Bryant Again

Tranquility, on 19 May 2013 - 09:52 AM, said:

I love this post. By all accounts I am a "casual" gamer when it comes to 80% of the video games I play. I rarely finish games and rarely play most games for more than an hour or two a day, if I play any at all. Usually, I have about 1.5 to 2 hours at night after my wife goes to bed that is "my time" to do with as I please.

However, the game is what decides how "hardcore" I end up being. There are some games that push me in to "hardcore" mode. These games make me want to forgo going to bed at a decent time to keep playing. These games make me think about them when I'm not playing. These games hold my attention longer. And, when I find a game like this - I become hardcore - but just for that game in that moment in time.

So, while I am very much a casual gamer, certain games have taken me past that threshold. Which is why designing a game for "casual-ness" is, in my opinion, rather dumb. If a game is good, it will create hardcore gamers out of casual gamers.

That is why I think that this game, in particular, is never going to last. My definition of "casual" player has nothing to do with hours per day playing. It has to do with a mindset. To me, a casual gamer will play a game "casually," which means "without regularity" or "occasionally". A casual gamer isn't going to be tied down to one game or another, because they are casual. Furthermore, MMOs make for bad casual games. Why? Because in an MMO - the population is a large part of the content and appeal to other gamers. A casual MMO simply, by definition, won't have a large population that plays more than "occasionally".

In my opinion, GW2 doesn't have the pull to create the hardcore player from the casual player - and as such - will have a very tough time with long term sustainability.

Trei, on 18 May 2013 - 09:55 AM, said:

no, and yes. haha. I'm not 100% masterful of that game, there are plenty of people who are.
First I want to reply specifically to the end of your post, these critical posts are  coming from people who have played and enjoyed a previous game played and enjoyed/hated this game, and in the opinion of that person, these criticisms are formed. it's not a "fair" "unfair" situation, If I play some thing, and find it bland or boring, you can't tell me I wasn't being fair because you don't agree. a lot of people were walking in with a positive attitude and high expectations for gw2 not this "oh god I'm going to hate this bull crap" attitude so I think the opinions formed are more than fair.

I'm pretty sure you've not played a lot(or any) of guild wars 1 because you'd notice a immediate difference in depth of combat and the flow of combat. pick any class walk in to Random arenas and mash buttons you're going to die, you put together a build full of trash skills, no elite. you die. you don't pick the right target to kill your team will lose. some one dies in a fight, if you can get off a hard res, you may still have a chance.

go play gw2. if you go in and mash buttons you can do decent in a scrap melee, come with a crap build? as long as you keep moving and grab key points you can still win. picking targets doesn't even matter (as much) in gw2. you can't even see what class each profession is, all you see is cloth, heavy, medium... until they use a skill, and even then they are all just doing damage there aren't any meaningful buffs to watch out for to make a target any more of a threat over the other. in a full team melee, even the pro's say usually first team to have some one downed is the one who loses the fight. and in that situation usually the rest of the full team battles end that way.

the "all you do is mash buttons" is a over exaggeration, but in probably 99% of the skills you use, are knee jerk moves. used just because the cool down was up. yeah some skills have very specific uses or are better used at a certain time/situation but it's not enough to make the game play interesting. like the roots you talked about, you don't target the ele because of xxx or the thief because of yyy. you root who ever your team targets, which is usually the most exposed person. and you root them because your cool down is up. and the second your cool down goes up you'll root them again with out a second thought because they are kiting or running and need to cut that crap out and die already. the exact same thing goes for knockdown/interrupts except there are specific things you NEED to look for with those, like stopping a finisher on a teammate or interrupting a channeling tome guardian. if you're fighting some one with no channeling skills or no worry of a some one immediately being downed you pop your knockdown interrupt as it comes off cool down. no questions asked, no thought involved.

I agree some noob friendliness is good. GW1 pvp wasn't noob friendly but the pve was pretty forgiving. things get easier the more you discover your class, good skill combinations pop up. and there was a LOT more to discover. having over 1000 skills to play with because of class and cross class combinations. the choices for gw2 really aren't there. honestly you could probably go from lvl 1-80 with out popping a single utility or elite skill. my girl friend just hit 51 and I still have to come behind her and put in her attributes she's not added for 5+ levels or pick skills on her skill bar and she does just fine when we play together. her bar is actually full of signets because she doesn't really think to use any other skills besides 1-6 and those are used as said before, because the cool down was up. and It feels easier to play with her, even though she is clearly unskilled I don't feel like I'm carrying all the weight and she does fine when I'm not playing with her. on top of that, at lvl 51 (no alts) she's sitting on about 13g right now, I remember I had about 4g at that level my first run through. I kind of felt like being knowledgeable and knowing where to go/what to do, screwed me over because she clearly made more money than me (and I didn't spend a dime until lvl 80)

((my opinion))
yeah there is always room for improvement, but that improvement needs to come from the devs side not the player side, we've done pretty much all we can with the skills they provided for us, but the combat depth just isn't there. they are trying to treat it like a fast paced fps game. (I say that because they try and compare it to FPS in early interviews) but it's not a fps, being knee jerky and and chasing people around a map isn't fun in a RPG environment. I can appreciate  the fast pace, but they need the combat depth skills need to do more than damage + X, League of legends does this well. ultimately the goal is to get inside the other persons base, but the encounters are crazy to watch and it takes a real amount of skill and understanding of the game to play at high levels. and that's some thing a lot of people agree gw2 doesn't have. the fact that it's yet to be an e-sport even though they announced that's what they were pushing for that before launch further proves the majority share this same opinion.

dimiguel, on 17 May 2013 - 07:53 PM, said:

This is pretty much it. I am totally cool with a new game that is unlike Guild Wars in style and combat, but they missed the things that made Guild Wars a great game. The replay-ability of Guild Wars was phenomenal. Maybe not for everyone, but for those people that liked the teamwork of combat, it was great. GW2 misses this by a mile.

Other things like a low max level and no gear progression were amazing. Again, not for everyone, but for many people it was great. It meant you never had to worry about things that really don't matter. I mean level and weapon stats are pretty irrelevant to making a good game - they just kinda increase the time played without necessarily having the underlying mechanics to make the game worth playing for that long.

That is the ultimate difference between GW1 and GW2; regardless of the content or the amount of content, the underlying mechanics of GW1 solved a big problem for many people: it was replayable. GW2 does not seem to have that same magic for many many people.

tl'dr slapdash design with little or no ground-up understanding of each gameplay element.

Combat is a mix of the superficial elements of action and MMO. There's very little depth to it as a result, because it's really just MMO combat with movement for the sake of movement and contrived dodging mechanics. It's safe to say that the devs are likely struggling with the actual content and balancing because they have no idea the kind of mess they've gotten themselves into with the combat system. I know I would be if I did the same things they did.

Imbalances derive from giving professions access to combat elements that aren't balanced at a base level. For instance Eles succeed in PvP because they can dominate through mobility. Similarly, Warriors suffer because all classes are free to move and attack at the same time while being able to cancel channels that other wise root and make them vulnerable. The devs try to balance movement by throwing cc everywhere, and that just makes combat a mess in PvP and adds a useless skills in PvE.

DEs hardly help to simulate a dynamic and living world, because all they really are are static quests on timers and without the need to pick up and turn in. the latter actually making the experience feel less alive and the process more akin to data entry. "Wait and kill X every X minute for X amount of exp and gold" sound familiar. The static narratives behind each DEs veil this very thinly.

WvW is being designed with the mentality that you can get players to play by chasing objectives and rewards. The mindless zerging this causes is a turn off to players actually playing for strategy and group cooperation. This style of gameplay is fine for some people and it's great for them that they still enjoy it, but it isn't something that's appealing many players. Several large communities of dedicated WvW players have left just a month ago and the communities that remain are growing smaller each day.

/end rant

ArenaNet really need to take every single aspect of the game and improve upon it as much they can, one by one. The game itself feels far from polished and there is just so much that they could expand upon. They claim to have over a hundred staff in the new team. I don't know much about the coding that goes into developing an MMO, but from what I can tell, there must be only a small fraction of that hundred staff ever working on the game at a time. They promised so much before the game came out and it's fallen increadibly short of even the lowest expectations. I thought ArenaNet were supposed to be different...

This idea came up several months ago with the release of Lost Shores. I can't remember all of the points made, but it was pretty convincing. Among the "evidence" behind the theory was the jumping puzzle named "Under New Management," a suspected reference to Nexon and Cristin Cox working their grubby claws into the game with purely profitable measures. As well, there was the suspicion of a symbolism between karka and the lionguard. It was theorized that the karka represented Nexon, coming into the Lionguard's (ANet's) territory, and tearing down the lion statue in LA, symbolic of Nexon stripping ANet of their former relatively non-greedy stance with a cash shop in GW1.

I'm normally not big on conspiracy theories, but I don't think it's any coincidence that in the interim between GW1 and GW2, Nexon purchased some 15% of the shares of NC Soft (or was it ANet themselves?), and ANet hired Cristin Cox to oversee the monetization of GW2, and now GW2 is a significantly more cash driven game than GW1. Cristin is already well known for having ruined Maplestory, and I wouldn't be too surprised if it were actually at NC Soft's "suggestion" that ANet hired her. Why would a company that had such a successful model with GW1, with a very limited cash shop, suddenly go overboard with it in GW2?

I have to agree with Duderino: it seems NC Soft forced GW2 out early in an attempt to rescue a sinking ship. And now they're taking the lifeboats with them. GW2 is only just in the past 2-3 months starting to head in the right direction with content and updates, but it's still far too gold/cash-centric than I care for.

I was in a thread in the videogame generals section of 4chan yesterday (no, /b/ does not comprise all of 4chan; there's more to it than that), and someone jokingly posted something along the lines of:
"Just $15 a month and you can be a premium GW2 member, receiving benefits such as:
--800 gems per month!
--early access to new content!
--free costumes/cosmetics from the Black Lion store!
--a monthly package of boosters and other consumables!"
And a few other benefits.

It's scary just how believable that post was. GW2 is being ruined by its cash driven stance. I much preferred the system of GW1 where I could just pay $7 and get the costume I want, no rng, no gambling, just me playing dress-up with my characters.

I must admit I was thinking of that the other day - blue and yellow ARE the NCSoft colours, after all.

Kudos to Anet if that is what it means. NCsoft is a terrible company and Nexon is even worse than them. I believe Anets reputation has been mostly ruined, and I would love to blame it on someone else.

Arewn, on 15 May 2013 - 10:22 PM, said:

This is 100% true and I will take the blame. I definitely didn't post my feelings and I should have. Once interesting thing to note is that I simply equated the kind of conditioning given to us by the developers to get exotic gear as a Skinner box, but I never took it the step further that other posters did which was to show that not only was gear acquisition a Skinner box method (as is most gear acquisition) but that it fell prey to the "bad" Skinner Box which was the part where you had expected results from the actions, instead of the much more advantageous "random" results or "gambling" results.

So, yes, I did make that mistake and I will make sure to make the connections such a thread deserves from the original poster.

Dasryn, on 14 May 2013 - 09:04 AM, said:

condi DOES do a lot of damage and everyone knows that, but the damage has to be done over a period of time to be comparable.  Why this isn't effective is because a lot of organized groups can burst bosses down before a max condi player's stacks could contribute the same damage as another's straight up burst.  

I don't have numbers, but I can tell you right now that condi overlaps with others, takes too long to be effective compared to direct damge, and the very rare occasion it can be cleansed.  it's armor ignoring and goes through protection, but we push out retarded amounts of damage already so it would only serve to speed things up where it's already not needed or offer a different but less reliable playstyle.

We don't need more damage, zerker is a problem because we don't need anything BUT damage.  And to everyone saying you can't play zerker anywhere but a few specific dungeons, that's not true at all.  I've never NOT been zerker with a group full of zerkers since release.  

This topic is also about the highest tier of PvE, which is about being optimal rather than using your own style.  Anet hasn't found how to mix the two yet.  I'm all for build diversity, but when it comes to me personally.. I just don't have fun when I'm not ACTUALLY offering as much as I know I can.

Dasryn, on 14 May 2013 - 09:04 AM, said:

You are wrong here. The problem is not how much Direct or Cond dmg can a character do, but that there is cap on condition dmg. If you have. for example , necro and thief doing bleed/poison, it's likely that the necro will do 25 stacks of bleed and 1 poison, while the thief will do nothing, since the conditions and their cap is shared among all players. That said Direct dmg does not overlap and 5 people doing DD will outpreform 5 people doing CD.


There are a lot of good solutions to the problem written here. I have nothing more to add.

Anet has more or less convinced themselves that "fun" means encouraging people to move around to different areas and content in a day, rather than doing the same thing over and over for hours on end. Ironically the Penitent farmers will just move on to the next best area to run over and over all day long until the next nerf in a few months time, so even if you appreciate the sentiment, I'm not sure what they've accomplished.

Lordkrall, on 10 May 2013 - 04:47 AM, said:

That was an Easter Egg that you had to go out of your way to trigger. It's not the same as things in the natural story being goofy.

Pre-release, Guild Wars' entire staff was around a dozen people if that tells you anything.

I agree with a lot Elcee had to say, I would add one bit of insight if I may.  If you look at GW2 as a teen or young adult game, a lot of the content and presentation actually make a little more sense.  I seems very odd they wouldn't try and cater to GW1's aging fanbase...I mean, they had an almost guaranteed small core of loyalists.  But I really think they squandered that in favor of catering to a larger, younger demographic.

For instance, in the Flame & Frost pre-battle finale, the two bosses do some childish "Ginyu-Force" poses for the camera before the battle starts.  WTF is that all about?  It would be fine if this stuff was sprinkled here and there throughout the game, but it's saturated in it.  This is even stranger to me because people had said F&F was supposed to have a more serious tone.  I can't see how anyone over 20 years of age enjoys the GW2 storyline...

Crantson, on 08 May 2013 - 01:57 PM, said:

Amusingly enough that is exactly why I liked Prophecies. Heck, I still am not sure if my character really helped the "good" guys in the end. Maybe when GW2's story is complete I will be satisfied, but hat was always the point of the story to me. You never really could be sure you were doing the right thing or working with the right people. Heck, the people you were helping at each stage of the story were never really the "wrong" people either. They all thought they were doing the right thing (the Lich may be an exception). The character always being on the run and always being off balance with incorrect information just drove the idea home. I found it interesting (but far from novel or mind blowing).

GW2 story was inserted into the environment. The environment was built around GW1's story and now we have a new story (that doesn't flow off of the story in GW1) in the same environment. Sure, places have changed, but those changes all happened in between the end of GW1 and the beginning of the story in GW2. The dragons have supposedly been an issue for a while when we at war, I never felt that way though. The world doesn't feel at all related to the story. GW2's world and story are disconnected from each other. That, and choose your own path stories are pretty much always terrible.