nosleepdemon.1368

> @"Rhyse.8179" said:

> I see a few people asking why HOT was considered a fiasco. It's important to remember that HOT today is very different from what it was like at release.

>

> **The Hype**

> 1. Elite Specs were pushed hard as the core feature of the expansion, and everyone wanted theirs. They even had a "sample weekend" before launch, where pre-orders could try out the elite specs before the release. People loved them - it's what everyone wanted.

> 2. Then, when release came, it was learned that not only did the specs had to be unlocked (this was never stated before release) and that it took 500 hero points to do it. 500 is literally every single HP in the entire expansion. Core Only has 380 or something, so even if you had 100% core map completion it didn't help much. Basically, for every character you wanted to espec you had to 100% map complete the entire expansion. Including every alt.

> 3. In addition, map completion was locked behind the masteries, and locked hard. Many POIs or HP's were in poison fields for example, that you need Nuhoch 7 mastery to enter. There was no possible way to get this without the mastery, not even mesmers could help.

> 4. Masteries took 5x (not a typo) more XP then they do today. It easily took a month of grinding the expansion content (remember, you can't get HOT mastery xp unless in HOT maps) before you could fully unlock your espec. Truly hardcore grinders could maybe do it in 3 weeks, but for most people it was over a month. I remember personally running VB for an entire week before I could unlock bouncing mushrooms, which is a required step in the story.

> 5. People were PISSED. The one thing... ONE THING! ... they had expected from the expansion was hard locked behind a month of grinding.

>

> **Meta Events:**

> 1. To make matters worse, running meta events required hours of commitment.

> 2. At the time, the events did not award by completion of events in the chain, but by "meta event progression" and "participation level." Say you did the VB Pact Encampment chain, and made it until all 3 leaders were found. That's about 20% completion, and entitles you to a pitiful reward. That would take about half an hour Remember, no one had especs unlocked yet, so power creep was limited and events took much longer.

> 3. To get 100% completion in VB for example, you had to start at the beginning and go all the way through the complete night meta.

> 4. In addition, you had to be actively running each event, or you'd get a low % of participation level, and lousy rewards. Explores got left in the lurch.

> 5. This meant that a 90 minute single play session was required to get the map rewards - and you had to be doing the events the entire time.

> 6. The event XP - vital to unlocking masteries and thus the coveted especs - was included in these meta rewards.

> 7. This is why people are saying that meta events lock out casual players or map explorers. Because, at the time, they actually did.

>

> **All That Changed**

> 1. Especs now require 250 HPS, or about half the expac. It's just over two maps worth.

> 2. Meta events are now broken into sub-events that reward you as you go. You can play for half an our and get the full half an hour worth of map rewards.

> 3. Hard locked HP's in VB and AB were made accessible without the masteries. You still need them to 100% the expac (esp in Dragon Stand) but you can at least unlock your espec sooner.

> 4. Mastery XP requirements were reduced by 5x. Yes, literally 5x.

>

> **Summary**

> HOT was a hot mess when it launched. It was a horrible experience for anyone except the most hardcore players, and even they were mad because grinding was not what was advertised. Every complaint you hear about HOT was 100% justified. However, by the end of the year, Anet had fixed it. A lot of those complaints are not valid anymore. Nonetheless, it's what people who were there remember, especially if they quit before the fixes came out. HOT as it stands today is some of the best content in the game.

>

> The problems with POF come down to Anet not remembering that their fixes to HOT *worked*. Instead of realizing that they had (eventually) found a winning formula they swung full round the other direction and lost everything they gained.

I thought the idea of farming your skills for the Elite spec was a neat idea; progression doesn't just get you new shinies, your character becomes more adept as well. It didn't quite work out though as the creeps were hard enough to require a fully functional spec to defeat. That was my only complaint though, I very much enjoyed the difficulty and complexity of the maps and the crazy 2 hour meta events that you could actually *fail*.

PoF is Arena Net taking a step back and realising that they weren't making a game for gamers, but for people who like to feel good for a minimal amount of effort.

My impression is that HoT was what they *wanted* to make, and PoF is what they *had* to make.

Verdant Brink was an absolutely epic zone, you are immediately thrown into this chaotic and dire situation and it is very obvious that the success of the campaign now weighs on the shoulders of you and the rest of the team. You are on your back foot reeling from a surprise attack from a cunning and powerful adversary.

The intro to PoF on the other hand requires you to throw buckets of water and save lazy villagers who fell asleep.

So... Yeah. Go go OP and the status quo of lacklustre, simply laid out single layered map design.

GW2 is the only game where I have female main characters, and no male ones. Funnily enough it's because the male characters, to me, look obscenely deformed. Specifically, their shoulders are impossibly broad to the point where clearly, these guys skipped leg day every day. I sympathise with you OP, and agree that the Norn characters are a little better. I wonder though if the body shapes might also be a game design thing, perhaps they are easier to build armour for in ways that doesn't make it clip?

HoT is by far the superior expansion; PoF is anachronistic in comparison, it's as if PoF was actually designed first, but then scrapped for a cooler idea. Afterward, the developers still had all that content to release so they made the maps pretty and wrote the story in an evening. The HoT maps are huge, rolling events that involve every player in some way - you can team up, you can solo smaller objectives, you can do challenges on the side. Then every couple of hours, everything culminates in a huge and unique battle. It's amazing, involving and challenging stuff. PoF on the other hand brow beats you with a terribad story line and maps which are certainly pretty, but nowhere near the level of technical brilliance achieved with HoT.

Sigh. I really hoped we wouldn't have yet another lynching of someone over social media. This sort of discourse brings out the worst in us.

> @"Shizlam.4310" said:

> > @"Shizlam.4310" said:

> > > @"nosleepdemon.1368" said:

> > > Still just words folks... Do you really want to ruin someone's life? Is that seriously what you advocate for?

>

> Honestly, I just want her out of Anet's narrative team. Whatever happens to her after it's not my business, she should think a little before speaking in public media with her real identity. There are several cases of people that got a lot of problems because of social media by talking out of their butts or even just giving an opinion, this is not something new and she should have known by now. She choose to ignore it and these are the consequences.

>

>

Yeah people have suffered after outbursts on social media, or after some other aspect of their lives has been uncovered. I don't agree with any of it; all she wrote were words, it doesn't matter how bad they were. Unless she is obviously involved in some sort of hate group, then she ought to just be left alone. This kind of lynching is unhealthy for us as a society.

Still just words folks... Do you really want to ruin someone's life? Is that seriously what you advocate for?

> @"alaskasnowgirl.6047" said:

> > @"nosleepdemon.1368" said:

> > > @"Vieux P.1238" said:

> > > You know if she get's fired by Anet, .....bet you she gonna call it sexism & she got fired cuz she a woman & sue them for it.

> >

> > Anyone that gets fired for voicing their opinion whether or not it's on "company time" is almost assuredly undeserving of it. Twitter is a total cesspit of humanity and we would all be better off not using it, or paying attention to anything on it. ANet have somehow made their MMO work where so many have failed, so I imagine they have their heads screwed on right. All this dev deserves is a chat with HR followed by everyone in the room laughing the whole thing off for being rightly ridiculous.

>

> In a world where a CEO of a company was forced to resign for privately donating money to a political cause a few years ago, I don't see how this is ridiculous. When people who happen to favor social justice viewpoints complain, people get fired. It would be a double standard to laugh this off as ridiculous, just because it isn't a "victim" group who was being discriminated against here. The craziest thing about this is, I don't know anything about the streamer who gave feedback to the dev but according to everyone who has watched them they are pretty focused on doing game content and not at all controversial, political, or by any means sexist. Hell, even the dev didn't know who they were so she had no basis from which to claim they were sexist, since their comment certainly didn't offer any.

>

> This has to be a two way street here. The fact is, this dev's twitter in the recent past has called for people, including some men in the gaming community, to be fired, called for non-peaceful protest, and approved of and shared doxxing posts. This person clearly supported people getting fired, kicked out of restaurants, made a social pariah etc, on her twitter merely because of their views, and not even because of how they expressed them. If ANET did decide to fire her, it would actually be pretty just.

Yeah well the world is frankly, bonkers. I don't care if the dev is an sjw or not, nor do I particularly care about what was said. For the record, what happened with Firefox was also bs, and recently, with Roseanne too. If someone has a mental break on social media, who cares? People getting offended over words is a nasty firstworldproblem that needs to fuck right off.

> @"Vieux P.1238" said:

> You know if she get's fired by Anet, .....bet you she gonna call it sexism & she got fired cuz she a woman & sue them for it.

Anyone that gets fired for voicing their opinion whether or not it's on "company time" is almost assuredly undeserving of it. Twitter is a total cesspit of humanity and we would all be better off not using it, or paying attention to anything on it. ANet have somehow made their MMO work where so many have failed, so I imagine they have their heads screwed on right. All this dev deserves is a chat with HR followed by everyone in the room laughing the whole thing off for being rightly ridiculous.

ANet tend to err on the side of misandry as a whole, being at best, politically correct to the point of hampering the game imo (ahem Taimi). With that said, there are plenty of "rock star" developers out there who believe the sun shines out of their bottoms, and this particular dev appears to fit the mold. The tool she used this time was the sexism card, but had that not been available she would have no doubt done something else. GW2 does a lot of things right, enough for the individual conduct of their developers to not matter all that much to me. As the saying goes - never meet your heroes. Hopefully the existence of this thread is enough of an impetus for her to stop acting like a jerk, but don't expect it.

> @"Nyel.1843" said:

> > @"nosleepdemon.1368" said:

> > > @"Nyel.1843" said:

> > > > @"nosleepdemon.1368" said:

> > > > Oh brilliant, they can finally fix this total abomination of game design. Here's hoping that they delete underwater combat entirely along with the Quaggans.

> > >

> > > I don't want miss underwater content, it's awesome. It just needs better tweaking and balancing, which hopefully is done today. Underwater content is super rare in MMORPGs nowadays and GW2 is outstanding in that regard.

> >

> > There's a good reason it's super rare...

>

> Yeah most devs are too lazy or not capable of creating it. Look at SWTOR or ESO, devs didn't even implement diving or swimming.

>

> I am very pleased that GW2 has a lot of amazing underwater stuff.

Yes, that's right. All those other developers just didn't know what they were doing. 6 degrees of freedom is a super great idea in a game that fixes its camera to prevent gimble lock. What could go wrong? Oh wait, Vashj'ir.

> @"Nyel.1843" said:

> > @"nosleepdemon.1368" said:

> > Oh brilliant, they can finally fix this total abomination of game design. Here's hoping that they delete underwater combat entirely along with the Quaggans.

>

> I don't want miss underwater content, it's awesome. It just needs better tweaking and balancing, which hopefully is done today. Underwater content is super rare in MMORPGs nowadays and GW2 is outstanding in that regard.

There's a good reason it's super rare...

Oh brilliant, they can finally fix this total abomination of game design. Here's hoping that they delete underwater combat entirely along with the Quaggans.

Herald is great for solo play, you can even kite almost endlessly if spending thirty minutes killing champs is your thing. Solo play is about the one thing Rev has going for it, actually :P

> @"Lonami.2987" said:

> > @"nosleepdemon.1368" said:

> > The Renegade is the victim of a politically correct design philosophy - they wanted a female legend who beat sexual stereotypes and won the day. Unfortunately, they designed her kit and everything else about Renegade to match this ideal - Kalla's skills all call in members of the Warband she led to help her. This causes all sorts of monstrous problems, from high skill cost due to the unique and "impactful" nature of each member of her Warband, to the fact that they are physical manifestations that can be cc'd and/or killed. Even worse Kalla herself is just frigging boring. Sure, she is an important figure from Charr history, but she's actually *not* a fun or exciting legend to "play as".

> >

> > The most important consideration of game design, is to make sure your "hook" is compelling. Before story, before theme, before anything like that, the mechanics have to be *fun* to interact with. The Renegade fails this basic design principle.

> >

> > But hey, Kalla sure does diversify the Revenant's selection of legends.

>

> I'm still mad they didn't take Varesh Ossa instead of that dumb gorilla Mallyx. Perfect opportunity for a really good female character, and it got wasted.

>

> I still prefer Kalla to Pyre, but yeah, it was handled pretty poorly as a legend, and feels completely out of place in Elona. Some legendary sunspear would have been a far better choice, like [Queen Nadijeh](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Queen_Nadijeh), but I guess spellbreaker already took those themes for himself.

>

> Anyway, [few revenant and renegade redesign ideas here](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/22455/how-would-you-redesign-the-revenant) for those interested.

Mallyx is dopey, and his random vocal lines don't do him any favours. "I shall consume you from within!" "yeah, whatevs buddy".

> @"Xanctus The Dragonslayer.2318" said:

> > @"nosleepdemon.1368" said:

> > Renegade sucks because they designed an entire spec around a political motivation. You can see these design choices throughout the game, but they are probably most obvious when looking at the cliched living world characters, many of whom fit some sort of convenient racial or social stereotype.

> >

> > Diversity is of course a good thing, but it has to be done right. A plot device or character has to exist for more reasons than to simply check off a box. The Revenant's elite spec is one of these boxes, and it worked out quite poorly.

> >

> > Remember back during the elite spec previews? Every spec got like a 50 second clip or so, and they all had some cool mechanic to show off... Except the Rev. If I recall, even the person narrating didn't really know what made the Renegade unique, I think they said something like "and you can shoot arrows that teleport behind your target!". Yeeeah.

> >

> > The Renegade is the victim of a politically correct design philosophy - they wanted a female legend who beat sexual stereotypes and won the day. Unfortunately, they designed her kit and everything else about Renegade to match this ideal - Kalla's skills all call in members of the Warband she led to help her. This causes all sorts of monstrous problems, from high skill cost due to the unique and "impactful" nature of each member of her Warband, to the fact that they are physical manifestations that can be cc'd and/or killed. Even worse Kalla herself is just frigging boring. Sure, she is an important figure from Charr history, but she's actually *not* a fun or exciting legend to "play as".

> >

> > The most important consideration of game design, is to make sure your "hook" is compelling. Before story, before theme, before anything like that, the mechanics have to be *fun* to interact with. The Renegade fails this basic design principle.

> >

> > But hey, Kalla sure does diversify the Revenant's selection of legends.

>

> Glint is litterally a girl. she litterally made babies.

>

> A-net simply kitten up.

Yes, but all the other legends were male. I'm not kidding they legit said that going with Kalla also brought the male/female ratio more in line.

Kalla's mechanics are driven by her lore first and foremost, and by sensible design as an afterthought. It would have made more sense to make her s-1, 2, 3 skills AoE (or just remove them), and her utility skills to change her physical attacks to embody the war band member she has chosen to channel.

Renegade sucks because they designed an entire spec around a political motivation. You can see these design choices throughout the game, but they are probably most obvious when looking at the cliched living world characters, many of whom fit some sort of convenient racial or social stereotype.

Diversity is of course a good thing, but it has to be done right. A plot device or character has to exist for more reasons than to simply check off a box. The Revenant's elite spec is one of these boxes, and it worked out quite poorly.

Remember back during the elite spec previews? Every spec got like a 50 second clip or so, and they all had some cool mechanic to show off... Except the Rev. If I recall, even the person narrating didn't really know what made the Renegade unique, I think they said something like "and you can shoot arrows that teleport behind your target!". Yeeeah.

The Renegade is the victim of a politically correct design philosophy - they wanted a female legend who beat sexual stereotypes and won the day. Unfortunately, they designed her kit and everything else about Renegade to match this ideal - Kalla's skills all call in members of the Warband she led to help her. This causes all sorts of monstrous problems, from high skill cost due to the unique and "impactful" nature of each member of her Warband, to the fact that they are physical manifestations that can be cc'd and/or killed. Even worse Kalla herself is just frigging boring. Sure, she is an important figure from Charr history, but she's actually *not* a fun or exciting legend to "play as".

The most important consideration of game design, is to make sure your "hook" is compelling. Before story, before theme, before anything like that, the mechanics have to be *fun* to interact with. The Renegade fails this basic design principle.

But hey, Kalla sure does diversify the Revenant's selection of legends.

Living Story is utter rubbish. The irony here is that SAB is just about the most compelling content ANet ever made for GW2 and it was all just an April Fool's joke. Go figure.

Advantages of SAB over Living Story:

* A vibrant and whimsical game world - No angst, no drama, a simple objective that makes sense which the player can get behind.

* The dialog is incomprehensible - Only the bare minimum of speech is translated, the rest is in a language that the player cannot understand. Because of this, the player need not burden themselves with potential plot holes, ridiculous decisions or irritating behaviour that would otherwise be present.

* No inventory hell - Baubbles are the sole currency of SAB. There are no fragments of this, shards of that, caches of magic crystals or essences of etheral macguffins to collect, refine, combine and toss into the mystic forge.

* Compelling characters - Finally, characters that don't make you want to rip your eyes out. Moto and the Princess are actually decent, loveable people who you genuinely want to save and who don't burden you with their internal squabbles or deep seated character flaws.

* No DragonS. - There is only one dragon in SAB, and you don't have to spend 20 minutes shooting him with fireworks to kill him.

* Taimi is dead. - Technically, she doesn't exist, but that's merely a detail. Taimi does not exist in SAB. Neither do Rox or Braham. You no longer need to run an entire campaign based on the desires of a bunch of angsty teenagers dressed in adult clothing. This by itself should be the biggest reason to simply spend all of your time in SAB.

So please, ANet, consider making worlds 3 and 4, it would be by far the best story you have ever written!

> @"lokh.2695" said:

> It doesn't really matter. Toxicity and elitism was a thing before DPS meters and are just part of human nature. What I would like the most if we had an in-game DPSmeter, made by ANet, letting you know your own stats and that's it. The more ppl use 3rd party programs, the less likely it is for ANet to implement these features themselves.

As much as I think people's aversion to deeps metres is ridiculous, this would be a fair middle ground. It helps both sides and is a reasonable compromise.

Dear Lord OP, grow thicker skin.

I kinda wish toxicity and toxic were filtered to kitten on the forum, as soon as I see those words I just know the rest of the argument is going to be some passive-aggressive crying.

Like one of the above posters eluded to, people nowadays let words utterly undermine their self esteem to the point, where we are now as a society, making concessions to protect their pretty little minds.

> @"ToPNoP.2493" said:

> > @"Malediktus.9250" said:

> > > @"ToPNoP.2493" said:

> > > > @"Malediktus.9250" said:

> > > > > @"ToPNoP.2493" said:

> > > > > > @"Malediktus.9250" said:

> > > > > > Anet should add dps meters, gear check and build templates into the game. Obviously with an option to opt out for gear check. But DPS should not be able to be hidden in instanced content.

> > > > >

> > > > > I think we should be able to opt out of anyone seeing our damage.

> > > >

> > > > You would just get instant kicked from all groups if you opt out of DPS meter (at least from those groups who use ArcDPS already). It is very suspicious if someone wants to hide his performance from the group/squad

> > >

> > > So, what you are saying is. If a player does not submit to elitism, then he/she would be ridiculed and excluded?

> > You can always make your own groups. Oh wait you just want to leech raid kills from people who put effort in. Just like the lfg commanders + his 1-3 friends are often terrible and most likely do not even meet their own requirements and put them very high to get carried

>

> A similar thing when I first started playing halted my production of raid gear, and stopped any interest in fractals. I have not been in a fractal since I started, elitist attitudes is what started that. I bought all the resistance, and simply sold it back. Elitists are what are keeping me out of pvp right now, the toxicity from the op and bandwagon has ruined it for me this season. I left a prominent server because of elitists,. After, I was at their keep every day fighting all who would challenge, almost all were sent to spawn. I don't use programs to get gud, I am not so unintelligent as to not see for myself what is hurting my toon, and I fix it. To me, that is the fun in this game. Figuring out what I'm doing wrong, not using a program that teaches me what others are doing right. We should either, 1. give dps meters to every single account, or 2. stop dps meter use because it gives an unfair advantage to others.

>

> Guild leaders should help to design a comp, not send their best program user into other teams to see what is where. It seems too spy and cheaty to me.

>

Forgive me but this seems to be at the very least, exaggerated. I've been doing fractals since they came out, and dungeon gold farms since before then. In that time, I have been kicked from a group precisely one time for not meeting AP requirements listed in the group name. Whoops, my bad. I have however also received two guild and countless friend invites. I've seen people rage quit rarely, but the party has never bullied them and usually once a new player joins we breeze through whatever boss we got stuck at.

I feel like many of the people who claim elitism this and e-peen that and mah toxicicity!!1 are the harbingers of their own misery.

I don't understand why group or raid wide DPS metres are such an issue. It's not like people don't already discriminate based on your profession/AP/build etc. Players have had and always will have the opportunity to create their own groups with lax/no rules regarding who can or can't join. Perhaps a feature can be added that enables/disables metres for a group which is set by the leader once when starting the group. The state of DPS metres could then be inspected by any prospective member of the group; If a player is bad/trying to get carried with nobody noticing, they can feel free not to join that group.

> @"Gotejjeken.1267" said:

> For me it was Z1 of W1 that was the PITA. I must have died 50 times on the little area with the bunch of jumping rocks--specifically the last rock that is 'hiding'. Z3 was surprisingly the easiest for me, little to no traps.

>

> Anyway, not sure if OP or anyone else needs a visual for how to do the rock part of W1Z2...but here it is:

>

>

I lost close to 100 lives there. Thankfully when I finally figured out the timing I was able to get it right almost every time. That section was rather upsetting.

It carries over, mine did.

PvP Cliffside - both teams attempt to break the seals on their respective giants while interfering with the opposition. Breaking a seal on your giant respawns the same seal on the opponent's giant. Mobs spawn as usual.

What could go wrong?