Yesterday, Colin made a post on the forums concerning loot drops. Apparently, there has been a glitch in the code that has prevented players from being rewarded in certain cases. This has been obvious to many for a while now as champion level mobs don't always drop loot even though Arena Net has stated that they should. The official word now is that this problem has been located and fixed. Here is what Colin had to say,
The rules by which you qualify for credit for an event or for experience when killing a mob are different rules than those used to help determine if you qualify for loot. Some of these were set up to be unintentionally restrictive, and as such you could kill a creature with a lot of health (this was most noticeable on champions) and not qualify for loot, despite qualifying for all other credit.
For the February Flame & Frost: The Gathering Storm release we will be repairing this issue to ensure more players are capable of earning loot credit for kills. This should fix the issue such that you got credit for killing a champion, but received no loot from it. Once fixed, all champion mobs will correctly always drop 1 blue or better loot item, and all veterans will have a chance of dropping loot better than regular mobs as outlined in the November release. Please note, it is still possible to kill a creature and not do enough damage to qualify for loot (which is the only way you won’t get loot for a champion), it is also still possible for veterans to not drop loot at all, since they simply have better odds of dropping loot than normal creatures but no guaranteed drops.
This is great news! I am glad this is finally being addressed and fixed. Not getting loot from a champion is extremely frustrating. As with everything on the Internet, this post has turned into a controversial topic. A lot of players are frustrated after weeks of telling Arena Net this problem existed without receiving proper communication. This may be true, but in the end though I think we can applaud Arena Net's choice to admit to the mistake and quickly work towards getting a fix in game. As if anticipating this bad reaction Colin attempts to placate the masses with promises of more loot.
On top of this, we’re also updating some of the loot in various areas of the game for the February release that should make specific areas more rewarding. We’ll cover this is in detail with the February release notes.
And he wins because you can't argue with more loot. At least I won't.
Just wanted to give a quick update on this topic. We've completed verifying every update from the November release and there were zero changes to anything what so ever that would have negatively affected loot in any way/shape/form. We can officially confirm this as an X-files level conspiracy at this point.
We’re in the midst of evaluating every loot table in the game and running massive random roll evaluations table by table, as well as evaluating every system game wide that causes a player to qualify for items to determine if any issues exist in those systems from launch.
So, what Colin is saying is that there was nothing changed in the November patch. They have looked at the code and confirmed that this is the case. You have two choices now. Firstly, you can believe Arena Net and move on and enjoy the game as is. Secondly, you can choose to not believe Arena Net and be upset and bitter. I choose to be happy. There are answers to why a large number of players think something changed in November when in fact nothing did. You do not have to resort to thinking Arena Net is lying or incompetent.
What a player might be observing is a form of the confirmation bias. A good example of this is that many people believe that there are more emergency room visits during a full moon then on any other day. The only evidence for this comes anecdotally from nurses and doctors. They are more likely to remember and report a surge in patients on a night with a full moon than any other night. Thus, it may seem like the full moon causes people to go a little crazy. Statistics do not lie and it can be shown that there is no increase in emergency room traffic on nights with a full moon. This equates to the situation in Guild Wars 2 where you have, firstly, players only noticing when they are not getting good loot, and secondly, only players getting bad loot are reporting their problems. Thus, it may seems like there is a problem when in fact one does not exist.
The other thing that may be a factor here is that people are terrible judges of true randomness. As an example take the following two images. Which do you think was generated by the most random process?
It turns out that the image on the left was generated by simply placing 100 random stars with in the fixed area using a random number generator. The image on the right was generated by first dividing the entire area into 100 squares and then randomly placing a star inside each of those squares. See for yourself in the image below. No two stars are in the same box.
It is hard for a lot of people to accept that the image with the black stars is in fact generated by a more random process than the image with the blue stars. This has a lot to do with how the human brain is constantly looking for patterns. When the brain sees these patterns it attempts to correlate them to a cause even if a cause does not exist. Essentially, this is the illusion of luck. It is why people can believe that they are on a "hot streak" or why they might believe an object gives them an increased chance at success. Some call this the Gambler's fallacy. In the end it is all the same thing. People are terrible judges of randomness. That is why we invented statistics.
So, what does this have to do with Guild Wars 2? Imagine your character is walking around in the image with the black stars above. Each time it encounters a star you can equate that to "getting good loot". Now if your character was in an area of that image with a clump of stars before the November patch then afterwards you managed to find yourself in a void you might say to yourself, "Hey, I am getting less loot after then November patch then I was before. The patch must have changed something." This is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, especially if you think the world looks like the image with the blue stars. This hypothesis has been shot down by Arena Net who have looked at the bigger picture. They can see the entire image and use statistical techniques to determine the randomness of the spread of stars. Unfortunately, as players all we can see is what is around us. Thus, in the end I am going to trust Arena Net when they say that there is no difference pre and post patch.
I hope this quick look at probability, math, and psychology has given you something to think about. I have attempted to back up my statements with links to sites with more information if you are interested in exploring these topics further. All-in-all my advice to everyone would be to be optimistic about the situation. More loot is coming in February and an outstanding bug has been corrected. Lets move on and enjoy the game.
What do you guys think? Are you happy with these changes/fixes? Do you buy my theories as why these conspiracy theories started? Let me know in the comments.
A teaser has been posted up on the Guild Wars 2 main site for the February release of Flame and Frost which is being called, "The Gathering Storm." In this teaser, we learn some new things about what to expect in the February release. The devs have also taken to the forums with additional details. Today I will go over these changes and add my thoughts.
The Living Story Continues
The effects of the Arena Net kool-aid I was drinking when I reviewed the Living Story have started to ware off. The story is grinding along far to slow for me. At first I thought it was just pacing but I am not so sure anymore. The effects of the story do not seem to be far reaching and changes are slow to come. The teaser for February seems to imply we will just have more of the same thing.
The situation worsens for the citizens of Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateau. Volunteers have eased the burden, but more refugees hobble down from the Shiverpeaks. The storm there gains momentum, but the forces of good are beginning to rally. They’re sending their heroes to defend the land and its peoples. Someone must hold back the gathering storm.
Maybe this is just me though. Having not experienced the new content I should not prejudge it. Re-reading Angel McCoy's blog post on the official Guild Wars 2 site does give me more hope for the Living Story. Flame and Frost may be just Arena Net testing out the idea for themselves and with players or maybe I am wrong and the story will speed up with more changes in February. I think the idea has great merit and I hope it does just end up being a couple lines of new NPC dialog every week and instead becomes a narrative the player can look forward to participating in on an on going basis.
PvP - New Map Spirit Watch and Rankings
The PvP side of things will be seeing a new map titled Spirit Watch, which by the sounds of it, features game play elements similar to Capture the Flag,
This peaceful green vale, nestled between cliffside shrines to the norn Spirits of the Wild is about to echo with the sounds of combat. In Spirit Watch, players will score bonus points by capturing the Orb of Ascension and running it to any of the three shrines on this newest PvP map.
A lot of people have been wanting new styles of play in PvP and Arena Net has been saying they want to stick with the conquest format with some added twists. This seems to fit in exactly with that philosophy as we see capture the flag elements added to what I assume is a conquest style map. Further along in Arena Net's blog post we learn of a ranking system officially coming into effect,
It's time to prove your skill! In this new type of competitive PvP, two teams of equal average rating are pitted against each other in a quick, intense match. The ratings for every member of each team is then adjusted after the match.
I feel match making is a core thing that PvP requires. It is a kind of progression for a lot of people, but it is also necessary to create enjoyable matches. I have been reluctant to play PvP up to this point because of the lack of match making. I think this change will bring me and a lot of others into the game.
More details on these changes were given in GW2Guru's state of the game. This is a great series where every month some PvP players get together with devs and discuss Guild Wars 2 PvP. If you are into PvP or looking to start playing this format I highly recommend watching this video,
Guild Missions
The next thing we learn about in Arena Net's blog post are Guild Missions. New guild content has been at the top of my "want list" for a while now. For a game named "Guild" Wars the guilds certainly do not feel as important as I think they should be. Guilds are missing a lot of basic features that make running them on a daily basis difficult (ie no way to see if people are inactive). Here is what Anet has to say,
Join your fellow guild members to take on an entirely new category of content! These missions, designed for coordinated group play, include everything from bounties to group puzzles to cross-country challenges. You’ll need to work together to complete the missions and earn new Guild Merits, which can unlock cool upgrades and rewards. It pays to be in a guild!
These missions have been hinted at in the past and it is nice to see that we will see these in game at the end of the month. Anthony Ordon added the following on the forums,
We want you to be able to play with your friends without feeling pressured by the game to spend your time doing otherwise. We’re still fine-tuning some details, but the general idea is that rewards from new guild content system are rate-limited in such a way that a smaller, more-focused groups can maintain a similar pace to the larger ones. So no, you won’t have to abandon your friends and join mega-guilds to benefit from the system, but that’s not to say the mega-guilds won’t have plenty of stuff to do.
That is about all we have on what these Guild Missions are. The only other thing mentioned in the past has been that they will allow people not in the Guild running the mission to also participate. This raises some alarm bells that the missions will just be events that require a guild to activate. I sure hope that is not the case because then the role of the guild is mitigated. Anthony's post above already seems to hint at the fact that being in a large guild will not help you finish these mission's any easier. I just hope that the role of the Guild is not reduced to simply activating the event. I hope that an active coordinated team is required. My guild has been itching for something to do and I hope this is it.
Custom Daily Achievements
The second set of changes to the daily achievement system will arrive in February allowing players to select which tasks they do in order to complete their daily achievement,
With our new selectable achievement system, you’ll have a chance to set new daily challenges for yourself and to choose what kind of content you want to be rewarded for playing.
This change will make the daily achievements seem a lot less grindy. I personally do not like crafting or the gathering that goes along with it. When I play I do not like worrying about missing those gathering nodes and prefer to focus on the action. I hope after this patch goes live that I will never have to gather again. I know other feel similarly about other aspects of the game thus I am sure this change will be popular across the board.
WvW Changes Delayed
Not mentioned in Arena Net's official blog post is the fact that the anticipated WvW changes have been delayed. Instead we get details about this on the forums from Colin Johanson,
Because of how broad the WvW game type is, and how large testing for features for this area of the game can be we’re going to hold off on any major WvW updates until March to allow a bit more time to test and polish.
March will see the release of the WuvWuv progression system, new ranks you can earn in WvW visible to all other players, and new DubVDub specific abilities/bonuses that you can earn as you rank up. Our team working on WvW will discuss this system in more detail as that date approaches.
Colin's post then goes on to detail some of the WvW changes expected to make the cut for the March patch that we have discussed here on Egg Baron in the past. Although the delays disappointing I would rather see a polished release then something half complete. In the end though, WvW may loose this player to PvP as those changes seem to be steamrolling ahead.
Conclusions
While the January patch seemed a lot larger than I was expecting so far the February patch seems kind of light in comparison. Perhaps, this is because of the WvW delays, or perhaps there is still a lot more to come that has not been mentioned. Both myself and the people I play with have high hopes for the Guild Missions. We really hope this will be the thing to bring life back into our Guild and give us something new to do. I still think Arena Net is on the right path with their update methodology. I just wish it worked at a faster pace. What are you most looking forward to it the February update? Let me know in the comments below.
There are some post patch red posts that I wanted quickly take the time to catch everyone up on. Some of these posts clarify how the most recent patch effected the game and others talk of the future. I like to round up all the red posts here every once in a while so you guys can avoid the forums and still get the news.
In response to your feedback, we will be reducing the ticket costs for this week’s Paid Tournament event from 3 tickets to 1! In addition to the other tournament rewards, winners will receive 1 tournament ticket back. Thanks for your input. Hope to see you in game!
If you are looking to give structured tournaments a try this week seems like the perfect time with the cost reduction.
The combo killer has been removed from the weekly rotation, clearly not working as intended.
A lot of people were saying they had a problem with this, however, as I said in my previous post I had no issues what-so-ever. Actually, I had a lot of fun with this one. When I first saw it, I quickly started thinking of ways that I would be able to get combos. I got my first couple by dropping my Elementalist's Fire Ring around enemies that I saw other people attacking. This got me one or two, so I decided to start up a group to get it done. I had to explain to some people how to combo off my fire field, but most of them got it after a couple tries and the whole party was done in 15 minutes. I thought this was a great way to bring people together especially if they are just going after the achievement. Hopefully, they fix it up and bring it back.
Star Icon a Bug
If you are one of the people wondering what that star icon under your dailies achievement tracker in the top right of the HUD is, Tyler Bearce has an answer.
A number of people have asked what the star icon, underneath the new Daily Achievement UI, in the upper right corner is. The star is related to the week long paid PvP tournament change, but wasn’t supposed to be displayed. It will be fixed in the next patch.
Good to know. I thought it was going to have something to do with the new living story events and was waiting for stuff to appear here. Guess not!
It would appear that the Hide / Unhide option accidentally went away for town clothing headgear in the latest build, so the setting is currently stuck at whatever you had set it to prior to the build. We’re now tracking the issue.
Living Story Clarifications
Last night I could not find any of the new events in Diessa Plateau and I was wondering where they were. Seems like the Living Story will be released in stages slowly seeping out across Tyria. Bobby Stein took to the forums to explain the particulars of this system.
The Flame and Frost story content progresses over time. You will not see everything today, tomorrow, or even the next day.
Expect subtle changes at first. Maybe you’ll encounter some familiar characters. Perhaps you’ll be introduced to some new ones. You might see a new structure where there wasn't one before.
The Living Story content is initially about the thrill of discovery. We’ll put some markers on your map, maybe send you a letter, or parcel out details through certain characters, but the rest is up to you.
As the weeks progress, you’ll notice bigger changes in the world. New events may appear. Plots will advance and characters will develop.
This makes sense! This is kind of what I thought the dynamic events would be like at launch. This is interesting and I am looking forward to getting back in game and exploring this story now that I understand how it will work.
And indeed when I logged in today I received a mail message telling me that the Heralds have arrived.
Mini Patches Continue
There have been a couple more mini patches since the big patch dropped on the 28th. Here are some of the highlights,
Changed all non-copper karma gathering tools to have a level restriction.
I was wondering how people were harvesting the Rich Orichalcum node in Southsun without being level 80. Now I know. This has got me thinking about how this will effect the long term price of Orichalcum. I may have to invest some gold into this as I know a lot of people were harvesting the rich node using low level alts. Now the rich node is gone as is the ability to farm Orichalcum with low level characters. There has already been one large spike, maybe there will be more.
Magnetic Grasp: This ability now immobilizes the target that it strikes. It is now a large Projectile finisher, and damage is now split between this ability and Magnetic Leap.
New skill – Magnetic Leap (Earth Skill 3): Activate this ability to leap to an enemy that’s been struck by Magnetic Grasp.
Not much changed here. The skill was simply split from one spell that you cast then channelled for the leap, to now where they can in individually cast.
Fixed a bug that did not remove the Lava condition from players who died in the pools of lava at the final boss in the Volcano Fractal.
What was happening was people would get killed by falling into the lava, or getting knocked into it. When you enter the lava it deals damage to you by putting a debuff on you. Apparently this debuff wasn't going away, even after the whole party would wipe and reset. I read some horror stories on the forums. Good to know they were on top of this.
Adjusted Orr Undead loot drops
Sigh... vague comment is vague!
WvW Rating Reset
Habib Loew popped on to the forums to provide details about a planned rating reset for WvW. They have some good reasons for doing so and it sounds like it may increase a lot of people's excitement for WvW. Now servers will have to fight for the places in the rankings again. Here is what Habib had to say,
In the run up to the end of free world transfers we saw large population changes as people settled in to their home servers. This means that the WvW teams being fielded by many of the worlds are now dramatically different. In recognition of this fact, and in light of the increased population stability that comes with paid transfers, we feel that this would be a good time to reset the ratings of all the servers. A reset at this point will allow the rating & ranking system to more quickly and correctly rate these (effectively) new WvW teams.
So, the idea behind this is to quickly correct all the server ratings now that server populations have settled down and people can not jump ship. He goes on to explain that this weeks matches will continue to play out and the rankings at the end of the week will determine the preliminary rankings for the new server spread. On Friday, February 1st when the new matches start up the rankings will be set back to 0 and everyone will be on equal footing.
Over the last couple of months we've seen that when worlds experience dramatic changes in their ability to field a consistent fighting force for whatever reason, it can take quite a while for them to work their way through the ratings until they end up in a match that suits them better. In a lot of cases, some worlds took multiple matches to work their way through a single tier even after a series of blowouts. We really don't like that, so one of the goals for updating the math behind the ratings is to try and reduce how often we experience the repeated blowouts that can come from that sort of situation and get those teams through the rankings quicker.
We are promised that details of the math will come in the future, but for now we get an idea of what there plans are. The idea is to allow servers to get into the match ups that suit them best, faster. I know my server, Gates of Madness, had to suffer through a couple weeks where we did not stand a chance due to large population shifts. The idea seems solid, but we will have to wait to see.
Both posts contain more minor details. If you are looking for those follow the links to the posts above.
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I hope you found some of this interesting. I will try to get my first review of the Flame and Frost content up later today. For now I have to get in game and get my daily Laurel.
Just wanted to give everyone a quick heads up. Regina Buenaobra, NA Community Team Lead, posted the following on the forums. She contained this text in spoiler tags, as I suppose this information is available in game some where by talking to NPCs.
Check in with the heralds for updates. There are hints of things to come already in the game.
The playable Living Story content will start appearing tomorrow (January 29) at around noon Pacific Time in Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateau. When the events start in Diessa Plateau, you’ll be sent an in-game mail letting you know about it. However, if you’re already logged in when that happens, you need to change maps to receive it.
I was wondering where these events were! Good to know that they are still coming. Looking forward to this story starting. I am currently levelling my Mesmer in Diessa Plateau seeing what I can find out.
I am having a blast playing around with these new features and will have more details later today. They have really added some new spice to the game. The new hero panel is fabulous, and the new daily achievements are nice. Last night when the patch launched one of the daily achievements was "Combo Killer". Apparently a lot of people were having trouble with this one. I started a random group and got it done in about 15 minutes just laying down Fire Ring on my Elementalist and instructing people how to combo through it. Either way Colin said on that forums that it has been removed until further notice.
Anyway, I want to get back to playing. I will have a more detailed review of some of the new features later today once I have had the chance to fully experience them.
This is a continuation of my last post covering the GW2 Livestream that just took place on twitch.tv. They covered a lot more in this part than the first, so I hope I do not miss anything.
The developer's feel that a lot of the classes are close to where they want them. They want each class to have a number of different abilities and options in different situations. They would also like to see the classes balanced over all types of play, WvW, PvP, PvE, such that when you learn a class in one of these environments the skills will transfer to another environment.
When pressed specifically on the PvP balance and meta-game they agreed that there is work to be done. More roles are needed to make things more dynamic. They gave the example of the bunker builds (ie tanks) that can lock down a position in definitely. This makes for a stale game, where you need a person playing that position to win. They want to expand the game so that the meta-game can evolve new strategies to counter the current paradigm. Specifically, they name the bunker Elementalist build as being a potential problem that they had their eye on.
They also mentioned the Mesmer's portal ability and how it was causing problems in WvW. They do not want teams to always have to have a Mesmer and the portal ability to be successful. They mentioned giving players access to the ability in other ways, for example, through class abilities, or potentially siege. They do not want to nerf it out of existence because they feel the ability is cool. This is a kind of theme when they are talking about balance. They want to avoid nerfs and figure out new mechanics to shift the game forward.
They also touched on the subject of the Area of Effect nerf's that were mentioned in the last part. They wanted to assure people that this is not going to be a quick fix where they just nerf AoE across the board. Instead they are closely looking at data and comparing abilities to get a sense of where to go. It is true, that AoE concerns them, but it concerns them because players can take AoE spells and use them in 1 on 1 situations as effectively as if they had chosen single target abilities. There is no down side to picking AoE abilities. They mentioned that the solution does not have to be nerf's across the board, but instead a potential solution could be to add a new mechanic such as certain mobs being resistant to AoE damage allowing for single target dps to shine.
WvW stuffs
The developers were pressed for quite a few details on WvW. Firstly, they were asked what they mean by progression in WvW. They were reluctant to provide details, but did say the goals were to encourage people to defend and get in the action. They want to try to break up zergs and show people how strong spreading out on the map can be. They want to focus on rewarding players for their individual actions. They also want to continue on the design philosophy of ensuring that the ways you are rewarded in all aspects of the game are similar in terms of reward and mechanics.
When asked for more details about WvW specific abilities, they replied by saying that again these tied into their goals for adding progression. The abilities will be very WvW specific, relating to supply, movement speed, or siege skills for example. The abilities will only be used in WvW and that is also where they will be most useful anyway.
Finally, they discussed showing player name plates in WvW. They came up with pros and cons for both sides. Against it they mentioned trying to build a sense of "us vs them" instead of "me vs that guy". They want the enemy server to seem like a faceless giant. Not showing name plates also prevents people from griefing and harassing others in game. They are not completely opposed to the idea though because it adds the bragging rights that everyone enjoys when they are winning. If they system was added it would have to be voluntary, perhaps paying to display your name. Also, they would need to lock down harassment issues. They did suggest that if you are looking for that kind of glory than you should check out PvP because that is after all player vs player, whereas WvW is more about guilds and servers.
PvP and Custom Servers
The crew discussed what will be possible with custom servers. This was a time during the live stream, that they said they couldn't really release details, or say something was coming for sure, but their body language said, "yes, this stuff will be possible". Specifically, they talked about there being features and settings that the server host would be able to toggle on and off to create "pseudo" new game modes. Conquest isn't going anywhere. It is Arena Nets flagship PvP style that they want to continue to promote and build upon. The way I see it is that they are saying that if you want to play death match style, than a server admin will be able to setup a server where the only thing that grants points are player kills which would be team death match in conquest mode. They did not say this explicitly, but that is my interpretation from reading between the lines.
They also talked about how they were going to evolve the conquest mode going forward. They want to push the boundaries of this game mode in new ways. They have tried building stuff like a MOBA style arena, capture the flag, death match, etc. and tried playing them in house. They have to constantly ask themselves, "does this work in our game". A lot of the time the answer is no because it is not fun, but that doesn't mean these kinds of things won't make it into the game. Its just that if they do they will take a GW2 twist through the lens of the conquest system. This will help lower the barrier to entry by keeping everything on a similar frame work. The conquest system is the seed that they want to use to grow PvP into and eSport.
Evolving the game
A number of questions were asked that all tie into the idea of evolving the world as the game moves forward into the future. The first set of question on this topic were with regards to how Arena Net prioritizes changes to the game. They explained that their primary goal is to first build a stable foundation that works the way they want it to. Once they have this they can build on top of that. The use a feedback system of looking at data from newly released content, seeing how they can improve it, implementing that, and repeating. A good example is of the fractals release. They mentioned how much more dynamic the fractals encounters were compared to the other dungeons. On seeing peoples reactions to this they said, why not bring the bar up across the board.
Later on they came back to this when talking about how they would improve existing encounters. A lot of what they had to say involved looking at what they had done right and what they had done wrong and building on the good stuff. They want to make things feel more like the fractals encounters. Here things are always changing and you have to learn and play with the environment. This makes the encounters feel hectic which is what the developers want. They believe this will help make things feel less stagnant. Also mentioned were new tools that now allow scripters and designers to create better encounters. This will allow they to revisit old ideas that might not have been possible in the past.
Finally, they touched on how the persistent game world will evolve going into the future. Again they touched on past successes and failures this time naming the Karka Island events as an example. They mentioned changes that are coming to Orr that will build on what already exists there. There will be new events, encounters, rewards, animations, and effects here. All this will continue to build on the story that they have already been working on and encourage people to return to check it all out. With respect to the rest of the world they wanted to ensure us that they want you to go back to zones you have already played and continue to have unique experiences.
Random Questions
There were a couple short random question that didn't fall under a specific category so I thought I would quickly cover them here. Firstly, when asked about new weapon combinations for existing classes all three developers started chuckling and saying, "that is a great suggestion," "maybe that is something we will see in the future," "this works great with out current system". They couldn't go into details, but by the way they reacted to this I would swear that we will see this coming soon. Also, when reflecting on the answers they gave to the balance questions about giving classes more options, this seems like an obvious route to achieving that. They should read my article on weapon categories and varieties.
The topic of Guild vs Guild came up. I never played GW1 so I am not missing these in GW2. They explained that GvG was the primary competitive play style in GW1. Basically you battle and try to protect your guild lord while trying to defeat the enemy guild lord. The devs see this as being in GW2 in the form of 5 v 5 PvP and the primary competitive modes in GW2 have evolved to PvP and WvW. By the sounds of it there will be no GvG in Guild Wars 2.
Finally, there were some questions regarding the new crown system. Most were answered already in the forums by Colin, but there was some new stuff. Specifically what would be obtained in the class specific loots boxes that were pictured in Colin's "big post". They stated that this gear would not be cosmetic gear tied to a specific class, but instead would be a chance at guaranteed gear that your class can use. For example, Guardian and Warrior use the game armour but they use different weapons, so that would be the difference between their specific boxes.
Conclusions
This was a great little session with Arena Net where we got some honest answers straight from the developers mouths. Sure, they were limited to talking about specific topics, but the answers that were given elaborated on a good number of things and provided some unknown details. I hope they do this kind of thing again in the future. This recent media blitz from Arena Net has done a lot to calm some of my fears, but at the same time it has raised a number of new questions and concerns. That is another article though. Arena Net should continue this outreach as it shows they care about the community. I gained a lot from watching these live streams and in turn feel more connected to Arena Nets vision for the game.
Again I apologize about the wall of text. I wanted to get this posted as quickly as possible after the event, and skipped some of my usually editing steps. If anything is unclear or you have any questions please feel free to leave them in the comments below. I also tried to avoid giving my opinions and instead just reported what was said.
The devs discussed a lot of things that I have talked about previously on my blog here, here, here, here, here and here which were mostly things that have been mentioned on the forums in the past. A large chunk of this stream was dedicated to reviewing some of the information that was released over that last couple of days. I think it is good that Anet is getting this information out a number of media formats, but in this article I will only be mentioning the things I heard that were unique to this stream.
Firstly, with respect to re-balancing dungeons the first thing we can expect to see is the removal of "rez-rushing". Rez-rushing happens during encounters when party members that have died rez and rush back to the encounter while a single person keeps mobs from resetting. The best example I can think of is Citadel of Flame part 2 when you have to protect Magg as he sets up a bomb. Usually groups take turns kitting the mobs away from Magg and as they die a new party member replaces them while the one that died way points and runs back to the fight. The Alpha in Crusible of Eternity also tends to be a bit of a rez and rush fight.
Rez-rushing will be removed in two waves. The first wave will involve making it so that party members can not way point and rez while the party is in combat. At the same time the encounter difficulties will be reduced. Arena Net will then do a second pass on the encounters where they will be redesigned and properly balanced to a suitable difficultly. I imagine this will work similarly to the way that fractals currently works. If someone dies then you have to rez them in combat, finish the encounter and rez them, or wipe and reset at the last checkpoint. I have some mixed feelings about this, and hope that we get more details in part 2.
1 v 1 PvP Tournaments
Secondly, with respect to 1 v 1 tournaments in PvP. In previous places Arena Net has mentioned that they will be adding 1 v 1 tournaments to PvP but they have not released much else. For those that do not know the only tournament option available at the moment is an 8 team ladder tournament with 3 single elimination rounds. The plan is to add two team tournaments with a single round. The hope is that this will reduce the barrier to entry on these tournaments and prevent situations where not enough players can be found to make an 8 team tournament.
In the steam the developers mention that the cost to enter these tournaments will be less than the larger 8 man tournaments. They mentioned that they will be available as paid or free tournaments, but later said they will always require tickets which implies they are paid tournaments. Perhaps, I miss heard or misunderstood, I will try to clarify this after part 2. They also mentioned that, to start, 1 v 1 tournaments will only be available on the new PvP map Temple of the Silent Storm.
Balance
Next, with respect to balance they discussed some of their design philosophies and approaches to balance. They mentioned that their goals are to give each class multiple tools to use in any given situation, but to still maintain that each class has its own mechanics that make it unique. For example, stealth on thieves represents their way of mitigating damage, where as on a heavy class it would be their armor and buffs. They want to bring each class up to par by ensuring that each has a number of unique viable builds available to it.
Also on balance, they talked about balancing AoE damage. They feel that AoE damage is being leveraged too much in WvW and PvE. Single target damage classes are not getting the respect they deserve and groups are clearing dungeons too quickly by stacking AoE. I can't say I disagree, but in AoE's defence, aren't thieves single target burst a big stand out? and doesn't it take skill to get mobs stacked up for AoE? We will see how Arena Net proceeds, but it sounds like nerfs are coming to AoE across the board.
Details
Finally, they discussed why they are reluctant to give more details, especially with respect to time frames. They summed it up by saying, first of all, that it is fully intentional. They do this because sometimes things come up. In a system as complicated as Guild Wars 2 sometimes strange interactions occur and it takes longer to ship changes then is intended. They do not want to disappoint their fans. Essentially they are trying to perform a balancing act between managing expectations and providing transparency. They also do not want to be pressured into delivering a buggy product early and instead they would like to take the time to get it right.
Conclusions
Well I hope that provided you some details on what happened in this stream if you were unable to view it live. Hopefully an archived version of it will be posted somewhere. In the mean time I look forward to part 2 and I will report on the contents of this stream as well. Also, sorry for the text wall. I tried to break it into sections to make it easier to read, but I wanted to get this out to you guys as quickly as I could. I skipped a couple steps with respect to my normal editing process, so I hope this article is not too sloppy.
If you have any questions, as always, feel free to leave them in the comments below.
On the Guild Wars 2 main page today, we finally got the news that guesting is coming. Most notably it will be here at the end of the month. There isn't much else to say about this feature. It will work exactly as it was thought it would. Head over to the Guild Wars 2 main page to read the details.
Don't forget that once guesting is online on January 28th you will no longer be able to transfer servers with out paying a gem fee. Thus, if you are planning on moving servers now is the time to start doing your server shopping.
If you have not already seen the "big post" on main Guild Wars 2 site head over and give it a read. It has been the thing we all us players have been waiting for. It gives us a sense of direction as to where the game is headed and overall I think the message is good. Today I will share my thoughts on this message as well as provide a quick summary of what Colin had to say.
If you are not one for reading, the folks at Anet have also put a video out on YouTube which summarizes the contents of the main blog post but skips a lot of the exciting details. I have embedded the video below,
Where do we start? Well the main thrust of the article is that Arena Net is learning from mistakes and successes they have had in game and have plans to improve upon their successes and avoid making mistakes in the future.
Our goals for the New Year are to build on the areas of the game that were successful in 2012, to learn and apply lessons from things that didn't work as well, and to make sure that 2013 is a year none of us will ever forget.
The main thrust of a lot of what Colin has been saying over the last month or so has been about the focus on improving the core game, but what exactly is the core game? For one player it might be WvW for another sPvP and yet another person it could be PvE. What is Anet's take on this? Something entirely different,
These key pillars — a sense of community and a dynamic, living world full of different experiences every time you log in — are what makes Guild Wars 2 what it is. But what does that mean looking forward to 2013?
To me, it seems Anet's thoughts on the "core game" is more of a philosophy. I think they have seen where in the game their philosophy, on making Guild Wars 2 (remember this video?), has fallen short and now they hope to go back and fix those mistakes and bring out new content the focuses more on building the integrity of that philosophy.
PvE
Player versus Environment is a core part of the game for the majority of the players. In the new year we can expect Anet to continue to improve the world with more dynamics events and stories. Firstly, they want to add more content to the persistent world,
[W]e ... need to build on and strengthen our existing open world and its persistent content. The more persistent events we can provide in a specific area, the less often each of the events in that area needs to occur, which in turn adds to the sense of an ever-evolving open world.
This would be an excellent change. A lot of the zones feel really bland when you repeat events over and over again simply because there is nothing else active. It would also help when levelling an alt to not have to play the same events you did one the previous character you levelled.
The second thrust of the PvE changes will be on making the monthly unique events more exciting and inclusive. I have to say that I think they are already on the right track with this and I have seen improvements in each of the content releases for October, November, and December, but I have also seen steps backwards. Fortunately that is exactly how Colin feels about the situation as well,
Our Wintersday event was an example of applying a lot of the lessons learned from the earlier events to ensure we create content that is inclusive, community driven, and most importantly fun. From Wintersday, we discovered still more areas we can improve for future world events to make them even more exciting.
Next up are changes to the daily achievements that will make them more fun and dynamic,
We’ll add support so daily achievements will be different each day of the week, which will help drive players to different areas of the world and play together. Later, we’ll also be adding a system that lets you complete a subgroup of achievements to fulfill your daily. For example, if there are 6 daily achievements available, you’ll only need to do 4 of the 6. So you can choose the achievements that you’re most interested in.
This is the perfect example of a nice little change that will make all the difference. The current daily achievement has not changed since the beta weekend events and as far as I know it has never changed. I find it interesting logging in on the first of the month to see what the new monthly achievements will be and I am happy they are finally going to do this for the daily achievements as well. Little changes like this will make all the difference to those of us that log in every day.
To wrap up the PvE changes we will also see an renewed project to work on revamping encounters in dungeons and the persistent world. We will also receive the fixes to the Fractals dungeon that were promised before Xmas. Finally, there is a project in progress to get us an in game looking for group tool. All excellent changes that will go towards making the world that much more enjoyable to participate in.
Whether Colin's words translate into tangible results is another story entirely. As for specifics beyond this the article is lacking. I would imagine, since the PvE changes will be story driven, we will have to wait until a week or so before each release to get the specific changes we will see to PvE.
WvW
I have had the most fun playing WvW, but I have also had my most frustrating experiences in this game mode. The main focus on the post is on two upcoming changes; guesting and culling. Both of these problems have been plaguing the game since launch and it seems Anet has made some progress on these two issues. A time frame is not given, but we are told the solutions are "really close".
[W]e’ll be adding paid server transfers, with time limitations and WvW restrictions, and guesting ability, which allows players to visit friends on other servers in every part of the game except for WvW.
If you knew about guesting before launch you have probably been missing its inclusion in the game up. A lot of us thought that this would be a system in place at launch. Clearly, implementing this became more of an issue than Anet first thought. Speculation suggests that the reason for this is around the ability to get credit for doing events on different instances of the same zone.
For example, with the current monthly for "discovering jumping puzzles" you can stand at the entrance to a jumping puzzle on an overflow, re-log and enter a new overflow and get credit for discovering the jumping puzzle again. The same was true for the "building snowmen" achievement for Wintersday, and for the "carve a pumpkin" achievement for Halloween. Now if guesting were turned on today one could imagine being able jump from server to server killing dragons to loot the chests, farm resource nodes in the same zone multiple times, farm the chest at the end of a jumping puzzle, etc. Whether this speculation is correct, only Anet knows, but it seems reasonable.
We have been told that before the guesting is implemented and server transfers become paid we will get one final chance to transfer to another server for free. That may be true, but now is the time to start looking for a server to move to if you plan to do this as you can only try out a new server once a week
The other big issue plaguing WvW is culling. We have some words on this as well,
[W]e have a number of additional culling features in development. If all goes well, our hope is 2013 is the year culling ceases to exist, or is as minimal as possible in the WvW experience.
Nothing really new. Habib Loew has been talking about this for a while now, and we knew that this was being worked on. Hopefully the next thing we hear about this is when the fixes will be going live.
Finally we get some details about other features that are coming,
We’ll introduce a system of prestige and advancement specifically designed for WvW. This will give players a progression path where they earn new WvW-only abilities and bonuses, and with them gain prestige and visible titles/recognition. Also, we’ll add a new motivation to the WvW domain that goes beyond the overall weekly score to give more short term reasons to be winning in WvW as well.
The best thing mentioned are the unique WvW abilities. I have been thinking about this for a while and really do thing this would be something that would improve the enjoyment players have in WvW significantly. It would open up the possibilities of new strategies and hopefully make individual player's actions stand out more which is exactly the direction I would want to take WvW.
Again, nothing with respect to commanders which is disappointing because I think this is the main place where improvements can be made. Linking commander status into the prestige and advancement system mentioned would be awesome though.
I feel that Anet is taking the steps that are required to make WvW a stable platform on which to build additional content. It is disappointing that this is necessary in the first place, but once it is complete hopefully we will see changes to the commander system and improvements to reduce the zerg's and increase the results of individual and team action.
PvP
I have not played PvP because the game mode does not really interest me. Generally, Guild Wars has been know for its skill-based PvP. It was a big surprise to a lot of people to see that it was not really focused on in Guild Wars 2.
Most importantly, PvP will be seeing a match making system to ensure people of equal skill level are placed in matches together. Having watched a couple dozen PvP matches I can attest to the fact that this is a much needed addition. Most matches are completely one-sided and not interesting to watch.
We’ll be adding systems that make it easier for players who are less competitive to get matched only against people with similar skill sets...
We also want to make it easier to play games against good opponents, and give the ability to compete in games where ranking matters quickly and easily.
This also means that all the things that come with match making will also follow, such as, leader boards, progression rewards, and tournaments and prizes. On top of that we are promised custom servers, observer mode and a progression system.
These new changes do intrigue me and could encourage me give it a go, but a lot of the chagnes just seems like stuff that should have been included at launch. I was expecting to hear about new game modes. I will have to wait for more details before I judge this too harshly. These new changes do intrigue me and could encourage me give it a go. Over most of 2013 I think we can expect to see a lot of changes come to PvP as Anet ramps it up to become an eSport. Whether these changes will come fast enough to keep PvP an active part of the game is another topic entirely.
Rewards
It seems that Anet has a particular focus on improving rewards in the game. Perhaps this is due to the overwhelming feedback from users that they do not feel rewarded when playing the game. Well Anet has stepped up and is adding an entirely new reward system to the game based on achievement points.
One of our focuses is expanding and leveraging our achievement system. The concept behind this is to allow players to earn new rewards for achievements, as well as progressing down achievement paths that take advantage of the open world experience. We’ll add tokens for your achievement you can turn in to select from a list of rewards, including new reward types like ascended gear and infusions.
I think this is a great idea and was not something I had thought of. It allows players to pursue the game the way they want to and to receive rewards from the game for doing that. This has always been a core part of the Anet philosophy when making Guild Wars 2 so it is nice to see them follow through on this with this new reward system.
Immediately after Anet posted their blog post the forums went nuts over this particular topic and Colin came out to provide more details and to alleviate concerns around whether or not these tokens will be rewarded retroactively for achievements already completed. Colin had this to say,
The initial version will only be for daily/monthly achievements (this will not be retroactively rewarded.) Later you’ll see a system in place that rewards more expanded achievements points which will retroactively reward all achievements already earned, yes.
However, there are some achievements which are infinitely repeatable currently. It is highly likely so this new system isn't broken we’ll need to cap those and people who have made insane progress down one of those lines will lose some of their progress to get back to the cap. I wouldn't recommend anyone go bonkers trying to progress an infinitely repeatable achievement category in anticipation of the release of this system, as you will likely lose some points/progress if you take it to an extreme number.
You receive 1 crown per daily, and 10 per monthly. (We’re also still tweaking the costs of the items shown in the screen shot, and will continue to adjust them until until the system is released.)
Basically what this clears up is that, firstly, we will only be able to get the new "crown" currency from doing dailies and monthlies to start with. Secondly, all currently completed achievements will retroactively rewards crowns at a later date when finishing these achievements and the new ones will also earn you additional crowns. Finally, the only thing that will not earn you crowns and will not retroactively give you crowns are multiple completions of infinitely repeatable achievements. For example, Agent of Entropy which is rewarded each time you salvage 200 items. There are some more details in this thread from Colin if you are interested in checking that out.
I feel this is the correct direction for the reward system. It allows people to play the area of the game that interests them and still receive top tier rewards for doing so. This is exactly what I wanted to see. I hate feeling like I am being screwed out of gold by not speed clearing AC or CoF on a daily basis. Hopefully we will also see changes to the rewards champions drop in the world and an improvement on rewards from those events as well.
Guilds
The final topic to discuss today are guilds. A lot of players feel that there is not a whole lot for guilds to do. I would tend to agree, but my guild has found ways to make things for us to do together. That doesn't mean that I do not think the guild system does not need improvements. My feelings are far from that. I just think that most people do not manage a guild and do not see the real source of the problems which I feel are focused around there not being tools to effectively organize your guild. For crying out loud there isn't even a way to see when people last logged in such that you can remove inactive guild members.
I am not sure how Anet sees the situation, but the changes they are promising are more related to adding PvE content for Guilds to do together,
[W]e’re working on adding new types of content to the game in early 2013 that will allow guilds to go on missions together. Some of these missions may be content designed specifically for the guild to accomplish within certain constraints or time requirements while others see the creation of new content by a guild/s everyone in the world can experience.
This is fairly ambiguous. A lot of players were hoping for raid style dungeons that require coordination across a large number of players. This does not seem to be what the above implies. What I think it means is that we will see some sort of time trail on existing dungeons or perhaps jumping puzzles. As for the ability for guilds to create new content for others to enjoy I am completely puzzled by this. The only thing I can think of is that guild members will have the ability to decorate guild halls and non guild members will be able to visit the halls to see the creations of other guilds.
Again I would have liked to see changes to the back end management of guilds, but I suppose I will take this as well.
Conclusions
I think a lot of the stuff mentioned in Anet's blog post is absolutely fantastic. I think that, overall, this is the correct direction to take the game. My concerns mainly sit with the fact that we did not receive a lot of details with regards to time frames. A lot of the talk sees really ambiguous and these changes could come as early as January or as late as December. I think I would have preferred to see the post organized chronologically based on when they hope the change will hit the live server.
I was surprised by some of the changes and I am now really looking forward to these features. The new reward system based on achievement points looks really interesting. I am also excited to see the progression systems added into WvW along with the unique WvW abilities.
What do you guys think? If you were in charge of Anet what is the first problem in the game that you would fix? What is the change you are most looking forward too? Let me know in the comments below.
Since my last red post round up there have been a couple more good posts in the forums that I thought I would quickly catch you up on. There is some good stuff about WvW, dungeon rewards, and the GW2 mobile app.
Habib Loew on WvW's respawn timer, siege despawns, and loot drops
Another, real picture of Habib Loew Gameplay Programmer
Firstly, Habib Loew and Matt Witter took to the forums to continue answering questions in the thread Mike Ferguson was answering questions in last week with regards to WvW. They have officially turned this WvW thread into a real Q&A session, and it is great. Lots of interesting stuff coming out of this thread. Here are some highlights starting with Habib Loew's comments,
We haven’t settled all the details yet but we’re working on a forced respawn timer. It’s a good thing that your allies can revive you but I think the game will be better off without corpse scouts, etc.
Basically what I think he is saying is that once you have been stomped, in WvW, there will be a timer to prevent you from immediately being rezzed and getting right back into the fight. This will be a nice change, as right now it tends to be the larger zerg will win, simply because they will be more likely to be able to rez their fallen allies. This should fix it so that tactics are more impacting, but I wonder how you will be able to see other peoples respawn timers and how that will change tactics. Will it be a debuff that you see when selecting a player? Will the enemy be able to see it? I suppose these are the details they still have to settle.
One thing I’d like to see, for example, is a visible indicator of how much time is left before the siege despawns. That will make it easier for everyone to know the state of the siege and it should help us eliminate some false positives from the bug reports (siege got destroyed/used when the reporting playing wasn't looking, etc.) which should, in turn, help us hone in on the specific bug that’s happening. And while we’re in there adding a timer we’ll also spend some time robustifying (it’s a word!) the system. There’s no timeline on these changes yet but we are working on it.
This would be a great change. I often do not really want to build siege on a tower or keep because I know it will just despawn after I leave because no one is using it, however, if there were a timer above every siege telling how long it had until it despawned people would just use the weapon as they pass to make sure the timer resets. I think this would be fair to those that built the defences in the first place.
I've been loot'n bags since my buddy
Liam's 4th birthday party
In the beginning players killed NPCs and found loot on the NPC corpses. That setup is nice because it makes sense (gruesome sense, but still sense). If you kill a dude where is his stuff? In his pockets of course (see also: The Hobbit). If the corpse decayed then a bag was left behind so players would have one last chance to pick it up (it doesn’t hurt that rendering a bag is cheaper than rendering a high-poly character model.
Then WvW was born and players started killing players. At first we left the loot on the corpses as before but then a thousand player voices rang out and said “WTF man? I can’t jump down off this wall to get my loot because there’s like a hojillion enemy guys down there waiting to plant me like a tulip bulb!” or “WTF man? I can’t get up on top of that wall to get my loot because the whole point of a castle is that people can’t do that stuff!” We heard those pleas and, after some internal arguments (er, design discussions) we decided that realism could go suck it because getting loot is awesome.
So why did we put the bags at your feet rather than just dumping the items into your inventory? Part of the answer is that it was the smallest possible change that could work (programmers like stuff like that). We already had the bag spawning system so we could just reuse it. Another part of the answer is that picking up loot can be a bit like unwrapping a present and we didn’t want to ruin the unwrapping for everybody. Finally, if we just start putting loot into player inventory then we need to deal with a bunch of edge cases and at the time we had more pressing issues to work on. For example, when your inventory fills up items you receive go into inventory overflow and your character becomes encumbered. That makes you move really slowly and that didn’t seem like a nice thing to do to people in the middle of a fight. There were some others that I don’t recall off the top of my head, but suffice it to say there were some thorny design questions about the best way to handle it.
We have tossed around some ideas for ways to improve the system but it’s relatively low priority so nobody is actively working on it right now.
A nice long post, but if it is too long and you didn't read it all then let me summarize for you. Basically, in WvW loot is placed in a bag at your feet because, a) a bag is easier to render than a player model, b) getting loot is awesome, so they put it at your feet as opposed to the enemies corpse so you could get your loot, c) putting the loot directly into someones bag has development issues around edge cases (ie what to do when bag is full) d) changing the system to anything else is low priority.
Personally, I do not really feel like the bags dropping at my feet is a huge issue. Yes, if there was infinite number of people working for Anet I would love to see a better system in place, but I would not waste someones time fixing something that really is not broke. Plus, I find it fun to go back to a battlefield and hunt down my loots and see what I got.
Matt Witter on siege projectiles, PvE meets WvW, "invader/defender" names, and way points
[Players destroying siege projectiles] is intended! We actually had issues in early testing because players were able to reflect trebuchet shots.
Cool, I didn't even know you could do that. I will have to make sure I use my Thief's Smoke Screen or my Elementalist's Swirling Winds next time I need to defend against siege. I could see a well coordinated team laying down abilities like this constantly to protect a wall or gate.
There are no plans currently [for having large PVE style events (think dragon taking over Stonemist) in WvW]. However, this is something that is not off the table for the future and is often day dreamed about. I’m sure everyone would love to see a large size event start and destroy something. as long as they didn't own it.
The question we ask when building content is “can this be fun for all three teams involved?” This question is a large part of the design process, and often leads to changes or cancellation of content.
Perfect answer. Like really, who wouldn't want to see a dragon take over Stonemist Castle knowing that the other evil server is getting eaten alive by a dragon. Then, when you actually think about doing this and realize that hey maybe those people in Stonemist wouldn't be having fun getting eaten alive by a dragon that you notice that it isn't really a good idea, but we can dream!
Some of the reasons behind enemies appearing as ‘Server-name Invader’ where to avoid harassment issues, let other servers identify what server you are from, and to help establish server rivalry. The way your server name reads is something we would love to adjust, and I am hopeful that we will!
I think this is an excellent design decision. I am not really sure how the naming system could be adjusted to make it any better. I wouldn't really want to get PMs from people I have pwn'd telling me I hack and that they just reported me. That does not sound fun at all. That is, I like things exactly how they are.
Q: They are only inactive when the defense quest is active, are you guys planning on disabling them slightly longer than the defense quest to allow attackers to keep the defenders from spawning there just as the defense quest lapses?
For example under the current system I can count down on voip the defense quest and spawn in everyone right as it hits zero and before attackers can reflag the keep.
A: This is definitely a bug. I’ll see about leaving the rally points disabled for a few extra seconds after the event has completed. That way it just stays disabled if the event starts back up.
After providing that quick answer and the forums going NUTS, Matt Witter then came back on the forums to add this in,
Just to calm nerves I wanted to bring this up again. This is something that we would like to adjust, but doing so could remove one of the larger advantages of having the waypoint upgrade. With my mentioned adjustment it would also mean that one player would be able to lock down a location indefinitely. Changes to how this system works will need to be thoroughly designed and tested and as such will require time. I would not expect to see changes to how this works soon.
I agree that the system does need some fixes. I do not play enough WvW to fully understand the mechanics behind the way point system, but it seems, if I am reading the thread right, that when a keep is under attack the way point is disabled, but when the "defend the keep" event ends and before the next one starts the way point opens for a brief period of time allowing defenders into the keep. In my opinion, this seems like a good reward for having defended the attackers for a given period of time. It also prevents a single person from locking an entire server out of using the way point. I am not sure what the fix to this is. Personally, I do not see anything wrong with the current system, but again, I do not play WvW a lot nor do I play on a big WvW server to truly know if this is a problem.
Robert Hrouda on Dungeon Rewards
I think this is one of the more interesting posts a developer has made on the forums in the last while, which is why I will just quote the entire thing for you, than provide some summary afterwards. To give you some context he is responding to a question that asks if the new updates will prevent skipping of content in dungeons.
It’s one of those human things to do something with the path of least resistance and danger, especially when there is a reward at the end. I could make enemies never drop their aggro on players and force them to fight every single mob, but I don’t see that as a viable solution right now.
I think the better solution is to look at why people are skipping things, and approach from a different angle. Trash mobs have too much HP, and can’t be counted on for lucrative drops from a Risk/Time vs Reward, so people interested in making money (most groups) aren't incentivized to do it, whereas the end chest/boss are more guaranteed and accountable returns on time and risk. I also think there is something to be said about interesting trash mob mechanics making them more enjoyable of a fight.
I can’t make the rewards from trash mobs so lucrative though that people just farm the first couple trash mobs/boss in a dungeon and then rinse/repeat. We encountered this when people just farmed the first boss in an instance and then restarted it (earlier around launch time), and we had to adjust the content as a result. It’s a fine line you have to walk to encourage players to get to the end, but make the process of getting there rewarding enough as well.
I don’t imagine this next update will resolve all the skipping behavior. The path of least resistance is engrained in people, and even if I do everything I could to incentivize people, there will still be those who skip stuff. I have been fixing exploits that will require players to complete more of the events in dungeons, but I am sure people will still skip what they can to get to their end goal.
Alright, so the TL:DR version is this. People are going to take the path of least resistance. Devs could be mean and prevent agro from dropping, but he realizes this is the mean option and not ideal. He acknowledges that there are other approaches such as adjusting fight length, and rewards. He also mentions the time vs reward thing that is always in the backs of our heads. Most importantly though he says that making trash mob fights actually interesting would address half the problem. There is a flip side to this though. If trash mobs are too easy to kill and provide to much of a reward people will just farm these mobs instead of playing the dungeon. Robert, assures us that this is being worked on, but says that we shouldn't expect this problem to go away over night.
My personal feelings are that ideally a group would finish all the content in a dungeon in order to get the full reward. My solution would be to implement a "grading" system for peoples dungeon runs. Count the number of mobs that the group defeated as a percentage of the total and count the number of events completed as a percentage of the total. Then assign the dungeon run a "grade" from A-F and make the final rewards payout on a scale based on your group grade. This could allow for people to speed run to get a quick C or D, but would also reward those that took the time to complete the entire dungeon in a longer period of time with and A or B. It would also prevent people from farming the lucrative individual encounters in a dungeon, although, I personally do not see this as being a problem.
Colin Johanson on the Smart Phone App
The stock photo returns, again!
Not much to say about this post since I do not personally own a smart phone and could care less about there being a smart phone app. I know some people are eagerly awaiting this and unfortunately Colin continues his job as the barer of bad news,
This project was delayed in favor of having the specific folks required to build it skill-set wise working on solidifying the core of the game. You'll hear more about our ecosystem in the future, but we're not actively working on this project, in favor of making sure the core game itself is as fun and rewarding as possible.
Edited to add: We'll discuss what sort of projects we're doing instead in more detail in the blog post later this week, and even in more detail as the Jan/Feb/March releases get closer.
Personally, I think this is the right choice, but then again I am biased not having a smart phone. Some of the users in this thread showed some disappointment and I can't help but feel some agreement with this users comment,
This was one of the features I thought would put GW2 squarely in the “next-gen” category, with support for external channels right out of the box… very disappointing.
I wouldn't say, "very disappointing," but I do agree that this would be something that help set GW2 up as something "next-gen" and help it become more than the other MMOs that exist in the market.
The rules by which you qualify for credit for an event or for experience when killing a mob are different rules than those used to help determine if you qualify for loot. Some of these were set up to be unintentionally restrictive, and as such you could kill a creature with a lot of health (this was most noticeable on champions) and not qualify for loot, despite qualifying for all other credit.
