Basharic

El Duderino, on 06 March 2013 - 05:55 PM, said:

Hey man I'm just trying to help you enjoy the game a bit more. This lack of roles thing seems to have you upset. I haven't once called you a noob or directly told you to quit. I said the game may not be for you if you can't change your perspective. Quitting is up to you.

I honestly think you'd be happier if you would let go of GW and take GW2 for what it is. There are plenty of other issues to chew over than arguing about one of the pillars of the game. "No one profession is absolutely necessary in any given situation" is foundational to GW2. Griping about it is as useful as complaining about water being wet.

I played a feral druid in WoW, pretty much though almost all of vanilla, until I quit in Cata. Feral in vanilla WoW is the definition of going against design intent. Well, if you can call how blizz designed them at the time as having any intelligent intent.

El Duderino, on 06 March 2013 - 06:10 PM, said:

You realize that is counter to your point right? The pawns aren't going to be whipping out any new combination of skills to take a rook. If used well they might take a rook, but both players have access to the exact same set of abilities (pieces) at the start of a match. Without even the window dressing we get in MMOs.

raspberry jam, on 06 March 2013 - 05:17 PM, said:

http://massively.joy...l-27th-to-29th/


So just a bit more than 10 months. Didn't bother to look it up when I said it. But it's closer to a year than not. :-P

XPhiler, on 06 March 2013 - 04:44 PM, said:

Quick note on this, and I wish I had the video to prove it. The wife and I were screwing around in CS the other day, and the two of us did the entire Grenth chain up to the priest by ourselves. Between us and the NPCs we got him to 50%, only failing when we both happened to be caught at the same time by drop portal spam. They ran Jonez off right as we got back from rezzing. While that isn't solo I think it proves the point.

Unless there is some gimmick that requires two players to do something simultaneously it is possible to solo it. Some are way harder than others, to the point of impossible. But if you are good enough it can be done.

El Duderino, on 06 March 2013 - 02:17 PM, said:

I would say the right way to play a game is the way that makes you happy. If the game doesn't do that, you can go play something else. Or go cry on the internet.

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A month! I suppose I must now bow to your vast experience. I've been playing for what is getting close to a year. You are obviously way quicker than I am. I only know my thief well, and warrior sorta ok, the rest of the professions I'm still learning. Nope no depth there.

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First off you didn't understand the example. The point was expert players are creating complexity out of the "limited" skills available. New players, say people who have only been playing a month, are most likely still spamming skills on CD instead of watching for the best time to use them. I can promise you with absolute certainty you haven't sussed out all the possibilities from the mixture of traits and utilities across all the classes.

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It's not self righteous to point out a cinematic fight that closely resembles a good boss fight in GW2. Once again, you missed the point. You have the troll as the boss with adds, the team kites the boss while eliminating the adds, then they proceed to take turns whacking at the boss while dodging most of it's big attacks. You even have two people get downed and revived. One on his own and another when his friends touch him.

What you DIDN'T see was one of the fellowship gather up the troll and the adds, then pin them in a corner, thus allowing the rest of the team to flail away with spells for 15 minutes while one of the hobbits threw healing spells. Because that would be boring. It would be boring on screen, and it's only slightly less boring in a game.

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Oh you can speak on these forums. But you really need to pull that broomstick out when someone tries to help you understand the game.

Every MMO's gameplay is DPS or DPS enhancement hiding behind various skills. Healing is important because dead players have 0 DPS, tanking is important for minimizing distractions to the DPS, including death. CC? Keeps things still so you can DPS more either through preventing player death or enhancing damage. MMOs have always been about what flavor of damage you want to do. How a class goes about doing it is actually critical to how the game feels while also still letting anyone play whatever profession they want to play.

Being different from GW1 isn't a crime. You like it, I didn't. I was in game for exactly as long as it took me to realize I couldn't jump or move while attacking. It's a trivial reason, but it's all I needed. I'm sure I missed out on some fun gameplay because I couldn't change my perspective. Just like you are sour on GW2 because you can't seem to understand that GW2 is its own game.

I urge you to get to know your 80, get to know the other classes and how they can compliment yours. Do more dungeons, especially the ones with well designed bosses. You'll find more depth than you thought was there, and you'll find group composition greatly affects HOW you complete group activities in this game, but it will never affect IF you can complete them.

The game leaves that up to the skill of you and your teammates. That is what makes it awesome.

El Duderino, on 05 March 2013 - 11:49 PM, said:

You really need to change your perspective, and get took know the game better.

It helps if you think about the GW2 skill system in martial arts terms. In martial arts you have some very basic skill sets, punching, kicking, grappling, throws. These all break down into certain types of punches etc. but let's face it we haven't invented a new type of punch in a looooong time. The artistry in martial arts comes not from inventing a new punch, but in using the basics in new and interesting ways. The execution of the basic skills is what matters.

To your larger issue:

The traditional trinity has always been and will always feel artificial, because it IS artificial. Real fights simply do not work that way. GW2 fights are far closer to the real thing. The best example I've come across to illustrate this is the cave troll fight in LOTR Fellowship. Watch that scene until you get it.

Part of the role aspect you are looking for is found in the differences between the professions. Every class can nuke, heal friends a little, CC, and tank. Every class goes about doing that very differently and this includes variations within the professions based on build. The other part you are looking for is not due to the democratization of the classes, it's due to crappy encounter design.

The dungeons are way too friendly to the low-teamwork approach. Most of the boss encounters are far too static and simplistic, that is what causes the feeling of zerginess, most of the encounters just don't take any real teamwork to get them done. But hit the well designed content, and you aren't beating it without assigning roles for the fight.

An example was my guild's first attempt at the new ghost eater fight in AC. I'd read a little on it so we had a vague idea of what to expect. But it still took us a few minutes, (in between him getting stuck) to work out just how to get it done. We ended up having our tanky guardian keep the boss busy while the rest of us coordinated feeding the traps. Then we simply kited it to each and beat it down. That boss fight requires each person to know what their job is for the fight and execute it well. Trust me, it took for bloody ever for our silly asses to get the coordination on pulling the oozes correct.

Any one of us could have kited the boss, any four of us could have worked the oozes, which is a good thing. The roles you are looking for are now going to be doled out on a fight by fight basis. This is only going to get better as ArenaNet get better at designing boss encounters.