New path to legendary armor?

[Cyninja.2954]

38 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

... do you know why the completion rates were rising then, day after day? It's because the weaker players simply got discouraged with failing and stopped coming to the event. The players that learned and adapted were the same players that were already learning and adapting to any other content at that time - and their skill did not improve, they just needed some time to learn encounter-specific mechanics.

 

It's the same nowadays. The first day was a problem, and after that the players capable of learning learned, and carried the others. In Public, where the carrying can be done. Also, most of the veteran and skilled players from Private attempts shifted to public by second or third day at most (and some realized the problems even faster than that, and started shifting by the end of the first day)

 

Also, 1 in 20 success rate was bad even then. What was the population on SoS then? Because the completion rate on Gandara was way better even in the first days (and those were a real mess). You just absolutely had to find a full map for that.

 

I don't completely agree, but let's run with this scenario and assume it is correct. The success rates for the Marionette were imo way higher this time around, but that is likely due to a multitude of factors, especially the faster communication, the near immediate guides, the expertise from the first time the event was here, etc.

 

The decision developers are thus faced with would be:

Do we design and create content, of varying degrees, for the players more committed to our game, or those with near no commitment at all? Designing only in 1 direction will result in almost assure losing part of the players (as does almost any decision which is made).

 

The followup question then is: which players are likely to be more loyal or more committed to the game in the long run? Those which actively take part in enjoying the game while pushing themselves, again to varying degrees of skill, or those which immediately abandon content in the face of minimal challenge?

 

Now one might argue: well players might be committed and loyal to the game while seeking no challenge at all, and that could very well be true. It does seem highly unlikely that this would be applicable to a vast majority. The simple reality is that in all likeliness, players who immediately shun away from any challenge just drop the game right then and there to move to another game. This might happen now, or with the next event or content which poses a slight challenge. In general this type of player will NOT stick around for long.

Edited July 23, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Vilin.8056]

This specific disscussion has drift too far away from the main topic so I'll leave this as my last response.

 

3 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Yes, precisely. You've just said it yourself - it has nothing to do with core design of combat of this game.

Which is why the points in your complaint regarding boss AI do not make a valid point against my point that raids are designed around elements of the game's core combat design.

 

3 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

It was "widely incorporated into the game" purely due to raids. And it was a change that went against some very strongly worded original design goals of this game - Anet did not want dedicated healers. They wanted every single player to take care of their own survival. Just as they did not want dedicated tanks - they wanted enemies whose behaviour was impossible to completely predict, ones that could attack any player, so that everyone would need to be on their guard always.

 

Notice how raid boss design is very much not like this.

Quite the opposite, the whole self survival concept in past instanced contents result in the Berserker meta simply because nobody could outsustain a boss for an extended period of time, therefore damage rate overvalues sustain with no other alternative.

This phenomenon also brought in a lot of frustration over world bosses because players die too quickly and there isn't a reliable way for group based sustain.

 

As said, healer is already implemented into the core designs of group based combat since 6 years ago and is well perceived in all game modes.

 

As your statement about tank is equally inaccurate because these roles are generally kiters. Kiting boss in instanced contents are neither a new concept.

 

3 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Yes. But the game is designed in such a way that the community can be the only source of teaching. Because the knowledge the community teaches is not something the game itself is aware of. The game does not know which builds are good or bad at this very moment. Only people designing those builds do. As such, the game is incapable of teaching anything like this to the players.

What I see is this game can teach players on basic fundamentals in such as condition damage and power damage, CC and breakstun in a starter tutorial to begin their progress. Instead of throwing blank players immidiately onto community templates, this shouldn't be an impossible design.

 

3 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

It's not even that - most players are simply not capable of reasoning out which choices are good and which are bad. Or why those specific choices are good or bad. That is true even for many of the hardcore players. The difference is that harcore players are more used to support their playstyle with informations from other sources and adjust to it, and often actively look for that kind of information, while most of the casuals do things on their own. And it's often not that casuals are resistant to adjusting to the meta - it's that they are often unaware that something like that exists as something more than a bad word they hear from some "elitist" and "rude" players. It's not like they frequent third party sites, or even game forum, after all - all the information they have is the one the game gives them.

 

A lot of the problems with many casuals is that they often do try to interact with the system. They design their own builds, improve on them, and often are proud of the "accomplishments" they "made" in that direction. Too bad, that, due to unable to fully comprehend the complexity of the whole structure, those builds are often worth kitten. At the same time many hardcores do not even try to do that - they just simply copy the builds they've been supplied with. It's quite ironic, actually.

That's still a matter of choice and consequence, but on a diffrernt direction. Inflexibility over builds changes has long been a problem - in which most raiders don't possess - among casual players. If a player made a choice to stay static set up on this game's dynamic trait/skill tuning system, such outcome can be expected.

Add that with community based teaching, and we have a lot of traumatized players who just couldn't bear to submit and reset.

 

3 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

... do you know why the completion rates were rising then, day after day? It's because the weaker players simply got discouraged with failing and stopped coming to the event. The players that learned and adapted were the same players that were already learning and adapting to any other content at that time - and their skill did not improve, they just needed some time to learn encounter-specific mechanics.

 

It's the same nowadays. The first day was a problem, and after that the players capable of learning learned, and carried the others. In Public, where the carrying can be done. Also, most of the veteran and skilled players from Private attempts shifted to public by second or third day at most (and some realized the problems even faster than that, and started shifting by the end of the first day)

I believe you, and this is exactly how we all learn contents since we are newbies. And the progress of turning impossible events into successful ones are none the less educational for the casual players who's willing to learn, and gradually, passdown to future players.

Edited July 23, 2021 by Vilin.8056

[ArchonWing.9480]

9 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

I can think of specific pure Raid-based changes even less - i just dont remember all the changes they made over the years. I would have to go over balance patch after balance patch checking specifics before i could give you a comprehensive list. Notice, that i can thing of SPvP specific balance changes even less than that, but in spite of that there were quite a lot of those over the years. Many of which significantly impacted PvE at the time. And it is exactly because there were so many of them that i don't remember many specific ones.

 

Probably because it didn't happen, lol. WvW specific changes are the least common of the group, and yes, while some of them may have had negative effects on other game modes, the reverse is far more true that WvW has been affected by pvp and pve changes.

 

 

 

Quote

 

 

There were PvE-based changes, but there were WvW-based ones as well (unlike the PvE ones, those did not target chrono specifically, but went with a wide comb at boon generation for large groups of players. Chrono just got run over as a collateral, because iirc devs were mainly aiming then at guards and spellbreakers).

And Chrono support was extremely dominant in pve.

 

 

Quote

 

It was lootstick in PvE (and it was good at it). What caused it to get reworked (and destroyed its lootstick value) however was a very specific reason - the ability to hit through tower\keep walls and gates. Notice, how that is a purely WvW reason.

 

Are you serious? Staff auto was regarded as  trash that did no damage in either instanced pve or wvw. It was only abused as a loot stick (and empower)for tagging in either game mode, and that wasn't exactly healthy either. No weapon should just function as a loot stick. Nobody was dying from being hit beyond a gate with staff autos. Now, I've heard complaints about being CoR'd through a gate, or barrage (still works btw), but staff? It was reworked to give a usable attack with healing ability, so it wasn't just to leech in either pve open world or wvw.  There were  people wanting a rework in forever.

 

Not to mention tagging mobs for loot has been something they've gotten away from, with often trash mobs giving minimal loot and the bulk of the reward comes from completing the content.

 

It doesn't seem like you play WvW or even guardian much, so please don't continue with this.

 

 

Edited July 23, 2021 by ArchonWing.9480

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

3 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Are you serious? Staff auto was regarded as  trash that did no damage in either instanced pve or wvw. It was only abused as a loot stick (and empower)for tagging in either game mode, and that wasn't exactly healthy either. No weapon should just function as a loot stick. Nobody was dying from being hit beyond a gate with staff autos.

 

Not sure about through gates part but I had quite a number of kills on pre-rework staff, in bigger fights. Tho to be fair that was more due to nobody expecting this much of aoe burns (permeating wrath +staff AA, meant AoE burn with every AA cast in big fights), than staff being particular strong......

 

But yeah I think the main argument provided with the rework patch notes was that they don't like idea of a weapon mostly used for tagging, with only niche utility of might stacks and swiftness....

 

In overall case of WvW-related balance changes, I think the pattern was that the biggest amount of those happened closest to the original launch and the further it went the lesser amount of those. in last years most of what I recall was usually strictly pvp reasons, (nerfs of decap builds for example) or reasons that were mix of both pvp modes (spvp and wvw)

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

I want every mode of playing the game to lead to full legendary. Weapons, armor, trinkets, and upgrades should have a way to earn 100% legendary. Raids, Fractals, Open World, PvP, and WvW.

[ArchonWing.9480]

1 hour ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

 

Not sure about through gates part but I had quite a number of kills on pre-rework staff, in bigger fights. Tho to be fair that was more due to nobody expecting this much of aoe burns (permeating wrath +staff AA, meant AoE burn with every AA cast in big fights), than staff being particular strong......

 

But yeah I think the main argument provided with the rework patch notes was that they don't like idea of a weapon mostly used for tagging, with only niche utility of might stacks and swiftness....

 

In overall case of WvW-related balance changes, I think the pattern was that the biggest amount of those happened closest to the original launch and the further it went the lesser amount of those. in last years most of what I recall was usually strictly pvp reasons, (nerfs of decap builds for example) or reasons that were mix of both pvp modes (spvp and wvw)

 

Yea it was easier to tag stuff for sure, plus support guardians used damage stats (in some cases going full damage). Now Minstrel Guardian is popular and with retal gone the tag has gone through the bottom unless you spam reflects and burn guard's repeated nerf. Thankfully reward tracks and skirmish chests are the main reward system now though it may still suck if you want UD which I still don't have.  Now ironically, power based guardians in zergs do good burst damage with staff (but 2 and 3 instead).

 

PvP has also been a the focus of balance changes as there are far more of them than wvw ones. I'm always never sure if they imply pvp is lumped into wvw for these changes. Some changes to scourges imply yes.

 

And definitely the loot stick in the end was not intended behavior, though eventually the game changed itself to have content where support healers were wanted and staff finally saw use. I think a lot of people would agree that your rewards for open world events should definitely about helping complete it as opposed to tagging as many mobs as possible. It was quite the nightmare at times with scaling, and we're reminded of this every Halloween where it's actually best to hold back your damage so that people don't get screwed. 😉

Edited July 23, 2021 by ArchonWing.9480

[Endilbiach.4132]

Curious about how many people feel which way about this topic.

 

Edit: This WAS the start of a poll before admins merged the threads and deleted the poll.

Edited July 30, 2021 by Endilbiach.4132
What the hell?

[Sigmoid.7082]

You're curiosity couldn't be satisfied by the literal dozens of threads, including a very recent one, on this very topic? 

[Endilbiach.4132]

8 minutes ago, Sigmoid.7082 said:

You're curiosity couldn't be satisfied by the literal dozens of threads, including a very recent one, on this very topic? 

 

All that gave me was the intensity of certain people's feelings.  I want to see if I can get the numbers behind the feelings of the community.  In the thread that I started I had maybe 5 or 6 people STRONGLY against it, which a lot of their arguments boiled down to "it's not about me having it, it's about you not."  While I had easily 2 to 3 times as many either interested or supporting it.  I don't really want to debate the idea again in this thread, that's what the last thread was for and it exploded because of the raider community.  I'm really just wondering about numbers.

Easy or hard to get, special skins or not, all of that is immaterial, I want to know how people feel about the basic idea of a set of pve legendary armor that avoids raids and strikes.  A lot of players absolutely hate that content, and as a result are forced into wvw or pvp if they want legendary armor, which feels a bit unfair.

 

Edit: if I had been thinking, I would have put a poll on the original thread when I made it.

Edited July 29, 2021 by Endilbiach.4132
slow brain gave me new thought

[Sigmoid.7082]

You will just be getting the numbers from a minority, the people who vote, of a minority, those who care about the topic, of a minority, those who come to the forum. 

 

You won't really get anything  quantifiable or at a level that would represent "the community". Just interaction from the same passionate people either side of the debate. 

 

"Easy or hard to get, special skins or not, all of that is immateria"

 

If you ignore the details then everything can see like a good , easy, must do idea that "the community" wants and that "there is no reason not to implement it". 

 

But I digress. Go luck with your second thread. 

[Endilbiach.4132]

2 minutes ago, Sigmoid.7082 said:

You will just be getting the numbers from a minority, the people who vote, of a minority, those who care about the topic, of a minority, those who come to the forum. 

 

You won't really get anything  quantifiable or at a level that would represent "the community". Just interaction from the same passionate people either side of the debate. 

 

"Easy or hard to get, special skins or not, all of that is immateria"

 

If you ignore the details then everything can see like a good , easy, must do idea that "the community" wants and that "there is no reason not to implement it". 

 

But I digress. Go luck with your second thread. 

 

You're not wrong, and I'm aware, but I couldn't even get a sense of the balance of the scales just from our forum warriors in the last thread.  In-game my feedback is also heavily weighted, as I mostly play open world content, so I encounter a LOT of people who feel the same way I do about the matter.  I might have better luck getting balanced feedback in some place like Mistlock or even the Lily of Elon, but that would be hugely labor intensive and I have no means by which to guarantee I'm actually getting the kind of balanced community feedback I'd be looking for.

I mean there are further problems with that too.  Open world moderately casual players outnumber raiders probably at least 10 to 1, even if you only count open world players who already have at least 1 legendary item.  They're naturally going to say yes to this question, so in terms of weight of players realistically there's no way that the "no's" could possibly win this poll if we asked EVERY GW2 player.  So maybe it's best to ask the people invested enough to actually come to the forums and respond to polls like this?

 

I don't pretend to know, I'm just sating a curiosity itch that I've had for a while.

[Cyninja.2954]

9 minutes ago, Endilbiach.4132 said:

 

You're not wrong, and I'm aware, but I couldn't even get a sense of the balance of the scales just from our forum warriors in the last thread.  In-game my feedback is also heavily weighted, as I mostly play open world content, so I encounter a LOT of people who feel the same way I do about the matter.  I might have better luck getting balanced feedback in some place like Mistlock or even the Lily of Elon, but that would be hugely labor intensive and I have no means by which to guarantee I'm actually getting the kind of balanced community feedback I'd be looking for.

 

Well as long as you are aware that your poll has nearly no value in the data it will provide, no harm in asking I guess.

 

Quote

I mean there are further problems with that too.  Open world moderately casual players outnumber raiders probably at least 10 to 1, even if you only count open world players who already have at least 1 legendary item.  They're naturally going to say yes to this question, so in terms of weight of players realistically there's no way that the "no's" could possibly win this poll if we asked EVERY GW2 player.  So maybe it's best to ask the people invested enough to actually come to the forums and respond to polls like this?

 

Are you going by player count, or hours spent on the game, or money spent on the game? All of those have very different meaning developer resource wise for example.

 

You are also assuming that every player, even those with less time commitment to the game, has legendary armory as a goal, and automatically assume that those players will vote "yes" in a limited binary system. Where is the "I don't care" option?

 

As far as player numbers, we have a rough estimate of how many players, or at least a certain percentage of them, at different intervals of time spent on the game, have done or are playing raids. The ratio was not 1 to 10 and it shifts drastically as a player becomes more veteran hour spent on the game.

 

Quote

 

I don't pretend to know, I'm just sating a curiosity itch that I've had for a while.

 

This poll won't satisfy that itch (well it might if you are satisfied with biased data). You already realize yourself that the poll will not yield a meaningful result.

Edited July 29, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Endilbiach.4132]

4 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

This poll won't satisfy that itch (well it might if you are satisfied with biased data). You already realize yourself that the poll will not yield a meaningful result.

 

It'll come closer than anything I've seen thus far.  At least I'll have some numbers from some subset of the community.

[DoomNexus.5324]

I hope not. Maybe if they'd make it an even bigger gold sink than the others. Or with maybe tons of ascended crafting materials (the time gated and account bound stuff).
But one of the last things we need in GW2 is to disincentivize players even more to team up for something. I'm already not happy with how they handled WvW armor as it can be boiled down to just a big waiting game with an occasional camp flip to reset the participation timer. PvP unfortunately doesn't allow teaming up so that's off the table anyway.

So if it is of equal difficulty/cost then I'm strongly against it as it devalues the existing legendary sets and the time and effort people have already put in or put in right now/until the new legy armor would release. If it is way more expensive and/or time gated without any possible skips as the tradeoff then eh.. okay, maybe. But I wouldn't be happy about it either.

[Dami.5046]

yes please. I have plenty of ascended i could use for pre's. Don't care how much it could cost or how much i need to farm.

Done my time in spvp and wvw.

Edited July 29, 2021 by Dami.5046

[kolumbia.5409]

Oh yes, lets take a look at the collections for all the PvE leggies:

 

Weapons - mostly open world

Ad Infinitum - mostly fractals

Aurora/Vision/Prismatic Champions Inheritance - mostly story

Coalescence - mostly raids

Armor - mostly raids

Aquabreather - not existing

 

By your logic we should also get a way to get all weapons, backpiece and all trinkets from doing 10 man content right? I still don't understand, why people in MMORPG demand that there is a way to get endgame gear from doing something other than the "hardest" content in the game, but never advocate that there is a way for raiders to get trinkets/weapons/backpiece from doing raids.

[Endilbiach.4132]

43 minutes ago, kolumbia.5409 said:

Oh yes, lets take a look at the collections for all the PvE leggies:

 

Weapons - mostly open world

Ad Infinitum - mostly fractals

Aurora/Vision/Prismatic Champions Inheritance - mostly story

Coalescence - mostly raids

Armor - mostly raids

Aquabreather - not existing

 

By your logic we should also get a way to get all weapons, backpiece and all trinkets from doing 10 man content right? I still don't understand, why people in MMORPG demand that there is a way to get endgame gear from doing something other than the "hardest" content in the game, but never advocate that there is a way for raiders to get trinkets/weapons/backpiece from doing raids.

 

I actually think there should be a way for you to get that through only 10 man content and gold, if that's the content you want to play.  I think pvp, wvw, raids, and open world should each have a route to a full suit of legendary gear within each type of content.

Edited July 29, 2021 by Endilbiach.4132
Trying not to argue in this thread.

[Dante.1763]

In the spirit of OPS post, i wont bother debating folks here in the thread, as OP should not either. Let the numbers speak for themselves. Even the numbers of the minority who come here have value, smaller value? Absolutely.

 

Tis a shame anet doesnt send out polls to players from time to time.

[yann.1946]

1 minute ago, Dante.1763 said:

In the spirit of OPS post, i wont bother debating folks here in the thread, as OP should not either. Let the numbers speak for themselves. Even the numbers of the minority who come here have value, smaller value? Absolutely.

 

Tis a shame anet doesnt send out polls to players from time to time.

I will not argue about the topic of the question.

But sometimes number can have negative value. Especially if questions and answers are poorly worded, or the data set is extremely skewed. 

[Dante.1763]

Just now, yann.1946 said:

I will not argue about the topic of the question.

But sometimes number can have negative value. Especially if questions and answers are poorly worded, or the data set is extremely skewed. 

This is true. Which, if anet sent out a poll to everyone with say 250 gems(2 bl keys), would be the best source of data. We wouldnt see it of course, but they would, and well 250 gems for a 10-20 minute poll wouldnt be to bad.

[Endilbiach.4132]

10 minutes ago, Dante.1763 said:

In the spirit of OPS post, i wont bother debating folks here in the thread, as OP should not either. Let the numbers speak for themselves. Even the numbers of the minority who come here have value, smaller value? Absolutely.

 

Tis a shame anet doesnt send out polls to players from time to time.

 

5 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

I will not argue about the topic of the question.

But sometimes number can have negative value. Especially if questions and answers are poorly worded, or the data set is extremely skewed. 

 

 

You're both right, thank you, I've tried to remove argumentative posts that I've made.

[yann.1946]

1 minute ago, Dante.1763 said:

This is true. Which, if anet sent out a poll to everyone with say 250 gems(2 bl keys), would be the best source of data. We wouldnt see it of course, but they would, and well 250 gems for a 10-20 minute poll wouldnt be to bad.

Well a little while ago someone was complaining that someone else got a poll, so i think anet is having polls.

 

Also if they actually gift keys as reward you would exclude those that are extremely against lootboxes. So data in regard to that would be skewed. 🙂

[Endilbiach.4132]

3 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

Well a little while ago someone was complaining that someone else got a poll, so i think anet is having polls.

 

Also if they actually gift keys as reward you would exclude those that are extremely against lootboxes. So data in regard to that would be skewed. 🙂

 

I'd consider that a voluntary abstention from the poll.  You'd also be talking about an extreme minority of the playerbase that wouldn't take a poll simply because the reward was keys to chests.

 

There's no way to avoid *some* level of response bias,  all you can do is try to understand that bias and view your data through that lens.

Edited July 29, 2021 by Endilbiach.4132

[Dante.1763]

3 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

Well a little while ago someone was complaining that someone else got a poll, so i think anet is having polls.

 

Also if they actually gift keys as reward you would exclude those that are extremely against lootboxes. So data in regard to that would be skewed. 🙂

XD

 

You arent wrong, tis why i said gems, with the 2 keys being used as an example of what it could but. Shoulda made that clearer.

[yann.1946]

1 minute ago, Endilbiach.4132 said:

 

I'd consider that a voluntary abstention from the poll.  You'd also be talking about an extreme minority of the playerbase that wouldn't take a poll simply because the reward was keys to chests.

Well its those voluntary abstentions are what causes lots of trouble in data gathering (selection bias).

1 minute ago, Endilbiach.4132 said:

There's no way to avoid *some* level of response bias,  all you can do is try to understand that bias and view your data through that lens.

 

You're right, which is why its such an interesting field of study.