Arngrim Einheri

radiovideo441, on 19 May 2013 - 04:27 PM, said:

Depends on which sitcom is better. Ever wonder why some things are considered classics and transcend time while other fade away?

Well, the biggest part of the first is the themes that it explores, the themes in Infinite are very different and it has yet to slap me with a sloppy morality system yet.

They've also managed to make Elizabeth fairly useful in game. I can't count the number of times she saved my ass by tossing me ammo or salts in the middle of a conflict. In addition to finding money and lockpicks that I might have missed she is pleasant to have along rather than a detriment. Not making the game an escort mission is a godsend, basically.

spoilers contained herein.

Personally, I don't think a lot of this is intentional. Rather, I think ArenaNet means well, but doesn't have the resources or the connection with their customers to make the best choices.

Yes, I know they communicate better than most companies, but their updates rarely seem to appease or appeal to the glaring problems most people can agree on.

Also, I think Final Rest was a fixed glitch, or added to the game. I think there was a 0% chance of it dropping before, and it is now fixed.

The image of that woman will haunt me, my children, my children's children, and all generations from here on out.

Arngrim Einheri, on 10 February 2013 - 11:31 PM, said:

Well to be honest this is what is a bit unknown nobody knows for sure.

I can tell you this. There will be ENDGAME. There will be Heroic Dungeons. It has not been said if there will be Raids that is unknown. There will be PvP Battlegrounds, but I have no clue how big except that they are not limited to some small 5 vs 5 size.

In terms of gear progression my best very rough guess it is less hardcore then WOW but much more hardcore then Guild Wars 2. However first BETA weekend event was kind of restricted so players could not see or access any endgame or high level content. Anyway in each Dungeons there is usually a treasure chest with Class specific loot so everybody should get some reward though there are also Need/Greed random items also. There is an Auction House in the game where players can also buy/sell items.

raspberry jam, on 17 January 2013 - 10:25 AM, said:

The reason time is involved: Is it's the same rate for all players so it solves the differential "levelling/progression" of players that can play 12hrs a day for eg. Secondly the longer a player trains a character, the more value that character has so PFO as per EVE Online (which still has some crazy figure of about 10-17% of players who started still playing EVE).

The power-curve is lower, so newer players take a few months to level a skill and that is fairly near it's max. power by then even if more months will get it closer to max. So the design goal is experienced players have more versatility (things they can do) whereas newer players are a) useful and b. comparative depending on the scenario and how far from day 0 they are. It's still early days so no idea how/what extent that will transpire. But for illustration a combat is aimed to combine: level, numbers of combatants, equipment, skill of players - which sounds like the more variables the more even they all are (apart from numbers) - it's also the case that new players will be hoovered up by guilds (aka charted companies/settlements etc).

Arduin, on 17 January 2013 - 11:32 AM, said:

I think it's impossible. The themepark budget is in the range of anywhere from 30-100m$ (is rift in the lower end?) and Archage which is very hybrid or attempting to around 25$m. PFO is in the 5-10$m range (I guess 6-7). So the devs don't have enough for appeasing that preference and they point out "meaningful player player" interaction is more important than expensive crafted content - because players chew through it too quickly, (the kickstarter was a extra 1m$/gauging market) on top of private investors).

Arngrim Einheri, on 17 January 2013 - 09:06 PM, said:

What To Expect From Early Access Beta > Why is it Paid? (it's more like a Delta than a Beta btwi!)

Kickstarter Community Thread: Subscriptions & Microtransactions (short summary)

Money Changes Everything (Virtual economy & more detail)

=====================================

DISCLAIMER: This is not a pro-mudflation post.

=====================================

That's my opinion after playing GW2 for last several months since beta (2x lvl 80s - Ele and Guard and a few sub-80 alts) and after playing GW1 considerably since launch (champion of the gods, gwamm and phoenix).

I think cosmetic rewards worked for GW1 beause the primary focus on GW was multiple formats of PvP with "looking good" as the secondary aspect of the game to fill the downtime. Many players collected skins while completing other PvE objectives like getting GWAMM, filling up HoM etc. Also, we need to keep in mind that concept of cosmetic only reward came in to being after factions was launched. With no increase in level cap and no significant powercreep (with the exception of assassin splits in GvG), there was really no need to introduce armor sets with different stats.

But, in GW2, the concept of cosmetic reward has been introduced during the launch itself. It may be an insinuation of the community but, that notion is prevalent and still makes me struggle a bit to fathom the reasoning of the introduction of the higher stat ascended gear in the game. I wonder if the devs are regretting because they allowed this "cosmetic only" concept to become a widespread notion in the community during the development without nipping it in the bud. Maybe they were afraid that they would lose a solid differentiator, something that sets GW2 apart from the other MMOs. Hence, they allowed that to continue.

As the game is new, it can't offer as many objectives that another established game can offer. Hence, some portion of the community feels that the game lacks content. I think, in other MMOs, gear grind is a huge endgame content, if not the only one. And that grind feels like content to the playerbase because the gear that you attain is actually better in overall number, and not only in looks. To divert people from that mindset, it'd require ANET to move GW2 in a completely different direction if most of the rewards in the game remain cosmetic only.

And, that direction should be not RNG driven pseudo-content. It should not be Korean MMO: ANET Edition. Maybe that direction should be emphasized focus in content that has more human element, more human interaction. Here are some thoughts:

Open Arena non-instanced Fights - Spars, duels etc. Would you not like to see two players duking it out in a colleseum in Orr? Would you like to bet on the outcome of that fight for a chance to make some money? Would you like to prepare yourself for such duels instead of being a sideliner in the future and earn portion of the collected bets as reward for winning the bout? This can also be a decent money sink instead of forcing players to spend attrocious amount of gold to obtain the looks of cultural armors.

World vs. World Competitions - How about rewarding the guilds that make the most impact in defending their own lands or lay waste of the enemies in the enemy territories during monthly seasons? How about making more guild objective raids or rewarding the guilds with tangible cosmetic rewards or temporary boons to the guild members?

World Bosses - How about adding random events where multiple of the current world bosses spawn adding more challenge to the inhabitants of the world to tackle. If the inhabitants prevail, reward them appropriately with something that can be used to attain their futire goals.

There can be many such ideas, practical or impractical. But, the real notion behind all these is to let the community feel that they are spending time in the world and adding value to their account - not playing for the sake of fun only. I know, everyone play for the fun.. for sometime. But, without clear attainable objectives, motivation dries out. Adding gear treadmill can alleviate the problem temporarily but, in the long term content wins over pseudo-content. Real useful rewards win over cosmetic only rewards.

These are my thoughts. What are yours?

tl;dr: Provide interesting objectives that motivate players to do something. If you are looking at gear treadmill, you are looking at the wrong direction. That's my opinion.

Arngrim Einheri, on 23 December 2012 - 12:13 AM, said:

You needed brains.

Let me explain one of their easiest quests for lvl10 or so.

A drunk pirate had buried a treasure and had a map about where he hid it, but he wanted a bottle of special rum first.
The bottle of special rum was only available on an island, so you travel there.
Then you see there is a non-trading limit on the island, some stuff is forbidden to trade, including this bottle of rum, every time you try to take the boat they will confiscate it.
But then you see a banana plantage, if you talk to the npc he will say they often ship crates of bananas to a cooking shop in the port where this drunk pirate is.
So you put the bottle of rum in one of the crates, and then fill it up with other bananas so it will be shipped.

Then go back to the port, find the cooking shop, find the crate and get the rum.
Go talk to the pirate, get the map.
Then the map only has 2 sentences on it "something about a cross in a park in a town".
Go to the town, go to the park and there is no cross.
Watch your minimap and notice the park is layed out in a cross, follow the "4 steps south, 3 east" thing and dig up the chest with a spade.

Every quest was like this, with special crafting recipes you needed to think of yourself, stuff to combine,....
Ofcourse you could use guides but then nothing is fun.
RS had the most amazing quests in a MMO ever (mostly because they weren't the primary levelling mechanism in the game, contrary to most MMO's)

I try my best!

Arewn, on 23 December 2012 - 02:16 AM, said:

Not going to lie, I get irked when people overpay. Steam may have had dominant sales the past couple of years, but they've been getting blown out of the water as of late.

Doki20, on 22 December 2012 - 03:26 PM, said:

It's 60% off at GameFly with coupon code HOLIDAY20 right now.

Arngrim Einheri, on 21 December 2012 - 12:29 AM, said:

$15 on Amazon starting tomorrow; activates on Steam.

Alternatively, if there's something else you want to get on Amazon Digital, you'll get a $5 credit towards eligible games next year with every purchase, which will stack with their price of $18 on Dark Souls in the first week of January.

Arngrim Einheri, on 23 December 2012 - 12:13 AM, said:

A lot of the quests are like puzzles. You are presented with problems that you have to solve in creative ways, often through the use of obscure items out in the world. It's also presented more in the way of a dialogue between NPCs and your character rather than the block of texts you get in traditional MMO's. This gives a lot of NPCs in the world their own personalities and backgrounds.
Sometimes there's quests that require combat, but then it presents you with a unique challenge you don't find anywhere else in the game. Like one quest where you have to solve a puzzle that spans across three floors in a temple and you are under constant attack of fairly powerful monsters.
I'd say the quests are easily the best part of RuneScape, and by far the best I've seen in an MMO.

Last I remember, there were no kill x of y. All the quests had lore basis in the game and had different activities and things required for you to complete them. One required me to help an in game Romeo and Juliet escape together. Another had me dying Goblin armor. And yet another had me go into a haunted house.

Their quest system was the only interesting thing they had, and it was relatively good. Too bad combat is so flat.

Gilles VI, on 15 December 2012 - 10:17 PM, said:

Idk how it could be his fault for knowing what anets interests are. He's expressing interest in a FFA and as knowledgable readers it's our responsibility to inform him that a pure FFA match would kind of ruin the point of synergizing abilities with fields and finishers.

But I'm not quite sure he even means gamemodes. I think asparagus is looking for an open world pvp. However the pve side of the game is designed to function in groups, having random open world pvp would destroy that.

@asparagus the one suggestion you mentioned is dueling. Most of the pvp community agrees a dueling feature should be implemented, mostly because people are dueling anyway in random servers you might as well make it easier and structured especially because a dueling system seems easier to implement than custom servers, obs mode, or anything else on their list lol

OH GOD.

ObscureThreat, on 06 December 2012 - 12:25 PM, said:

In a way UW/FoW in the original series were unique in the sense that every mob could drop a shard/glob so you had an incentive to kill everything. While in GW2 it's basically a "rush to the boss" as everything in between is just a delay to get your final 60 tokens + 26s + chest.