badra al duun

Scizzor, on 15 November 2012 - 03:29 PM, said:

Legendaries WILL have better stats than exotics. That is fact. When ascended items are introduced, legendaries will be up-scaled to the same top tier of gear. Ie...better than exotic. Pay attention.

Infusions WILL add additional stats. That is fact. The lesser infusion I looked at was +5 offensive stat. The difference between exotic and ascended is a good bit more than 10 points. 5 x2 for the minor attributes alone, another 5 from a lesser infusion... and the primary stat that has been showcased was Magic Find, which correlates poorly to other primary stats, but we can very safely, and extremely conservatively guestmate the typical difference will be another 8 for the primary stat.(some guestimates put it at over 20) This adds up to 23 total per piece minimum, of which there are going to be roughly 14 slots worth, for a rough total of 320 additional stats from upgrading to ascended (not including weapon damage, and armor! >.<). So no, not 10.

Downplaying the facts doesn't help you support your position, it just makes you look manipulative... much like Anet has been doing, and are earning a reputation for deception... because they are being deceptive....

CalmLittleBuddy, on 15 November 2012 - 04:04 PM, said:

What crack pipe are you smoking off of? Nothing has changed since beta?? Really...
1. You've yet to notice you've had a grind....more importantly, you are oblivious to the grind that is now upon us.
2. Luls. You must not be observant. Gear is incredibly important. Think it isn't? Un-equip it and go for a friendly stroll through WvW. Come share with us your magical tale of still wtfpwning the local natives in your wake, k? I'm sure it will be an extravagant story of intense battles, high stakes, and clinch decisions, and of your inevitable triumph.
3. Woosh
4. Er... yeah. Not technically true. You can buy power in this game, with gold. Gems buy gold. Dollars buy gems. Thus, dollars buy power in this game. Yay! Wait...

Poorly?

Personally, I expected zero treadmill. Because Anet said as much. I again personally, was slightly miffed by the differing levels/qualities of gear from 1-80. But I never was outraged by it. it seemed counter to some of the things Anet staff said about the game, but the ease of acquiring exotics proved to alleviate my agitation. But to straight up introduce a new tier of brand *in new end game gear to replace the "old" one? Scandal, treachery, lies! I wasn't sold a game with the treadmill. I feel betrayed, swindled, robbed.

Vexies, on 15 November 2012 - 04:43 PM, said:

False dilemma. Your two options presented are not the only two options available. I do not recognize you, nor your authority to enforce your demands of submission. Deceptive sophistry, all of it.

The game is what it is, as it is, now. Tomorrow it will be different, as it was different too last week. The game changes, generally in small and subtle ways... expansive and enriching ways. But too it sometimes changes in damaging and degrading ways. The addition of ascended gear is just so, it absolves one of the core principles of this game's development.

Levistis, on 15 November 2012 - 04:44 PM, said:

Are you incapable of tolerating the presence of someone who holds a different opinion to your own? You must rudely command them to leave?

Do you know why people react this way? I'll give you a hint... it is most often... they feel the same way. Yup! You heard it right. Because they are scared to admit that they feel the exact same way. It is a form of cognitive dissonance. You expel the concept that gives you discomfort, and it gives you discomfort because it is a threat to a cherished idea. A threat, not simply because it is opposition to the idea, no no... it is a thread because you already believe it. You just haven't faced it yet.

That signature "a happy gw2 player"... fun secret... it wasn't for our benefit you wrote that. By signing that as your name, you hoped to subconsciously reinforce your cherished idea, because you know that you already agree with what is being said here and you are attempting to convince yourself otherwise. It won’t work forever though.

Midnight_Tea, on 15 November 2012 - 11:52 PM, said:

I couldn't agree more.

It makes me sad, because... there was so much promise and potential. So much.

Brilliant locales for roleplaying.

They failed to realise this. The cities are tiny and pale imitations of the concept art. Look at the giant deathstar that the Black Citadel was supposed to be, then look at the lazy effort we got in game. In game they just slapped down models even without even bothering to put rims on things, so you have houses just sinking into metal.

GW2 looks depressingly bad. And it shouldn't. GW1 looks better, right now, than GW2 does. Why is that? Everquest II looks better than GW2. Why? Champions Online has bigger, more realised cities with loads of fun, roleplaying locales. It's just all so dead. This is one area where they really could have focused on. This leads me to...

In-city activities.

Look at the charr cars. Consider how awesome things like races and destruction derbies might have been. Or helicopter training missions where you get to fly far, far above Tyria, where you can see landmarks on the distant ground below you. They could have done breath-takingly genius things with this. They could have in every city. Instead, there are scant events, they're almost not there.

The player instance.

They could have made this a thing of persistence, they could have had places which you could decorate with things you'd won by playing games. There could have been quests entirely centred around the player instance which would change it permanently. There could have been customisation options to buy. A giant relief of your character's head on that mountain? Why the hell not?

Its a game, it's supposed to be fun!

Jumping puzzles.

They could have made these so that anyone of any level could access any of them, and they could have put in multiples of them in every zone. And most of them are depressingly short. They could have had long ones. And what about throwing in things like riddles that you have to get right, otherwise you'll fall prey to some kind of trap.

They could have had something like the riddle dungeon from Landstalker (for the Mega Drive/Genesis for those that remember that), and they could have had puzzles like the puzzle chunks in Torchlight II, or like Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, which could have had people working together to come up with solutions to them.

Dynamic events.

These are just copypasta things. And considering that GW2's combat is abysmally slow and monotonous (I prefer the zippier, more fun, more immediate and visceral combat of Champions online)? I think they could have done other things. They could have taken pages from The Secret World and CO. They could have had investigative things which would have lead you around the zone. Maybe someone asks you to figure out the perpetrator of a murder.

You'd get to question people, piece evidence together, and actually use your brain instead of just one-to-five, faceroll to survive. It could have had peopel cooperating to try and figure things out. Because to be honest, GW2 right now is like TSW but without those fun parts.

Potential?

So much of it... wasted. GW2 galls me. They couldn't make the combat fun, I guess. Okay, fine. It's depressingly slow and focuses around the sterile sword-swing trading of WoW. But they could have made the rest of the game fun, couldn't they? For me, GW2 is just falling so very short of the potential it could have had. It genuinely exasperates me.

Some days I wish I'd been the head of design, there, so I could get their priorites straight, to help them create a really unique, fun game. And one that isn't so focused on slow, monotonous combat and grind. Grind. Grind. Grind. I guess we can blame Nexon for that, I don't know. Still... what a mess.

As I keep saying, there are so many things they could have done to make it great. So many things.

FiachSidhe, on 15 November 2012 - 10:30 PM, said:

Have to disagree here. It's not specific to management, but specific to the architecture teams, which in game development refers to the lead game designers, i.e. those who decide the properties and functionality of the game world, assets, NPCs.

In general the thesis is: "When doing high-altitude [i.e. visionary] design, the air gets really thin." In other words: Deprived of oxygen, they stop to think clearly.

This applies to most creative endeavors, which again includes engineering, and specifically software engineering.

At one point a small team at ArenaNet were so deprived of oxygen, up there in the atmosphere, that they completely lost orientation and judgment. Which pretty much explains everything that's wrong with GW2.

Silvercat18, on 24 November 2012 - 04:39 PM, said:

Nop they are not.

I came to a game that promised me no gear grind for TOP stats armor , just for looks...

Wait , what do i see now? Gear grind at its best. WoW style.

So nop , people that came hoping Anet would keep their promises like me are also on the quitting stage now.

Lordkrall, on 21 November 2012 - 10:53 AM, said:

Yeah, I guess there are technical limitations to repeating events. I guess that's why this game has no repeating events at all, only unique ones, right?

There are dozens of open world events on ever-repeating cycles that are just as weird, if not more so. Arbitrarily assigning greater importance to one particular event's persistence is just that: arbitrary. It has nothing to do with logic.

And, it didn't even work, forcing persistence upon  the event. Many people ran it several times over.

All it does is piss people off for no good reason.

Asudementio, on 19 November 2012 - 10:37 PM, said:

Except Ascended gear doesn't just provide an infusion slot. It also has higher stats than exotics. If Arenanet just wanted to please the dungeon divers, they could have added Ascended items with just the infusion mechanic.

Or, they could have raised named exotic pieces to Ascended tier so that it doesn't feel like just another exotic but have exotic and ascended gear have infusion slots (and make the infusions harder to get).

There is a lot Arenanet could have done without pulling a 180 by introducing a gear treadmill for highest stat gear (after saying that highest stat would be easy for casual player to get).

Even though you don't NEED highest stat gear to play all parts of the game, it certainly goes up against what they said before about player skill being a determining factor and not player time (I'm looking at this line from a WvW perspective).

Okay, after reading through quite a bit of this I can reaffirm a few things.

1) In some sense we now have a reason to grind for enhanced stats, which affect game play INSTEAD of ascetics. This is hypocritical by A-Net to do so.

2) People bringing up the argument that it's only for PvE progression in Fractals. By adding stats regardless if it's mostly for a single dungeon is irrelevant, because those stats will affect everything under it as well.

3) Arena Net could have side stepped by still being able to add Infusion to rings/backpacks etc. to resist agony. Agony could be stacked in the Tier 1 Tier 2 and Tier 3 just fine. Increasing drop rates for exotics and Fractals weapon skins.

That way by simply adding Agony to that single instance lets you get Infusion for that single instance to get super rare weapon skins, without affecting anything else. Adding Agony and Infusion is an interesting mechanic to say the least, but it should stop at that. But what they did by adding stats to items that are grindy to get kind of reminds me of another MMO doesn't it?

tatsuo, on 19 November 2012 - 06:05 PM, said:

You have to understand, Guild Wars 1 was never about necessary grind and exclusive content. And whenever ArenaNet thought that would be a good idea, they listened to their community and quickly backpedalled. What happened was that instead of adding new gear, they did things like adding hard mode to dungeons for challenges, and that worked out really, really well.

They promised us a game based upon that, and because of their reputation, we believed them. Reputation is important. You have to be able to believe some people sometimes. Let me give you an example: Guild Wars 1 wasn't a game about just standing there and trading blows in a really sterile way with a foe. You know 'hey, I swung a sword.' Guild Wars 1 wasn't about that.

Colin Johanson told us in the Manifesto that 'hey, I swung a sword' wouldn't be relevant to GW2 and we believed him. But when I really started playing GW2, I realised that it was just a sterile trading of blows. I did just swing a sword. I did swing it again. That's most of what I did. The foes I fought were really dumb, no better than WoW's AI, and nothing on the brilliant AI of GW1. Now, see, I'd come to GW2 after playing games like ME3, and ME3 has tactical AI (where mobs help each other).

So coming to GW2 and witnessing zerging mobs that never hep each other and never do anythign tactically, and then combat that was as slow as treacle (GW1 was much faster), and doing nothing but 'hey, I swung a sword,' I became quickly depressed. I felt betrayed by them. Because of their reputation, I bought into their dream. But that reputation has now been irreparably damaged.

GW2 is just an unfun grind with slow, unenjoyable combat, and copy-pasted content. This is the anti-thesis of what they promised. So I understand now, and I'm sorry I argued with people like you. The thing is... if I can play my geth in ME3, which has the kinds of truly unique abilities, tactics, and fun combat I wanted from GW2... then why would I want to play GW2? I've abandoned GW2 for ME3.

Screw the charr, I was passionate about them at one point, but I'll just go play my geth instead. I like ME3's tactical combat, I like the smart AI, I like how zippy it feels. And I also like that you don't need to grind for gear to get into excusive content.

All the content of ME3 is open to me from the start. That's something that GW2 promised me but never came through on. See, early on it sounded like they'd have more reverse-scaling stuff so you could go into higher level areas. None of that made it in. There was even talk of having things like a companion AI to make the gameplay feel more tactical. That never made it in. And right now GW2 is more like WoW than GW1.

I actually feel bad about having argued with people in the past, now. Like I said, I believed in their reputation. But that reputation is gone. I see them now as flim-flam men, con artists, and the like. They pulled the wool over my eyes and they won't get the chance again. They would have to do much to show me that any other game carrying the name 'ArenaNet' woud be worthwhile.

So yeah, I'm sorry that I disbelieved people like you. I just found the lore and the world intoxicating, at least in the books (not in the game, the game just... completely ruins that potential to be good), and I really, really wanted to believe in their reputation. I look like a bit of an idiot now, I get that.

Being one of the first to get a Legendary I woudln't mind this change at all.

Because frankly, when I started making my Legendary it was much easier then now.

I bought my Colossus for 30g, now it's more then 300g+.

People can whine and say making it easier is not fair for those that already have the weapon, but is it really?  Most of us made our legendaries early and benefited from the cheaper prices of Mats.

People saying "welfare legendaries" are just being absurd.  At 30g for my colossus... and at 15 silver each of molten lodestones.. I guess my weapon should be considered a welfare legendary then?

No it should not.  The prices as it stands now require a player to have more then 1000+ gold.  That to me is quite absurd considering that farming in this game and earning gold is quite hard.

If you all look at it this way, most people that already have legendaries and are going against this thread, probably bought their precursor and mats at a much CHEAPER price then the current players that are trying now.  So please quite your yapping, besides I highly doubt they make it that much easier...  I just can't imagine what I personally would do if the colossus was at 350g when I made my legendary... that right there could have garnered me 100 Icy RuneStones, All my lodestones and my ectos.  It's absurd if you look at the monopolistic prices now, I feel bad for the people who are embarking in their legendaries at these absurd prices.

Seriously, I didn't think anything could put me off this game, even with all its faults, but a 1 time event where you can get the most amazing loot in the game, is just wrong.

I had to get my son to bed so he couldn't take part. I am sure there must be hundreds of thousands of people who couldn't take part at this specific time. My friends I play with couldn't do anything because of crippling lag, so I chose not to abandon them, thinking maybe there would be a chance to repeat it when it wasn't absolutely mental.

They need to limit it to once per account for the chest and run it again at a couple of different times, so that those who couldn't take part actually have a chance to do it. Even back in the days of GW1 they had the sense to run special events every 3 hours, this is the stupidest move I have ever seen them make. A cut scene or a big lagfest in LA is 1 thing, but something of this magnitude should not be so player exclusive.

Jason Seven, on 17 November 2012 - 12:39 AM, said:

My goodness, you're annoying.  I can tolerate smugness from people like Raspberry Jam, who are intelligent and can actually put sound reasoning behind their posts, even if I disagree with them.  But you?  You're a broken record.  All of your bellowing comes down to one simple statement; mmorpgs are all about making numbers grow.  

That's seven different flavors of wrong right there.  MMORPGs are about role-playing with many other people in an online setting.  None of that means player characters must perpetually get higher and higher numbers on their character sheet.  Yes, the role-playing aspect of the game means there should be some sort of character development, but not that the numbers must keep increasing.  Just look at Guild Wars 1 (yes, it is an apt comparison since it's also an RPG.  the number of players able to participate in the same events at a time has no bearing on the need for bigger and better junk).  In the seven years it has been in play, not once did they add weapons with higher damage, or armor with better defenses.  They added different ways to get the maximum values, and new skins to wear, but no higher numbers.

People kept playing GW1 without stronger items to acquire.  You may not like it, but plenty of them were perfectly content to keep playing simply for different looks.  It can work.  Stat-seekers such as yourself couldn't understand that.  Worse, you wouldn't let just one game on the market be different.  You had to have your stupid gear progression, and you wouldn't shut up until you got it.  Why couldn't you just go back to the plethora of other games out there that cater to your play style?  For the novelty?  Obviously not, since you won't let GW2 be different.  The lack of monthly fee?  Not likely.  There's plenty of free to play games that go the treadmill route (Aion, SWtoR will join soon).  

People like you ruined GW2.  I hope you're happy.  Oh wait.  You got what you want.  You know how to get it again when you want more.  Of course you are!

No.

Exotics need to remain the "affordable" max stat tier -- that's what they were sold as, with Legendary being simply a cosmetic upgrade, and not an essential one for achieving max performance.

I'm fine with adding vanity items, and whether or not these exist in a separate item rarity tier is irrelevant. What I care about is max gear becoming more unattainable, and people who thought they were set now being screwed by a gear treadmill, however "minor" it may be.

I am fine with including Ascended items upon just one condition: you can achieve the exact same stats with Exotics as you can with Ascended and Legendary.

Zorian51, on 12 November 2012 - 07:07 PM, said:

he seems pretty defensive in his responses.  they know that every little piece of info gets picked apart almost immediately.  this is nothing more than  an attempt to build up hype imo.

The_Tree_Branch, on 09 November 2012 - 06:59 AM, said:

Drrr Drrr Drrr Drrrrrrrrrr

When I do WvW, I do it for at least a couple hours at a time.  I help with battlefield objectives, I kill players, and I have 80 tokens.  No, it is not a L2P issue, it is a range issue.

Yes, the jump puzzle is beneath me.  I shouldn't get a higher reward for doing a jump puzzle than I do for holding off a siege for 30 minutes and killing a hundred people.  I didn't sign up for Super Mario Brothers, I signed up for WvW.  Every time you kill somebody you have a CHANCE at getting tokens, and if you are unlucky you could go quite a long time without ANY drops.

WvW can be a blast but there is no escaping its futility. Everything you capture, build and defend is washed away by the next zerg like building sand castles too close to the waves.