I feel excluded from EoD because Soo Won meta event is too hard

[Ruisen.9471]

48 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

On the contrary, the game does next to no teaching whatsoever. It does try to teach a few basic things (like the infamous dodge tutorial, or, in EoD, the breakbar and combo fields one), but those aren't the key to this event. The buildcraft and dps are, and about those, the game does not teach you anything at all. All that stuff you're supposed to learn on your own. And, frankly, if someone didn't improve in that regard throughout the core and two expansions, expecting this to change in the third expansion is... well, there's that one saying about repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting different reaults.

In reality, all the game does is just throwing bigger and bigger requirements at you to see at which point you will fail and go home. Except, again, by now they should already know what the breakpoints for different percentages of community are. They have been testing this for years. So, i really fail to see any point in this except actively trying to drive part of the game population away.

Most MMO's don't really teach you how to be good enough at your class to do raid content either, at least the ones I've played.    You used to ask your guild before the days of googling it, now you just google it.  I mean, people who people who don't want to do raid content will ignore it even if you put it in the game.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Ruisen.9471

[Erise.5614]

13 minutes ago, Ruisen.9471 said:

Most MMO's don't really teach you how to be good enough at your class to do raid content either, at least the ones I've played.    You used to ask your guild before the days of googling it, now you just google it.  I mean, people who people who don't want to do raid content will ignore it even if you put it in the game.

But isn't that just outdated game design? The Dark Souls series is mainstream due to having an excellent learning curve while being much more demanding than any raids is to an individual.

But if one intends to hold to those old principles, why is there a need to increase open world difficulty? Why is there a need for strikes? 
Are they overcoming problems worth solving?

Edited April 5, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Cuks.8241]

7 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

But isn't that just outdated game design? The Dark Souls series is mainstream due to having an excellent learning curve while being much more demanding than any raids is to an individual.

But if one intends to hold to those old principles, why is there a need to increase open world difficulty? Why is there a need for strikes? 
Are they overcoming problems worth solving?

Dark Souls great learning curve? Dark Souls has no learning curve. It doesnt tell you anything about stats, it doesnt give you any direction where to go besides vague dialogue and once you beat the intro boss where you will repeteadly fail you are left to wonder. The learning there goes die on one mob until you learn the fight in details and move to the next. And if you go left instead of right you will die without any warning and direction. Oh and from time time there will be a surprise attack you cant avoid untill it kills you first. I mean the game's subtitle is Prepare to die. Very bad example.

But ok this is not Dark Souls and shouldnt be. And I really dont get this the game needs to teach players everything. What is the point? This is not a very complex game. You have descriptions on abilities (something DS doesnt have) and they improved them lately.

There is plenty to learn on the Eod meta. Its how to stay alive. All the attacks have visual queues and very specific sound queues (not even queues but plain explanations by Aurene and others). If everyone just stayed up during the whole fight this would be a cake. And people are learning the fight, the win rate is increasing, that is obvious if you play it consistently.

[Erise.5614]

Just now, Cuks.8241 said:

Dark Souls great learning curve? Dark Souls has no learning curve. It doesnt tell you anything about stats, it doesnt give you any direction where to go besides vague dialogue and once you beat the intro boss where you will repeteadly fail you are left to wonder. The learning there goes die on one mob until you learn the fight in details and move to the next. And if you go left instead of right you will die without any warning and direction. Oh and from time time there will be a surprise attack you cant avoid untill it kills you first. I mean the game's subtitle is Prepare to die. Very bad example.

The thing is. It does give relevant feedback on all key mechanics. It doesn't hold your hands. And it's still subjective whether you enjoy it. Obviously. But the level design, the progression, the feedback loop and learning experience are quite excellent. Superior to GW2 in every way. Now, to be fair. A singleplayer game can do lots of things about those things that an MMO could never do. So the point isn't entirely fair. Though I do find it a good example of how challenge is not inherently a problem and there is a huge audience who enjoys challenge.

4 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

And I really dont get this the game needs to teach players everything. What is the point? This is not a very complex game. You have descriptions on abilities (something DS doesnt have) and they improved them lately.

I'm sorry but what?

GW2 has one of the most complex systems in the MMO sphere. If you sit someone down to read every single tooltip and every piece of explanation the game gives you they will have absolutely 0 idea about how to be effective.

7 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

There is plenty to learn on the Eod meta. Its how to stay alive. All the attacks have visual queues and very specific sound queues (not even queues but plain explanations by Aurene and others). If everyone just stayed up during the whole fight this would be a cake. And people are learning the fight, the win rate is increasing, that is obvious if you play it consistently.

Attacks and indicators don't always show up on all graphics settings. Just being alive makes less difference than good gear. In some of the successful runs you can see the top 10 players deal about as much DPS as entire pug maps. Swapping out the open world gear some of those players have with berserkers would double their output and make those 30-60s downtime from dying irrelevant.

Success rates are increasing. But I'd doubt how much that can be attributed to learning. It seems more like most of the difference were nerfs. Because the fight really isn't designed to learn something specific and therefore consistently overcome it. You can just out DPS mechanics. Which is what almost all successful runs do. They just DPS fast enough for the time intensive mechanics to rarely come up. There isn't much to learn about the encounter itself and improvements there have little impact on success rates. 

[Cuks.8241]

9 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

The thing is. It does give relevant feedback on all key mechanics. It doesn't hold your hands. And it's still subjective whether you enjoy it. Obviously. But the level design, the progression, the feedback loop and learning experience are quite excellent. Superior to GW2 in every way. Now, to be fair. A singleplayer game can do lots of things about those things that an MMO could never do. So the point isn't entirely fair. Though I do find it a good example of how challenge is not inherently a problem and there is a huge audience who enjoys challenge.

I'm sorry but what?

GW2 has one of the most complex systems in the MMO sphere. If you sit someone down to read every single tooltip and every piece of explanation the game gives you they will have absolutely 0 idea about how to be effective.

Attacks and indicators don't always show up on all graphics settings. Just being alive makes less difference than good gear. In some of the successful runs you can see the top 10 players deal about as much DPS as entire pug maps. Swapping out the open world gear some of those players have with berserkers would double their output and make those 30-60s downtime from dying irrelevant.

Success rates are increasing. But I'd doubt how much that can be attributed to learning. It seems more like most of the difference were nerfs. Because the fight really isn't designed to learn something specific and therefore consistently overcome it. You can just out DPS mechanics. Which is what almost all successful runs do. They just DPS fast enough for the time intensive mechanics to rarely come up. There isn't much to learn about the encounter itself and improvements there have little impact on success rates. 

Give me one example of relevant feedback besides being murdered? Give me one example on how it gives feedback or relevant info on mechanics. Hey give me one example on giving any direction on where to go even in the starting areas.

Gw2 has a decent system, perhaps more complex than many of the mainstream mmorpgs but I wouldnt call it hard to learn. I mean yes if you read just the tooltips you wont have a clue but that is always the case. You have to connect the experience with stats. And you have all the info and tools in the game. What I found out that if you play enough your build and rotation will already be close to what people perceive as meta. Or at least the output will be. Also rotations might seem complex on paper but if you play enough you found out most are actually  natural and makes sense naturally if you put some thought into it. The theorycrafting only elevates those a little bit.

Ill actually stick to the DS as the extreme counterpart. In DS each weapon (not type, but each weapon) is unique in it's abilities. You dont execute ability by straightforward pressing of button "x" but a combination of buttons and timings you have to found out by yourself. There is no info on what each ability does, you dont even get info on what abilities each weapon is capable of. Its all up to you to learn while being murdered solely based on the animation response on the screen. Ill go a step further. You get a bunch of items during your play in DS. There is close to no info what these items are for. You have unique souls you can actually consume as any other soul. Those souls are important for upgrading your character. Player can get the unique soul, consume it and locks out his upgrade options permanently without any possible reparation or even info on it.

Again DS is extreme counterpart. But since you brought it up as a great learning curve without any example at all.

[The Boz.2038]

11 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

The problem is, it ain't challenging. No new strategies were figured out

You keep harping on about this point, and you keep ignoring all of the adaptations the community has made just to pretend to be right.
Remember kids! If it's a new strat, then it's either not happening, or it is elitist! So there is no new strat!

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Ruisen.9471 said:

Most MMO's don't really teach you how to be good enough at your class to do raid content either, at least the ones I've played. 

There are three components to this - gearing up, picking a build, and polishing your skills. Most MMORPGs nowadays simplify the first two components as much as possible, so you can concentrate on the last one - and even in the last one you can generally still slowly improve throughout playing even without actively training for it, which means that eventually you will get to the point where you are at the low entry level to raiding and can start to improve from that point up in raid environment (and with help from other raiders).

In GW2 there's no such thing. You can improve organically as far as basic game mechanics go, but all other things (builds, gear, even proper skill setup and rotation) are so complicated that gradual improvement is next to impossible. You need to either fully understand the system (and extremely few players do so, even among hardcores), or get help from someone else. And you have to get that help long before getting to that "low entry" level.

And the whole "stepstones to raiding" idea Anet keeps pushing does not change the situation. It can at best track your progress, but will never help you with achieving it.

[Geckoo.6018]

14 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

GW2 has one of the most complex systems in the MMO sphere. If you sit someone down to read every single tooltip and every piece of explanation the game gives you they will have absolutely 0 idea about how to be effective.

Gw2 has the same level of complexity than most RPG's have: it's easy to find out certain combinations just by reading what your abilities and traits do, but to be optimal while using those combinations it requires to do some research, either by testing stuff yourself or by following a guide (essentially, following someone else research).

You have plenty of players that learn how to be more effective or deal with certain mechanics without the game making any effort to teach that to them, you know why? because they want to! It's not a matter of the game lacking the apropiate tutorials, is a matter of player interest.

When it comes to a meta event (since that is the topic), having a big part of the community understanding and learning the fight is just a matter of time: trial and error, experience as a community.

When we see the success rates going up (well, at least the people talking about it here) is not just the nerfs doing their part, is also the fact that after a month there is more people that knows how the whole thing works and no in-game tutorial was required.

The question i have for you is, how far do you believe the game should hold your hand?

 

The only issue this meta event has right now is community perception and how the preparation buffs reinforce that perception. Meaning that the required time before the meta starts is still a problem that is not helping to have more variety of squads. I'm not going to consider the crazy bite patterns an issue because that looks like a bug.

[Erise.5614]

45 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Give me one example of relevant feedback besides being murdered? Give me one example on how it gives feedback or relevant info on mechanics.

With pleasure! I've written a paper for university on the game design and storytelling of Dark Souls! (1, been a while since I've finished and moved into the industry).

Dark Souls has extremely responsive animations. HP bars don't just disappear but light up yellow, clarifying how much damage you just dealt / how much damage you received before smoothly catching up with the red part of the HP bar. Damage formulas are as straight forward as could be. No elaborate synergies between different elements. Meaning it has a lot less to teach about them. Leveling up highlights all attributes, showing simultaneously what it was previously and what it will be after leveling up. Not just for the stat itself but also how much damage your weapon will deal so you can get an idea of how much of a difference it will be during combat. And since there are no multiplicative mechanics you can actually use the difference, roughly estimate the percentage difference and make an informed decision! 

45 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Hey give me one example on giving any direction on where to go even in the starting areas.

After the Asylum it drops you in Firelink Shrine with no explicit direction about where to go. It kinda acts like a Metroidvania in that regard by allowing you to go anywhere but adding various, necessary gimmicks to progress right at the entrance of an area. Giving you very clear expectations of what this area has in store. Yes, frequently by killing you. But that only happens if you actively explore. Because, point number two.

They left a trail of bread crums leading you in a single direction. There's an item you can pick up in a well immediately. Which orients your camera towards some clearly framed stairs with another item visible far in the background. No other direction has this kind of lure so most players follow that path and are lead straight into the training area where you aren't instantly killed and have time to heal up. It's using negative reinforcement for the choices you're not supposed to make (while still allowing you to do that) and using positive reinforcement for the intended path.
With each area being deliberately designed to teach you one mechanic, one gimmick, one enemy behavior. Having weak enemies doing it. Slowly escalating difficulty before putting in a boss as an ultimate challenge of previously learned aspects. Alongside a steady pacing balancing new mechanics, novel gimmicks and familiar elements. 

45 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

You dont execute ability by straightforward pressing of button "x" but a combination of buttons and timings you have to found out by yourself.

It's just timings, clearly portrayed by the animations. Otherwise skills either have explicit descriptions (e.g. magic, prayers) or is consistent between all weapons (it's always a heavy attack, quick attack, block, block attack. Directly associated with the 4 buttons). They vary a little in details which are also explicitly outlined in the description as stats are straight forward and all displayed in there. Yes, getting a feeling for those takes a bit of time but feedback on those is fairly quick. Special combos like attack step back some weapons have are not necessary to be effective and are fine to not be discovered for an enjoyable playing experience. Just an additional tool for the people who like experimenting. 

45 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Its all up to you to learn while being murdered solely based on the animation response on the screen.

The game offers areas to try things out in most zones with little risk to life. It takes a moment to do. Yes. But because the feedback is so tight, so consistent, so comparable it takes less time than properly understanding even a single skill in GW2. 

45 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

You get a bunch of items during your play in DS. There is close to no info what these items are for. You have unique souls you can actually consume as any other soul. Those souls are important for upgrading your character. Player can get the unique soul, consume it and locks out his upgrade options permanently without any possible reparation or even info on it.

This is not true. It is not important for upgrading your character. It's another optional progression path for when you like exploration. A theme throughout the entire game. Hence the various hidden items behind indistinguishable hidden doors. It does increase replayability as you are almost expected to miss a lot of those things the first time through. But it doesn't diminish the gameplay experience as consequence of it. 

45 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

What I found out that if you play enough your build and rotation will already be close to what people perceive as meta. Or at least the output will be. Also rotations might seem complex on paper but if you play enough you found out most are actually  natural and makes sense naturally if you put some thought into it. The theorycrafting only elevates those a little bit.

Agree with the rotations. Disagree with the build. Just ending up with a good set of traits and gear is already unintuitive. It requires a significant amount of theory crafting by yourself, repeated reading up on lots of things and revisiting old choices as new things become available as certain synergies didn't exist when you first unlocked a set of choices. 

This is extremely overwhelming and off putting. With a lot of players just being told to do the meta and actively learning even less. It can work. You can learn it yourself. But only a very specific kind of player enjoys the process provided by guild wars.

Which is why we see so much inefficiency.Pug a bit in metas. Ideally comm some of them. Look at averages and all that. I'm not making any assumptions here. 

A huge amount of players have not learned these things. Too many to blame laziness. The results. The gameplay we currently see in game really speaks for itself.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Erise.5614]

21 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

You keep harping on about this point, and you keep ignoring all of the adaptations the community has made just to pretend to be right.
Remember kids! If it's a new strat, then it's either not happening, or it is elitist! So there is no new strat!

What new, superior strats were developed in the past 3 weeks? 

[Yellow Rainbow.6142]

I just ran as Commander W1 to W4 Raid encounter yesterday, as well as Eod Strikes. No KP check, didn't even ask for experience and didn't even sub group strike mission.

With couple of fail on Raid, cleared all easily enough.

Then thought about running DE META then, I said to myself, it's not worth it. Pug don't listen to you neither I have the energy to manage 50 people. I have failed this enough to not to repeat it.

[The Boz.2038]

1 minute ago, Erise.5614 said:

What new, superior strats were developed in the past 3 weeks? 

You are yet to acknowledge the existence of the first ones as viable/non-elitist/non-toxic. Really not interested in getting into another "but that's not a strategy" with you.

[Erise.5614]

59 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

You are yet to acknowledge the existence of the first ones as viable/non-elitist/non-toxic. Really not interested in getting into another "but that's not a strategy" with you.

With "first one" you mean gatekeeping, trying to force a new map instance from being generated and simply bringing twice the DPS of any average PUG? 

I mean. Yes, that is effective. But if that is actually the intended strat then it's decent design for instanced content but poor design for an open world meta event. 

And if the intention is for the general player base to double their DPS then the rest of the expansion is poorly made by not leading players towards the right conclusions and requiring it step by step but just suddenly dropping that sharp increase into their face. 

If you mean a different strategy, please be explicit about it ❤️ 

Edited April 5, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Cuks.8241]

4 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

With pleasure! I've written a paper for university on the game design and storytelling of Dark Souls! (1, been a while since I've finished and moved into the industry).

Dark Souls has extremely responsive animations. HP bars don't just disappear but light up yellow, clarifying how much damage you just dealt / how much damage you received before smoothly catching up with the red part of the HP bar. Damage formulas are as straight forward as could be. No elaborate synergies between different elements. Meaning it has a lot less to teach about them. Leveling up highlights all attributes, showing simultaneously what it was previously and what it will be after leveling up. Not just for the stat itself but also how much damage your weapon will deal so you can get an idea of how much of a difference it will be during combat. 

After the Asylum it drops you in Firelink Shrine with no explicit direction about where to go. It kinda acts like a Metroidvania in that regard by allowing you to go anywhere but adding various, necessary gimmicks to progress right at the entrance of an area. Giving you very clear expectations of what this area has in store. Yes, frequently by killing you. But that only happens if you actively explore. Because, point number two.

They left a trail of bread crums leading you in a single direction. There's an item you can pick up in a well immediately. Which orients your camera towards some clearly framed stairs with another item visible far in the background. No other direction has this kind of lure so most players follow that path and are lead straight into the training area where you aren't instantly killed and have time to heal up. 
With each area being deliberately designed to teach you one mechanic, one gimmick, one enemy behavior. Having weak enemies doing it. Slowly escalating difficulty before putting in a boss as an ultimate challenge of previously learned aspects. Alongside a steady pacing balancing new mechanics, novel gimmicks and familiar elements. 

It's just timings, clearly portrayed by the animations. Otherwise skills either have explicit descriptions (e.g. magic, prayers) or is consistent between all weapons (it's always a heavy attack, quick attack, block, block attack. Directly associated with the 4 buttons). They vary a little in details which are also explicitly outlined in the description as stats are straight forward and all displayed in there. Yes, getting a feeling for those takes a bit of time but feedback on those is fairly quick. Special combos like attack step back some weapons have are not necessary to be effective and are fine to not be discovered for an enjoyable playing experience. Just an additional tool for the people who like experimenting. 

The game offers areas to try things out in most zones with little risk to life. It takes a moment to do. Yes. But because the feedback is so tight, so consistent, so comparable it takes less time than properly understanding even a single skill in GW2. 

This is not true. It is not important for upgrading your character. It's another optional progression path for when you like exploration. A theme throughout the entire game. Hence the various hidden items behind indistinguishable hidden doors. It does increase replayability as you are almost expected to miss a lot of those things the first time through. But it doesn't diminish the gameplay experience as consequence of it. 

Agree with the rotations. Disagree with the build. Just ending up with a good set of traits and gear is already unintuitive. It requires a significant amount of theory crafting by yourself, repeated reading up on lots of things and revisiting old choices as new things become available as certain synergies didn't exist when you first unlocked a set of choices. 

This is extremely overwhelming and off putting. With a lot of players just being told to do the meta and actively learning even less. It can work. You can learn it yourself. But only a very specific kind of player enjoys the process provided by guild wars.

Which is why we see so much inefficiency.Pug a bit in metas. Ideally comm some of them. Look at averages and all that. I'm not making any assumptions here. 

A huge amount of players have not learned these things. Too many to blame laziness. The results. The gameplay we currently see in game really speaks for itself.

I agree with everything written on DS with you and also on the feedback it provides. Dont get me wrong its a great game and enjoyed it greatly especially because of the challenge and learning and response and flow.

I dont remember dmg formulas in DS. I know it took me a while before I figured out which stat impacts each weapon. But gw2 is quite transparent here also. You can clearly see in the character menu on how each stat reflects in the output. This is done much better than most games I played including mmorpgs where you had to almost always resort to outside often approximated recreated curves. The ability tooltips in gw2 clearly distinguish between base effects and additional trait effects. It also highlights stats that are affected by traits. So it is easy to see the synergies between build and output.

Gw2 animations are actually quite good for mmorpg and you can get quite some feedback from them. This is purely spvp thing. Anything above that player numbers is cluster kitten and not required in general. In my opinion mob telegraphs are clear. If I compare to Wow from the time I played, you never really knew if something is good or bad, how bad it is and often the area of effects were not clear at all (sometimes you could half way walk into it, other times you just insta died 3 meters infront of it).

But as you mentioned yourself. You learn in DS mostly on direct response during the gameplay through observation and repetition. Why is this acceptable standard or even great design for some games and not also acceptable or encouraged for gw2.

[yann.1946]

1 hour ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Dark Souls great learning curve? Dark Souls has no learning curve. It doesnt tell you anything about stats, it doesnt give you any direction where to go besides vague dialogue and once you beat the intro boss where you will repeteadly fail you are left to wonder. The learning there goes die on one mob until you learn the fight in details and move to the next. And if you go left instead of right you will die without any warning and direction. Oh and from time time there will be a surprise attack you cant avoid untill it kills you first. I mean the game's subtitle is Prepare to die. Very bad example.

But ok this is not Dark Souls and shouldnt be. And I really dont get this the game needs to teach players everything. What is the point? This is not a very complex game. You have descriptions on abilities (something DS doesnt have) and they improved them lately.

This part I disagree with strongly. Gw2 is a very complex game (most mmo's are actually). 

Even when just talking about combat, what is and what is not usefull isn't always clear. How strong is might for example in practice? Which stats are the most important? In a group setting, what does a team need? 

These are not tribunal things to learn

1 hour ago, Cuks.8241 said:

There is plenty to learn on the Eod meta. Its how to stay alive. All the attacks have visual queues and very specific sound queues (not even queues but plain explanations by Aurene and others). If everyone just stayed up during the whole fight this would be a cake. And people are learning the fight, the win rate is increasing, that is obvious if you play it consistently.

 

[Erise.5614]

35 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

I agree with everything written on DS with you and also on the feedback it provides. Dont get me wrong its a great game and enjoyed it greatly especially because of the challenge and learning and response and flow.

I dont remember dmg formulas in DS. I know it took me a while before I figured out which stat impacts each weapon. But gw2 is quite transparent here also. You can clearly see in the character menu on how each stat reflects in the output. This is done much better than most games I played including mmorpgs where you had to almost always resort to outside often approximated recreated curves. The ability tooltips in gw2 clearly distinguish between base effects and additional trait effects. It also highlights stats that are affected by traits. So it is easy to see the synergies between build and output.

I disagree with this heavily. Most of these things are only obvious to MMO veterans. 

Stat feedback is only about the current build and requires replacement with owned alternative stats to compare effect. Putting up a significant gold gate in front of experimentation and additional hoops to jump through. Can't highlight an object in chat or TP to see how it would affect your combat effectiveness. The preview screen could be used here to help with that. 

The difference between stats and combat effectiveness in itself is already not good. It is not obvious that precision means crit chance. You can learn it from the tool tip but it takes a significant amount of time and adds onto the tedium that is tool tip reading.

And even once you experimented with it the actual damage output will not be reflective of those stats because of several layers of modifiers.

The highlighting is a joke. It tells you that something is affected. Not just stats but also skills and combat modes. Which is not useful information until you have a decent overview over the entire combat system. But getting a good overview over all that is extreme and often inexperienced players just never get to that point of overview where the synergies become clear. It's a quality of life tool for experienced people theory crafting as you can quickly skim through the tooltips. But it's not good at teaching new players as most of these words have no intuitive meaning.

E.g. "Shroud skills gain reduced recharge" 
What even is shroud? I'm a scourge. I have shades!? Are shades the same as shrouds? 
What is recharge? Is that cooldown? On the F2-5 skills? Or on placing a shade? Both? Neither?

Reading just keeps adding questions rather than answering the ones you had. 

35 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Gw2 animations are actually quite good for mmorpg and you can get quite some feedback from them. This is purely spvp thing. Anything above that player numbers is cluster kitten and not required in general.

Exactly. I mean, we can see with New World how well PvP focused MMOs do. They never did well. It's nice for that purpose but in a majority of the content you can not see jack.

And even when you can see something the feedback is more abstract than with, for example, RPGs such as DS. Hit responses (aka getting hit) is only selectively reacted to and very indirect. All of this is necessitated by the genre and not actually the fault of ANet. However, it needs to be better at teaching to overcome these necessary shortcomings.

35 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

If I compare to Wow from the time I played, you never really knew if something is good or bad, how bad it is and often the area of effects were not clear at all (sometimes you could half way walk into it, other times you just insta died 3 meters infront of it).

I agree. Though you had a lot more feedback through explicit support and wide variety for addons.

And, much more importantly, worse design doesn't justify bad design. 

35 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

You learn in DS mostly on direct response during the gameplay through observation and repetition. Why is this acceptable standard or even great design for some games and not also acceptable or encouraged for gw2.

It would be! But GW2 is not doing it.

It doesn't have the necessary pacing, it doesn't implement the necessary game loop, it doesn't format content in a way where you progress step by step. The progression path isn't there. DS teaches, both with what it provides to you but also by sending specific kinds of enemies at you and designing areas to progressively introduce, reinforce and test mastery of certain parts of the combat system. This is teaching. This is what I mean when I say DS is good at teaching and GW2 is not. 

There is open world and story where everything is irrelevant. And then there is the other side of the game where everything is relevant. And in between a huge gap. This gap is the problem. It requires players to progress small bit by small bit without the game encouraging further progress for a long time. Or requires to blindly follow instructions to immediately bridge the gap without understanding anything.

Both have conversion issues. Both loose a lot of people along the way.

If GW2 was designed with gameplay and feedback loops as tight and gradual as DS I'd be fully on board with that! 

Edited April 5, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Cuks.8241]

1 minute ago, yann.1946 said:

This part I disagree with strongly. Gw2 is a very complex game (most mmo's are actually). 

Even when just talking about combat, what is and what is not usefull isn't always clear. How strong is might for example in practice? Which stats are the most important? In a group setting, what does a team need? 

These are not tribunal things to learn

 

Gw2 doesnt have obsurd amount of skills. And it doesnt have absurd amount of skills that are basically the same in its purpose. In wow I had like 40+ skills keybinded, the numbers were just absurd. I had macros (supported in game) for skill synergies. I had different skills that were linked to different targets (focus or target) and in the past you could also use lower rank skills that did less dmg, faster cast time but included added effect (example rank 1 blizzard for quick rogue destealth or rank 1 frostbolt for a quickcast slow effect during kiting). 

In this regard gw2 is not complex. It is actually quite concise and straightforward. There is much less redundancy also. You know what my first impression for gw2 was coming from Wow as my previous mmorpg. Oh this game look so simple, maybe to simple for my taste.

Gw2 has actually very good explanations of effects and outputs in UI. Want to know what stat does? All there in UI, oh look precision affects crit%. Want to know how much %crit this piece of equipment gives or this stat adds? All there in the UI. Want to know if this trait affects specific ability or adds effect to it? Its in the tooltip. 

This is actually not so common in many games. Often you are only left with the output number (dmg on mob) or even not that. It took me years of playing Baldurs Gate to figure out what "thac0" means. Not the formulas, just what it actually is.

[Astralporing.1957]

4 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

There is open world and story where everything is irrelevant. And then there is the other side of the game where everything is relevant. And in between a huge gap. This gap is the problem. It requires players to progress small bit by small bit without the game encouraging further progress for a long time. Or requires to blindly follow instructions to immediately bridge the gap without understanding anything.

Actually, it's more of the latter than the former. The game system is built in such a way, that small improvements are next to impossible. You improve a bit at the beginning and hit a barrier you cannot easily cross. And at the point where you will be able to cross it, your effectiveness does not advance by a small step, but by a massive jump. And only after that jump you can start to gradually improve again. There are no players at all in-between those two points In this way, any content in-between those two points is pretty much irrelevant - it will be too hard for those that did not make the step, and too easy for those that did.

[Erise.5614]

1 minute ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Actually, it's more of the latter than the former. The game system is built in such a way, that small improvements are next to impossible. You improve a bit at the beginning and hit a barrier you cannot easily cross. And at the point where you will be able to cross it, your effectiveness does not advance by a small step, but by a massive jump. And only after that jump you can start to gradually improve again. There are no players at all in-between those two points In this way, any content in-between those two points is pretty much irrelevant - it will be too hard for those that did not make the step, and too easy for those that did.

Basically what I meant but thanks for clarifying!

Yes, it's a huge gap and making progress within the gap means you see very, very little difference. The game doesn't encourage further experimentation.

Until you found something close to a meta build with all the relevant bits and pieces where it skyrockets. 

[Astralporing.1957]

7 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

You know what my first impression for gw2 was coming from Wow as my previous mmorpg. Oh this game look so simple, maybe to simple for my taste.

And that's part of the problem. GW2 on the surface indeed seems to be very simple, and can even be easily played at that level. And that's the level majority of the players stay at. To improve, hovewer, you need to look behind that, and realize how immensely complex it can be when you want to push the edge of what is possible. That's the very gap that separates the majority of the players from the more hardcore-minded minority. Most players take that game at face value, and never realize that they are being fooled by appearances.

[Melech.4308]

On 3/31/2022 at 11:36 PM, Kaloken.9461 said:

Hi all!

 

First of all, I would like to say I really like Guild Wars 2. I bought every expansion so far, including EoD.

 

I really like open world content. Raids on the other hand I don't like - they simply take too much investment for my taste to really be able to do them. I understand and respect the raiding community is pretty closed to those, who can't actually show their involvement by pinging legendary insights. That's ok with me.

 

I am pretty happy with the open world content, because basically everybody can play it. That was my assumption, when I bought EoD.

 

When I failed repeatedly in the Soo Won meta event, I started to feel frustrated. It always takes like one hour to fail and get pretty much nothing out of it. No chance of ever unlocking the turtle mount and enyoing this game content without finding an able squad. I therefore tried to find an organized squad that would deal with this - in my eyes way too difficult - meta event. The organized squads I found don't seem to teach or require knowing the mechanics, but they also require to be able to ping legendary insights and a raid role. As I am not a raider, I feel rejected by the game and its community, excluded from the content I want to unlock and very very frustrated. I understand and respect the organized squads of having these restrictions, because the meta event is obviously way too hard.

 

The community mentioned this meta event being too difficult for a longer time now. So far no real changes, as far as I can see. Will you please do something about it, ArenaNet? If you want to create a new raid, I am fine with it. But don't call a raid an open world meta event please and don't hide mounts behind a raid. It excludes and frustrates people.

If you're playing on EU servers, you can join me as I command a squad to do DE everyday starting at 10PM UTC. I give instructions on what to do, the mechanics, and others. The only thing I ask is that you pay attention and do events; no AFKs allowed. So far, we have never failed DE since I started commanding.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Melech.4308

[The Boz.2038]

1 hour ago, Erise.5614 said:

With "first one" you mean gatekeeping, trying to force a new map instance from being generated and simply bringing twice the DPS of any average PUG? 

No, I mean squads, subgroups, support players. Which you all described as elitist stuff that has no business existing in OW PvE, in not one but two separate previous threads.
But there you go, pretending that nothing happened, so predictible.

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

20 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

That's the very gap that separates the majority of the players from the more hardcore-minded minority.

It's not even the "hardcore-minded minority". The division isn't two-fold. I.e. there are people who are aware, and do execute some of the deeper aspects, but lack time and experience on the others (i.e. gear).

Edited April 5, 2022 by NorthernRedStar.3054

[The Boz.2038]

1 hour ago, Erise.5614 said:

It is not obvious that precision means crit chance. You can learn it from the tool tip but it takes a significant amount of time and adds onto the tedium that is tool tip reading.

Wow.
We are beyond hand-holding now, folks.
"Hmm. What does Precision do? It's there in my menu. And mousing over things usually gives me more info. Huh, guess I'll never know, I don't have the time to ever see what it does."
We are fully in "Good stat: get more" land here. Any name for a stat other than "Good stat" and "Bad stat" is, obviously, bad, and should be avoided, because it is non-modern game design. A profession is an elite spec is a build is a stat set. Play necro? You are condi scourge, all your gear is automatically viper, and your bar is set in stone. Have fun!

Edited April 5, 2022 by The Boz.2038

[Astralporing.1957]

16 minutes ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

It's not even the "hardcore-minded minority". The division isn't two-fold. I.e. there are people who are aware, and do execute some of the deeper aspects, but lack time and experience on the others (i.e. gear).

The "step" i am talking about is knowledge. And since the source of that knowledge is the same for choosing traits, skills and gear, if you know one, you know all. Those players you speak of have already taken that step, they are just not fully putting it in practice yet.