starlinvf.1358
-
Posts
2,278 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Forums
Blogs
Events
Articles
Downloads
Gallery
Store
Posts posted by starlinvf.1358
-
-
A lot of skills have a requirement to be facing a target, or they'll count as a misfire....... unfortunately the game is very obtuse about which ones are like that. some skills will not let you cast if you're not facing them, others will cast and then not do anything because you're not facing at the time, some you can start casting then look away and the skill will firebackwards at the target, and some will misfire and immediately go on interrupt cooldown.
They've cleaned up a few skills that used to cast behind you, but weren't meant to.... and its made me realize the Devs might not comprehend how players view/utilize the camera controls, because the "About face" trick isn't bound by default, and thus gets argued over being "player skill", "an exploit", or "high level play", but has a very, very, very clear difference in combat performance when its used or not used. The same can be said about "walking through" enemies in PvP, since cleaves have a firing arc they detect hits in, and walking through enemies can cause them to miss.
While they are a logical, mechanical consequence of the game using geometric math for things.... it creates a bunch of obtuse situations that can make or break a moment in combat. That affects advanced game play to the point that I don't think the Devs appreciate how it affects the skill gap in PvP.
-
If all you do is Raid, you'll be disappointed regardless. Its not designed well enough as a concept to have the endless nature of WoW raids.
In terms of build comp, the short version is all of them have viability (technically always had).... but as far as the Raid community goes, everything has been progressively capped off in a way that its now boils down to "What the group argues over for which classes they want to roll that day". The Meta revolves around 2 major comps. ChornoTank or Fire Brigade.
ChronoTank is a Chrono/Chorno/Druid team, and is the main PUG comp due to its high compatibility with all other Raid builds, and universal applicability in all raid wings. FireBrigade is a Firebrand/Renegade pair to give Quickness and Alacrity over a larger area, requires healing and might from other slots, but allows for better fight specific optimization and hybrids. However, it does have difficulty in a few fights where they aren't recommended for.
On the subject of future proofing..... after the Devs touching chrono tank, nothing is safe. The more popular a build is now, the more likely they'll change it to make room for other builds to squeeze in..... and then nerf those.. and so on... and so on...
The first mistake people make is trying to make/find an archetype seen in other games, rather then see the game's strengths and play those to an advantage. The concept of "a main" is poison to this game, as you have the opportunity to get good with EVERY class, since they're easy to get setup, and the variety helps break up the monotony of farming "end game" over and over, weeks on end. But even saying that.... the game underutilizes its own features to a criminal level, making the slow rate of content releases that much more pronounced. The late section of HOT raids start to get more interesting mechanics, as are many of the POF fights..... but there isn't enough variety in total, and what remains of the raid community has done them so many times, and now so well practiced, I'm pretty sure at least half do it while watching Netflix.
Secondly... Progression for Progression's sake (as are chasing shinnies) is a dead end mind set. The game has tried repeated to "add more progression", but they realize doing so in the way other games do will frustrate the largely casual player base and still do nothing to aid retention of "Hardcore" players that blow through "goals" within a week of them being added. Artificial gating delays the onset, but ultimately compounds the problem when the wall is hit.
By looking at whats happening with classic WoW, the "progression" system as we see it today offers nothing of real value to the players. Players need problems to solve that aren't just mathematical in nature..... its why gear treadmills are the only thing keeping contemporary WoW-like games alive, and why they die off so suddenly once they can't keep up with the playerbase's insatiable need for progress in the absence of catharsis.
Now as for class choice.... if you're trying to satisfy a messiah complex, ChronoTank is the one job that destablizes the fastest. And not for the reasons you expect/hope for. Chrono team comps are based on 3 supports that enables the DPS builds to run completely glass. If you're not familiar with this yet.... the ENTIRE PURPOSE of the Trinity design is to shield the DPS builds from everything else; and its done in such an artificially dumb way, that it openly invites disaster. Hybrid comps are actually a lot stronger in practice, but have to be more specifically tailored to the Encounter. Given the difficulty of finding that kind of flexibility in LFG, partitioning the DPS from the Supports in the group comp makes it much easier to fill with Randos. This also applies to fractals, since front loaded DPS shortens fights enough that "tank" type jobs don't even need to exist.
ChronoTank itself is actually the unintended result of the game's combat system highlighting a situation where Duelist builds (which are made for 1v1) are also the optimal build type for Tanking. Simply put, basic game design heavily favors "Damage avoidance" over "Damage Soaking", and this game's active combat system gives players full control over it. The ONLY reason you don't see this in every Tank and Spank format RPG, is that defenses tend to be passive and probability driven. That lack of control, compounded by common "level disparity" penalties, means players have no means of substituting their "stats" with mastery of game play. In fact, this is on purpose, as many players could fundamentally break the whole combat system with tricks that would be insanely obvious in FPS games. ... and we have 5 years worth of FPS/RPG hybrids that proved it.
While we're on the subject.... the Meta in this game is heavily skewed in favor of DPS. But given the level of flexibility in the build system, DPS is cost/benefit analysis for other functions. As a result.... everything is DPS by default, and its simply a question of how much DPS they are trading off to fill another function. Theoretically any class can tank raid bosses effectively. What makes Chrono Meta is potential for Role Compression. A Chrono is Tank, Buff, Group Defense, and Add Control in a single package, that would normally take at least 3 slots in any other game. There is currently 5 benchmark builds just for Chrono Tank, plus 2 more 2nd Chrono in mirror comp, each of which represents thresholds for optimal trade offs between personal DPS vs Aggro control and additional support functions.
As far as this game goes.... how much you enjoy getting into it depends entirely on how much you're willing to "Unlearn" all the arbitrary stupidity of Trinity based games, and Learn all the arbitrary stupidity of Action Combat/RPG hybrid games. Personally I prefer the arbitrary stupidity of the latter, since it forces Devs to address things at a mechanical level, and offers much greater possibility for creative solutions via comprehension of the game's internal design logic.
-
@rdigeri.7935 said:
@starlinvf.1358 said:Gooooollllleeeeeeeeeeemmmmmmmem Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiideeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeers!!!!I'm intrigued, please elaborate ;)Its been on my wish list ever since I found out the Hazmat suit was a thing. I've been floating 2 ideas for it.....
One is based on a GW1 idea I had, in which I inadvertently predicted scrapper Gyros, that used to set of clock work drones and a clockwork golem as a platform to blend the Necro and Ranger minion mechanics.
The other is basically Scruffy meets Titan Fall- Given how modern golems are all launched into combat (see Golem cannon in Straights of Devastation), and a lot of newer ones can accept pilots. The pilots utilities vary between personal defense, command type skills, and Area support skills (which also enhance the golem's ability). When piloted, those same skills gain additional trait bonuses.
I could just never figure out the optimal control scheme for the Auto pilot, wheither to design around it be a disposable asset, and if it should work on the idea of multiple golem types, or have one golem that reconfigure itself on the fly.
-
Mesmers have the canon ability to bend time and even reality.
"Naruto"....... you're thinking too small.
-
@"Taygus.4571" said:But you can technically earn everything in the gemstore by doing whatever content you want.
you're not pigeon holed into grinding the same dungeon or boss, you can do whatever metas you wnat or fractals or dungeons and change gokd to gems.
I prefer this way.Do you really need to be told go here go there, fight this boss for a lucky drop or craft these things to enjoy playing the game/the reward?
That doesn't hold as much weight as it used it, given how most of pre-outfit era Gem Store items were Convenience based..... and that itself was essentially Anet Racketeering the game design around it. Once Outfits hit, the Gem store has become increasingly aggressive over time. Not "Antagonistic", but highly aggressive in how its its been restructured from offering Finite upgrades (has a max cap per character/account), and its new direction almost entirely "Reoccurring spending opportunities". In fact, their so confident in this new model, they've almost directly marginalized every aspect of the original business model's key money makers, and spun it as "making the game better for players"... despite the fact they refused to do a lot of things previously, BECAUSE it was core to what the Gem store offered.
My gripe is the new gemstore is trying to motivate you to spend more, at an increasing frequency, because the new paradigm has no upper limit on a per character basis. You can only sell 4 bag slots per character, only 2 crafting slots per account, only 16 bank tabs per account, and maybe a set of unbreakable tools per character..... but you can sell an endless amount of Outfits, glider and mount skins, and the Glyphs just added a whole new dimension of how many times they can get you to buy more unbreakable tools, despite having more sets then you have characters for.
I've also have growing concerns about the incremental nature of the bypass items, that not only used to be connected to in-game rewards and events, but also pushing toward allowing players to be less engaged at a higher pace, rather then more engaged at a comfortable pace, and still parting with their money at whats almost an effective loss. This is a side effect of most of the Player's focus being centered around Wealth and Item Value, and general devaluing of effort. Like how there was another thread earlier complaining about the cost of Mystic coins and Clovers, yet proactively denounces the multiple ways to get additional coins & clovers, almost of all of them more cost efficient, simply because he refuses to invest the surprisingly low effort to start doing a daily routine of Fractals, Leyline, Teq and AP. Which I find hypocritical more on the fact that the gold yield for Dailies and Farms are so high for such little effort, yet tries to make a case that MC are too expensive to afford, when his goal is a Legendary weapon, which is a gold sink by its nature. And then tries to close his opening post as the project not being a big deal, and he'll abandon it.... yet opened on a rant about how he got bad RNG while rolling x10s on the clover recipe, claimed the its well below "the promised %", based on a sample size of 10 rolls.
^Its stuff like this that makes me worried that promoting a path of leaster resistance, when we're already optimized for it to begin with, is causing even more players to disconnect from the reality of the game, and making their bubbles smaller. "you can do whatever metas you wnat or fractals or dungeons and change gokd to gems."..... yet it seems like people to avoid expending effort that would otherwise facilitate that. And part of me wonders how intentional this is.......
-
@Ashen.2907 said:
@"starlinvf.1358" said:Paper beats Rock, Scissors beats Paper. Scissors also happen to beat Rock. That is until Rock gets its Espec- at which point it becomes an unstoppable killing machine; that also beats Paper. And would beat Scissors. But it can't find Scissors, cuz Scissors be invisible.And thats called "Balance".PS: Revenants are Mushrooms.Kudos for making me laugh out loud.Now I have to clean the coffee off of my monitor.I can't take credit for creating that. It comes from a WoW video not much older then the game itself (the map was released in 2005). The whole Rougecraft series is hilarious if you know some common MMO class tropes.... but its even funnier if you've played WoW and know what the players were like back then.
(balance)
(compilation)
> @TheGrimm.5624 said:@SinisterSlay.6973 said:Yeah sorry when I try wvw. I don't feel any sense that I am helping. Your right, my open world build is probably the problem. But then this thread seems to be trying to say that open world builds should be used for wvw.The primary reason I don't raid or wvw is because you have to follow a meta, and I find that boring. I much prefer to make my own build using my own research and accounting for my own abilities. I find pvp decently fun, even if I am not great at it.Just a side note, I am a PvXer, and have played WvW for about 5 years. I would offer a different thought to you. I have 20 toons for WvW each geared out differently and doubtfully few would be considered meta. WvW and custom builds work well together but knowing what you can do with them may take time. But no you don't have to run meta. Most Pugmanders would prefer you are running meta so they can set some expectations of what they can do with you but a number of servers run heavy pug non-metas as well and do fine.The funny part is whatever build I create for a WvW will be their gear set in non-wvw settings as well. Once you find a build that works for you in WvW it might work rather well in other game modes as well. Good hunting!Its hard to blame then though. Damage in WvW scales quickly AGAINST the target in a way that you NEED a back bone of Group sustain that practically demands over-compensating. Open world builds are heavily skewed toward glass damage, with only a few minor tweaks to mitigate One-shot situations.... everything else about Open world is an attrition war. PvP and WvW Roaming highly values sustain, because everything you go up against can continuously dish out as much (if not more) damage as you can.
But WvW zergs are a whole different animal. The aggregate damage and CCs put out by groups as small as 10, can easily overwhelm builds which lack a continuous source of Stability, Cleansing and Healing. No single build can do that without giving up all its damage. Which is why GvG and Zerg comp are even more strongly reinforced then Raid comps, because even the collateral damage a squad can generate is upwards of 50-100k DPS.... over 4 times the HP most builds can even have. In fact... its not even that uncommon to go up and down multiple times in the span of a few seconds mid-fight, or even go straight past down state due to the volume of incoming damage.
Ultimately, the WvW Group meta isn't so much about how damage is put out, so much as how long sustain can last against what the enemy is putting out. More damage increases the pressure.... but without sustain of your own, isn't doesn't take long for their damage to outlast your personal defenses.
I order of priority, you need a support backbone for each sub-group.... usually 1 Firebrand and 1 Healing Scrapper minimum. Second priority is Sustained AOE damage and Boon Corruption, of which Scourge does both in excess. Second is a practical requirement for Third, which is Hard CCs and Spike damage. Without corrupts removing stability, CC and Spike damage fail to connect. This is why most groups need at least 15 people with this comp layout to support PUGs of any other type; as no other builds can provide this level of Core Sustain, while also countering it.
I've seen coordinated groups of other builds operating as auxiliary to the main group comp. But its excessively hard to coordinate PUGs, as many aren't capable of keeping up with call outs and reactions, and too many refuse to join voice comms (or refuse to the Comms the group is using) despite how much it improves team direction. Jerks are jerks, regardless. But most PUGmanders live in a space where everything happens 3 seconds behind them, when it only takes half a second to utterly destabilize a group. Its like trying to play in sPvP with 3k ping against 5 Mirages..... hard enough on its own, made even more impossible by latency.
But looping back around for a second, I also want to point out another common problem with PUGmanders on nearly every server. Many of them have massive Egos, and the level at which they can keep it in check varies more then rando builds in a World boss fight. Because of this, most are insanely prone to micromanagement.... which is exactly what you don't want to be doing in groups the size GvG and Zergs run at. I've only met one commander who never had an egocentric melt down when they were beat by groups who were obviously doing better then them. Some are better at managing it then others..... but it never surprises me now, how fast a commander falls apart when they get frustrated. And in that same set of statistics, that one exception is the only one I've met that knows how to delegate. Most commanders can't handle other voices talking when they're focusing...... The exception has 3 voices talking over each other, with each of the 3 directing their own subgroup, and playing off each other's movements. Unsurprisingly, a lot of GvG groups operate similar to this; but usually with less voice activity, since they know how to read each other's movements.
Another issue, largely due to the micromanagement style, is a lot of Commanders not knowing how to handle Strike groups. Normally Rangers and Deadeyes are summarily shut down by the amount of sustain and reflect the typical WvW comp has. Other similar high impact, low target builds also fall into this category. While incredibly difficult, its entirely possible to coordinate a subgroup of PUGs to do things like Focus fire, cut lines, and/or Havoc high value targets and targets of opportunity in an enemy zerg. The hardest part is teaching them how to deal/bypass reflects. But once set up and practiced a bit, they are surprisingly effective at gnawing away at the enemy forces. Its like watching Dolphins/Whales break up a school of fish. Too bad it requires a Lieutenant to do their job, and PUGs willing to learn and listen.... 2 things most commanders lack trust in.
-
@Ashen.2907 said:
@"starlinvf.1358" said:Paper beats Rock, Scissors beats Paper. Scissors also happen to beat Rock. That is until Rock gets its Espec- at which point it becomes an unstoppable killing machine; that also beats Paper. And would beat Scissors. But it can't find Scissors, cuz Scissors be invisible.And thats called "Balance".PS: Revenants are Mushrooms.Kudos for making me laugh out loud.Now I have to clean the coffee off of my monitor.I can't take credit for creating that. It comes from a WoW video not much older then the game itself (the map was released in 2005). The whole Rougecraft series is hilarious if you know some common MMO class tropes.... but its even funnier if you've played WoW and know what the players were like back then.
(balance)
(compilation)
-
If you're gonna complain about something like its a game ruining thing, at least make it meaty. This is like a fan fiction level of antagonism...... aka the threat is actually just mild inconvenience, but needs to be played up because the Victim complex needs an injustice to decry.
Theres at least 5 things about Mystic coins worse then what you're describing...... and those aren't even holding a candle to the actual, difficult to avoid bottle necks in Legendary weapon production. I can make 500-1000 gold just selling crap during ONE festival; thats enough to cover the MC cost in the span of 2 weeks.
So tell me again how your sample size of "10" supersedes everything we know about Statistical Analysis practices?
-
@"wefal.8426" said:I thought Arena Net didnt want to have dedicated roles such as tank/healer.Yet we see this clearly in raids and in fractals.
In raids, almost every group will ask for chrono tank, chrono supp, druid healer, warrior banners. You only have 6 flex spots.In fractals, almost all groups ask for firebrigade. Only 3 flex spots.
I remember years ago before GW2 launched, Arena Net spoke about how they want to step away from dedicated roles, meaning everyone can play whatever roles they want.
Either my memory serves me wrong or Arena Net made dedicated roles.
They dismantled the Trinity at a class level. But, ultimately, designing Raids around classic raid/dungeon structure (which is what the Holy Trinity is built specifically to be a part of) demanded those roles be filled by players.
If it isn't clear at this point, the Holy Trinity itself is a support framework to protect DPS builds in an Attrition war. Because the system is unstable by nature, the group comp only builds in what is the minimal required safety net, and pours its remaining resources into whatever makes the fight as short as possible.
In GW2's Dungeons, damage could bypass the need for any other type of build..... and was so effective, it was (and still is) the optimal strategy. There no shortage in irony in how this effectively eliminated the roles of Healer and Tank, yet shut out even more classes then a Hard trinity does.
And for Bonus Irony: The Chrono is not even a Tank Spec. Its just that Mesmer is so strong in 1v1 Scenarios, its conventional defenses heavily loaded into Weapons and Shatters, Chrono outgoing boons being mostly loaded on Utility skills, and most Bosses falling for the "Tank" strategy, made the Chrono a perfect storm for role compression. I'm pretty sure the Devs hadn't intended it to work this way when they concepted it, but has been forced to roll with it ever since. We then took that idea, and built shaped the meta of every other game mode around this game breaking approach.
-
@SeikeNz.3526 said:
@Aaralyna.3104 said:This will break the game. Fighting mounted (especially when ranged or with minions/pets/clones, and even more so on a flying mount like a skyscale) will make players never get off their mounts. This means that a chunk of gw combat system will be ignored (combo fields). Next to that, it will give a group of players an unfair advantage over new players and players without an expansion (yes those exist). We can already see how uninviting WvW became for that group when the warclaw became a thing, and how that same group cannot keep up with events as they are not as fast as mounted players and ofcourse they cannot climb that much either. So you will have to stick with the 1 skills of mounts (be it raptor swipe or a skyscale coming to your aid). They did nerf this damage already as well because it was too op. And finally, what is so wrong with ground combat where you actively have to dodge, move around, use combo fields etc...They indeed added some flavor in Dragonfall but they kept it there, as should imo (and those mobs can still take you out of the sky at least).i dont see how this will break the game, i will not use my char skills while mounted, i will just use the mount skills while mounted, this will be like a engi tool kit, so i don't have the same power as a unmounted character it's just for the fun and different skills, since after skyscale anyone use others mounts? so every mount will have a different utility in combat and all of them will be useful, also the idea is if the mount die you can't mount it again unless you are out of combatThats failing to acknowledge how things always play out around here. Alt skills have historically existed on a razors edge between the Defacto Best in Slot choice, and utter worthlessness. If mounted combat is even remotely practical, players will favor it over their own skills. This is because the mount is bar-none the strongest defensive option players have in the game..... strong evades, is effectively a second life bar that eats a downed state in your place (and the stun can be bypassed by a stun break), best mobility by design, and the flying mounts exploit the fact that most non-projectile attacks can't touch them. On the other end of the spectrum, Mounts have terribly low HP (by design) to handle combat, and the fact that their dynamic with aggressive AOE (which is common in the POF maps they're made for) is one of circumnavigation, and not engagement. The entire concept behind Dismount skills is to be a strong opening INTO combat, since the mounts were never meant to be sustainable DURING combat. And as-is, the dismount skills are borderline too strong against CC vulnerable mobs, and ineffective against CC-immune ones.
Mounts are meant to do 3 things..... Map Navigation, Evasion and Pursuit. Once you start dipping into combat, the delicate isolation its managed to retain is immediately lost; and now you have thousands of issues to address in various sequence.
Next, you run into all the same problems we've seen with Gliding combat. Bloodstone Fen is the ONLY map with access to general use gliding combat skills...... and the optimal strategy in the map is to stay airborne and bomb things to death. The ONLY thing that manages to keep that in check is amount of Anti-Air built into the White mantle. As such, the areas where they aren't found you see players gliding whenever possible to avoid being attacked by ground units. Mounted combat is either going to be too strong (or strong at range) to make up for the fragility of the mounts, or the mounts too fragile to be worth risking the engagement.
If they are to exist at all, I find the existing approach of being Event specific to be capable of avoiding abuse, where as free use effectively can't. It also has the added benefit of allowing for a much wider range of abilities
-
@"SinisterSlay.6973" said:As a PvE only player. I tried WvW during the warclaw thing. Hated every minute of it. The balance and logistics is just so terrible.
Just because your openworld build was dying to things that could actually fight back, doesn't mean the balance is terrible. WvW is the only game mode with even a remote sense of balance left in it. Its simple Rock Paper Scissors..
Paper beats Rock, Scissors beats Paper. Scissors also happen to beat Rock. That is until Rock gets its Espec- at which point it becomes an unstoppable killing machine; that also beats Paper. And would beat Scissors. But it can't find Scissors, cuz Scissors be invisible.
And thats called "Balance".
PS: Revenants are Mushrooms.
-
@"WhatLiesBeneath.9018" said:No because WvW and PvP maps needs to be balanced in a whole different way, PvE maps doesnt need any balance at all.
It goes even further then that. WvW maps are fundamentally designed for ground movement only, and special considerations are made for gliding decent. All of the PvE mounts can break this in a way that its counter productive to any type of event design built around the map layout. Preventing that by obstacles addresses that issue, but compounds a problem in WvW that would create too many choke points for the wrong reasons. The only way this would work is to disable all the mounts, except Warclaw, so all the traversal conflicts are avoided. However, side lanes then start becoming a point of contention. PvP/WvW maps need to funnel players around longer paths to control timing, PvE maps on the other hand need bypasses because players expect to be able to avoid things. To this day, I see still people complaining about Drytop's routing and WP discovery sequence, since anything not in a straight line is consider "obtuse" in people's eyes.
Edge of the Mists "functionally" does what the OP is talking about. But WvW players largely hate fighting in it, because the fight guilds keep perpetuating the stigma that all WvW fights should be Open Field GvG. And PvE players hate moving around it, because you can't bypass obstacles (by design).
And for the record... PvE maps actually need a lot more balance, because players tend to have, and expect, more freedom of movement within them. Ignoring the need for it doesn't mean the need ceases to exist. For instance, both the Roller Beetle and Skyscale maps are different from all previous maps in order for those mount's abilities to make sense. The Roller Beetle tracks in Tyria also lead to a few small modifications to the map, to ensure the beetles had a clear path to follow. Griffon breaks almost every map up to when the Roller Beetle was introduced, but is almost stymied in the maps after it. Dragon Fall has a lot uneven obstacles, mixing long vertical and horizontal requirements that the Skyscale does handle but the Griffon can't.
Then theres the meta events. Lane arrangement, lane partitioning, side lanes, congregation points, split phases, intended traversal, mastery traversal, fight mechanics, siege mechanics (if present), boss mechanics, reinforcement method (respawn distance, time to travel, etc).... all areas which are very easy to mess up by themselves, and even easier to mess up in event synergy. Just looking at older World Boss fights and Core Tyria metas compared to Newer metas, or even "fixed" versions of existing ones. Orr is a time capsule of various half finished ideas, cleaver attempts to fix events without changing them, and events that break on a regular basis. Its entire structure was designed as part of a back to back push/pull through various sections; but had no inherent reset event/timer, and no mechanism to make them flow smoothly between maps. Orr today has most of its event chains isolated from each other, which made it a prime farming spot for a number of years (including during HOT).
I can say without a doubt that the LS maps are wildly inconsistent in how successful their meta's were as one-time experiences, much less repeat ones. And thats ignoring how mounts affected all of HOT/LS3's Content block.
-
@Ben K.6238 said:
@TheGrimm.5624 said:Standing straight......mmmmm...They look some much better when they do. Love my Charr but it does make my back twig sympathetically from time to time.@Ashantara.8731 said:@"Regh.8649" said:What's a bit off are the proportions, our paws can barely reach our noses…. and it look a bit wierd.Either shorten the neck or lengthen the armsNoooo! The arms are already overly long! :oBoth of these are the result of them not being generic catgirls.Humans can not comfortably or efficiently walk on all fours because our arms are too short, and our skull morphology would make it very uncomfortable to look ahead if we did. Charr would not have these problems because of the different spine shape and arms that are much closer to the length of their legs.The problem is you can't have it both ways with a race that looks like this. If they are remodelled so they don't look ridiculous when standing upright in the classic GW1 Flame Legion pose, they'll look ridiculous when running on all fours (which was not implemented in GW1, so this would not have surfaced at the time).Flame Legion used to practice Eugenics. They also developed upright fighting styles to intimate humans, since humans fear things taller then them (also works on Orges) The obsession with being everything humans fear got so ludicrously out of hand, it figures Charr raised closer to the home land (and didn't employ human targeted intimidation tactics) were not only better fighters, but also beat the Flame Legion in spite of their huge magical advantage. Pyre Fierceshot was like "f*** this noise", and arrowed the Shamans to death.
-
@TheGrimm.5624 said:
@"Arzurag.7506" said:Crafting is quite complex and it´s indeed quite the nuisance that you need so many different part-items for just one weapon/armor-piece.But it´s the way it is and it won´t be changed so why bother complaining about it ? The community surely won´t vote for a change.I am asking mostly due to questioning myself here, but what about it would you say is complex? I am biased because I like more involved crafting systems and one the first ones I encountered had you mining ore to make nails all the way to putting everything together needed to craft a sailing ship and if you didn't calculate it on a spreadsheet you would lose money when selling fully crafted things. A mighty Hail! to any old time Pirates of the Burning Sea peeps out here.I think hes confusing "lots of UI lists" as being the same thing as "complex". Crafting in this game has a very simple structure of 4s.... as in any crafting step is made from 4 items or less. The information overload comes in the fact that there are a lot intermediary steps that flow in multiple directions; and I've noticed a trend where people can't really keep track of things more then 2 steps removed from their end goal. Like to make a magic robe you combine 10 Cloth scraps, a sack of magic dust, and "The Eye of all Seeing voyeurism +7" to get a +7 Robe of Teleportation..... which physically has 10 times more material when worn by a Male Mage and 50 times less material when worn by a Female Mage, despite base materials effectively being half a yard of fabric in total. And somehow the female version also got metal bits in it, despite the crafting recipe having no metal in it.
Oddly enough, a lot of crafted items in this game are worth less then their base materials, just because our gear system has a lot of dead-end scenarios. Prior to Asc gear, every tier other then T6 was near worthless. And Leather was mere coppers until you needed them insignias, because only a small % of players were using Med Classes on launch
-
@Acheron.4731 said:
@Zaklex.6308 said:@Icemanfrost.5428 said:@Ayrilana.1396 said:@Ashantara.8731 said:@Ayrilana.1396 said:The crafting NPC’s give a brief lesson on how to craft for each of the professions. Unfortunately players tend to skip over this. You also learn about it when you hit either level 12 or 13 I think.I don't recall them elaborating on any specifics that would help you understand the whole system in order to master it with ease.I never said anything about them helping you master it. As I had said, they give you a brief lesson on how to craft for each profession.It's not very helpful if this "brief lesson" doesn't help you master it.@Ashantara.8731 said:@Icemanfrost.5428 said:@Ayrilana.1396 said:@Ashantara.8731 said:@Ayrilana.1396 said:The crafting NPC’s give a brief lesson on how to craft for each of the professions. Unfortunately players tend to skip over this. You also learn about it when you hit either level 12 or 13 I think.I don't recall them elaborating on any specifics that would help you understand the whole system in order to master it with ease.I never said anything about them helping you master it. As I had said, they give you a brief lesson on how to craft for each profession.It's not very helpful if this "brief lesson" doesn't help you master it.Exactly! :lol:To both, you Master it by doing it...that's the whole purpose of becoming a Master Craftsman, it means you've learned how to craft by actually crafting...there's discovery for a reason.Does that require a Masters degree?Only to get to 500.
-
@"Irreverent.3594" said:If it comes to that then it should be two options: current one and toogle. Then everyones happy.
Everyone says that, but then no one would be happy when "it didn't do the thing I intended, even though its acting exactly like its supposed to". Sometimes you want it to do something, sometimes you don't..... and when the difference is you escaping or getting dismounted and falling to your death, people still blame the game for not reading their minds correctly.
This is why something "simple" like a toggle eventually leads to contextual modifiers. Because its never as simple as turning it on or off.... theres this edge case where I'm out of flight juice, and the toggle is too far out of the way (because of the other 30 toggles you have), but I want it to do this specific thing, because I'm using flight based attack skills (coming soon) and have to time them, while also being chased by a rolling blizzard, and am flying toward an object where the collision mesh is different then visual mesh, and want to grab once, charge jump, then slide face the rest of the way up. .... Which is still wrong, because you were supposed to glide down to a spot at the bottom of the wall... but you being the player (and the player is always right), decided up and over was the solution, despite 5 previous failed attempts at.
You don't think stuff like this happens all the time? At least a dozen personal stories have situations where a particular type of build works against the player, Griffon and Springer gets used (and goes nowhere) because players are just used to going "over" things to bypass them, and a LOT of fights and JPs where you "forgot to untoggle" your toggle sets you back to the beginning... and could had been avoided entirely if you simply made this other way your normal reaction.
And people wonder why games have such complicated keybind menus now days. A few is fine. But games that continue longer then a year never stop at a few. Consider how many functions have been added to THIS game alone in the last 7 years. Especs and the Fbar, Special Action key, Mounts, Mount special actions, and Novelties, each with extra keys needed and half aren't even bound by default. And yet people still go on and on about wanting Consumable Hot bars, extra Hotbars, Inventory Hotbars, Mount hotbar, function hotkeys for toggles, and toggles for toggles so you don't accidentally toggle at the wrong time when reaching for another toggle.
-
@"Luthan.5236" said:It's normal that this happens. You have players that want new stuff. So elite specs got added and stuff got changed. Might change even more if they make newer expansions in the future. Makes sense to have older content easier - so new players can catch up faster if they want. The latest content should be balanced to the latest strength of the chars/professions.
But thats not what happened. While I don't think the OP understand the context of what actually happened, the fact of the matter is Core Tyria suffers from 2 decisions that deeply ingrained in its design, and one counter balancing decision that could address things, but they refuse to reverse.
The problem is that Mobs AI isn't that intelligent, and ultimately can't be due to nature of the skill system used on both sides. HOWEVER, its been shown repeatedly that Mobs can be given skills that mimic player combat behaviors, and have been universally recognized as being much harder to fight as a result. But this is criminally underutilized due to the "tank and spank" mentality of Migrant players from other franchises, and they get immediately frustrated when enemies do simple things like evade, block, blind, or change position on their own.
There was a point in GW1 where they introduced a couple of very simple combat awareness behaviors into the AI system, and players had substantial difficulty responding to it after years of ingrained training to "disable and unload" against mob groups. GW1 being more traditional "stand and cast" with tab targeting, and straight up trinity, many skills were never designed or tuned to deal with a moving target. Thus when AI did simple things like "move out of AOE circles", or "stop attacking things with retaliation-type effects", or "attack the healer first", Players had trouble coping with the multitasking involved with both attacking and defending at the same time.
When GW2 was in beta, the AI displayed a significant amount of evasive behavior when in combat. They move out of AOE circles, ranged mobs will put distance between them and melee opponents, and they'll run when in too much danger. Some of these are seen in a lot of neutral mobs in open world; and its something players forget exist, and then complain about when it happens. And from that feedback they decided to lobotomize the AI, and just have them stand there and take it like good little lambs to the slaughter. To make up for this, mob HP and Damage output has to be overtuned to pose any kind of a minor threat to a competent player.
When HOT was built on the mandate to provide "more challenging content", the Devs had the right idea, but then executed it in the wrong order. I was one of many that hated feral Mordrem in the Maag wastes, largely because fighting them was insanely oppressive. Once you learned their weaknesses it became more manageable... but a lot of that was underminded by how Core Skills were set up at the time. Modrem are ultimately vulnerable to various types of hard and soft CCs; but a glaring problem is Core builds had poor access to these due to PvP balance. So we have this issue where we could suppress an enemy, but not long enough to kill it, nor wide enough to deal with a group. The modrem on the other hand had hard CCs in spades, tons of AOE, and way too much HP for their threat level. The net result was a Raid-esque scaling problem where "enough people" can generate the CCs and Damage necessary to suppress a whole wave of mobs before they can get attacks off.... but once one of those attacks get through, the player group's dynamics start to collapse, and the Modrem advantage snow balls as more of them get on the offensive. Players didn't have sufficient build options or skills to deal with that magnitude of reversal; and wouldn't until Especs showed up.
All of this is important to keep in mind, because the game went out of its way to keep Older zones relevant by using Side Kicking, Drop scaling, World bosses and Living World, all in order to actively get low and high level players to coexist as peers. Most games would have twink/gank dynamic between disparate levels blocks (some as small as 3 level difference), which forces players to follow level progression..... which is why theres such a massive genre wide obsession with "End Game", being at End game, and only focusing on End Game. And to its credit, Side Kicking in GW2 worked brilliantly. At least until Especs gave players too much access to everything, and Core Tyria was never retrofitted to accommodate.
THIS, above all else, is why Core Specs need a massive ground up overhaul. Increasing the functional capacity of Core specs opens the door to address a multitude of issues all over the game. Retooling Especs so they aren't so heavily power loaded, Updating Core to contend with Especs in PvP/WvW, Updating Core Tyria to take advantage of the stronger combat dynamics (adding more challenge back, while also developing a better learning curve for players), Fixing the power dynamics problem between Classes in Core, and laying down a frame work to make the system more adaptable and resilient to future updates.
Theres such huge disparity between Pre-HOT content and Post-HOT content, if I hadn't been there myself all these years, I too would assume all that old content was meant to be skipped/forgotten. And frankly.... the fact this continually posed a problem for so many MMOs, is Reason Enough to forcibly change that trend. Given the level of we wax nostalgic about "the old days", and how "everything was better" (even though it wasn't), preserving the relevance of old content has nothing but benefits to the player base.... even if we don't utilize it all the time.
-
@"crepuscular.9047" said:unlike linear progression games where all you care about is spamming skills and managing the resource pool
GW2 is about learning the mob mechanics, dodging, build setup base on the mobs you will be fighting, so there's a big learning curve
and Anet doesnt do a good job at teaching players, can you believe people still doesnt know how to do breakbars?it seems like Anet approach to people who are unwilling to learn and complaining about 'OMG! it's too hard, nerf or I will quit!' is giving more firepower, creating power creep, then have flow on effect to other areas of the game like PvP and WvW
This is the general problem, and why the 80boost is paradoxical in practice. For most games the early game and end game is only differentiated by "numbers". Stats on gear, number skills and talent tree stuff, size of parties, how much damage you do, and how much damage you can eat before dying.
GW2 is largely the same on the surface.... but theres many more concepts that are utterly abstract or non-existent in the WoW format, that this game gives you active control over. Evasion, Blocks, One-shot boons and conditions, and an extremely consistent rate of lethality through most of the game. HOT requires you to understand these upfront, but Core doesn't teach you the skills, because the way core content blocks were designed, it rarely mattered. POF suffers this same issue, but in a different way. Which is why most players think POF is better, because you die less.
You can't tank and spank your way to victory, and the game's buildcraft goes beyond skill stacking and rotation spamming. But whats frustrates both ends of the spectrum is that the game has progressively started presenting itself as a WoW alternative, attracting a player base now notoriously casual and afraid of discomfort. They come in on the presumption that "every game is like WoW with different graphics, and this game does nothing substantial to teach them important game mechanics; This was true at launch, and even more so now that new concepts are now baked into the baseline, but Core maps/missions rarely updated to reflect those. The only tutorial I can think of is the Dodge one in the starting zone.... which you have to stumble on by accident, and by then you're already used to simply soaking damage and healing over it. That should be either IN the Prologue , or right AFTER it as the first thing you see hitting open world.
I came across a player who spent roughly a minute trying to figure out how that tutorial worked, and I said in chat "you have to dodge through it"...... He dodged backwards once (because you do that when standing still), and then dodged forward. All of 5 seconds to teach a player that a critical game mechanic exists. This was a month ago....
The NPE/Leveling redesign does nothing to help this situation either. At best it sort of "tells" you things exist, but doesn't give you a reason to use it. It also really bad that several highly visual mechanics are metered out through this process, when its existence can be made and understood immediately upon encountering it; but then players misunderstand it, since disabling it until later levels makes it "inconstant" from what was previously established. Downed State is the biggest one. Weapon Skill bar unlocking only starting with auto attack, since AA on starting weapons have no sense of dynamics. The layout of Core-Trait/Skill unlocks of most classes following a power curve, but many early skills not being striking in terms of "limited buildcraft". This is on top of the fact that Traits don't make sense in the current system until you have at least 2 trait lines with Grandmasters.
The Vet players also get frustrated (as collateral damage) in light of changes made to simplify the system for broader appeal. The 3-trait line system has always been frustrating due to the Dev's ongoing struggle load balance power within it, and how classes are wildly inconstant in how their cross-line synergies are laid out. Ranger and Rev are incredibly aggravating in how single threaded you have to be, to get anywhere with them. Mesmer is the opposite, where you have you have too many build critical traits in constant competition with each other. Engineer gets too much force multiplication from single lines, leading to performance shutout (abilities not worth using) without them. A 3-line system is not bad unto itself... but the designers don't make the best use of it.
Players have to learn all this stuff on their own, Externally to the game..... and that runs at direct odds with the type of audience they're shooting for now. Boosting ironically broadcasts the idea that leveling is a long, drawn out task; and thus bypassing that "to get to the good stuff" is desirable. But the normal leveling route is also a struggle, since learning the game mechanics doesn't help accelerate the process. Its an odd conflict to have, since drawing out F2P play to get players overly invested is one goal.... but once they're on the pay side, rushing them to the end game with no knowledge of system quickly backfires. And ultimately this can't be solved via the current "we don't waste time updating old content" mindset, despite Core Tyria being the optimal place to do this in.
-
Something worth noting is that Collection related recipes don't seem to scale down exp as you level up. This might be an oversight, because aren't part of the main discovery list, and collections/non-meta items are often missed by Devs during these kind of projects.
If you unlock the minstrel and moot collections, they have food crafting in their 1st and 3rd tier crafting respectively. If you have them unlocked already, the connected recipes should all give exp you can to finish maxing it out. You don't even need to craft the complete item (since half the time you can't get repeats of key ingredients). I managed to level to 465 on Dark stirfry mix before realizing I only needed to hit 440, because the collection and tasting tray steps gives you 60 levels in total.
-
Videos like these rarely explore the whole problem... or at best, explore one facet based on one game in proper depth. Different MMOs fail for different reasons, because different games fail for different reasons. What makes MMOs so prominent is the cross section they create by their attempts at broad market appeal. Ultimately there is no "objective" perception of an MMO (or games in general), nor are they merely "Subjective". They can't be properly perceived in isolation, because your entire sum of experiences influences that. WoW Classic is NOT the same WoW 1.2...... it can't be, because the you that played WoW 1.2 is different then the you that is playing WoW Classic today. Its why some games get better or worse as they age. Its why recapturing nostalgia is nigh impossible.
The video keeps going on and on about Community.... but its based on HIS concept of a Community. That doesn't have the same face value as the Community hes referring to, that existed 10 years ago. Its not even the same type of people that used to play these games 10 years ago. Casual players were not big into multiplayer games from the era I remember; and hardcore players formed small, but strong communities. But today, with the integration of social media into the fabric of daily life, the concept of an MMO or large scale multiplayer community is a no brainer.
Nix speaks as if its a matter of fact..... but hes barely scratching the surface of World of Warcraft's situation, much less MMOs as a market.
And mandatory hate for asmongold, a channel devoid of an original thought and is the lowest of low effort formats that still manages to trick youtube's algorithm.
-
The answer is complicated because of how the classes are structured. The core classes are fundamentally both Archetypes and Hybrids as a single package, and is a type of Multi-classing concept very few RPGs even think to try.
The disparity in "meta" mostly comes from the heavily disproportionate value of various mechanical concepts involved in the game's combat, and how this is divided up among the Core classes. Damage and Damage boosting are king in this game.... so naturally, all classes that are good at this are considered baseline; and their tier divisions are broken up by what they can do IN ADDITION to damage. Guardian is the apex of most metas, because its boon support architecture allows for a massive increase in survival at a minimal cost to damage potential. its only in raids, which have an abnormal focus on extreme builds, that will try to completely ignore features of a class because someone else is marginally better.
The Core classes are also built around their mechanics, and usually have a particular method of accomplishing a task. This is where that weighting issue I mentioned earlier comes into play. Necros are designed around debuffing and boon ripping (which is their PvP profile), but not direct damage. PvE doesn't value that AT ALL.... so the lack of direct damage is the reason core necro is shuned the way it is. Thieves were also looked down upon, despite being damage oriented, because they don't boost damage of a group.
High tier is filled with classes that do things that are hard for other classes to replicate without huge sacrifices:
Guardians have group synergy at its core, and doesn't have to do serious build investment to make that happen. This allows it build for damage, and still buff allies using the same skills it uses to benefit themselves.
Elementalists ranked in second in most metas because it can field both damage and support functions on the fly, and has access to every baseline combat effect the game has. Pre-HOT, they were also the premier might stacker, which every organized group wanted.Memsers came in 3rd due to its ability to bypass parts of instanced content, and can suppress enemy mechanics in a lot of situations between both open world and instanced content. That utility is hard to ignore, and had been taken for granted in every organized fight... until HOT broke everything with its insane DPS metrics. It also holds a solid place in sPvP, being the hardest class to counter overall.Mid tier is populated by low effort classes. Here sits Ranger, Warrior, Rev, who all do decent damage in their own right, but can't offer group support without giving up damage in the process. This contention is why War and Ranger didn't offer the kind of value Guardian does for a slot; while Rev was designed for, and came in during a time when Anet was fumbling hard with Raid power balancing.
Low Tier has the 3 classes that didn't fit into the general Damage/Might centered meta of post-launch:
Thief is here mostly because its burst damage is very specifically tuned to PvP, has a low target cap, and doesn't field the kind of sustain damage or CC potential desired for general play. Its defense are also very stealth oriented, which is highly dysfunctional in light of the how Mob AI works. This makes them hard to play in general, and were not particularly effective in cluster fights that were common in open world and dungeons. The only place they excelled was in PvP, as players are actively hampered by the uncertainty created by stealth.
Engineer is low ranked from a long standing struggle with generating damage against moving targets. Their burst damage is weak in comparison to other classes, and their utilities outside the Damage-oriented kits have limited practical use. Its also one of the hardest classes to play behind the thief- requiring the mechanical knowledge of fields (an aspect shared by eles), but lacks the direct attacks and breadth of diversity allowed by Ele's attunement system.
At the bottom was Necro, which represents almost every good idea done wrong with the game's overall design. Necros are oppressive, but not by damage the way other classes would do the same. Core necro is a selfish support, partially based on Warlocks, and is meant to debuff enemies and provide control. The problem with this is multi-faceted....In PvE, the lack of general damage, and poor damage scaling with stats (keep in mind, Condis were weak DPS back in Core), basically caused all fights to drag on longer then they should. If not for their inherent tankiness, they wouldn't be able to accomplish much in general PvE. In PvP, condition cleanses were common, all the Necros control skills were strong, but short lived, and they lacked active defenses on the presumption that its HP will make up for it. This sort of worked initially, but aged terribly as average damage increased significantly, and control became more common in other classes via Especs and reworks.
HOT especs had 2 goals..... First was to make Raid viable builds for all the classes. Second, try to fill in the functional weaknesses of each class, so they will all see more broad use. For the most part this was a success- but is messed up hard in how the strength of a class's core spec carried directly into the Especs. This is why most people refer to it as Power Creep, because every Espec (except Druid) enabled a stronger Damage build out of the gate. A lot of classes needed this, but the way everything compounded created a new standard in redonkulous DPS, that still lingers to this day. Ranger got the short end of the stick, as the Druid's design attempts to make its existing support functions more active (aka clunky to use)... and then tacked on the "main healer" job for the sake of Raids. This is an ironic inversion, given Druids tend to be hybrids in other games; while the Ranger in GW2 already worked that way, minus the direct healing.
So the reason you rarely see Core builds is because the game is disproportionately weighted toward damage metrics. Especs largely doubled down on that premise, and increased the numbers of CCs and AOEs to boot, while the Core Specs still anguish in a paradigm thats now 7 years old. Once Especs were released, the only reason you ever saw Core specs in the meta was due to flukes in balance at the given time. Condi Ranger was only an option because Druid was an inherent DPS loss, and Banner Slave/Phalanx Warrior required 3 Core Trait lines to work correctly. For everyone else, their top builds either revolved around the Especs, or the Especs enhanced a core build (making it superior to core only).
Anet's long standing refusal to address Core perpetuates this situation.... especially since Core tends to be the reason many Especs scale out of control in the first place. You have no idea how frustrating that is, because they frequently nerf Core traits to address a specific problem that only happens with specific interactions of an Espec. Not only has his weakened Core in its own right, it also creates collateral damage with the other core and espec trait lines that may or may not manifest immediately. Engineer and Thief, historically, had a lot of delayed issues with balance changes. While Mesmer and Rev issues become apparent almost immediately.
The recent "wvw balance proposal" is a culmination of previous actions causing them to make stupid decisions in the present, and is a shining example of how bad they are at understanding an issue, the short range of their forward thinking, and their clear reliance on metrics in their decision making process. All worthy of a case study. And they don't even get to have the prestige of being unique in this problem either. Modern game design is hard, yes. But its amazing how many companies stumble forward, and never getting a proper handle on their creations. Anet originally had a Pedigree directly from Blizzards hayday too.... which makes this situation all the more frustrating.
-
@"Koods.9815" said:Everyone just chases new maps, or fast usual world bosses, instead of actualy taking the effort of taking down Triple Trouble. Devs, fix this somehow, please.
Devs can't fix a community problem....... they've tried, and fail on the regular. Upping the rewards will draw people in; but it also generates complaints about the difficulty and overflow since PUGS will almost never organize themselves. I saw that first hand during the Boss rush event. Making it easier won't really change anything, because its reputation is now set in stone.
If you don't believe me? Octovine is so well practiced at this point, Pugs can do the event tagless if they wanted to. The problem, ultimately, is that they do NOT want to invest any effort if they don't think the map is ALREADY organized.... and few are wiling to even speak up and see if theres even people on the map TO get organized. If they don't see at least 2 tags, they assume its just HP train and try to jump ship to an LFG map. I've been there on several occasions where there is overflow, and most would just sit around try to spam join a full map, despite there clearly being enough people idling around east and south gate WPs to run the meta.
The stupid part about all of that is the Tags really don't need to do anything other then run a Taxi, because the pugs (surprisingly) understand the mechanics, and can jump into roles if they are lacking. Teq is even easier to self organize, since you need only about 20 people to handle turrets and boats, and the rest can just react to the situation. I've even seen a late map salvage a bone wall, and ramped up as people kept falling in from the overflow.
Theres just this unshakable stigma that you NEED enough tags to do a meta at the start, or its doomed to fail. But in reality all the tags are really doing is giving something pugs can follow around 'visually", and occasionally give pep talks. And the "critical jobs" for most of these metas are pathetically easy compared to combat in general. I would rank POF bounties harder then most Tyrian metas, mainly due to bounty's having poor broadcasting of their hazards, and a lack of bypass strategies. The hardest would be VB and Serpents Ire, almost entirely because of how you need to split teams up to be effective. Chalk could realistically go auto pilot, because at this point everyone knows where failures are prone to happen, and can split up appropriately in the pre-phase.
The only thing the Devs could do is rework all the old metas to require split groups, so it forces players to habituate it. But the players will fight you every step of the way.
-
Because of how players are spread out, and how farming metas have evolved, TT fell off world boss train. Last I checked, EVO still does an a post reset TT for NA servers.... but later in the night its avoided by pugs. Reset is the closest to a guarantee you can have to an Organized meta happening, since tends to get baked into everyone's daily routine. Pretty much everything radiates outward from Reset Teq and Anomaly, since they're right there back to back.
-
@"Tsakhi.8124" said:Let them do their jobs. Have empathy, if you have a problem or idea, you should put it in detail; I have seen some of the player's ideas brought into fruition. One must remember, we are thousands, but they are a few. I imagine reading some of these posts makes them anxious, because I just have a feeling that there are a lot of deadlines to meet.
Empathy works both ways though. They've been squeezing the gem store harder as time has gone on, they've repeatedly failed to understand class dynamics in across all game modes, nearly all of the new PvE features and content lacks longevity, and the reason for the longevity issue is a misunderstanding of their own economy. When they moved to a more "direct reward" driven collection/achievement stricture for LS maps, they essentially dug their own hole. LS maps tend to live in partial isolation outside of its "wealth sink" aspects. A new currency unique to the map, often with a grind/time gate heavy collection to keep people there for a mandatory time length, a series of completionist achievements to get that increasingly scarce AP, and the possibility for a "gold farm" loop hole. That last bit is the ONLY thing that keeps maps alive longer then the normal 4-6 weeks it takes for most players to cycle through, and/or a new distraction that leads them to move on.
Aggressive Time gates are universally reviled by this community, and yet they are always the most egregious for the things we'd likely get the most. They try to resurrect old content by attaching it to a new One time high end reward, so completionists will go back and finish things they abandoned out frustration. Most of the vital QOL stuff is attached to various reward systems; and we promptly forget that fact once we clear the hurdle. There is a major and very legitimate concern that Build templates, which they are now marketing hard as a major feature, will need Legendary equipment to function in its proper capacity. These are part of a long history of ideas they've originally presented as being rather straight forward in concept, and tacks on these obtuse rules in the actual implementation to "correct" or drag down another (occasionally unrelated) system, in a "2 birds, 1 stone" mind set.
In short... they don't have "empathy", they have "Metrics". And seeing how some of their key project leads converse with the community, they have trouble reading between the lines of feedback, complaints, rants, and their own metrics. While I don't doubt they are paying attention, I do doubt they're properly comprehending whats going on. And those within the company that may, don't seem to have the capacity or authority to follow through, before "Pentagon Wars" type changes kick in. And as absurd as that sounds, it fits the bill to a lesser intensity.
500 Cooking and Garden Plots are just the most recent example; trying to arbitrarily add value to the plots (an existing gem store item) as a mandatory element for the new cooking system, use the free plot as leverage for selling the extra plots (by promising scaling), is trying to create a food sink with the Composter, time gates it with growing process, and didn't have the foresight to recognize what players were ALREADY DOING as an obvious loop hole to get around that limitation. Individually these elements wouldn't be particularly bad.... but in concert, its very clearly a bottle neck made to artificially inflate the value of Ascended food, which fails to offer real value between the high cost of production, the comparatively short duration, and the tediousness of a process that overtly prevents industrial scaling to offset the cost. They also uniformly nerfed the duration of other foods that would compete with it, but never addressed their already high cost of production and low sustained value. Primer Flasks failed in a similar way due to the various economics of material cost, and the 400-800g up front investment for the plots that (at best) produces 1 pair of primers every 4 days (half if you only have 1). Rather then go through the trouble of creating food expensive enough justify the primers, you can realistically find lesser, but far cheaper alternative foods. And this is fine because, ultimately, food only really offers 1 or 2% effective stat gains, and certain effect specific foods (like -10% damage reduction) have a very cheap version of it.
It also ignores another glaring issue with what would be the prime market for "Best in slot" food.... Raids. Raids are capped at 10 players, raid wings take longer then 1 hour to clear in most cases, and party comp demands a minimum of 3 different food types to match the core roles of Healer, DPS, and Tank/Kite. Those factors make Asc food not cost effective unless consumables can be brought down to less then 30g for the whole team. And thats not counting the effort for food production, as many hardcore raiders are weekend warriors.
WvW and boss trains have enough players to scale up the cost effectiveness of Asc food. A 3 hour run (which is typical for most organized guilds) calls for 6 - 9 trays of food. This doesn't run the risk of breaking the bank in gold, but essentially rides on the generosity of a few guild crafters putting in the effort for it. But at the same time, that number of people makes the food unnecessary to meet some aggregate performance threshold. Its everything that doesn't make sense about Ascended Gear, but none of the things that eventually offer a return on investment. [Like being permanent, having infusion slots, recycled to retain investment value, and zero opportunity cost to use]
Its like raising a kid..... if you have to question whether the investment of time, patience and money is going anywhere, it means theres serious problems happening that need to be addressed. These are also Professionals, that the market specifies are supposed to be good at their job.... And even if we ignore the fallacy surrounding that, there is a presumption of a decent batting average. The relationship between Developers and Players are highly dysfunctional right now. Not just with this game, but across the greater industry as a whole. So its hard to pitch empathy, when both sides have a very adversarial stance toward each other. The Devs manages the game like we're here to do a constant barrage of tasks that rival an actual job, and expect us to buy things while we do it. The audience is an insatiable, volatile, self-absorbed hoard that consumes all they encounter, in a quest to fill a Void that can't be filled by such things.
Empathy alone will not fix whats broken.
Letter of Commendation
in Players Helping Players
Posted
You could always sell it to someone making a personal Guild bank....