Arkham Creed

I believe I said something about not arguing semantics.

It is becoming clear that this thread has run its course and the discussion is lost in bickering. As such I am closing it.

El Duderino, on 09 April 2013 - 11:45 AM, said:

I think that it's a perspective issue, then. The way that I see it, rather than having 3-5 roles like most traditional multiplayer RPGs do, each class has its own particular role.

id est, in world of warcraft, you have 4 roles:
tanking
healing
melee dps
ranged dps

but to me, the class system in guild wars feels fundamentally more like the class system in team fortress 2. yes, i realize that tf2 is a fps and not a rpg, but it has multiple roles that you can play as, so it fits into this discussion perfectly.

In TF2, ultimately, every class just shoots at people. You might shoot at people in different ways, but you're just shooting people. This resembles Duderino's comment that cooking a chicken 10 different ways is still just cooking a chicken. But if you pretend that his comment is valid, then it should follow logically that group comp doesn't matter because ultimately all you're doing is shooting people, and though you all have different means, you all reach the same end point.

but that's not actually true.

each class in tf2 has a fundamentally different playstyle and brings different things to the table. if you bring a diverse balance of classes into a tf2 match, you have a greater potential to dominate that match.

likewise, in guild wars, each class has a fundamentally different playstyle and each brings something unique to the table. as a warrior, i wade deep into battle and have a great propensity to harass an enemy. as a guardian, i give our team a greater ability to extend further by giving greater survivability. as a thief, i can pick off key targets by dancing around the battlefield teleporting instantly and using both stealth and evade to stay alive deep in enemy territory.

so yeah, we're all "dps", sure. but it's not fair to say "the ends justify the means" just because everyone ultimately ends up dealing damage.

explain to me how we get massive amount of healing when we don't over reach from the commander in WvW? explain how mesmer can create a portal transporting golems closer to a strategic attack position and then out again when its serve its purpose, or that they can transport a whole team to cap nodes in spvp, explain how a 50+players group can hide from plain view (not culling) and ambush another server's players. those and many more are all different roles which players don't want to admit is in the games. even now, I am still finding new ability my character can do, and that's just on 2 different professions, this game has 8.

btw, isn't this thread about roles in the game and not about what defines PvP and WvW?

Menehune, on 08 April 2013 - 08:28 AM, said:

I don't want to derail the Dude's thread, so I'll just say thanks for the info and I've taken notes of your post!

Now on topic... To me it doesn't seem that there is a lack of roles or depth. It feels more like roles are there, but less distinct than many would prefer because just about everything involves damage - and also, the sheer amount of boons and conditions that are present at every battle in conjunction with the rather flashy effects tends to drown out the obvious impact of the aforementioned boons and conditions. This tends to impact the distinctiveness of support. And the strange (at least compared to other MMOs) aggro system removes the concept of a clear-cut, obvious and dedicated tank.

But just eyeballing the class forums where I see players much better and more experienced than myself discussing the nuances of the classes tells me that roles, diversity and depth do exist - they're just much harder to pick out in the chaos of combat and often get lost in translation.

matsif, on 31 March 2013 - 02:34 PM, said:

I'm not much of a fan of trenchcoats, but they're still better than what the light male armor has to offer.

Also, I really hope that in future they add some legendaries, that will affect the kits somehow

rifle, if any.  I play in kits 99% of the time so I'm not getting one on my engineer.

edit: this is based entirely on skin and aesthetics of the class.  Quip is horrendous with anyone but a clown in a circus, the shield is more of a guardian theme imo, but the rifle looks very "engineery" to me.  Haven't seen the speargun.

Engineers are versatile like nothing else in GW2. You constantly get new mechanics to play with, so jump right in and start the fun.

ProfGast, on 28 February 2013 - 03:14 AM, said:

The elixir has greater range, leaves a combo field, can remove conditions from allies, Has a shorter cooldown, is not an elite, can be pre cast to help revive yourself from a downed state and best of all is actually just a free skill attached to another great skill that gives you 2 extra dodges and a stun remove.

battle standard can be handy but Elixir R is the superior skill.

An engineer is a good addition to a dungeon party and can fill many roles.

They can simultaneously run both consistent aoe pressure and heavy support at range or in melee or run one of the best mass condition setups in the game and even run a decent spike setup. They can even opt for full support (not the best option on any profession though) all while bringing some outstanding CC to the table no matter what they run.

They self combo fairly well and excel at team combo's. They have the best Ranged res skill in the game.

They also have a much higher learning curve than quite possibly every other profession and play VERY differently to the others. Many of their builds are not a choice of melee or ranged but a mixture of both and as an engineer player you need to know when to swap between the two.

People who don't like GW2 will naturally disagree with awards it is getting.   The task of game developers is to decide whether the complaints represent a majority of their customer base or whether they are just a vocal minority.  

The OP's question was how this might effect the MMO genre.   This will evolve the MMO genre has we have seen it evolve since it's beginning.   The first decade of MMOs were characterized more by stagnation but there was some movement forward with games like DOAC.     The second decade we saw that progress occur at a much faster rate thanks to WoW bringing corporate attention to the MMO genre.  Unfortunately, much of the progress in those years resulted in disasters like Tabula Rasa, Warhammer, Age of Conan etc.  

Now we're seeing the companies and the developers finally starting to figure out what is really needed to evolve the genre.   Games like RIFTS and GW2 seem to gathering respectable playerbases so naturally these games will be looked upon as successful examples.

Belittling the changes won't stop them or change the market and it doesn't mean that the modern MMOs are lacking any quality of design.   Modern video games are meant to attract large audiences and the goal of video games has always been to make an entertaining product that is entertaining to a wide range of players.    MMOs have historically not succeeded appealing to wider audience and the quality of MMOs not intrinsically less simply because they are managing to do so now.  

There will always be those who don't want to see this evolution of the MMO genre and would prefer games stayed the way they were back when MMOs were the joke market of the video game industry with nothing more than a niche audience.   I remember back when the idea of a non-Korean MMO breaking 1 million players was considered outlandish.   Times have changed and frankly I would rather see that change occur than the stagnation that plagued the MMO industry at its start.

Soki, on 08 January 2013 - 05:37 PM, said:

Cause he's one of the few objective people that review games?

That's what a vocal minority accomplishes.

People think the game is very bad, but in reality it's just a couple of people whining about a small part of the game.
Result is everybody forgets the good parts of the game.

But people that can remain objective and keep a distance from forums like this can give their opinion, and apparently some of these people think GW2 is GOTY.

There is one known female tengu in Factions, although she uses the same model as the males. The description in the Factions manual indicates that female tengu are larger than the males, while the males tend to have brighter and more extravagant plumage.

While I can't put my hand on the interview right now, I also recall one of ArenaNet's lore people saying that sylvari do have functional sexual organs, at least to the level of being functional for pleasure, but do not bear children (or, at least, if they do, they don't reach reproductive maturity until they're older than the oldest living sylvari currently).

I'm pretty sure that ArenaNet has said that homosexuality is something that exists in Tyria, and it's not something they're either avoiding or looking to draw attention to. However, there are a couple of things that make it more obvious among the sylvari. The first is that because sylvari don't reproduce, they don't have the drive to reproduce influencing their sexuality, and thus likely have a higher proportion of homosexuals to begin with.

The second, though, is that each race's stories have a different 'flavour'. Human stories are based on politics and intrigue. Norn are high adventure. Charr are military steampunk and asura are mad scientists, while the sylvari stories are on the style of Arthurian romance, with the Pale Tree standing in for the Lady of the Lake.

"Romance", here, is the key to why we see more homosexual sylvari romances - because I'd be inclined to say we see more sylvari romances period. I can't think of any storylines for the charr, humans or norn that involve a couple in a romantic relationship (unless you count Lord Faren hitting on anything in a skirt) and only one for the asura, while for the sylvari you see them in two out of three of the initial arcs, and in one of those arcs it's the primary focus. It may be that we've seen more homosexual sylvari relationships simply because we've seen more sylvari relationships period.

NuclearDonut, on 20 December 2012 - 06:55 PM, said:

I have to totally agree with this one.  There is something about the Norn women that can be super hot.  Sure some of them look like they could hog tie you in a heart beat but when done right I think they are the hottest race in the game.  Plus Eir's armor is just sexy

Played nearly 3 hours last night with my brother, a serious rarity for me now that I have children, and we had a blast!

Bottom line is that we just did whatever we felt like, didn't sweat "progress" towards some ridiculous virtual goal, and mixed it up with different characters and events. In that 3 hours, we played four distinct game-modes, with 3 different characters each!

We started with an AC run, which was fun because we did a few things that we hadn't done before, rather than just speed-running it, and we had a few newer players to help along.

Then we went to EB to the jumping puzzle, which I'd never been to. It was a hoot. Didn't get far at all, but had some hilarious 3-way rivalries going with some FA & TC guys: yanking each other around and blasting each other off cliffs. Eventually, more TC showed up so we couldn't progress. Next time!

So the two of us ran around EB being obnoxious: taking camps, jacking yaks out from the middle of small zergs, stealing sentries, or drawing zergs to defend keeps from our two man "attacks". As a mark necro and focus mesmer, we eluded many zergs in some pretty epic chases. Didn't "accomplish" that much, but had some really fun cat and mouse going.

Finally, we dropped into tPvP, where we won our first tournament (we don't play much). We were mostly carried by a helluva thief player, but my brother and I had fun playing a psuedo-bunker-duo with strong team-fight builds. Our teammates were very nice people: didn't even complain when I bombed our first match (15 points maybe?)

So in 3 hours, we did a dungeon, ridiculous jumping puzzle + pvp, hit 'n' run WvW with some really fun chases (we had a group of 4 TC guys chasing us around for nearly 20 minutes), and a tPvP tournament. Never got boring, never felt grindy. We didn't really make much "progress", certainly not compared to focused grinding, but we had a lot of fun!

Much better than mindlessly trying to grind out some achievement, gear, or whatnot.