Fallanx

The Condor, on 29 January 2013 - 10:00 AM, said:

Overcompensation? Sorry, but the Dreamer is overBronyation to me. Yes, it and Quip should be party favor items and effects, not Legendary WEAPONS. I wouldn't want to kill an ogre with a unicorn farting rainbows. Sorry. It was laugh-worthy for a half second then I thought "damn, would I want to run around with this all the damn time? Hell no."

Shortbow is my Thief's staple. Everything else is one-handed. I'd need two legendaries to complete the package. The only one-handed legendary is a pander to Bronies, homosexuals and 13 year old girls. This is undeniable, and it annoys me on principle.

They sure are trying hard to screwup the Halloween week from start to finish...

I mean who tha hell tough an 1 time instanced event dungeon was a good idea with this server overflow system in place....really ?!?!

cant get in with friends or guidies on different overflows...should have thought of that.

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It's hard to avoid mentioning raiding because it has been the #1 most effective and popular type of endgame in any MMORPG. Hell, it has arguably been one of the only types -- raiding is really just a modified version of the "end boss" or "final level" that almost all video games have, simply extended to a multiplayer platform and renewed periodically to make players feel compelled to continue after winning once. Unfortunately, people have become unable to distinguish between "raiding" and "I want everything to be exactly like WoW because I'm a Blizzard fanboy." Every time somebody mentions the r-word, everyone goes into an anti-WoW frenzy because few can comprehend the notion that Blizzard did not invent the concept of PvE content for more than five players at a time. So, raiding is unavoidably the prime example of an endgame that has been proven to work. I think what most people really don't want is the epic gear treadmill of WoW and the tiered system, but it's entirely possible to have raids without that. Everquest had a fantastic raid scene before instancing and item quality levels was even invented.

Another thing Everquest was known for were its epic quests. This was before the word 'epic' became mainstream -- these quests really were epic. They were very long class-specific quests that resulted in an iconic weapon unofficially dubbed the "epic" for that class. I spent about four months getting my shadowknight epic, and it was perfectly adequate endgame content by itself. It's also an excellent way to introduce raid content as something other than "here's a tier of raid content with x bosses that reset once a week and drop three pieces of gear each" that people are so tired of from WoW. If instead there were quests where certain steps required defeating a raid boss, there's raid content without the formulaic theme park structure that Blizzard churn out. Imagine that: instead of there being a Molten Core or any of its thirty subsequent copies, with about eight raid bosses and no reason to go there except to loot them, you could have a quest where some of the last steps spawn events that require a raid force to complete.

Besides that, PvP is a perfectly adequate endgame if it's actually good PvP. I don't think GW2's PvP is all that good. People are getting tired of the arena model, especially when you provide only one mode of gameplay. WvW is far too zergy and ultimately meaningless to ever be competitive, it's really just a mini-game that some might enjoy while others can avoid it without needing to feel like they're giving up content. The sPvP element leaves a lot to be desired and this is why it isn't sufficient endgame by itself. MMORPG PvP is becoming a pretty tired thing in general because it can never be as good as the PvP you get in games that are made exclusively for PvP -- but it could try. Why not try something akin to the MOBA genre with MMORPG controls? Why not experiment with something outside the typical two cliché forms: team arena and castle siege. There's a reason RTS, FPS and MOBA are the big eSport genres while MMORPGs have always struggled. If ANet insist on making an MMORPG that has no quality PvE content, they need to make the PvP as good as it is in games like League of Legends, Counter-Strike and Starcraft. It's currently nowhere near that, and I'd say no MMORPG has ever been (and perhaps never will), though normally there's good PvE content on the side which is what keeps people playing. It really baffles me that ANet expected to keep people interested in a game where they provided no real PvE content, removed a core role, and still didn't really innovate their PvP.

At the end of the day, innovation is what it comes down to. They have to try something new. They've done some very interesting things with game systems such as the skill structure and the avoidance system, but that doesn't make for enjoyable gameplay on its own. When they then provide average PvP and practically no PvE, it's hard to expect everyone to love it. Instead, they should just try something new. They have incredible freedom to innovate and experiment because GW2 is already hailed as the MMORPG that tries new things and has the courage to break out of the WoW mold, but I still feel like they haven't been as brave as they could be. Experiment with dynamic and randomly generated content, experiment with 10-man PvE content, experiment with dungeons instead of making ones that look like they've been copy-pasted out of the last ten years of the genre.

And for **** sake, ditch this gear model. It doesn't work in an MMORPG. It barely worked in GW1 but was vaguely acceptable because it wasn't really a proper MMORPG, it was a mission-based coop game without a persistent game world. In an actual MMORPG, you cannot have an itemization where the best gear takes a week to get and then there's nothing else to ever aspire for. It won't work. If they have to make types of gear that can only be worn in their relevant content then do that. Anything is better than the current situation where there's no gear and no content because there's no gear. ANet have already shown that they're willing to change the way items work in PvP, so they have the freedom to introduce a different gear system for PvE which would open up the opportunity to have actual content. I feel like they tied their own hands by swearing not to have "epic gear" and thus weren't able to come up with meaningful PvE because they didn't have the only type of reward that has ever proven to function in long-term PvE gameplay. Ditch that whole mistake and simply say that PvE is a different game. It already is -- you can't take your PvE items into sPvP, so there's literally no reason to have almost the same itemization. It's not like PvE benefits from having an inch-deep itemization with no room to climb and stand out. PvP benefits from that because it rules out the problem of winning-by-gear, but the two venues of gameplay have already been separated to the extent where they cannot justify forcing the broken itemization on the PvE side of the game. It doesn't need to be Tier Fifteen WARLORD'S SUPERDUPER BATTLEGEAR with awesome 5-piece bonuses and whatnot, it just has to be something that compels people to continue playing after the first month!

Red_Falcon, on 22 October 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

That's what the SW:ToR fans said too.

Truth is that people who like MMOs don't like GW2 because they broke some conventions, and the people who don't like MMOs don't like GW2 because it is, when it comes down to it, a generic MMO. People who like games that require skill don't like GW2 because it doesn't require skill as much as it does time investment, and people who like noskill games don't like GW2 because pure time investment isn't enough.

In reality it's not such a bad game. They just have a lot of things in it that turn people off.