wider spread across the keyboard, then the rotation gets harder. Since most players aren't keeping up with the meta builds, it means that they end up doing worse.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

5. There is no feedback that their build is terrible, let alone guidance on what to do. Most players can't tell how bad they're doing because of it, let alone how much they're being carried.

There is "feedback" when they fail certain story instances thinking it's too hard. Then come and complain on the forums and realize their build is simply terrible, I remember someone complaining that they could not beat the first instance in Path of Fire on their Warrior and turns out they were using a messy build using Shout traits but only slotted Signets. Or something similar to that. But the feedback only exists when players want to see it, and always outside the open world, as in the open world you might have the worst build in the world, but succeed in every fight because more competent players exist around you

The vast majority of players do not come to the forums. Thus, they might read their failures as a call to gather more players, and not that they are inherently terrible at the game. Besides, most story instances instantly revive the player where they left off, so a player will solo zerg-rush their way to success without realizing that it is not meant to be this way. Similarly, most overworld events don't have a fixed timer, so players are free to solo zerg-rush those to success as well. They might blame the content, saying it is poorly balanced, and that they should just do something else. If a timed group event fails, they might not see themselves as a problem. They'll think "I'm doing my 'role' perfectly. It is other people who aren't doing their job."

The problem is that there is no guidance in-game, there are countless ways to build terribly, and default performance is terrible. The hardest part is coming up with a solution to this problem, and unfortunately "be better" isn't it.

[Fueki.4753]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:Charr in GW1 were essentially the flame legion of today, worshiping the titans who gave them power. Charr in GW2 are atheists, and thus lack the spirituality and drive to learn magic. They brag about their engineering and technology all of the time, and most of the Charr NPCs you meet in game are thieves, engineers, and warriors. Mesmers in Gw2 heavily emphasize beauty and deception, wherein most men are for strength and direct confrontation. Also, men would lack the multi-tasking skills to maintain multiple illusions of themselves. In game, most mesmer NPCs are women as well. Hell, they're also aristocracy, so think of that what you will.

The one NPC I perceived to be obsessed more with beauty than any other NPC was Norgu a male Mesmer.He was also the only Mesmer Hero, as far as I remember.The two most spiritual NPCs presented in GW1, Mhenlo and Master Togo, also were male.So there is nothing that ties beauty or spiritualism more to women than to men.

Atheism is no reason to lack affinity to magic. The magic doesn't come from any divine entity.If any race, it's only the humans that should lack magic use, as they were the only ones who needed divine help to use magic (which was already present).

Also, don't forget that Rytlock during his times as a Warrior, was capable of understanding and performing an exceedingly complex magical ritual to cleanse (a portion of) the ghosts of Ascalon.And then there is the Charr in the personal story who was capable of replicating the Searing, without worshipping the titans.