CrashTestAuto.9108

Yeah +1 to this. I know a lot of the time the responses are "I'd prefer they invest in new maps", but this is such a unique concept for a map that they really can't do again, and was completely wasted here. I'd happily have the map split into two if if there's a technical issue (basically straight down the middle for East and West). Then update the Arborstone mastery to also revitalise the west half of New Kaineng at the same time as Arborstone. Heck, I'd personally prefer they scrap Arborstone entirely beyond the story instance and move everything into West New Kaineng - Club Canach especially would be much better suited in there. Stick a proper holographic Roller Beetle racetrack going over the buildings, and maybe some Griffon masteries as well. It's a perfect hub for activities, and the hologram aesthetic means you can add basically anything the devs can imagine (combat, racing, gambling, minigames...). But yeah, more or less a full overhaul would be worth at least one episode of Living Story effort, then it could be periodically added to. The map was stunning when I first arrived there, and just got increasingly disappointing over time.

I like the idea, and would support it being fully implemented. Assuming it works slightly worse than an average pug group, it's a potential alternative to solo dungeons/fractals. That said, if it is complex, I'd go with a (major) compromise. Give every class an elite skill that is tuned to roughly the strength of the racial summons, then have it summon two of your characters at random (maybe have favourites assignable) as allies. Obviously massively less useful, but also much less of a balancing headache.

Yeah, I wouldn't put too much stock in that. This forum has an extremely low population of active posters relative to the game, and from what I've seen it isn't particularly representative of the player base. Not to say that I think housing will be all that popular, as most people I've played with care very little for decorating guild halls as well (I still think it's potentially a good idea though, as some of the players that do care will probably spend a LOT on it).

I really like the concept, though I do think there are some bits that would be complicated. Specifically, is this a set instance where you own a plot, meaning your neighbour is always the same, or is it that you own the same grid position in a random instance, meaning the city will change around you? Option (1) has issues with low populations, people leaving etc. Option (2) won't really feel like a city. If they added something like this to Guild Halls (basically add a "suburb" section to each hall, there's plenty of space), and players can add houses their, great 🙂 Though I get a bit less cool, I'm just not sure how it could work otherwise (and ANet have surprised me before). On the people saying this is unpopular/waste of resource and guild hall decorations prove it. I really don't think that's a fair comparison. Guild hall decoration, much as I personally enjoy it, is terribly implemented and has a really high barrier for entry. Plus MMO economies run on whales, and housing is hugely monetisable.

Support this, it's in line with other similar armours/items as well (e.g. the Mistforged set, turning off trinket effects, and the two versions of the Virtual Box headset). Probably easier to just unlock a second "slumbering" set of the armour to wardrobe than implement a specific toggle? While we're on the subject, would anyone object to them removing the massive spike on the back of the light chest piece that clips through back and shoulder pieces and points directly at your characters head 😂?

A few people argue that I should be deterred by the number of people disagreeing with me here, but so many posts are complete strawmen, so it really doesn't mean anything. A huge number of posts are like this one (and several immediately after it), which are just pretending I said something I didn't, which is a pretty effective way to make me think there wasn't a good counter to the point I actually made. It's disappointing the forum is like this, because the noise between actually substantive engagement with what I said makes having actually productive conversations much more difficult 😞

Do you think this actually engaged with what I said?

As has been emphasised by many people in this thread, 95% of GW2 is solo/solable. The idea that the end game should be instanced group content is, at best, rooted in tradition. There's no "should" about any type of content being included (heck, a load of people have set up roller-beetle racetracks in guild halls, and I would absolutely support a more official version of that). The last holiday event we had included a bell choir. This isn't even vaguely comparable to a basketball game (though plenty of very specifically focussed games do include random mini-games, so your argument wouldn't work even if the analogy held).

I'm not sure why you think they'd have to be easier. There's nothing presented that would necessitate that, and it would be very easy to simply set the health pools to take longer than average group kills for anyone achieving x% of top benchmarks. If people would still choose to do solo content because they prefer it to group content then... well I don't really see it as an argument against.

I can actually use the same quote from page one here: "The problem with things like "Go solo fractals and dungeons (and CRMs)" is that this gets fairly dull quite quickly because the health pools aren't designed for it. It's like in a single player game when the hard mode just turns enemies into bullet sponges. Moreover, because gold per hour is a thing, you have the nagging feeling that you're wasting your time as you slowly chip down enemy health that isn't designed for one player." You could get in a group and remove your armour and go fight a world boss for challenge too, so the devs could have saved a ton of resources by not building raids/strikes/dungeons etc. But, the idea that this would actually make players happy is a bit silly, so accusing people of wanting something else of "dishonesty" seems a bit... weird?

Okay, this was a substantive post, so apologies for being a little frustrated at this point. But allow me to quote myself from page one of the thread: "The problem with things like "Go solo fractals and dungeons (and CRMs)" is that this gets fairly dull quite quickly because the health pools aren't designed for it. It's like in a single player game when the hard mode just turns enemies into bullet sponges. Moreover, because gold per hour is a thing, you have the nagging feeling that you're wasting your time as you slowly chip down enemy health that isn't designed for one player." It is naïve to think that players will repeatedly log in and play completely unrewarding content. So yes, rewards matter. However, they don't matter that much, so long as the player feels like they're wasting their time. You have interpreted me only vaguely knowing the gold per hour of strikes off the top of my head as an indication I have no idea whatsoever, or no interest whatsoever. Neither of these is true, I just don't spend all my time making sure I'm doing the absolute best gold per hour in the game, and therefore know that the rewards are "good", and "75% of good" will still be fine. I understand that removing rewards from the design would get more consensus from some specific posters in this thread, but my intent is to describe a system I think will actually work, not just one that gets approval here.

Or, as I said, I wasn't sure exactly. I knew roughly that they work out as strong, but limited to daily. Checking [fast], that's broadly true, depending on the strike and what's daily. Now that's established, 75% of "strong", and limited to daily sounds pretty reasonable. So...?

Okay, you seem to think that the few people arguing in this thread somehow constitute that list? Or that the hypothetical new player I referenced is for some reason the person making the argument? I'm not really interested in arguing against a literal "I know best". So thank you for your time.

Okay. And for all the players who bought their first MMORPG when the game released on steam four months ago? There are other types of player than veteran MMO player. And they're the players who would most benefit from an in game learning curve.

This is false (CM has different mechanics than NM), and also missing the point I made about why the test dummy isn't an effective part of the game's learning curve.

I'm not sure on the gold per hour exactly, but I don't think 75% would be particularly high relative to other content, especially on a daily restriction. I'd also add shards, but slightly lower.

Sorry, I'm not trying to be snarky here, so take this literally. What is your point here? I'm not seeing it as either contradicting, or supporting my point.

Sometimes true. Depends on the time of day, the server, how long you have, what you want to do... They're a massive improvement on raids, but they are far from a magic bullet.

Variety.

This was a good post, so apologies for only focussing on this sentence, but it's a really key point. Yes, solo content removes effort to organise, is less risky, and you have more control over the outcome. This is absolutely perfect for the specific use case of busy gamers who have limited and unpredictable time in their day, but want to log in and do something fun/rewarding. The alternative (in a worst, but not I think uncommon scenario) is either they log in, maybe farm their home instance while hovering over LFG and log out, or just don't log in at all. Limiting the rewards to daily/weekly means this is not a farmable piece of content, but for players who only have a bit of time to game, and who don't want that time wasted on organisation and wiping through the fault of others, this would be a really great option.

The repeated argument I've seen in this thread is that solo content is really boring. So the idea that you're "bypassing" the fun content to play the boring content wouldn't make sense. I of course don't agree that solo content is boring. So I'd take the position of, if you feel like you're only doing the group content because there isn't a solo option, then that doesn't sound much fun. You've added "faster and very rewarding". I don't believe I've ever said either of those things. I'm happy for the fights to take slightly more time, for slightly less reward. Yes they'd be faster because you don't have to LFG, wait for people, or find slots with friends/guildies (which is great), but not in terms of the actual gameplay time.

Yes, but this is part of why NM and CM exist, right? Heck you could even add a really low reward "Story Mode" version that is literally just a portal to the Story Boss with the cutscenes and other bits removed. Additional complexity is that the benchmarks against the dummy are hugely impacted by the boss, either due to need for range or condi versus power. As I've said before, I think balancing is an issue I think is a pretty strong argument, but I'm not convinced is as big an issue as people are suggesting as the content is already flexible to this (groups would hit exactly the same issue). Speaking incredibly causally for the sake of giving an example set up. Current minimum DPS is what 15-17k to be "good enough", and the benchmarks are up in the 30s? So set NM mode to take the normal time of a group strike at about 50% benchmark, and CM to take normal time at about 70%. (Obviously those numbers are plucked out of pretty thin air, the actual design team will have better ideas in mind on what the target should be). But as I said in the post above. Part of the benefit of solo content is you get to see "wait, this is ridiculous" if you're taking ages to kill a boss. Especially if you were previously being carried in the same content in a group. Obviously the speedrunners mean you need to balance the rewards to prevent farming (daily/weekly rewards do this pretty well I think, and are already the design in game).

Okay, you're far from the worst offender on this, but could you please not try to infer beyond what I've actually said? Bad pug experiences happen, let's keep the discussion focussed on the game and the playerbase rather than individuals. Okay so this is a good breakdown, that highlights the actual in game problems. You've painted an ideal picture of learning, but let's go through: 1) General play/Open World bounties. Open world, absolutely definitely. However, this teaches close to nothing. I believe there was a player fairly recently who if memory served managed to complete the game with no gear, and if I remember right, literally no skills. Nothing is required in terms of build, rotation, gear, composition etc. Bounties/Champs/Bosses are a little better, but at this stage I would have to guess that most players either just die to them, or zer them. I don't think there's a lot of people figuring out how the game works at this stage. 2) Test dummy for dps rotation Absolutely not. The dummy is close to hidden, and has the word "raid" in the instance name, which is going to put a lot of people off. The way to set it up also isn't hugely intuitive even once you're in there. Don't get me wrong, I like the dummy, but there's not way this falls here on the average player curve. 3) Story encounter with strike boss. Okay, this is going to vary heavily by player, but I'm really not sure this teaches much more than Open World. Maybe once you get to EoD there's a little bit of learning required as they put a lot of effort in to introduce players to mechanics like breakbars etc. We actually have pretty good evidence that this wasn't effective though as so many people got to Dragon's End and then complained about difficulty. 4) Pug group strike no hard mode Okay, there are a few directions this can go- i) You get completely carried and learn nothing ii) You learn the mechanics but learn nothing about your contribution iii) Someone draws attention to your contribution The absolute best case scenario is (3), and that's only if the player is nice. Otherwise this might actually be the end of the experiment with pugging. 5) finally, hard mode once ive played normal mode enough times to have rote memorised all attack patterns.. Picture this as if you've gone through the above curve, rather than the curve which also included you looking up builds/videos online, or installing a DPS meter, or at least speaking to guildies/friends. When in the above curve did you learn how the game works? Or that your contribution wasn't up to scratch? This is a big issue with GW2, and a reason people keep asking for an in-game DPS meter. The game pretty much never tells you "You aren't good enough for this content" up until either Raid or CM mode (maybe HT), and that kind of relies on either your entire group wiping and you going out and researching, or you somehow getting the information that you're the weak link (it's entirely possible to just get carried without anyone ever mentioning it).

I'm not sure how complex you're picturing here (or what is actually required behind the scenes to make different changes), but a minimum viable product would literally just involve changing the health on the boss. I do realise they'd want to do a bit more than that, but there've already been three versions of these bosses made, so I would hope that they made them not too out of spaghetti code. On the practicing point. A few things. Basic game mechanics obviously, then specific boss mechanics (e.g. the expanding rings you need to jump over, which is pretty important in AH CM), and then rotations in a variety of actual gameplay conditions. Extra bonus on the dummy is that players would be able to practice whilst passively earning rewards. Yes you can practice some of these elsewhere, but not in too many places where that would give you information about how you specifically are doing. An important point being that this is a standardised fight that player would come across naturally, without googling or reading external sites, meaning that the game itself would be telling players "Your DPS isn't good enough", rather than them having to happen upon a benchmarking video (or worse, get yelled at by a pug and never join again).

Just to edit out the odd strawmanning, because otherwise that was actually pretty good. I'm proposing solo Strike missions with the following description: 1) More engaging that the Story Mode versions (through mechanics and difficulty) 2) Faster to access and get to the fight 3) Scaled so single player DPS leads to similar fight length to group version 4) Rewards similar to or slightly less than group version (recoloured Living Water skins would be nice) (In summary, basically the same benefits that group strikes have over Story Mode, but scaled to solo DPS, so that solo players can also enjoy those benefits) As noted, this would have additional benefit of allowing people to practice in a low (zero) pressure environment, and indicate when DPS is low in lieu of a DPS meter.