Elite Specialization Beta Event | Demo Equipment | Legendary Armory/Equipment Unlock

[Metzie.3012]

With the Beta Event, you (ANet) are providing a limited amount of equipment and consumables. Players with legendary equipment get access to the legendary armory and thus the advantage of being able to design the beta classes as desired. And that's a good thing, so far!

But what I asked myself right after the start of the first beta event is why you (ANet) don't make the legendary armory, i.e. the legendary equipment, generally available for the time of the beta event? Boxes with legendary items already exist. This would have the added value for all beta testers and participants (and also new players) and at the same time you would promote it and give players the opportunity to get an insight into of what it means or what advantage(s) it has to craft legendary items.

[ReaverKane.7598]

Honestly, yeah, they could do that, and would improve the data... Too much work at this point, i'd say. Although CMC had a weird named legendary armour equipped during the last livestream. So it might be the case that it can be somewhat easily added.

Edited September 22, 2021 by ReaverKane.7598

[LukaBre.8621]

Beta events are not designed to push the benchmarks as further as you can as the numbers will most certainly go down by the time the class is oficially revealed.

That being said, I think its pointless to make an additional code changes just so people can have a bit more options while testing 3 classes for less than a week. Especially now that everything legendary is tied to the armory instead of just being an item in your inventory. (many exceptions would have to be made for this rule and most likely too much resources for them to use up right now)

I would rather have them put such effort into the expansion itself. Seeing how the skills work and interact with the rest of the world is by far enough for something thats called 'beta'.

[Metzie.3012]

1 hour ago, LukaBre.8621 said:

Beta events are not designed to push the benchmarks as further as you can as the numbers will most certainly go down by the time the class is oficially revealed.

Counter-question: what are they for? Who's talking about benchmarks? That's not the point at all. It's about giving players the opportunity and freedom to find something that suits or could suit his or her style of play. It's also about getting a wide range of feedback, that too is limited, just by the limitation (not being able to use almost everything that might be needed).

The legendary armory now offers this possibility, so why shouldn't the general public or the participants benefit from it for such a beta event? It was to be expected that ANet would use "old templates or possibilities" like for the PoF beta. I would have been positively surprised if they had changed this on their own initiative (access to the legendary armoury or items with the current beta events). 

If you now possibly come up with the argument that you (or players in general) would have been better prepared for the beta event ... one or the other would have had better opportunities. Reference: Copy of the actual account and items for the beta Event ... 🤥 ... that would basically be an own goal.

Not infrequently I have heard or read the question "How are you supposed to theory crafting builds and then actually put them into practice if you don't have the necessary resources to do so (something like that). To take the wind out of the sails right away, sPvP and open world or WvW are two different shoes (to test).

 

Quote

That being said, I think its pointless to make an additional code changes just so people can have a bit more options while testing 3 classes for less than a week. Especially now that everything legendary is tied to the armory instead of just being an item in your inventory. (many exceptions would have to be made for this rule and most likely too much resources for them to use up right now)

How do you know how much resources, work or time is or would be required to implement or change this? 

Beta access is temporary, nor is progress or anything like that saved for the future. In other words, your beta-created characters and everything related to them are separate from your actual account content. What exceptions would need to be made? I don't understand the relation to the legendary armoury + effort.   

 

1 hour ago, LukaBre.8621 said:

I would rather have them put such effort into the expansion itself. Seeing how the skills work and interact with the rest of the world is by far enough for something thats called 'beta'.

In that section I could ask the same question again, how you seem to know that the effort is so high that in your opinion it wouldn't be worth the effort (if there is or would be an above-average effort at all) to add value for the entire playerbase (or at least for beta participants). 

 

All in all, no offence. And by the way, I personally have everything I need or would need (i.e. legendary items) to explore possibilities. Accordingly, my suggestion is or was not meant selfishly or only related to the fact that I would have added value. 🙂

Edited September 22, 2021 by Metzie.3012

[Rasimir.6239]

9 hours ago, Metzie.3012 said:

Not infrequently I have heard or read the question "How are you supposed to theory crafting builds and then actually put them into practice if you don't have the necessary resources to do so (something like that). To take the wind out of the sails right away, sPvP and open world or WvW are two different shoes (to test).

I honestly don't think you are supposed to do that before release, not in this game at least. It's not as much of a numbers game as other games to begin with, since even with the theoretically "best" build out there, a large part of your performance relies on player skill and environment.

 

Beta events in GW2 have always been more of a general "look and feel" test, testing fluidity of gameplay and synergies with the rest of the game, rather than coming up with "optimizied" builds. Grab a beta character, go out into the world, and see if the gameplay works for you. Judging from the HoT and PoF betas, we will see enough skill and trait changes before release that any min-maxed theory crafting you do now is worthless anyway.

[LukaBre.8621]

11 hours ago, Metzie.3012 said:

Counter-question: what are they for? Who's talking about benchmarks? That's not the point at all. It's about giving players the opportunity and freedom to find something that suits or could suit his or her style of play. It's also about getting a wide range of feedback, that too is limited, just by the limitation (not being able to use almost everything that might be needed).

I consider them to be events where you test the specializations MECHANICALLY. Whether the certain build/class suits you. The numbers have nothing to do with it. I heard someone crying how the torment rune was 'the best' rune for harbinger and it was unavailable. Best for what? Damage? Yes. But damage in beta is highly irrelevant as the numbers can easily be tweaked and nerfed to the ground if necessary. What matters is how the class is played. "Hey these harbinger potions seem boring" - That's a valid beta feedback that they actually need to work on. "I did 50k damage because this rune makes me do so much more" - That's not a valid beta feedback imo.
 

11 hours ago, Metzie.3012 said:

If you now possibly come up with the argument that you (or players in general) would have been better prepared for the beta event ... one or the other would have had better opportunities. Reference: Copy of the actual account and items for the beta Event ... 🤥 ... that would basically be an own goal.

Yes some people were better prepared, some werent, but i think you're presenting it as a far bigger issue than it is. Nobody made the legendary armor 'just for the sake of the beta'. It's convenience. Speaking of inconvenience, I for example, cannot test the new classes in fractals because I'm unable to get any agony infusions on them. Some people can because they knew to prepare those infusions in their bank before the beta hit. Should I be screaming that we need to get a full stack of +9s on next beta? Ofc not. It's beta. It doesn't matter THAT much. Most of the games don't even have stuff like this and all you would usually get is a video preview of a class you might be playing (think about it).

 

11 hours ago, Metzie.3012 said:

Not infrequently I have heard or read the question "How are you supposed to theory crafting builds and then actually put them into practice if you don't have the necessary resources to do so (something like that). To take the wind out of the sails right away, sPvP and open world or WvW are two different shoes (to test).

That's exactly the point what I'm saying - there's no need to test EVERYTHING you can do with the class. Few builds here and there are quite enough. To quote Rasimir above - you're not even supposed to do that in the beta itself. Don't try to make a meta in the beta (I should save this somewhere as a quote). You got plenty of room to play around (not infinite, but plenty).

11 hours ago, Metzie.3012 said:

How do you know how much resources, work or time is or would be required to implement or change this? 

Beta access is temporary, nor is progress or anything like that saved for the future. In other words, your beta-created characters and everything related to them are separate from your actual account content. What exceptions would need to be made? I don't understand the relation to the legendary armoury + effort.   

In that section I could ask the same question again, how you seem to know that the effort is so high that in your opinion it wouldn't be worth the effort (if there is or would be an above-average effort at all) to add value for the entire playerbase (or at least for beta participants). 

Obviously I cannot guarantee that it will take too much time but from my point of view it will, here's why. The fact that those items need to be added to the legendary armory makes it so that the armory of that character must remain unrelated to the armory of other characters. Given that the system is rather new and was probably put out just so it can work properly - I would expect it to be some struggle in exceptioning out certain characters out of the 'account-wide-armory'. And as you said, beta access is temporary (basically we'll have like maybe 10 days left total after this one's over) so the effort to fix bugs that come up with such implementation might not be worth. Especially as it's a small percentage of people that would actually go 'all-in' when it comes to theory/build crafting. Most people will create account, swing it few times and leave it be (probably because of being afraid of a precursor dropping on those characters heh 😉).  I wouldnt consider any of this an issue if this beta happened pre-armory as the legendary items would be just that - items, not part of any bigger system and so on. So adding-removing them from the account would be far less of a work.

 

 

[Vlaxitov.9753]

I don't think "how does it feel mechanically" and "how effective can I make a build for this" are necessarily two mutually exclusive things. That said, I don't think we need legendary gear to get an idea of what we can do with the specs we're trying. I've taken some time to "theory craft" a group support build with one of the classes and test it in groups without needing legendary gear.

[LukaBre.8621]

4 hours ago, Vlaxitov.9753 said:

I don't think "how does it feel mechanically" and "how effective can I make a build for this" are necessarily two mutually exclusive things. That said, I don't think we need legendary gear to get an idea of what we can do with the specs we're trying. I've taken some time to "theory craft" a group support build with one of the classes and test it in groups without needing legendary gear.

Generally speaking yes, you could say that they are not mutually exclusive, however, speaking of beta - i think its much more important on how spec feels, the theme, the skills themselves, how they act in open world/pve content/pvp content etc rather than how strong something hits.

For example: the new warrior spec -> Does Dragon Trigger feel good, does it lack something, is it boring or is it fun, is it buggy...etc. Those are the questions for beta imo.

Should it hit for 480k? Thats a question for balance, but I would consider that balancing something comes only after you nail the design of it.

[Vlaxitov.9753]

12 minutes ago, LukaBre.8621 said:

Generally speaking yes, you could say that they are not mutually exclusive, however, speaking of beta - i think its much more important on how spec feels, the theme, the skills themselves, how they act in open world/pve content/pvp content etc rather than how strong something hits.

If skills are woefully undertuned or extremely overtuned its going to have a big effect on how the spec feels including how you would chose to play it.

[LukaBre.8621]

57 minutes ago, Vlaxitov.9753 said:

If skills are woefully undertuned or extremely overtuned its going to have a big effect on how the spec feels including how you would chose to play it.

Yes, I'm not saying that the numbers are not impacting the gameplay at all (hence why I somewhat agreed above) but the numbers are far less hard to tweak than the design itself. If catalyst, lets say, lack damage to actually be competitive with other classes in terms of damage - it can be tweaked on a patch level. But if its not fun or it mechanically doesn't feel right - that needs to be changed before expac release. Speaking of ele - heard a lot of people saying that they would like to be able to prepare and charge F5 before getting in the fight - thats a mechanic change. Make the bar more visible - also mechanic change. 

Hope that clears out what I deem more worth during the beta period. All this is ofc pretty subjective matter.

Edited September 23, 2021 by LukaBre.8621

[yoni.7015]

On 9/22/2021 at 4:15 PM, Metzie.3012 said:

With the Beta Event, you (ANet) are providing a limited amount of equipment and consumables. Players with legendary equipment get access to the legendary armory and thus the advantage of being able to design the beta classes as desired. And that's a good thing, so far!

But what I asked myself right after the start of the first beta event is why you (ANet) don't make the legendary armory, i.e. the legendary equipment, generally available for the time of the beta event? Boxes with legendary items already exist. This would have the added value for all beta testers and participants (and also new players) and at the same time you would promote it and give players the opportunity to get an insight into of what it means or what advantage(s) it has to craft legendary items.

Why don’t you craft legendary gear? Than you can use it during the Beta tests. 

[LukaBre.8621]

2 minutes ago, yoni.7015 said:

Why don’t you craft legendary gear? Than you can use it during the Beta tests. 

I think they said that they already crafted it later in the replies, and that the purpose of this was for the players that dont currently have the lege gear. I don't think its one of those 'crying' sort of posts.

[Vlaxitov.9753]

7 minutes ago, LukaBre.8621 said:

Yes, I'm not saying that the numbers are not impacting the gameplay at all (hence why I somewhat agreed above) but the numbers are far less hard to tweak than the design itself. If catalyst, lets say, lack damage to actually be competitive with other classes in terms of damage - it can be tweaked on a patch level. But if its not fun or it mechanically doesn't feel right - that needs to be changedbeofre expac release. Speaking of ele - heard a lot of people saying that they would like to be able to prepare and charge F5 before getting in the fight - thats a mechanic change. Make the bar more visible - also mechanic change. 

Hope that clears out what I deem more worth during the beta period. All this is ofc pretty subjective matter.

Oh I totally agree with numbers can much more easily be tweaked than core mechanics. Its probably quite a challenge though to balance those two things TBH. For example with damage, you have to balance numbers alongside actual mechanics with careful consideration or else you're liable to end up with easy mode class/specs to an egregious degree when compared to other class/specs.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Vlaxitov.9753

[LukaBre.8621]

Just now, Vlaxitov.9753 said:

Oh I totally agree with numbers can much more easily be tweaked than core mechanics. Its probably quite a challenge though to balance those two things TBH. For with damage, you have to balance the actual mechanics with careful consideration or else you're liable to end up with easy mode class/specs to an egregious degree when compared to other class/specs.

Yep they definitely gotta be careful with it. Otherwise some specs might turn into a next firebrand hehe. Though we did see them make hard nerfs (boon thief, condi quick firebrand...) and some neat buffs (alac mirage recently) when things get out of hand. I think it's overall in good hands 🙂

[Metzie.3451]

17 minutes ago, yoni.7015 said:

Why don’t you craft legendary gear? Than you can use it during the Beta tests. 

 

🙄 Did someone just try to be funny? 😙

 

18 hours ago, Metzie.3012 said:

All in all, no offence. And by the way, I personally have everything I need or would need (i.e. legendary items) to explore possibilities. Accordingly, my suggestion is or was not meant selfishly or only related to the fact that I would have added value. 🙂