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DaG.5103

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Everything posted by DaG.5103

  1. They did return. A friend of mine received and sold on the TP a Keeper's ascended recipe of some kind.
  2. Perhaps the reward for match placement doesn't need to be yet another currency or system or pile of gold. What if, instead, the winning team received an account-wide "Major Boon" (on participating accounts - however that's measured - pips gained, etc) that simply increased WXP, reward track gain, and pip gain for the next matchup, while 2nd place got the "Minor" version of that? This increases overall liquid gold (as players request) and also encourages continued play in WvW to take advantage of the reward. I'm no BIG WvWer but I dabble from time to time, so perhaps there's some important push-pull element I'm missing here. In my mind, though, this seems like a solid option to keep players invested. And this would still want to be done in conjunction with important tweaks to reward options (namely, as others say, ways to spend Emblems, tickets, etc) and the addition of more content variety (Maps, Siege tweaks/new types, and IMO keep Bonus Events coming) to keep things exciting.
  3. It occurred to me reading this thread that the difficulty in implementing this may be due to the nature of their cumulative effects? E.G. If you have Aurora, Vision, and Coalescence, and you were to hypothetically toggle one off, are their effects coded in a way where they can easily drop the cumulative effect from "stage 3" to "stage 2", etc? So perhaps that's where the issue is. That said, what we really would like is just acknowledgement that "we're working on it" so we can go back to maximum hype. ...and, again, I believe it's widely requested for Infusions as well. Just saying. 🙂
  4. It's worth noting that Aurora, Vision, and Coalescence will now be the only legendary items that you are forced to use the visuals for if you use the item. All weapons, armor, and back items can be reskinned. Back items, helms, shoulders, and gloves can be hidden. Conflux and Transcendence can now be toggled. But, for some reason, Aurora, Vision, and Coalescence must display their effects. Don't get me wrong, this is an amazing update. It's 98% there. I love the touch of the "congratulations" screens as well. Lovely! But we really need this last bit of the update that seems to have been missed to bring everything into line. (And, while we are at it, Infusions should gain a toggle option as well. Please let me use my Deldrimor Stoneskin Infusion for the stat/agony resist without turning my character into a rock).
  5. I could be wrong, but based on your comments, there's one big disconnect here: LW season 2 is an anomaly in that its episodes introduced 2 new maps (4 episodes per map: much slower than other releases) and that those maps were not locked behind owning the episodes. In Seasons 3 and 4, every new episode comes with a new map that includes new rewards, currencies, events, meta events, and achievements. In IBS, there are 3 new maps and a pile of repeatable content spread between its episodes. Whether we are talking weekly or monthly, the concept has always been that you do the story - generally not a huge time investment - but then you also have lots of activities on the map to do and currencies to obtain and achievements to work for. For example, in Dry Top, the map you went into for Season 2, there's a big meta-event every hour where a sandstorm sweeps in. Completing events within that awards you geodes, which you can use to buy lockpicks. The sandstorm reveals various chests that your lockpicks can open, with which you can earn Fossilized Insects that you can turn into the Ambrite Weapons. Geodes are also used in legendary precursor crafting and for other purchasable rewards in the map. There are also a variety of other achievements, like finding the Lost Coins and defeating the Skritt Queen, which earns you a Central Tyria Mastery Point (you'll want those if you get the expansions!). Once you get into Season 3 and forward, you'll need to own the respective episode in order to access that episode's map. And you'll find excellent rewards worth playing the maps for, including Ascended gear, more cool weapon and armor skins, unique gizmos, new Mounts, and more. I know it can be annoying to have to wait a week for each episode, but it's being given to you for free instead of having to pay for it. There is only one other time where I can recall them offering an old episode for free - and it was last year, right after the pandemic hit, and it only applied to Icebrood Saga episodes for a short time. If it bothers you that much, you can still buy them, but I think if you just spend some more time immersing yourself in each new map you'll have plenty to do still!
  6. Wow, that's completely amazing to me. I've done it every day since it launched last week - I had just one time where we caused them to fight endlessly, and once that happened, the bulk of the players joined a commander, we all left and started a private instance to run it successfully. It's a bug, and I'm not sure how you've had it happen so many times in a row. It's almost unbelievable. It seems that players are able to damage the clashing champions when they are only supposed to break the bar, and if they hit 0 health before the bar breaks, it bugs the fight. I've heard people in chat saying it's conditions that are doing this - because all power damage is 0'd out from what I can see. Are you playing some kind of crazy condi build and causing it to happen for your entire public instance somehow? Next time, before the 10%, tell everyone in map chat to CC ONLY and no conditions. Hopefully that will slow any damage down enough. Drop a United Legions Portable Waystation if you can so everyone has access to EMP (if they have the mastery). I cannot possibly imagine this would happen to you again if you take the right steps. And, with luck, by tomorrow this will be fixed so it can't happen at all.
  7. I think you and I are just not hitting the same wavelength, because I don't disagree with what you are saying in general, but yet we are both in disagreement about a fundamental definition. I see what you are saying about the "level of rewards" and even agree, but I don't think that's even really the point I'm trying to make. Perhaps I can try to better explain what I'm getting at. When I say "level of rewards", I'm referring to the average rewards that you would get if you went in and did them right now. If I did the W3 Escort, the rewards of that would be the same as if I had done Dhuum. The unique rewards may be different between them but the overall rewards would have been the same had I done one or the other. You wanting to adjust the difficulty is what I'm opposing. If anything the rewards should be adjusted to better reflect the difficulty. Yep, we are totally on the same page then. Talking just about straight "liquid gold" rewards is only one piece of the puzzle, and one I'm not even really touching! My concern is "why would I run Snowden". Currently, I only do it when it's up as a daily during Bonus events. And I still get groups that can't complete the CM timer, even when I ask for a proper comp. So while upping the "liquid gold" reward - AKA the "level of rewards" for that one in particular is an option, though it wouldn't be the first one I reached for, even in the realm of increasing rewards. Here's another option - Better Daily rewards. This is effectively the fix that makes Fractals work. Even though some Fractals are tougher than others, you can only get so many Daily T4 chests, so you are encouraged more to run them when they are the daily. As I said above, the daily reward is weak. Improving that, or introducing a Daily CMs Achievement for each DRM that is a daily that has a more substantial reward (like how Fractals can reward [Gold] Fractal skins, ascended gear, etc) will encourage people to play Snowden and actually try to beat the timer. This can be blanket applied to all DRMs and still helps address the problem, because now I'm time gated on how many of those achieves I can do, so if I want a particular reward I will go out of my way to run Snowden specifically when its the daily so I don't miss out on it. (And I don't think many people would argue that increasing rewards on DRMs in general would hurt.) It's totally cool that you don't agree in making the timer more forgiving. Chalk that up to personal taste - in my mind it's the path of least resistance to a "fix" for a dev team that we can see already had to thin out the current content a lot. As I said way above, I'm down for anything that helps make more people want to run these. I'm sure the devs feel that way too.
  8. I think if the rewards are the same, then they probably should be. Strikes and Raids each have unique drops to the various encounters. Boneskinner's weapons, Runic armor currencies, all of the unique items to each raid boss, etc. Now if Snowden had a couple of unique drops, or a higher chance of Volcanic Stormcaller weapons or something, I think that feels much more reasonable and would get more people running them as well, but of course that's more work than simply editing a timer. Except the reward level across strikes is the same just as it is for raids. You get the same level of rewards doing the easiest raid just as you would the most difficult. It isn't, though. I don't have a chance to get the White Mantle Portal Device from Escort or Trio or Gorse. I can farm magnetite and buy it, but obviously if I just learn Xera and fight I can reduce the friction of the grind if it drops, so there's a clear advantage to doing a more difficult encounter in that circumstance. Same with items to purchase Runic Armor pieces. I would rather do all of them daily than farm Grothmar 6 times because each has a chance at something unique, even though a few are slightly more difficult. Even if it's not as blunt as Dungeons' "you get more gold for doing things that aren't CoF path 1", by simply having different rewards they create a unique incentive to not just funnel people into the easiest options, or funnel people away from the hardest ones. That's the path that DRMs may be headed right now with the difficulty difference between Snowden CMs and the rest. Likewise, the weekly lockout on raid encounters forces you to improve and be more versatile in order to progress faster. Those who are more skilled at more fights reduce the friction of the grind. It's clear that Snowden is on a different level than the others. Thunderhead and Fields are the only other ones where I've seen groups struggle close to as much, and I'm not concerned about those. Talking to people in game and experiencing different group and solo attempts myself - some successful, some unsuccessful - makes it pretty clear that the level is different. That can be perfectly fine but after DRMs have been out for a year and we are all in Cantha, finding a group that can successfully complete Snowden CMs will start to get a lot harder because people will want to do the one with a significantly higher chance of failure even less than they want to do DRMs in general right now. Having very rare drops unique to specific bosses doesn't change the level of rewards that you would encounter across raids, strikes, and even DRMs. Ignoring the gold rewards from dungeons, they all have unique skins but the level of rewards you get are still the same. It's only when you factor in the gold rewards does it differ. Uniqueness of rewards doesn't necessarily have any relation to difficulty. Out of the 10, Snowden is probably the most difficult. Metrica, Brisban, and Gendarran are the easiest as you'd have to actually try to fail in order to fail them. Field of Ruin and Thunderhead Keep at a level right below Snowden. The rest are between those two and the first three. There's a nice range of difficulty across the DRMs. Whether one can find groups later in time doesn't matter as they scale. They can be done solo.I think you and I are just not hitting the same wavelength, because I don't disagree with what you are saying in general, but yet we are both in disagreement about a fundamental definition. I see what you are saying about the "level of rewards" and even agree, but I don't think that's even really the point I'm trying to make. There are several systems reward systems at play in content to enable its replayability regardless of its difficulty level. I'm going to use Strikes as the primary example here because I think it's just a hair simpler without having the weekly lockout and legendary collections attached. These are the reward systems for Strikes: Crystals with weekly colorsDaily Priority / Echoes chestRunic Armor drops, 1 unique piece per Strike (other than CW, which has it's own "do this 50 times achievement" instead)Basic loot chests w/ unIDed loot, currencies, etc.The reason you would do a harder strike over an easier one is thus: It's a Daily / You need it for your Echoes for the week.You hope to get the Runic Armor drop from itYou really like the stock contentThese are the reward systems for CM DRMs: Prismaticite drops w/ Both boonsDefense SealsBasic loot chests w/ unIDed loot, etc.The reason you would do a harder strike (Snowden) over an easier one is thus: It's a daily and you want more Seals - the only unique bonus reward for doing a daily DRM. And you can get that WITHOUT doing CMs.You really like beating Ryland up.Now, those of us who have been doing DRMs are pretty much flush with Seals at this point. I'm nearing a couple thousand and I've bought most everything. I have a few Tengu weapons I didn't get but that won't drain me at all. I can probably just start dumping them into supply boxes for mats if I want, but I'm waiting it out to see what else releases. The comparison is pretty clear, though. The advantage to choosing to run Snowden is very minor. You would choose to run Whisper because the daily system offers more robust rewards, and there are unique rare drops. So the fact that there is a difficulty difference is made up by having a unique reason to do them. From the perspective of someone new, they see "well, I want to learn to do Whisper so that I can complete my Echoes or get that armor drop". Looking at Snowden, besides 5 AP or whatever from doing it 5 times with CMs, they have almost no incentive to run Daily Snowden DRM on CMs besides a few extra Seals. I've chosen to solo Doric rather than find a group for Snowden in the past because I'd rather not get the 5 bonus seals than spend 15m to not get the extra prismaticite if I screw up on the boss. It's a minor reward at best. I hope that makes more sense. I'm not saying that we need a sliding scale of gold gain, I'm just saying the reward system is not really set up to encourage players to do content that is significantly more difficult than other similar content. The easy solution is to adjust the difficulty of the content that is the farthest outlier.
  9. I think if the rewards are the same, then they probably should be. Strikes and Raids each have unique drops to the various encounters. Boneskinner's weapons, Runic armor currencies, all of the unique items to each raid boss, etc. Now if Snowden had a couple of unique drops, or a higher chance of Volcanic Stormcaller weapons or something, I think that feels much more reasonable and would get more people running them as well, but of course that's more work than simply editing a timer. Except the reward level across strikes is the same just as it is for raids. You get the same level of rewards doing the easiest raid just as you would the most difficult. It isn't, though. I don't have a chance to get the White Mantle Portal Device from Escort or Trio or Gorse. I can farm magnetite and buy it, but obviously if I just learn Xera and fight I can reduce the friction of the grind if it drops, so there's a clear advantage to doing a more difficult encounter in that circumstance. Same with items to purchase Runic Armor pieces. I would rather do all of them daily than farm Grothmar 6 times because each has a chance at something unique, even though a few are slightly more difficult. Even if it's not as blunt as Dungeons' "you get more gold for doing things that aren't CoF path 1", by simply having different rewards they create a unique incentive to not just funnel people into the easiest options, or funnel people away from the hardest ones. That's the path that DRMs may be headed right now with the difficulty difference between Snowden CMs and the rest. Likewise, the weekly lockout on raid encounters forces you to improve and be more versatile in order to progress faster. Those who are more skilled at more fights reduce the friction of the grind. It's clear that Snowden is on a different level than the others. Thunderhead and Fields are the only other ones where I've seen groups struggle close to as much, and I'm not concerned about those. Talking to people in game and experiencing different group and solo attempts myself - some successful, some unsuccessful - makes it pretty clear that the level is different. That can be perfectly fine but after DRMs have been out for a year and we are all in Cantha, finding a group that can successfully complete Snowden CMs will start to get a lot harder because people will want to do the one with a significantly higher chance of failure even less than they want to do DRMs in general right now.
  10. I think if the rewards are the same, then they probably should at least be a lot closer. Strikes and Raids each have unique drops to the various encounters. Boneskinner's weapons, Runic armor currencies, all of the unique items to each raid boss, etc. Now if Snowden had a couple of unique drops, or a higher chance of Volcanic Stormcaller weapons or something, I think that feels much more reasonable and would get more people running them as well, but of course that's more work than simply editing a timer. Edit: Just to clarify, I have no qualms with smaller scale differences. I think Snowden is simply a clear difficulty outlier in CMs. That timer is much tighter than most and only gives you a handful of minutes to fight a boss with multiple split phases and constant protection and that's assuming you also speed up the escort. It's incredibly tight and asks for a more structured comp than the others. I don't have issues with others besides the boss reset policy not being consistent.
  11. You are certainly a higher caliber player than most to be as adept at soloing and still have that much time left on Snowden. I definitely have plenty of time left on most timers (Fields of Ruin is the next tightest IIRC). However, my concern is that even with players as adept as yourself - or more medium-adept like myself - there is still a clear disparity in CM difficulty between several DRMs, but they offer precisely the same rewards. I don't mind if there are minor difficulty fluctuations, so I'm not concerned about, for example, Fields perhaps needing another minute to be more "in line" with the others as well, etc, but Snowden I think is infamous as the clear outlier. If that difficulty change is intended - perhaps because of the boss of the mission - then another option is to tweak the reward table as well to compensate. However, this runs the risk of creating an elitist funnel into only the most rewarding DRMs, so I'm not sold that that's a great option. But if Snowden is intended to reward the same as the others, which keeps all DRMs as viable options to run, then IMO it makes sense to tweak that difficulty just a bit to bring them closer to the same level. I'm totally about having optional, more difficult content. CMs are great to have on DRMs and keep them from being boring facerolls. I'm just looking for a little more consistency, or for the differences to be regarded and compensated instead if that's preferred, though I do have my reservations about that method for this type of content in particular. Edited: I added reservations about tweaking reward structure after I thought about it a little more. Not sure that's a great plan, but it's an option.
  12. Ah, well that would be because I've never done Bloodtide in a group since the first run, haha. I know better when I'm solo :P Related but irrelevant - I did discover that mounting before exiting the cannon with F allowed me to carry the cannon skill with me. But I couldn't activate it on the boss when I was in melee range of him. I didn't experiment too much with this, but if you can replicate it feel free to have fun with it...
  13. These actually can be weapon swapped out of, so they are no problem to do IMO! I wouldn't mind some of your other suggested tweaks though, I simply focused on the Bloodtide one because it's barely completable solo as it is. This is a good idea as well!
  14. Perfectly reasonable as well. I went with the no-resetting route because it would be more consistent with the way all other DRMs operate - but those bosses also do have particularly punishing AOEs to sit in. My only qualm is that there are other bosses (Fields or Ruin, Snowden, etc) that also have super punishing - possibly even more so - AOEs to be hit by, but those ones don't reset when you die, so the punishment is still less overall. So if you reduce the damage/stun of some of them, but not the others, where are we drawing the line and why? But ultimately, yes, any change to make those work better when Solo would be fine in my books!
  15. Like many players - and also unlike many players - I've been doing 2-3 DRMs most days since the update which improved scaling to allow CMs to be soloed - one of the best updates that could have been done to the system. I find the content fine, a bit repetitive, but not the worst thing I've spent time on in the game. But doing this for a couple of months I've compiled a small list of changes that I think would shore up many of the issues players have with the content. Lacking any other good way to get this list out there, I present it here with the hopes that community feedback can build on it, and it can be seen and considered by the dev team. Without further ado, below is the list of changes that I think would largely improve the DRM experience, categorized for consumability. Difficulty InconsistenciesThe main impetus for these changes is to not have some DRMs be artificially more difficult than others, especially when there is no difference in reward acquired. These changes also will complete the "scaling fixes" - I consider those incomplete as it is certainly possible to solo all DRMs, but 3 of them are excessively more difficult or punishing than the others when going it alone, and for those most players simply need to group up to finish them, defeating the purpose of the scaling changes. Prevent bosses in Thunderhead Keep and Caledon Forest from resetting on party wipe. - I believe this is due in some way to a pathing script that is set to the bosses - THK Destroyer walks in circles around the forge, while the Icebrood Construct walks up and down the bridge. This makes soloing arduous there are several mechanics that can easily wipe a solo player (or a less experienced group). In the spirit of keeping the DRMs on a similar difficulty level to maintain the variety that keeps them replayable, these bosses should not reset when a party wipes. Add 1 minute to the Timer CM on Snowden Drifts. - I'm not going to complain about difficult content, so I consider this a lower priority, but once again I feel like it's just an unusual and frankly unexpected difficulty spike compared to all other CMs, and, much like what happened with Dungeons and Citadel of Flame in the past, inconsistent difficulty leads to lowered variety in content as players gravitate towards the content that's easier and/or faster to complete, especially when rewards are the same. As it stands, this is a very difficult CM to solo, best done with a class that can provide swiftness or superspeed to the escort to buy time, consistently boonstrip to remove protection from the boss, DPS to beat the timer, and with enough active defenses to survive the boss's fast attack patterns and CC chains that can fully wipe you if one connects. As a group, I've found even with the strong raid/CM comp of HB + Alac + 3 DPS, all 3 DPS need to be hitting 10k+ DPS to still beat the timer - which should not be difficult (I main DPS DH so I'm easily well above that) but is once again a stark difference compared to the checks required for ALL other DRMs. Scale down supplies run in Bloodtide Coast pre events. - Actually, this morning I was at last able to solo all 3 pre-events AND set the challenges, which I had previously missed by just a handful of seconds each time. The trick was to hope the enemies spawned in such a way that I could kill a group of 2-3 in between supply runs, and to use the supply drop off closer to the entrance rather than the one closer to the quaggan cave. But this is a silly set of pre-events that is way harder to complete solo than any other set of events. Simply scaling down the supplies needed would bring this in line with all the others. Allies and Gameplay VarietyThe main impetus for these changes is to bring the Ally mechanic - which is, in theory, a good mechanic for creating a better variety of gameplay - into line with what I assume is its intended vision. I want to offer some praise for this mechanic's idea: Much like fractal instabilities, the allies have the potential to tweak the moment to moment gameplay of each DRM, but the problem is the variety of power level is too great - some allies are basically useless in CMs, while others provide extremely powerful tools that can shave minutes off of the timer. There is a system that allows you to pay seals to pick your ally each run, but this basically feels awful to do every time, because you are forced to do it before you "roll" to see if you got an easier run or not, and this also completely destroys the intention of having "varied moment to moment gameplay". Instead, what we need to see are certain allies buffed to remain useful in CMs, so players can pick a certain one if they'd prefer to have it, but aren't randomly punished if they choose not to pay up front. These Allies need stat or skill buffs: Sylvari, Norn, Ebon Vanguard, Flame Legion, Crystal Bloom, Asura, Tengu, Olmakhan - These ones die far too easily, and it's usually not worth taking any time to res them. The benefits provided by their presence are miniscule compared to what a single player can do. They have no ability to keep themselves alive (like the Exalted) and any skills gained (such as the Golem or the Fern Hound) are weak and a waste of time. The Ebon Vanguard banners are not placed well to be particularly useful in the fights where they would matter. Some of these allies are close - the Crystal Bloom have a useful buff from the crystal, but the NPCs that carry it get murdered by a stiff breeze of CM Bursters. The Flame Effigies actually seem to be able to handle themselves a bit better and their aura is alright, though they are still nothing compared to CM Elites. The Tengu bow 2 actually does decent boss damage, but unlike the Charrzookas, you have to keep the NPC alive to get more in a boss fight, or pick up arrows which are a joke, because holding the bow will destroy any chance of DPSing you have once your ammo runs out. For reference, these Allies are GOOD and don't need any significant changes: Exalted, Deldrimor Dwarves, Charr, and on the edge, Seraph. - The Exalted provide a great transformation (with the 3 skill from Masteries) and they actually down state and heal each other back, allowing them to hold off against CM foes. The Dwarves Acid is a special action that doesn't interrupt your ability to DPS and provides super strong damage and bar break. The Charrzooka 2 skill is a highly powerful skill against stationary bosses or groups and is worth going out of your way to pick up. The Seraph are on the edge - the watchknights still can get overwhlemed and die, but they are fairly bulky and provide consistent CC against enemies and bosses - I see them lasting much longer on their own than any ally besides Exalted, so I'll give them a pass. Reward UpdatesThe last section I have focuses on minor improvements to rewards and DRM currency acquisition that will make the final rewards feel more achievable and better to achieve. Adjust the Dragon Boons' duration. - One of the issues with the system is that you are encouraged to not play with your character beyond doing DRMs, because otherwise you will lose out on potential rewards as the Boons from killing a Primordius/Jormag champin wear off. Often doing a single meta or other daily or bonus events will be enough to reduce your first-gained boon to the point where it won't even be in effect the next time you run a DRM. With the most recent mastery increasing rewards while under the effect of both, this issue has been exacerbated. Now, in order to get the most rewards, I will need to use my alts to play other content to try to keep my main with both boons at all times. This could be easily fixed by increasing the duration of the boons massively - up to 3 or 4 hours per boon? Why are we punishing players for playing other content? Several hours per boon will still make me want to come back before it expires, but now I can actually go run a drizzlewood meta and not feel like I'm sacrificing some reward for others. Add the Cold and Fire damage types to the ascended weapons. - I'll admit I swiped this one from the GW2 subreddit - but this is an easy change that I've never seen a better place to apply. These are fire and ice weapons that take massive amounts of materials and time to craft - while I think it's crazy to sit here and ask for tons of cool extra effects on them, can we at least set the toggle on them to give them those unique death animations when used? Add an Infusion for the relevant Boon Effect as an additional reward to finishing the Ascended Weapon achievements. - Again, these are some of the most expensive weapon collections in the entire game. One really cool thing to do would be to add - even if it's by way of a vendor who "checks' if you've finished the achievement to grant you these items by mail or some little hack like that - a bonus Infusion to completing each one, perfect for your million new ascended weapons, and that Infusion should grant you the related "wrist effect" of ice or fire, just as if you had the related Dragon Boon on you. At this point, you deserve to have that boon effect on you 24/7 if you want, you've done enough DRMs to last a lifetime! That's everything I've got. I think these changes wouldn't be terribly difficult - many of them are just tweaking values or fixing something that really seems more like a bug than anything - besides adding the Infusions at the end. But I think they would make the DRMs smoother to play, better to Solo, and more rewarding to complete, so I think these would be great things to improve the big content addition from the end of the Icebrood Saga. Let me know your thoughts, if there's anything you agree or disagree with, and your own suggestions below!
  16. Mike, you are a breath of fresh air. Best of luck to your team, with the attitude you are showing and the skill behind your group as a whole, I am positive we will all enjoy the results of your efforts when they finally come to fruition.
  17. Hi Mike, thanks so much for your eagerness to take feedback. This is a topic that really affects everyone - a fresh outlook on how the game is marketed can do wonders for the population, the game's revenue, etc. Here's my perspective on things - and I'm sure it's echoed by many - I've got friends who used to play a while back. Some have popped on, on and off, but others may be down for the count. It's not that they couldn't like the game again - obviously not. But I think you need to think about how to get these players interested again. And for this, it's important to keep in mind that I have been praising the game for the past 5 years. And my praise is more valuable to these people - my friends - than vague praise from "randomname.xxxx" as shown in your trailer preview. But it doesn't do anything to them. It doesn't get them jived - and I think it's just not enough to speak about the game. People need to have the content visually jammed in their face, so they see themselves exploring a map, see themselves acquiring an item, see themselves trying out some content. What I'm going to toss back is [a video made by YT handle "Roelski",]( "a video made by YT handle "Roelski",") who shared this with everyone on Reddit. I want to first clarify that I don't think this is exactly how it should be done, but it's a huge step up. I can send something like this to my friend, and say "check out the new patch" without having to TYPE OUT everything to him in a text or something. It shows the new map, it hints at the new story without giving anything away, it shows a new fractal and raid (though the footage is not the best for these, you guys can do better I'm sure!). And it mentions a few other things, which I think should have gotten real footage.A proper video for Daybreak would point out the following: New Map - Domain of IstanNew Story Chapter - DaybreakNew Fractal - Twilight OasisNew Raid - Hall of ChainsNew Legendary - Binding of IposFirst Legendary Ring Collection - CoalescenceEach one of those items with visuals and catchy dialogue (I love the "what could go wrong?" line and the commentary on the map, gives you a great feel for the episode's tone). The Legendaries need to be SHOWN in these videos. The Fractals and Raids need to be SHOWN. Give me something I can send to my friends, and say "hey, check this out, pretty cool new stuff!" Because currently, I have to send them this: I'm all for word-of-mouth, but a little help in making it easier for me to do that would be awesome. Finally - my last point - I think you guys face a major hurdle in the way you approach putting these together. I think you put too much emphasis on preserving mystery and discovery. I 100% do not want anything spoiled for me - but I don't care if I know the name of the new map a week before it releases. What you end up doing is sacrificing actual advertisement to save this sense of discovery that leaves as soon as anyone checks Reddit or logs in and plays the first 10 minutes of the story. That can't be worth it! I know some of it may also stem from "not sure what's ready to ship" syndrome, but there's got to be a way to - for example - create the video portion for Twilight Oasis, and if it ends up not being ready to ship when the trailer is compiled, it's just pushed into the next trailer. It doesn't even have to be 100% accurate - recall the trailers for Rogue One a year prior! Show everything. Make it easy for me to entice my friends. Show new players the COOL STUFF that they haven't seen before. Telling them "wow our game sure is full of cool stuff, even this guy thinks so" isn't really the mark that needs to be hit right now to help GW2 thrive.
  18. Story, Maps, Mounts, Bounties - all spectacular. Saving words for criticisms! Heart of Thorns leaned too heavily on map wide metas for some - but I actually enjoyed them a ton, and I know a lot of players did as well, they just didn't like being forced to do them on all maps. I was hoping for a happy middle ground in PoF, but instead got a knee jerk entirely away from them. 1-2 of these in Deso/Vabbi would have been stellar. I need to see a new Triple Trouble / Tequatl / Octovine / etc! There's a ton of polish throughout, but a little spot was missed with regards to the new weapons and armor. No collections guiding us to complete those and hunt down the content! In fact, a lot of them aren't even in the wardrobe until unlocked, which seems like a big oversight. I don't even care what the rewards are - but those collections are great for keeping my content consumption guided and checked, and the little ding when you finish them sure feels nice!
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