Close to giving up

[Ithilwen.1529]

thread deleted

[Carighan.6758]

So am I, but more with GW2 as a whole. For as impressive as the game was 5 years ago on release, nowadays it is actually... quite disappointing? It really seems to stand testament that a subscription-based development effort is healthier for a game's long-term evolution.

And, relevant to the thread, the biggest source of complaint would be the appaling state of the classes IMO. Not even their balance, but their very fundamental design or lack there-of. Or such elementary things as combat readability, underwater combat or unified buff/debuff system. Which GW2 nearly had, see boons and conditions!

[Ithilwen.1529]

I don't agree on your first point. Star Trek Online, ( a sister game to GW2 from NCsoft , ) is free-to-play. It has frequent story updates and, by comparison, almost no balance problems. That game maintains a permanent test server. Players are offered rewards such as a unique tribble to try things out when a big change is coming. As a result of this testing, It is quite rare to hear of a seriously out-of-whack game element.

I've put out sustained effort over a period of years to "learn to play" and it's simply not working. I log off angry and depressed. The concept of Mesmer is amazing and cool.. but after more than 5 years, 2 accounts, 2 expansions and 1000's of pvp matches I'm close to being ready to drop it and walk away. I have more than a year logged, actually playing the game. I've made the effort.

What I'd like from ANET is: A build that gives respectable damage and is somewhat forgiving. Also, it needs to not be gutted and to offer something that is uniquely it's own. I will be amazed if Mirage Cloak isn't on some other class soon. It doesn't need to be forgiving on the level of Scourge or DH... but it needs to not require formula 1 reflexes to play well either.

[FaboBabo.3581]

I'd love the sword trait in dueling be changed to : steal life when blocking a foes attack ( 1 sec internal CD) damage : 390(1000power) heal : 780(wvw,pvp) 1270(pve), still reducing sword skill cooldowns by 20%.

Right now mesmer only has real Sustain in Inspiration, could be improved overall.

[Belishine.7493]

i think if they do a lot more to like a weekly balance patch and/or focuse on fixing all the buggy and brocken stuff this would make the game soo mutch better for everyone but the balance patches are so long apart like atlest 3 months for one. i also keep runing in to game breackng bugs all the time that is make the game feel like they are focusing to mutch on the liveing world stuff and expantion and not trying to fix the real issue of the bugs.

[apharma.3741]

@Ithilwen.1529 said:I don't agree on your first point. Star Trek Online, ( a sister game to GW2 from NCsoft , ) is free-to-play. It has frequent story updates and, by comparison, almost no balance problems. That game maintains a permanent test server. Players are offered rewards such as a unique tribble to try things out when a big change is coming. As a result of this testing, It is quite rare to hear of a seriously out-of-whack game element.

I've put out sustained effort over a period of years to "learn to play" and it's simply not working. I log off angry and depressed. The concept of Mesmer is amazing and cool.. but after more than 5 years, 2 accounts, 2 expansions and 1000's of pvp matches I'm close to being ready to drop it and walk away. I have more than a year logged, actually playing the game. I've made the effort.

What I'd like from ANET is: A build that gives respectable damage and is somewhat forgiving. Also, it needs to not be gutted and to offer something that is uniquely it's own. I will be amazed if Mirage Cloak isn't on some other class soon. It doesn't need to be forgiving on the level of Scourge or DH... but it needs to not require formula 1 reflexes to play well either.

You are completely and utterly wrong. I have played STO when it went F2P so many years ago. Tactical captains were infinitely better than every other class in PvE and escorts were the only end game ships you really saw until legacy of Romulus. It then changed to romulan faction and tactical were better than everything else followed by tactical captains from other factions a little far behind and then everything else was significantly further behind. Only recently has it achieved anything resembling balance and that is only because everyone is capable of doing 3 times more damage than anyone would ever need to complete anything in PvE.

STO PvP has been dead forever, I mean real PvP where players blast each other away, it died after the 3rd or 4th lockbox and was mostly because there were so many special consoles that you could only buy from a currency that came in their lock boxes or worse still you needed to win the 1 in 200 odds ship. All of this being character bound not account and not account unlock. This aspect is not only still here but in full swing with a crafting system where to get the best upgrade chances you have to buy from the cash shop.

There is no WvW. I even log in still (I have a lifetime subscription which has more than paid for itself many times over) and have geared up my main characters from years ago, while some aspects have improved the combat is clunky, the interface out of date and the company treats every single person as a cash cow to be milked until it is no longer useful and shot. STO is only played because of the IP, if it was any other space based MMO it would have been buried under the amazing and terrible EVE.

I too feel frustrated with GW2, I feel frustrated the devs think need to squeeze money out of us when many would just throw cash at ANet for OK skins and focusing primarily on the game systems. I wish they would properly go through the classes and ditch/change mechanics that don’t work, phantasms on mesmer, stealth as a mechanic, resistance being on/off gameplay, WvW rewarding numbers more than brains etc. However I can categorically say GW2 is superior in the way you play the game to almost any other MMO mostly because of the active combat and almost no downtime.

[bart.3687]

@FaboBabo.3581 said:I'd love the sword trait in dueling be changed to : steal life when blocking a foes attack ( 1 sec internal CD) damage : 390(1000power) heal : 780(wvw,pvp) 1270(pve), still reducing sword skill cooldowns by 20%.

Right now mesmer only has real Sustain in Inspiration, could be improved overall.

I see you'd like synergy with OH sword block (and possibly with Scepter 2 if you use Sc/Sw build), but the trait makes no sense with MH sword at all.I'm all up for more sustained heal sources for mes, but the trait you proposed is not really a good idea imo.

[dude.2950]

Time to take a break an come back every 3 months to see what balance team has to offer.

[FaboBabo.3581]

@bart.3687 said:

@FaboBabo.3581 said:I'd love the sword trait in dueling be changed to : steal life when blocking a foes attack ( 1 sec internal CD) damage : 390(1000power) heal : 780(wvw,pvp) 1270(pve), still reducing sword skill cooldowns by 20%.

Right now mesmer only has real Sustain in Inspiration, could be improved overall.

I see you'd like synergy with OH sword block (and possibly with Scepter 2 if you use Sc/Sw build), but the trait makes no sense with MH sword at all.I'm all up for more sustained heal sources for mes, but the trait you proposed is not really a good idea imo.

exactly what i'm looking at, and ur probably right, that the trait wouldnt fit overall.I really like the design of scepter 2 and sword 4, dealing damage when blocking an attack ->punishing the attacker feels mesmer like<- and i'd really like to go even further on this. This is why i designed the steal health block trait. Maaaaaybe could fit in another place.

edit ; maybe make it like the new spellbreaker - dagger trait ; evading an attack grants might (sword MH), blocking an attack steals life (sword OH)i REAAALLY want health steal on block somewhere ;D

edit 2 ; making it more similar to what we have now ; evading an attack granst increased ferocity (20 , up to 5 stacks), (sword MH), blocking an attack steals life (sword OH)

[SlimChance.6593]

Life steal is a Necro thing.. 'steal a boon' sounds like Mesmer ?

[Ithilwen.1529]

@apharma.3741 said:

@Ithilwen.1529 said:I don't agree on your first point. Star Trek Online, ( a sister game to GW2 from NCsoft , ) is free-to-play. It has frequent story updates

and, by comparison, almost no balance problems.

That game maintains a permanent test server. Players are offered rewards such as a unique tribble to try things out when a big change is coming. As a result of this

testing,

It is quite rare to hear of a seriously out-of-whack game element.

I've put out sustained effort over a period of years to "learn to play" and it's simply not working. I log off angry and depressed. The concept of Mesmer is amazing and cool.. but after more than 5 years, 2 accounts, 2 expansions and 1000's of pvp matches I'm close to being ready to drop it and walk away. I have more than a year logged, actually playing the game.

I've made the effort.

What I'd like from ANET is: A build that gives respectable damage and is somewhat forgiving. Also, it needs to not be gutted and to offer something that is uniquely it's own. I will be amazed if Mirage Cloak isn't on some other class soon. It doesn't need to be forgiving on the level of Scourge or DH... but it needs to not require formula 1 reflexes to play well either.

You are completely and utterly wrong. I have played STO when it went F2P so many years ago. Tactical captains were infinitely better than every other class in PvE and escorts were the only end game ships you really saw until legacy of Romulus. It then changed to romulan faction and tactical were better than everything else followed by tactical captains from other factions a little far behind and then everything else was significantly further behind. Only recently has it achieved anything resembling balance and that is only because everyone is capable of doing 3 times more damage than anyone would ever need to complete anything in PvE.

STO PvP has been dead forever, I mean real PvP where players blast each other away, it died after the 3rd or 4th lockbox and was mostly because there were so many special consoles that you could only buy from a currency that came in their lock boxes or worse still you needed to win the 1 in 200 odds ship. All of this being character bound not account and not account unlock. This aspect is not only still here but in full swing with a crafting system where to get the best upgrade chances you have to buy from the cash shop.

There is no WvW. I even log in still (I have a lifetime subscription which has more than paid for itself many times over) and have geared up my main characters from years ago, while some aspects have improved the combat is clunky, the interface out of date and the company treats every single person as a cash cow to be milked until it is no longer useful and shot. STO is only played because of the IP, if it was any other space based MMO it would have been buried under the amazing and terrible EVE.

I too feel frustrated with GW2, I feel frustrated the devs think need to squeeze money out of us when many would just throw cash at ANet for OK skins and focusing primarily on the game systems. I wish they would properly go through the classes and ditch/change mechanics that don’t work, phantasms on mesmer, stealth as a mechanic, resistance being on/off gameplay, WvW rewarding numbers more than brains etc. However I can categorically say GW2 is superior in the way you play the game to almost any other MMO mostly because of the active combat and almost no downtime.

STO is currently very well balanced. Yes PvP there is dead.. that's because of all m the pay to win stuff.. A good comparison can be drawn to needing PoF classes. My point is that STO tests things publicly before release, there fore it seldom releases things that are badly buggy or OP/UP.

I agree that the profit drive hurts ANET.

[Ithilwen.1529]

A couple of strong interrupts, that could be reliably used against Warrior/dg/thief would go a long way.

[apharma.3741]

@Ithilwen.1529 said:

@apharma.3741 said:

@Ithilwen.1529 said:I don't agree on your first point. Star Trek Online, ( a sister game to GW2 from NCsoft , ) is free-to-play. It has frequent story updates

and, by comparison, almost no balance problems.

That game maintains a permanent test server. Players are offered rewards such as a unique tribble to try things out when a big change is coming. As a result of this

testing,

It is quite rare to hear of a seriously out-of-whack game element.

I've put out sustained effort over a period of years to "learn to play" and it's simply not working. I log off angry and depressed. The concept of Mesmer is amazing and cool.. but after more than 5 years, 2 accounts, 2 expansions and 1000's of pvp matches I'm close to being ready to drop it and walk away. I have more than a year logged, actually playing the game.

I've made the effort.

What I'd like from ANET is: A build that gives respectable damage and is somewhat forgiving. Also, it needs to not be gutted and to offer something that is uniquely it's own. I will be amazed if Mirage Cloak isn't on some other class soon. It doesn't need to be forgiving on the level of Scourge or DH... but it needs to not require formula 1 reflexes to play well either.

You are completely and utterly wrong. I have played STO when it went F2P so many years ago. Tactical captains were infinitely better than every other class in PvE and escorts were the only end game ships you really saw until legacy of Romulus. It then changed to romulan faction and tactical were better than everything else followed by tactical captains from other factions a little far behind and then everything else was significantly further behind. Only recently has it achieved anything resembling balance and that is only because everyone is capable of doing 3 times more damage than anyone would ever need to complete anything in PvE.

STO PvP has been dead forever, I mean real PvP where players blast each other away, it died after the 3rd or 4th lockbox and was mostly because there were so many special consoles that you could only buy from a currency that came in their lock boxes or worse still you needed to win the 1 in 200 odds ship. All of this being character bound not account and not account unlock. This aspect is not only still here but in full swing with a crafting system where to get the best upgrade chances you have to buy from the cash shop.

There is no WvW. I even log in still (I have a lifetime subscription which has more than paid for itself many times over) and have geared up my main characters from years ago, while some aspects have improved the combat is clunky, the interface out of date and the company treats every single person as a cash cow to be milked until it is no longer useful and shot. STO is only played because of the IP, if it was any other space based MMO it would have been buried under the amazing and terrible EVE.

I too feel frustrated with GW2, I feel frustrated the devs think need to squeeze money out of us when many would just throw cash at ANet for OK skins and focusing primarily on the game systems. I wish they would properly go through the classes and ditch/change mechanics that don’t work, phantasms on mesmer, stealth as a mechanic, resistance being on/off gameplay, WvW rewarding numbers more than brains etc. However I can categorically say GW2 is superior in the way you play the game to almost any other MMO mostly because of the active combat and almost no downtime.

STO is currently very well balanced. Yes PvP there is dead..

that's because of all m the pay to win stuff..

A good comparison can be drawn to needing PoF classes. My point is that STO tests things publicly before release, there fore it seldom releases things that are badly buggy or OP/UP.

I agree that the profit drive hurts ANET.

No, they release things that don’t work. Accuracy as a stat is supposed to go up to 100% where it then gets converted into crit chance and crit severity, it hasn’t worked with many skills for a long time, it took the playerbase until I think it was 5 years after release to finally be able to prove the conversion wasn’t working with fire at will and all the accx2 gear people had picked up was worthless.

Bet you also didn’t know that torpedo spread (all marks) cannot ever miss because it doesn’t have accuracy properly applied while high yield versions have the chance to hit properly calculated and it has been this way for 5 years. The staff at STO is so small they don’t actually do balancing more than perhaps once a year and most of the time it’s to nerf stuff to get you to buy new stuff.

As I say the only reason it looks balanced is because everyone is doing three times as much damage as anyone would ever need to. It’s still fun flying around going pew pew pew though. Ground is pretty nice too, try and join the colony simulation runs some time, it’s basically like old no win scenario but ground.

Edit: Curunen below is right, nice and casual and don’t try at anything.

[Curunen.8729]

The only thing I'll "give up" gw2 for (ie take extended breaks) is when Star Citizen alpha 3.0 hits live servers, simply because I'll be preferring to spend my time on that.

Otherwise gw2 is a fine game - just got to adopt the casual approach. It's much healthier, less stress, no worries about balance - play to enjoy the aesthetics and awesome combat mechanics/animations/visual/aural effects. The game's been much more fun since I changed my mindset to that.

[Ithilwen.1529]

I didn't like No-win scenario much. Why play a game that you're intended to lose? I fly a Narcine dreadnought ( admittedly, a pay-to-win ship ,) and normally goes with Fire at Will twice rather than torpedo spread. The Ico set requires the torpedos. Torpedo spread might be bugged, but it's so slow that fire at will does more damage. Thus it's not really an issue. Perhaps they left a bug to let torps keep up a little.

To return to the point. STO does have bugs. It also has "black box" algorithms for determining things like damage and mods. Things may well work as intended Regardless of that, I haven't seen a serious balance issue or bug that wasn't almost instantly addressed in years.

ANET would do well to follow the example of STO and publicly test things on a normal basis.

[Cyninja.2954]

While I agree that test server access would allow for better balance, I'm not sure comparing GW2 and STO really works. STO has a very different business model and as mentioned is pay to win (which allows way more flexibility design wise), increasing level cap as well as new gear makes balancing also a lot easier. It's been a while since I played STO, but back when I was playing it (mind you not very long, didn't even hit endgame before I got bored) the guides at every point in time where very clear on which classes were best to pick and which ship type was to chose.

@Curunen.8729 said:The only thing I'll "give up" gw2 for (ie take extended breaks) is when Star Citizen alpha 3.0 hits live servers, simply because I'll be preferring to spend my time on that.

Otherwise gw2 is a fine game - just got to adopt the casual approach. It's much healthier, less stress, no worries about balance - play to enjoy the aesthetics and awesome combat mechanics/animations/visual/aural effects. The game's been much more fun since I changed my mindset to that.

This is the proper approach even if you are a hardcore gamer imo. Playing GW2 the same way as other MMOs (8+ hours per day for years) does not work and will never work. That's not what the game is designed for. Taking healthy breaks on the other hand allows for people to return regularly, enjoy new content or just in general not feel forced to play constantly to "catch-up".

On the other hand, GW2 has some of the most diverse content you can play solo or with friends which only gets added to with each passing content patch.

[apharma.3741]

@Ithilwen.1529 said:I didn't like No-win scenario much. Why play a game that you're intended to lose? I fly a Narcine dreadnought ( admittedly, a pay-to-win ship ,) and normally goes with Fire at Will twice rather than torpedo spread. The Ico set requires the torpedos. Torpedo spread might be bugged, but it's so slow that fire at will does more damage. Thus it's not really an issue. Perhaps they left a bug to let torps keep up a little.

To return to the point. STO does have bugs. It also has "black box" algorithms for determining things like damage and mods. Things may well work as intended Regardless of that, I haven't seen a serious balance issue or bug that wasn't almost instantly addressed in years.

ANET would do well to follow the example of STO and publicly test things on a normal basis.

Define serious? I would have thought a skill being a guaranteed hit when it’s supposed to obey hit and miss chance as a serious bug. Especially as this pretty much helped kill off PvP as these torpedoes would follow you while in stealth and thus one shot you. The illusion of balance is maintained by having no PvP and that everyone is firing out nukes to kill flies.

ANet would not do well to follow any example of STO other than perhaps a public test server for new balance and feedback however considering the current fustercluck of people’s opinions and how extremely biased they are I think it’s better that ANet do not. I mean there are people who were defending scourge corrupting 4 boons on a 6s CD.

Also there were 2 no win scenarios, one you could win and one you most certainly couldn’t as it just threw more and more boss mobs in a wave till you died. I was talking about the original which required tactics, dps and control but if done properly by 5 people was fairly straight forward.

[OriOri.8724]

@apharma.3741 said:

@Ithilwen.1529 said:I didn't like No-win scenario much.

Why play a game that you're intended to lose?

I fly a Narcine dreadnought ( admittedly, a pay-to-win ship ,) and normally goes with Fire at Will twice rather than torpedo spread. The Ico set requires the torpedos. Torpedo spread might be bugged, but it's so slow that fire at will does more damage. Thus it's not really an issue. Perhaps they left a bug to let torps keep up a little.

To return to the point. STO does have bugs. It also has "black box" algorithms for determining things like damage and mods. Things may well work as intended

Regardless of that, I haven't seen a serious balance issue or bug that wasn't almost instantly addressed in years.

ANET would do well to follow the example of STO and publicly test things on a normal basis.

ANet would not do well to follow any example of STO other than perhaps a public test server for new balance and feedback however considering the current fustercluck of people’s opinions and how extremely biased they are I think it’s better that ANet do not. I mean there are people who were defending scourge corrupting 4 boons on a 6s CD.

Pretty much this. So many people are so used to the broken balance in GW2 that they can't objectively tell Anet when something is overperforming on their class because they either A) think its normal, B) think its deserved for their class "always being on the bottom, now its our time to be OP", or C) just have no clue about what is and isn't overpowered