starlinvf.1358
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Posts posted by starlinvf.1358
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Its only the precursor crafting under the older systems that require you to have the items (because you have to salvage them). Most of the collections only require you to have the skin unlocked.
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@Cristalyan.5728 said:
@Cameryn.5310 said:@"Neutra.6857" said:Oh also, it is rather sad that people are basically saying that this game is in such a bad state that they need to monetize this feature.You don't pay a monthly subscription fee. So how on earth do you THINK games work without subscriptions? Pixie dust? Black magic? Fervent invocation of deity?Why are you bothering with this detail? It was not the playerbase who decided for this kind of business. It was ANet, And they claimed it is viable. The only thing a player should do was to buy the game. And we done exactly this. So, now we are called to pay for a wrong decision? Not our decision? HM?If I have to pay, I will pay to a game where I can find correct decisions.On the other hand, it was not the playerbase who invented the famousscarcity is good, but Anet. It may be a good moment to make them feel how good is this scarcity.Game access was pitched at "buy once", but that always existed in tandem with the Gem store providing on-going income. Guildwars 1 had a supporting store front providing armor skins, knicknacks, account upgrades and supplemental game content.... but it was also very obscured from the game's interface. GW1's business model was to sell whole campaigns as full priced games, which had the benefit of being able to seamlessly translocate characters between them as if they were part of a single game world, but each functioned as independent games that anyone could reasonably buy into as their starting point. This was almost entirely unique to GW1 at the time, as very few single player games supported character imports, and all MMOs had a singular, sequential, linear time line that all players followed (mostly due to how everything ties into leveling).
There was NEVER any doubt that the Gem store would be a bigger part of GW2, and had the potential to tap into the revenue potential of F2P games, but without having the baked-in necessity of leveling and gear enhancement required to keep up with end-game. As much as the gem store has fallen from grace due to changing cultural phenomena, its initial implementation was borderline pointless. There really wasn't any compelling reason to buy into the gem store, unless you were an absolute hardcore farmer that couldn't be arsed to find a merchant at least twice an hour. Magic find wasn't effective at the values we could obtain, Exp came in droves, drops in general were incredibly rare, and processing materials were merely a question of how many salvage kits you were willing to carry. Leveling was very fast, gear was easy to get, very little of the game was actually hard, and the majority of that was how effective you were as a player plus how good your buildcraft was.
See.... the original business model worked on the idea of a consistent rate of new players expanding the existing playerbase, and a % of those occasionally spending money. Thats called "Growth". What fucked everything up was a combination of Anet's slow development rate, and a rapid shift to whaling business models across the industry. Increased competition across the board fighting over the smallest piece of the pie, eventually gave way to the gambling systems that "CREATE" new whales that wouldn't otherwise exist in older, less subjective systems.
The model they proposed IS viable.... but it doesn't make incomprehensible amounts of money like the ones you see today. Players let it get this way, because the younger generations were exposed to monetization systems earlier in life, most of the game they play are based on this, and is complacent about it, because this is how its always been to them. Older gens that aren't gamers fell victim to similar traps in other areas of commerce, but the convenience they gain is at least tangible. Gen X grew up in a sweet spot where games were still considered products, and there existed an obvious separation in how marketing, game design, and reward systems worked. Marketing could sell you on a bad game, but it would never be confused for a good one. Now that marketing permeates into every facet of daily life, separating them is difficult, even when knowing how it works.
The first step to realizing how little you know is to admit that your decisions aren't always your own. Your choices are the product of multiple influences..... some from your own experiences, some manipulated through forced perspective, but never entirely in your control. Anet did NOT invent "scarcity is good"..... that has existed for as long as creatures had realized rare things often have value. But Anet only started leaning into it after a series of events proved it was stupidly effective, despite other existing systems being more generous to the players; or more specifically BECAUSE of it. Remember when I said drops used to be rare...... today we don't give a crap about 99% of things that we get, because all we do is process it into ubiquitous gold- and then complain about how we never have enough gold. Instead we're heavily fixated on things which are obvious bottle necks at a given moment, only to quickly forget they exist once the bottleneck is no longer a concern. Out of sight, out of mind. Because Scarcity keeps those bottlenecks at the forefront longer, we get frustrated into finding ways to bypass them as quickly as possible. But the irony is if that scarcity was removed, we have historically complained about having nothing worth doing. Our sense of catharsis is so damaged at this point, success is as much an enemy as desire. We want to Want, because "wanting" is the only thing giving anything value in this version of culture. Don't believe me? Just look at how how everything in our entertainment is sprawling sagas of on-going narratives, expanding catalogs, and endless loops of activities, despite our internal belief that what we want is a satisfying ending. In truth, we just gorge on things because of their novelty, and get bored with it once that novelty wears off. I remember beanie babies.... do you?
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@Abyssisis.3971 said:
I know, I would love to have traps be throwable again, but then they would start to look a lot like Wells instead of traps.
I don't see how thats a problem since Marks are like Wells, but work like traps. Traps in this game suffer from the dramatic difference in effectiveness based on entirely on how attentive the other player is. I'm ok with the counter play of avoidance, and the arena denial aspect if they are detected.... but what I have an issue with is how poorly they punish players who fall into it. Individually they are too weak, so you have to stack traps to make dangerous. But when stacked, they run the risk of being way too powerful as a burst. I hate to say it.... but they need the kind of obvious threat level of Scourge shades, to make staying in them a gamble. But they also shouldn't have the kind of front loading damage we saw with DH trapper in PvP.
Unfortunately there too many other factors creating overlapping issues with Rangers damage. Ideally I'd like to push for Ranger utilities to be less damage focused, and letting the weapons carry that aspect.... but its weapon damage is mediocre without some convoluted, and very specific trait and rotation set ups.
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in Mesmer
@Noodle Ant.1605 said:Was hoping that we’d get to provide some feedback about some of the changes like they tried to with WvW, especially considering the state that chrono is in, but that seems like a big nope now.
To be fair, they're still going ahead with the hot button scrapper changes- so its not like there was much hope to begin with
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@otto.5684 said:They do. However, there is no context where Signet of Courage is viable. Do not use it.. ever.
Doesn't matter really. Guard elites are the least important parts of their builds, and its only in specific situations they've ever mattered to some kind of rotation. You could make the PvP and Raid argument, but those no longer matter to the majority of players..... and you know exactly why. :P
And since theres never a good reason to use those skills, or ever be in a situation that uses those skills.... may as well take the one that gives a passive bonus.
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You have to go back in time to GW1, and make the Warrior trainer change his mind.
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@Kageseigi.2150 said:
@"alain.1659" said:but now, especially in wvw there are mounts.Power creep made thief irrelevant without gimmicky builds. But the stealth mechanic is bad, and in my opinion gw2 was never designed to handle a stealth class . Thus a class mechanic that only works well with stealth is still hurting the game.This. As someone who hadn't played WvW in QUITE a while, I went back to play a bit recently. EVERYBODY was running around on mounts. As a Thief who is used to outrunning everyone, I got left behind in the dust. So I started on my quest to finally get the mount also. Dealing with terrible timing (no commanders or zergs taking keeps whenever I was online), it was quite frustrating being so slow compared to nearly every enemy and ally.Personally, I don't like Anet's decision to put mounts into WvW... at least like how they did. WvW used to be inclusive, upscaling low level players to level 80. That's actually how I got most of my experience when I was a new player. If the HoT changes to WvW weren't enough, now, you are required to both own PoF AND go through achievement collections just to gain equal footing in WvW. I can understand gliding, because it's not THAT necessary, but mounts are basically required. But I digress...Anyway, mounts have dealt a severe blow to Thieves. Not only are they faster than Thieves, making ambushes difficult to prepare and execute, but their health and CC immunities have made Thief opening bursts rather pointless. So even if a Thief can actually manage to dismount an enemy, the Thief has already given up their presence and location (no more surprise), and the Thief has just blown its resources before the fight even begins.As for Stealth, also in WvW, the changes have made it very finicky. If you go anywhere in enemy territory, or even in friendly territory many times, you can easily get Revealed if you stay in Stealth for longer than 2 seconds. And if even if you're fortunate enough where there's nothing around that will automatically Reveal you, so many professions have been given abilities to Reveal you. If the Stealth Trap wasn't enough! Thieves can't even Reveal or see enemies that are in Stealth. Personally, I think one of the main problems with Stealth is that it's not exclusively a Thief mechanic. Too many other professions have it now... some that have more powerful bursts with no tell or warning whatsoever.Maybe Thief shouldve had something like an opening strike and a bonuses to attacking from behind or sides onlyThis also. The Thief needs an Opening Strike mechanic for assassin-style play. I'm not saying to make it deal more damage in itself, but it should be sufficiently debilitating to the target so that it can tilt the rest of the fight to be more in favor of the Thief. The flanking bonuses should also exist for the general Thief. I'd actually say makebaseline (remove the health requirement, and just make both bonuses based on flanking), and replace it with an Opening Strike-style trait... making the Critical Strikes line more of an Assassin line.Have been playing thief for a long time and I dont remember even a minute without people complaining about it and asking for nerfs. It is truly tiring. But for me this poor mans wow rogue mentalityIf a Rogue doesn't cause people to complain, it's not a proper Rogue ;-)This reminds me of the whole Alterac Valley rant from World of Rougecraft. .......and I'm not sure if thats intentional or not.
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@"Turk.5460" said:Just get rid of stealth on dodge, and now also the stealth on heal. No compensation is even needed. Neither of these need to be in the game nor are they needed for a DE to be effective. We have more than enough tools to gain stealth without them.
That doesn't address the real problem. Deadeye's concept should had never been on thief precisely because high stealth uptime, high spike damage and range are the trifecta of things you should never give one build where range has the kind of advantages this game gives it. Thats why core Thief is so heavily balanced around its stealth as a defense, while DE doubled everything to the point that it obtained "pre-balance Rouge" status. Shortbow mobility already gave thief a semi-broken level of advantage, and Steal's only counter balance is it can only brings you closer into the target. And thats on top of the fact limited stealth skills never stopped thief from having too much stealth via smoke/leap combos.
Its entire balance edict is "glass cannon" that sits on a razors edge. Because a "lucky shot" (when its visible) is the Only counter attack to something you can't effectively target. Stronger AOEs is another option, but that breaks the game in multiple other ways just to combat ONE class.... more specifically ONE MECHANIC. But simply increasing the number of reveals doesn't work, because that is thief's entire defense kit, and half of Memser's PvP defense kit. I'm even starting to think Dare Devil would had been a better baseline for core thief, since it has strong offensive and defensive options that don't revolve exclusively around stealth.
Malicious attacks are just regular stealth attacks, but stronger. The additional stealth access give them more opportunities to use it, even more power to disengage and change position at will, can attack from ANY position with the advantage, and the ONE thing that can properly expose them has too low access/low duration across the game, AND is either short ranged AOE or has to have them targeted while their already visible, AND on the off chance you do tag them with Reveal, they can purge it.
We're at the point where its effectively impossible to reign this in without utterly destroying either Thief Stealth or Deadeye as a concept.
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@Psycoprophet.8107 said:Boo hoo! Seriously?
sadly he is.....
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do we really need a list?
A. Break bars, by their design, convert all types of CCs into a form of secondary damage, basically defeating the point of CCs (hard and soft) in general since they only have a distinct impact in PvP and WvW (which is PvP, but bigger) to begin with.B. Stun Breaks eliminate any threat the break bar poses, because it bypasses the only state in this system in which you are vulnerable.C. Control conditions are not even what condition builds are aboutD. Hard CCs aren't even called Conditions, they're called Disables- and are NOT even affected by things that affect conditions globally.E. Both power and conditions builds have pretty much the same level of access to control skills; and having a condition focused build doesn't really change that.
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Switch to Renegade :P
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I always wondered what the ramifications of having the projectile bounce, and/or adding boon interaction into the baseline would be.
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Its worth pointing out that Shatters are at the Core of the majority of Mesmer's traits. Even with much of that being gutted over the years, its overall design makes it an illusion spawning engine, which in turn increases the power of the Shatters. Especially in PvP, where you crap out multiple illusions every few seconds.
Older Mirage builds used to camp clones for the IH, and older Mesmer builds used to camp Phantasms due to a poor design choice. Something I'm glad got changed, but currently acts as a problem due to a lot of other related balance SNAFUs that haven't gotten corrected in its wake. Folks complained about the Phantasm change; but ultimately it opened up a better opportunity to make better use of the Shatters for their trait synergy........ now we just need the Devs to undo all the damage they did to traits over the years, so we can put it all to good use again.
Rant aside, Mirage's dissonance in PvE mostly comes from the fact that Mirage itself is more tuned for PvP; while mesmer itself is a Dueling class at its core. PvP values both damage pressure and "low cap" burst damage, because the HP of opponents are relatively low (rarely higher then 25-27k HP), and puts a huge amount of value on controls and interrupts. PvE is almost the exact opposite, being solely obsessed with sustained damage output, because the Potato-type Mob AI behavior (which offers zero threat in their own right) is offset by making them an Attrition race. IE: HP Oceans, some reaching into the millions if not billions, and hits like a truck with the wind up time of 2 trucks.
When you start getting into raids specifically, the way they are designed gives a leeway in rotations that shorter fights (including fractals) don't allow for. The team comps also provide max boons, which is something rarely sustainable outside of Raids. This is where you start to find the bigger anomalies in DPS benchmarks, and why Raid balance actions frequently disrupts all the other game modes in a big way. Raid fights also tend to be very static or easily controlled, hence why long rotations are even possible. Aggregate damage is the primary goal, and is why the buildcraft goes out of its way to find the mathematically optimal DPS rotation for every build not doing something else; and those other builds exist to mainly to enhance the DPS of the Group.
PvP on the other hand is very opportunistic, and involves a lot of timing and counter play. The enemy has moments of weakness, and a decent amount of damage at the right moment can put them down for good. But unlike PvE, these opponents fight back, recover from damage, and can shut you down in return.
Now consider the difference between Daredevil and Deadeye in a PvE situation. DD is actually made for high sustain damage, where core Thief is made more for occasional bursts, and Deadeye doubles down on that. Thief had always struggled outside of PvP, because its burst damage was routinely lower then mob HP, and openworld always favored the ability to kill mobs in an opening attack. Daredevil did nothing to address that directly, but their sustained damage enables them to follow through with the opening attack and still come out on top. Deadeye (all incarnations) allowed them to increase their burst damage well above the HP of mobs (and now from range), letting them kite a target until they were ready to go in for an explosive damage combo.
When put into Raid, Daredevil's strength comes from having a very high DPS on a very simple rotation. This I can only assume was by design, because it doesn't have the ear marks of a raid build that outsmarted the Devs. Deadeye on the other hand has been both over its life time. Version 1 offered a universally applicable debuff that increased ALL incoming damage to a target..... which was a bad idea in hindsight when you look at the kind of DPS many builds were putting out BEFORE that modifier came into play. Version 2 made it a selfish damage buff, but its time based element made it that much easier to keep it part of a raid rotation, but actively discouraged fighting (and thus being at risk) in all other situations until the debuff was at max power. Version 3 (consume on stealth attack) makes it so much like Core thief, that its hard to tell the difference if not for the fact its spike damage is twice as big. Which is why everyone got rightfully upset when the Devs nerfed CORE THIEF'S sustained damage, to offset the high spike damage of Deadeye... because they thought deadeye DPS metrics were "a little too high in raids".
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@"monk seal.8079" said:Not salty, in fact very happy that we no longer have to deal with cheesy mantra power chronomancer shatter builds. In PvE, Druid players have had to adjust to changes made to that specializtion and the lack of fixes, so chronomancer players need to do the same. Why should they receive favored treatment over other professions? Mesmer profession had a major rework in 2018: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/27216/game-update-notes-february-6-2018
Only serious Mantra power builds allowed. (serious face)
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You HAVE to factor in Split and Mimic, because thats how they're currently doing it.
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so they fixed a bug you mean.....
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shhhhhhh...... we have a good thing going here!!!
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@"Omnicron.2467" said:Berserker is also fire based with sword/torch and longbow :)
Not to mention you can leverage the barbarian aesthetic, spikey armor, goes into rampage mode (2 of them if your berserker), and is "always angry"
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@Scoobaniec.9561 said:Remove trait system. Its the main cause of unbalanced stuff. Mobas dont have it for a reason
(Looks at the auxiliary item list) .......... does.... does he not know how that works?
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@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:If the writers removed every character someone didn't like, there would be no characters except, perhaps, the PC.
I say we get rid of the Commander...... In every major disaster we've witnessed through out this story, they all had one thing in common. (Dramatic Choya)
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You need to have the entire LS4 story package (all chapters), which is gonna cost you gems/$$ since you've already missed 2 opportunities to get the whole set for free.
Once you have that unlocked, you have 2 options on how to go about the story.
Option A: If you have time on your hands, I highly recommend doing the story in order. Path of Fire first, followed by Season 4 in order. If you don't have the 4 basic mounts (which you get through Path of Fire and its story), you'll NEED those to get around the maps for all of the post-POF Content blocks. While not required, Gliding from Heart of Thorns (which comes before POF) is defacto mandatory to keep up with most zergs, and should be obtained at some point. The down side is that you're gonna be on a 2 month lag before catching up with the rest of the community for the current story...... but thats going to be the cost of trying to get caught up on everything right at the start of a new Content season.
You might also lose time on Festivals- which I also recommend spending at least a week on when they go live, since theres huge opportunities to make gold needed for later on.
Option B is to try to skip/power through the basics and jump straight into the new season. This is viable, but will be difficult since you don't have all the movement abilities unlocked. If you have a good guild that can help you with either Mastery tracks, or Portal you past obstacles in the new map, this is probably the stronger option. Then in the downtime between major content releases (which is claimed to be faster this time around), you go and back fill tasks needed for specific unlocks.
I push for option A on the assumption that you're playing solo right now; and following the story arc will give you stuff you need in the order they were introduced, and how the maps were built. You can skip Griffon and Roller Beetle, as both require a significant amount of effort/time you can't afford if you're rushing. The Skyscale is not entirely necessary, but its utility is extremely high- making it a must-have if you're doing things "out of order".
Heart of Thorns is an entirely different animal. You have to keep in mind that the Devs were constantly changing how they handled content releases over the years..... so EVERYTHING after Core Tyria is wildly inconsistent. HOT in particular is a huge spike in combat difficulty, the maps are vertical, and intentionally difficult to navigate without all of the mastery tracks. Mounts bypass this in some places, but getting around is still very dangerous. Season 3(which comes after HOT) is a good source ascended trinkets, but Season 4 can provide those (though not as easily). POF's story line is fairly long, and the traversal time significant due to the size of the maps. Season 4 has a lot of story steps tied to Meta events; but most of these events are still actively farmed.
As for the Skyscale collection itself: you're looking at a roughly week long process, and you'll need a LOT of map currencies from all the LS4 maps to complete it. If you have Teleport to friend Stones available, you can potentially stream line the Currency time gate by teleporting to Dragonfall, and using the NPC there to trade Volatile magic for currencies from other maps in limited amounts per day. You'll also need most of the Core Tyria and POF maps at least partially explored, since one step is a Goose chase around the globe. You can bypass this with gold, but it gets expensive very fast.
For details, there are multiple guides reddit that give you a full run down on what you'll need, what prep work to do ahead of time, and what time gates will hit you in the face as progress through it.
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@Sicktanick.4369 said:
@Danikat.8537 said:If you're not planning on playing WvW together then your server doesn't matter at all. As long as you're in the same region (NA or EU) you can play together.If you want to play WvW together then they could join you, because Sanctum of Rall is a medium population server. Or if you want to move to a new server then I recommend finding one for you all to join, have them pick it as their starting server and then transfering your account to it. To do that you'll need to either pay gems or delete all your characters to get a free transfer. Everything else on your account (items in the bank, skins in the wardrobe, achievements unlocked etc.) will be saved but you will lose the characters themselves and things like bag slots you've bought for them or crafting professions you've levelled.What happens to say all my gold? From your post ive gathered that any xmogs you have are saved...what else is saved that is worth while? Or what do you actually lose by deleting all your characters? Like for example in WoW, if you delete a character, besides xmogs you lose absolutely everything about that character.If your accounts older then a year, its not worth deleting everything just for a free server transfer.
But SOR already a link server, so you'll be paired with other high pop servers to help balance population size. This rotation their paired with Fort Aspenwood, and doing pretty good in T3. Just have your friend join SOR so you can play in the same WvW match ups..... assuming you ever get into it.
Otherwise it doesn't matter beyond EU or NA zones, since PVE works on a Megaserver concept that has all regional players share the same map pools. Sometimes maps overflow into additional instances (especially during scheduled metas). But easily possible to stay together, or with the squad, by using the Join Map function from the party UI.
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@Sicktanick.4369 said:
@Danikat.8537 said:If you're not planning on playing WvW together then your server doesn't matter at all. As long as you're in the same region (NA or EU) you can play together.If you want to play WvW together then they could join you, because Sanctum of Rall is a medium population server. Or if you want to move to a new server then I recommend finding one for you all to join, have them pick it as their starting server and then transfering your account to it. To do that you'll need to either pay gems or delete all your characters to get a free transfer. Everything else on your account (items in the bank, skins in the wardrobe, achievements unlocked etc.) will be saved but you will lose the characters themselves and things like bag slots you've bought for them or crafting professions you've levelled.What happens to say all my gold? From your post ive gathered that any xmogs you have are saved...what else is saved that is worth while? Or what do you actually lose by deleting all your characters? Like for example in WoW, if you delete a character, besides xmogs you lose absolutely everything about that character.If your accounts older then a year, its not worth deleting everything just for a free server transfer.
But SOR already a link server, so you'll be paired with other high pop servers to help balance population size. This rotation their paired with Fort Aspenwood, and doing pretty good in T3. Just have your friend join SOR so you can play in the same WvW match ups..... assuming you ever get into it.
Otherwise it doesn't matter beyond EU or NA zones, since PVE works on a Megaserver concept that has all regional players share the same map pools. Sometimes maps overflow into additional instances (especially during scheduled metas), but possible to stay together, or with the squad by the Join Map function from the party UI.
Diffecult combat
in Players Helping Players
Posted
A thing has been making the rounds about how the difference between skilled and unskilled players performance is 10 fold. With the exception of HOT, very few areas of Open world and story are above trivial in difficulty. What most casual players don't realize is how important a cohesive build is to the game..... or that the bar for it is insanely low. Its not enough to "just pick" skills and traits on face value; you have to think about covering needs and looking for force multipliers.
Also..... you don't tank and spank past level 15. Dodges are universal for a reason, and only get more important as you move up the content blocks. For some people it took years to wrap their minds around it... but once you start to understand that the classes designs are made around PvP sensibilities, everything else starts to fall in place. Its also at this point that PvE's weaknesses become obvious, since the AI offers no challenge, and the majority of mobs are easily defeated by spike damage.
So if the game is "cheaply smashing" you, its pretty much guaranteed you're either not avoiding attacks, or your build has no damage. Both of those are easy enough to remedy.