EPTGuild Wars 2 @GuildWars2
Stress Test tomorrow! August 15 from 12 Noon Pacific Time to 4PM Pacific Time! http://ow.ly/cYjdC ~RB2 #GW2
Stress Test tomorrow! August 15 from 12 Noon Pacific Time to 4PM Pacific Time! http://ow.ly/cYjdC ~RB2 #GW2
Guild Wars 2 - Page 196
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grs
Germany2339 Posts
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crms
United States11933 Posts
Oh well, 2 weeks isn't that long! | ||
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Br33zyy
United States296 Posts
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Firebolt145
Lalalaland34491 Posts
On August 15 2012 06:28 crms wrote: scumbag GW2, always doing stress tests during my work hours. ^_^ Oh well, 2 weeks isn't that long! 1.5 weeks if you prepurchased. :D | ||
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Ryhzuo
New Zealand198 Posts
On August 14 2012 18:12 UdderChaos wrote: You didn't really actually address any of the points or logic in my post. The only thing you actually addressed was the fact that the holy trinity is replaced with something, without describing what or how it is better and how it addresses the lack of the good features the holy trinity brings. I really didn't want to do that, but if you insist... + Show Spoiler + Ok well this is a pretty big deal. Basically arena-net has this idea that they can remove the holy trinity and make the game work. Well lets look at the reasons behind doing this, basically the point they make, the only justification i might add, is that it's often hard to find the role your lacking, ie a tank or a healer. But they COMPLETELY fail to address all the advantages it gives. and what will make up the loss of these advantages. Firstly, having played many MMOs, missing a role isn't that big of a deal, i didn't find it ruined my experience of any MMO I've played, sure it was very frustrating at times, but when you take into account the sheer amount of time i put into these games it wasn't a very frequent problem. Breaking it down into the two sides of the game, pvp and pve: Arenanet have made numerous points on why they believe the holy trinity should go. The time wasted needed to find a balanced party was only one of the reasons. And it's not even that big of an issue anymore in WoW with recent improvements. But have you also considered the following? Without the holy trinity, any profession can perform at all roles with similar proficiency. One of the problems with role-locking professions was that if you suddenly decided you didn't like tanking anymore and wanted to be a DPS, you would have to re-roll and level up an entirely separate character class from scratch. Unless you had a good guild or friends who had characters to lend you (character sharing is against the ToS too I believe), then this was what you had to do. With GW2's professions, if you suddenly decided you want to try being a bulky character, all you need to do is switch your gear around and restat your traits. With something like WoW, if you weren't the right class, then you simply were sub-optimal. People who played with familiar groups were often boxed into roles that their group required, rather than the playstyle that they enjoy. I for one was always the designated healer in our group, not because I wanted to, but because no one else would and our party needed one. This is not always the case, but it occur frequently, and it takes away from the fun of the game. In GW2, by removing the necessity of the trinity, they also removed the reliance of specific group compositions, which means that you could play the style you want and it was up to your own skill level, not the composition of your party, that determined how well you performed. + Show Spoiler + Firstly it's effect on pve. If i compare it to world of warcraft, the 5 mans could be a bit frustrating to find a tank or healer, this was TBC when i used to play, this was largely caused by the lack of classes that could play tank/healer and the general fact that you had to take the gear that suited your main spec/play style, ie most players opted for maxing their dps gear and ignoring the fact there class could dps/heal even if it could, and blizzard failed to implement anything to gear up offspecs and dual spec came into the game way too late. If you look at how blizzard executed the holy trinity it was horrible. They were far too few tanking and healing glasses at the start of the game, even in tbc only druids and warriors could tank, and only warriors really bothered tanking because they couldn't really dps. While EVERY class had a dps spec. and people wonder why there were too many dpsers. They also didn't implement any hybrid classes, by hybrid im not referring to classes with multi specs (ie shaman) but a class that was capable of say, dpsing and healing at the same time. Also raiding was a joke, your tank needed the best gear and all encounters encouraged having mainly one tank, with a few off-tanks in your pocket on some encounters. And going back to 5 mans, lets not even talk about how unintuitive the looking for group system used to be, or non existent as the case was pre-tbc. I played vanilla Warcraft when it first was released, and in hindsight now I actually think the Holy Trinity was never a intended mechanic but a consequence of player build-optimization. The updates and content that came later were built around this trinity because that's how EVERYONE was playing the game. Food for thought. + Show Spoiler + Lets now look at what you REMOVE by getting rid of the holy trinity in pve. Well for a start your stripping a layer of complexity off the game, having to rely on your allies to achieve your goals is somewhat diminished. And to those that are no doubt about to point me to the whole "arrows shot through fire" synergy they have talked about, well isn't this just another hidden version of the holy trinity? at the end of the day the holy trinity is a system that forces teamwork and synergy and dependence on others, so unless they implement so much synergy your just as dependent anyways and so you have just created a holy-not trinity- but actually an ugly mix, then you've gone full circle. Let me explain this. Ok you might not get "lf1m healer last spot" for 5 hours, but you might get something equally worse, were you get "lf1m "insert specific glass last spot" because you need that classes synergy to have enough dps/survivability so either they are removing your dependence on allies and lessening synergy, which is a bad thing in a sociable game imo, or they are actually replacing it with something worse! Think about it, if synergy is just the holy trinity, all you need to find is a healer, a role that many classes can fill in other games, but if the synergy comes from each individual class then there will always be a specific class thats wanted for a role that other classes can't fill. So there are 3 outcomes, either theres is less synergy and dependence on your allies, not something i look forward too, they find a good balance, and replace the holy trinity with basically another version of itself, which would be very hard to achieve, or they go too far and make you MORE dependent on specific classes, rather than 3 roles that multiple classes can fill. In the first part of this paragraph you yourself hit another point on one of the weaknesses of the Trinity. "At the end of the day, the Holy Trinity is a system that forces teamwork and synergy and dependence on others." Granted, GW2 is an MMORPG so you'd obviously be playing with other people regardless. My point (and Arenanet's too), is simply that a system which promotes and encourages teamwork is better than a system where you are entirely dependent on others. There is nothing in GW2 that prevents you from playing an entirely solo playstyle. You can go into a 5 man dungeon and tunnel vision your way through the entire thing, not paying attention to your allies and only ensuring your own survival. There's nothing built into GW2 that prevents you from doing this. What does exist are incentives, mechanics like the downed state, combo fields, control and support skills, things like instanced loot, no mob tagging, dynamic events, individual exp. These things exist to encourage you to play together, not force you to, they simply make the game easier and more enjoyable, more social. Choice is always good in an open ended game like MMORPGS. Think EVE Online. There are leaders of giant companies, and then there are players who just prefer to log on every day and mine for an hour or so. I can't make out what exactly you are trying to argue in the second half of this paragraph, but I assume it boils down to how with how the professions work, you think that parties will even more tight than they are now, requiring a specific combination of classes (ie, 1 thief, 2 ele, 1 guardian, 1 necro) or something along those lines. And yes, at the very very high levels of play, that is a distinct possibility. Dungeon farming guilds that speedrun through them, demanding detailed builds and strategies for every encounter to shave a few minutes off their run times. These types of players however, are very much the 0.5%. I ask in return. Have YOU played through Ascalonian Catacombs? I have, thrice. Twice with my thief and once with my Engineer. In fact, the time I ran it through on my engineer we had 5 engineers in our party. One guy decided he was in love with mines and one other guy had a turret fetish. The rest of us wouldn't get go of our flamethrowers. And you know what, we actually managed it, and it was a lot of fun. The time it took wasn't even that different from my two thief runs where we had "properly distributed classes". At the end of the day, isn't that's whats most important? Do-ability and fun? + Show Spoiler + Now the big one, pvp. This may surprise some people, but i believe this is actually where it will effect the game the most. One brilliant thing that the holy trinity provides in this situation is an easily identifiable distinct 3 roles in pvp. The healer/support, who supports his friends, the tankish class, that runs in and soaks the dmg while pissing people off, and the damage dealer, who's as weak as a wet sponge, but then eats your face off in half a second given the tank. What you do by removing this is merging the classes closest. THIS IS A MASSIVE PROBLEM, why? Because of balance, balance, balance. The holy trinity slaps balance's game ruining, lack of diversity enforcing, uglyness, in the face. Again, im going to use wow because its the mmo ive had the most experience with, but i have played others, infact a lot of others including GW 1. Blizzard's only option to balance the classes was basically to merge them into one in pvp, especially the healers, what this means is without the distinct roles of the holy trinity your going to get even less diverse classes or unused ones if you want a balanced pvp. It's actually incredibly difficult to balance something and keep it diverse, as shown with sc2, obviously perfect balance would require perfect symmetry, but balance negligible enough for most even high level players not to notice imbalance but still retain good diversity (see BW) is actually incredibly hard to achieve, and the holy trinity helps a lot with diversity. Trying to make a bunch of dps classes all diverse will be VERY hard if not impossible. Balance will be difficult, but not impossible. Just because an MMORPG doesn't have a trinity doesn't mean it can't be balanced, so this is less of you complaining that non-trinity will not be balanced, and more of your concern that Arenanet can't balanced a game without a trinity in it. I can't give you a yay or nay on this one, only to tell you that having played GW1 since release, and having followed all the patches and changes to GW2 since the Gameson and Pax builds way last year, I have faith in Arenanet to get it right, like they almost always have in the past. I DO however, have to address this ABSURD notion you seem to have that the Holy trinity somehow adds complexity to PvP. In fact, it's the exact opposite. When you design a system that every party needs to follow if they need to want successful in combat, what results is that the outcome of fights are often determined by who's system breaks down first. In layman's terms, it basically means that you fucking gank the healer. How is that remotely complex? Every team fight has the same objective, every class is spec'd to the one role they have to fill. Oh, your tank died? I guess you're screwed then. It's frustrating for the players, and quite frankly, it's boring to watch as a spectator. Complexity does not mean you design an overbearing system with too many parts required to function. Complexity is when you make multiple ways of victory, multiple avenues of success. Complexity is when you can try to win by securing all the votes of the UN or launching a rocket into space in Civ5. Complexity is when you can try and support your Antimage so he can carry in the lategame, or pick big stunners to win teamfights and push towers while they respawn in DotA. Complexity is when you can pressure the Zerg's 4th to delay his hive, or take a 4th yourself and drop like crazy because he has no mutas in SC2. Complexity is when you can constantly blind and daze the warrior so he's too afraid to use his spike skill-chain, or you hide in stealth until he engages someone else so you can venom stack him and he can't run because he just used his leap skills, in GW2. Now, did that all of the points or logic in your post? I mean I know you are trying to play devils advocate, a la article's title, but these are old old arguments... | ||
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Scrandom
Canada2819 Posts
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Oroch
Belgium143 Posts
On August 15 2012 16:03 Scrandom wrote: If I pick server A in the beta will I get to pick a new one once the actual game launches or am I stuck with the server I picked in the beta? You'll be able to change once the game is released  | ||
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kellymilkies
Singapore1393 Posts
![[image loading]](https://p.twimg.com/A0V3iBQCQAA5HQM.png) | ||
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Valenius
United Kingdom1266 Posts
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DaRkFrosT
United States407 Posts
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crms
United States11933 Posts
On August 16 2012 02:17 DaRkFrosT wrote: How do you level in Guild wars 2? Is it like a traditional MMO where you start at level 1 and do quests/grind to get to level 80, and once youre level 80, you get to do all the end game pvp/pve content? you start at level 1 and do quest, dynamic events, or craft to lv80. you can do WvW PvP from lv1, and your stats will be adjusted to a standard lv80 but your skills won't be available.* you can do sPvP battleground type things from lv1 because when you zone in you're level 80 with full gear, you can earn points to buy more gear/gems etc., but don't have to level.* *This is how it was in the beta, I'm not sure if any of this is changed for release. | ||
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DaRkFrosT
United States407 Posts
On August 16 2012 02:29 crms wrote: you start at level 1 and do quest, dynamic events, or craft to lv80. you can do WvW PvP from lv1, and your gear will be adjusted to a standard lv80 but your skills won't be available.* you can do sPvP battleground type things from lv1 because when you zone in you're level 80 with full gear, you can earn points to buy more gear/gems etc., but don't have to level.* *This is how it was in the beta, I'm not sure if any of this is changed for release. So would it be wise to just level to 80 before doing any pvp? | ||
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GGTeMpLaR
United States7226 Posts
On August 16 2012 02:40 DaRkFrosT wrote: So would it be wise to just level to 80 before doing any pvp? As far as I understand, you can toggle on structured PvP mode where you can que for BGs/Arenas at level 80 with max gear so it's like a "competitive PvP mode" without the grind that you don't see very often in MMO's (the way this sort of competitive PvP should be in any MMO, hell any game). So there's really no need to level at all if you just want to hop into competitive PvP. Even in the WvWvW PvP, which doesn't give you max gear (I think), it still sets everyone to max level stats. | ||
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Vaelone
Finland4400 Posts
On August 16 2012 02:40 DaRkFrosT wrote: So would it be wise to just level to 80 before doing any pvp? In my honorable opinion, no fuck that. I got to like lvl 3 in beta and wanted to try PvP already, goodluck with 80. | ||
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Deleted User 101379
4849 Posts
On August 16 2012 02:43 GGTeMpLaR wrote: As far as I understand, you can toggle on structured PvP mode where you can que for BGs/Arenas at level 80 with max gear so it's like a "competitive PvP mode" without the grind that you don't see very often in MMO's (the way this sort of competitive PvP should be in any MMO, hell any game). Even in the WvWvW PvP, which doesn't give you max gear (I think), it still sets everyone to max level stats. From the beta weekends you get the level 80 base stats but the difference to someone with level 80 & level 80 equip is still very big, so you won't be able to fight others 1v1, maybe not even 1v2. In the big battles it won't matter but in small skirmishes it might make a big difference. | ||
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Sylvex
United States127 Posts
In WvW only your level gets raised to 80. Your base stats are raised, but your skills do not get unlocked, you do not get additional trait points beyond your current actual level, and no gear is provided. This is how its been for the last few beta weekends and stress tests. | ||
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Depetrify
978 Posts
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Crissaegrim
2947 Posts
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rezoacken
Canada2719 Posts
On August 16 2012 05:28 Crissaegrim wrote: I am really interested in getting this game but its really unfamiliar to me. I am interested to to what are weapon stats like? Are they randomized or will it be more set like in WoW? Loots have kind of random stats, a bit like wow random green/blue drops in the world so its no Diablo 3, you have a very limited amount of possible stats so you often find something you want to equip. Then you have crafting alowing you to really do exactly what you want (quality is also better at equal levels). Personal quest has fixed rewards and I'm not sure about dungeon bosses. | ||
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eviltomahawk
United States11135 Posts
On August 16 2012 06:31 rezoacken wrote: Loots have kind of random stats, a bit like wow random green/blue drops in the world so its no Diablo 3, you have a very limited amount of possible stats so you often find something you want to equip. Then you have crafting alowing you to really do exactly what you want (quality is also better at equal levels). Personal quest has fixed rewards and I'm not sure about dungeon bosses. I would also like to add that from what I've heard, crafting is surprisingly satisfying and is a very good alternative source of experience points and leveling. I didn't try out crafting in the beta, however, so I can't give my own opinion on it. Apparently, cooking is also in the game, and I heard rumors of a chefs' guild that is planning on forming. | ||
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