In GW2 you run a dungeon three times and it guarantees you a minor max-stat item. Run a dungeon five times and you are guaranteed a major max-stat item.
That's pretty shit, IMO. I was getting 1-2 upgrades every run in WoW, not one after 5 runs. 5 runs would have me decked out in blues of that tier (so, yellows in GW2), not with just one Really Good Item.
I think Anet is being cautious about adding a LFD tool precisely because of the mentality it seems to have fostered in WoW's community. I think they're hoping to avoid that here. Right now you're getting a lot of people who've been through WoW's system. They're used to the fast food style dungeons. Quick and easy, in and out. They have no patience for strategy sessions, people unfamiliar with the fights, taking things cautiously, or things going wrong. They have nothing invested in becoming a better player or sticking it out because they can just get another group. It's all about maximizing efficiency. They're coming at this with an entirely different mindset(not necessarily one I agree with but this is what you're up against). I think this mentality is a result of a combination of things but largely it's a result of the design of WoW's dungeons and how player expectations have been shaped.
I think it's going to take time to retrain people so they become used to how GW2 does things.
Would it help if Anet somehow facilitated the process of putting a group together. I think so. A better LFG tool(and making people aware of it so they use it) might work. It's worth a shot.
Should GW2 institute a LFD type tool? I'm not sure. It's a really convenient tool and I'm really fond of it but there are gameplay consequences to adding it.
Could a LFD tool work with GW2's more challenging dungeons? I think so, as long as that remains the norm. But this means the onus is on Anet to do a good job balancing dungeons to meet this ideal and setting player expectations.
Personally, I think a full LFG tool just wasn't high on their priority list.
Otherwise, if you're right, they need to get off their high horse. At the moment they have very few dungeons, many of which are both not very fun and unrewarding to play. "This will make you appreciate them better!" should be way, way lower on their priority list than "these just aren't very good, let's do better".
Just let me swap one dungeon's currency for another, maybe not even at 1:1. Some of the dungeons are just completely horrible experiences right now. Like, I know some of you like Arah, but I can't stand that place and it takes longer to do than it took to clear all of an average raid in WOW
Edit: also a way to convert dungeon tokens into wuvwuv badges
Just let me swap one dungeon's currency for another, maybe not even at 1:1. Some of the dungeons are just completely horrible experiences right now. Like, I know some of you like Arah, but I can't stand that place and it takes longer to do than it took to clear all of an average raid in WOW
Edit: also a way to convert dungeon tokens into wuvwuv badges
Just make a goddamn common currency or something. Maybe a mix of both.
WoW has a common currency from dungeons so you don't have to run the same damn place 1000x.
They don't even need a LFD tool like that. A tool that lets you flag as LFD: AC, for example, and then let other players see who was flagged on that list would help. I'd like to do AC, are there 4 people currently flagged as LFD for it? I'll message and invite them. Hey, group formed 10x as fast.
Sorry, but putting a party together is not a pointless waste of time, especially if ANet is aiming for dungeons to be challenging. Does it take too much time? Yes. Should it be automatic? In my opinion, no.
An improved LFG tool will solve the problem of having to spam chat. Story-mode incentives will just make getting the group together faster.
Someone in your party does have to travel to the dungeon entrance to initiate the dungeon. CoE and CoF entrances are tied to zone meta events. Not sure if there are others.
In what way isn't it? What am I gaining by this process? What's the reasoning here?
As pointed out above, GW2 is even less discriminatory about class selection then WoW or it's equivalents so you are literally just grabbing the first 4 warm bodies coherent enough to respond to a message in chat.
Maybe your reasoning applies to Explorable mode, but Story mode is 100% meant to be done by a random group of anybodies.
Auto-LFD might work for story mode. The problem there is then people would expect it for explorable, which I definitely would not prefer (although on the other hand I wouldn't quit the game over it).
I think that people personally getting a party together would mean (in general) more social aspects, more strategy discussion, less people bailing, etc. Meaning a nicer experience overall in the actual dungeon. Maybe that wouldn't be as much of an issue as I am imagining. The GW2 community is pretty good. I think the heavy emphasis on cooperation in PvE helps to encourage a good community.
Having personally put together parties for years in MMOs, I've never found this to be true. PUGs are PUGs, regardless of how they are assembled.
I think Anet is being cautious about adding a LFD tool precisely because of the mentality it seems to have fostered in WoW's community. I think they're hoping to avoid that here. Right now you're getting a lot of people who've been through WoW's system. They're used to the fast food style dungeons. Quick and easy, in and out. They have no patience for strategy sessions, people unfamiliar with the fights, taking things cautiously, or things going wrong. They have nothing invested in becoming a better player or sticking it out because they can just get another group. It's all about maximizing efficiency. They're coming at this with an entirely different mindset(not necessarily one I agree with but this is what you're up against). I think this mentality is a result of a combination of things but largely it's a result of the design of WoW's dungeons and how player expectations have been shaped.
I think it's going to take time to retrain people so they become used to how GW2 does things.
Would it help if Anet somehow facilitated the process of putting a group together. I think so. A better LFG tool(and making people aware of it so they use it) might work. It's worth a shot.
Should GW2 institute a LFD type tool? I'm not sure. It's a really convenient tool and I'm really fond of it but there are gameplay consequences to adding it.
Could a LFD tool work with GW2's more challenging dungeons? I think so, as long as that remains the norm. But this means the onus is on Anet to do a good job balancing dungeons to meet this ideal and setting player expectations.
The LFG tool didn't foster that mentality, the dungeon design did. LFG tools just act to expedite the processes already going on. People ran heroics the same before and after LFG. They just did it faster and with less need for Dalaran Horse Trading before hand.
Now you maybe have a point that said effort made people more invested in their group and thus less willing to leave at the drop of a hat, but at the same time that effort presented a large barrier to player enjoyment both before the dungeon and should someone choose/be forced to leave mid-dungeon.
But I think you are right about Anet's differing views on dungeons. The problem is, I don't think those views line up with much of their playerbase. And I don't mean in terms of just "run it fast and hard and often", but in terms of what people want from an MMO.
I think alot of people were looking forward to and are still looking for a 5 player endgame dungeon running experience.
In GW2 you run a dungeon three times and it guarantees you a minor max-stat item. Run a dungeon five times and you are guaranteed a major max-stat item.
That's pretty shit, IMO. I was getting 1-2 upgrades every run in WoW, not one after 5 runs. 5 runs would have me decked out in blues of that tier (so, yellows in GW2), not with just one Really Good Item.
Well if you wanted to, you could get 1-2 yellows for every GW2 dungeon run rather than saving up for exotics. It would take 5 runs to get a full set of yellow armor.
1-2 upgrades from WoW dungeons seems pretty lucky. From what I remember in WoW, I would get upgrades about once every 2 runs since it depends on the luck of the drops and the luck of your roll against other people. So possibly 10 runs to get a set of armor. Even so, that is still comparable effort/reward to getting a set of yellows in GW2.
Now, that is substantially less than what it takes in GW2 for exotics (~30 runs) but it is still only blues and only for one tier. Get a full set of exotics in GW2 and you are max.
Just let me swap one dungeon's currency for another, maybe not even at 1:1. Some of the dungeons are just completely horrible experiences right now. Like, I know some of you like Arah, but I can't stand that place and it takes longer to do than it took to clear all of an average raid in WOW
Edit: also a way to convert dungeon tokens into wuvwuv badges
Just make a goddamn common currency or something. Maybe a mix of both.
WoW has a common currency from dungeons so you don't have to run the same damn place 1000x.
Generally you can get a given set of stats from about 2-4 different dungeons, so mix it up?
In GW2 you run a dungeon three times and it guarantees you a minor max-stat item. Run a dungeon five times and you are guaranteed a major max-stat item.
That's pretty shit, IMO. I was getting 1-2 upgrades every run in WoW, not one after 5 runs. 5 runs would have me decked out in blues of that tier (so, yellows in GW2), not with just one Really Good Item.
Well if you wanted to, you could get 1-2 yellows for every GW2 dungeon run rather than saving up for exotics. It would take 5 runs to get a full set of yellow armor.
1-2 upgrades from WoW dungeons seems pretty lucky. From what I remember in WoW, I would get upgrades about once every 2 runs since it depends on the luck of the drops and the luck of your roll against other people. So possibly 10 runs to get a set of armor. Even so, that is still comparable effort/reward to getting a set of yellows in GW2.
Now, that is substantially less than what it takes in GW2 for exotics (~30 runs) but it is still only blues and only for one tier. Get a full set of exotics in GW2 and you are max.
He's probably talking about gear from Justice points.
Just let me swap one dungeon's currency for another, maybe not even at 1:1. Some of the dungeons are just completely horrible experiences right now. Like, I know some of you like Arah, but I can't stand that place and it takes longer to do than it took to clear all of an average raid in WOW
Edit: also a way to convert dungeon tokens into wuvwuv badges
Just make a goddamn common currency or something. Maybe a mix of both.
WoW has a common currency from dungeons so you don't have to run the same damn place 1000x.
Generally you can get a given set of stats from about 2-4 different dungeons, so mix it up?
Who gives a shit about stats? No one runs dungeons in GW2 for the stats, you run them for the look.
If it's for the look, yeah you need to run the proper dungeon. The look shows that you achieved something specific. I am pretty sure that ANet is in agreement on this.
I think alot of people were looking forward to and are still looking for a 5 player endgame dungeon running experience.
I do almost nothing but dungeon running on my level 80. Both my build and gear have gotten better tuned with each dungeon, my tactics have gotten better and I've racked up tokens for shinies.
Is there something I'm missing here? What more could you want? I never got to WoW's endgame so I have no real idea what the allure there is other than playing dungeon slot machines.
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citizen059hello my name is citizenI'm from the InternetRegistered Userregular
edited October 2012
I'm not concerned about endgame at all, and I think it's because I view MMO's differently than the majority of players seem to.
For me, playing the game isn't about moving from one goal to the next and making "progress" (in the form of levels or loot).
It's more like playing Team Fortress 2. I've played those maps hundreds of times, I've pushed carts and captured the intelligence more times than I can remember...but I keep doing it because it's fun to do. I don't really care that I've done it before, or if I'm getting any items for it.
I somehow missed the point when "progress" became the reason to play an MMO.
If other people can't view it that way, it's okay. No big deal.
If it's for the look, yeah you need to run the proper dungeon. The look shows that you achieved something specific. I am pretty sure that ANet is in agreement on this.
I'm not sure where the value in showing "Yeah, I ran the exact same dungeon 25+ times" is.
I think alot of people were looking forward to and are still looking for a 5 player endgame dungeon running experience.
I do almost nothing but dungeon running on my level 80. Both my build and gear have gotten better tuned with each dungeon, my tactics have gotten better and I've racked up tokens for shinies.
Is there something I'm missing here? What more could you want? I never got to WoW's endgame so I have no real idea what the allure there is other than playing dungeon slot machines.
What level of organization do you need to achieve this?
I think alot of people were looking forward to and are still looking for a 5 player endgame dungeon running experience.
I do almost nothing but dungeon running on my level 80. Both my build and gear have gotten better tuned with each dungeon, my tactics have gotten better and I've racked up tokens for shinies.
Is there something I'm missing here? What more could you want? I never got to WoW's endgame so I have no real idea what the allure there is other than playing dungeon slot machines.
Well it is essentially the same thing you are doing except with less "I want that visual" but more "I want to be stronger" and for some "I like the story and want to see what happens". WoW's "beginning" endgame is a less grindy, more polished, version of GW2 end game grind.
I think alot of people were looking forward to and are still looking for a 5 player endgame dungeon running experience.
I do almost nothing but dungeon running on my level 80. Both my build and gear have gotten better tuned with each dungeon, my tactics have gotten better and I've racked up tokens for shinies.
Is there something I'm missing here? What more could you want? I never got to WoW's endgame so I have no real idea what the allure there is other than playing dungeon slot machines.
What level of organization do you need to achieve this?
be in a guild with more than 4 other people and ask them...
This thread is not about arguing over specifics of one game. It's about weighing the two against each other.
Whether or not GW2 should have a dungeon-finding tool is best left to that specific thread. It's good that this never really became a heated bicker battle among the fans of either game, but if you all can't stay on topic, then maybe this thread has served its purpose and should end.
I think alot of people were looking forward to and are still looking for a 5 player endgame dungeon running experience.
I do almost nothing but dungeon running on my level 80. Both my build and gear have gotten better tuned with each dungeon, my tactics have gotten better and I've racked up tokens for shinies.
Is there something I'm missing here? What more could you want? I never got to WoW's endgame so I have no real idea what the allure there is other than playing dungeon slot machines.
What level of organization do you need to achieve this?
The difference between blazing through a dungeon and getting absolutely buttblasted is how well people can play their class and how well they work together. On the surface GW2's dungeons appear to be much more based on the individual and to a degree they are, but even with good players organization can make a huge difference. I've done all three paths in Ascalonion Catacombs in the time it takes other groups one run just because I was in a solid, organized group that worked together.
I think alot of people were looking forward to and are still looking for a 5 player endgame dungeon running experience.
I do almost nothing but dungeon running on my level 80. Both my build and gear have gotten better tuned with each dungeon, my tactics have gotten better and I've racked up tokens for shinies.
Is there something I'm missing here? What more could you want? I never got to WoW's endgame so I have no real idea what the allure there is other than playing dungeon slot machines.
What level of organization do you need to achieve this?
The difference between blazing through a dungeon and getting absolutely buttblasted is how well people can play their class and how well they work together. On the surface GW2's dungeons appear to be much more based on the individual and to a degree they are, but even with good players organization can make a huge difference.
Right, which is why I'm asking you to think about how well organized your group is to pull this off.
If Anet is expecting alot of the people running explorable modes, they are not gonna satisfy a more low skill level many are looking for. If dungeons in GW2 are equivalent to raids in WoW, you are gonna get people complaining theirs no equivalent to heroics.
be in a guild with more than 3 other people and ask them...
More then 4 and hope they all want to do dungeons, are online at the same time for the same stretch and are competent enough to pull it off in an organized fashion.
We're giving you solutions and anecdotal evidence to the contrary but all you seem to want to say is "IT IS TOO HARD!"
I personally think WoW felt like a complete waste of time until you got to max level when there was finally something to do. GW2 to me felt like I had something I could do at every level that felt worth my time.
We're giving you solutions and anecdotal evidence to the contrary but all you seem to want to say is "IT IS TOO HARD!"
I personally think WoW felt like a complete waste of time until you got to max level when there was finally something to do. GW2 to me felt like I had something I could do at every level that felt worth my time.
You aren't giving any evidence to the contrary though. Hell, you don't even seem to understand what I said.
GW2 explorable dungeons are much more challenging then what at first glance seems their equivalent in WoW.
I'd say GW2 story-mode is close to WoW heroic, while GW2 explorable is close to WoW raid. It is a bit tricky to compare them directly though because I feel like GW2 has a (somewhat) higher skill ceiling.
Well it is essentially the same thing you are doing except with less "I want that visual" but more "I want to be stronger" and for some "I like the story and want to see what happens".
Yeah, this is a pretty notable difference between WoW and GW2. GW2 is (by design) not about getting stronger stats, it is about tuning your stats to your build and improving your skill with your chosen build (and getting cool/epic/fancy-looking gear).
GW2 dungeons have plenty of story though. The stories tie in to their zones like dungeons in WoW do, but they also tie in to your personal story. Also, it is cool to see the "aftermath" of the initial story-mode plot when you do explorable-mode.
Although in either game you pretty much ignore the story after the first couple runs.
I'd say GW2 story-mode is close to WoW heroic, while GW2 explorable is close to WoW raid. It is a bit tricky to compare them directly though because I feel like GW2 has a (somewhat) higher skill ceiling.
Yeah, that's kinda what I was getting at and I think that will throw alot of people. I think many LIKE having a WoW-Heroic-level group PvE content that's actually worth doing. (GW2 story modes aren't after you do them the first time)
Which is I'd say a big fundamental difference between the two games.
I think the difficulty of explorable mode is being overstated here. You'll probably have a hard time your first couple times you do a particular wing, but once you have five 80s with decent gear who know the drill, they go pretty smoothly. I'd say overall GW2 explorables are comparable to WoW heroics.
If I were Anet I would probably make story mode easier though. There isn't a huge difficulty gap between story and explorable, and explorable is supposed to be the hard stuff.
The only WOW raid I ever did was zul'gurub, and the hardest thing about it was herding 20 cats into the same instance at the same time. It's why I always liked raiding in theory moreso than in practice.
Yah, gw2 explorables are really that hard unless you're doing them with sub-80s or people with bad gear/builds. I can't really remember the last time I failed an explorable.
Last night I tried to log in to gw2 to do something, and after 15 minutes of looking for a group I found one for HotW exp. We did paths 1 and 2, and it was so ridiculously boring. Everything is just a big meat pinata. For melee bosses you just kite them forever. For ranged bosses, I didn't even have to look at the screen, just literally strafe back and forth and spam all my abilities while watching Hulu. Then I realized that I already have all max gear stats, transmuted to look how I want it to look, so there wasn't really any reward for running it anyways...
If I were Anet I would probably make story mode easier though. There isn't a huge difficulty gap between story and explorable
I'd agree with this. The story modes should be much more accessible than they are for people who are just interested in the lore and story. If they have to cut the monetary rewards to prevent people from farming the story modes then that's fine.
Then I realized that I already have all max gear stats, transmuted to look how I want it to look, so there wasn't really any reward for running it anyways...
Gearing up alts yo! Tokens are account bound and not character bound and all that sweet sweet money certainly doesn't hurt.
Yah, gw2 explorables are really that hard unless you're doing them with sub-80s or people with bad gear/builds. I can't really remember the last time I failed an explorable.
I don't see how you can fail dungeons in GW2, unless everyone runs out of repair money. My first Catacombs run was a 2 hour mess where all my gear broke multiple times and we still finished it.
I like WoW for the sheer silliness and the Lovecraftian slant. The fee does feel a little annoying, however.
GW2 has a more serious atmosphere, but I like the random events where everyone teams up.
I wish WoW had more of that.
I don't know if it gets too much more Lovecraftian than the elder dragons. I mean they're forces of nature with incomprehensible motives who've shown up to simply destroy life.
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Regardless of other nonsense I don't like about GW2, like events not happening often enough and their poor visibility coming from playing TR and RIFT.
The sluggish camera is completely killing enjoying the game for me. It became even more apparent after playing MoP. I had the same issue with ToR except their implementation would make my camera fly around at random.
I would really like to know who came up with this idea that camera/mouse acceleration was ever a good thing over clean 1:1 movement.
I like WoW for the sheer silliness and the Lovecraftian slant. The fee does feel a little annoying, however.
GW2 has a more serious atmosphere, but I like the random events where everyone teams up.
I wish WoW had more of that.
I don't know if it gets too much more Lovecraftian than the elder dragons. I mean they're forces of nature with incomprehensible motives who've shown up to simply destroy life.
... in WoW? Only two of the dragons have tried to kill everyone and both had gone insane.
I can't play WoW anymore after playing GW2. I had a friend send me a Scroll of Resurrection about a week ago, and I just couldn't do it.
WoW is straight up crippled if you play it without addons, to some degree, which is something I didn't want to invest a lot of time into setting up since I was pretty unsure about playing the game longterm again. Even with that out of the way the gameplay felt painfully slow, and there was just a whole lot less going on than in even the most basic fights in GW2. Even though I had like 500 skills, the gameplay felt extremely shallow and repetitive. I missed a ton of the interactivity of GW2, like weapon swap being meaningful, but most of all I missed dodging.
Dodging adds a whole other layer of interaction to gameplay because those spells you can't stand in without getting wrecked don't need to show up for 2-3s before landing. The pacing change that dodging provides (along with casting while moving, to a lesser extent) allows for a better player experience in my opinion, while still maintaining a lot of the challenge to encounters even though it essentially gives invincibility.
On the whole, I think there are fairly obvious pros and cons to both games. PvE content is not even a contest in terms of quality for instance. GW2's dungeons are very reminiscent of classic WoW where the designers didn't seem to understand what makes fights interesting or challenging, so they're still in the "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" phase. The lack of a Holy Trinity system also limits encounter design to a huge degree in some areas. The AI also feels really poorly designed which can cause enemies to tunnel a single person until they simply run out of survival tools, which is not fun or interesting. PvE content in GW2 is just something that needs time to fix. Even though the combat is great, dungeon design just isn't there, and if they want to make PvE into something they can sell the game on, it needs a lot of work that I'm not sure they're going to do.
GW2 also has a crazy amount of bugs. There are literally pages and pages of posts on their forums just full of problems, from abilities being outright non-functional to buff durations being wrong. Tooltips are incredibly vague in a lot of places, some skills work in WvW and SPvP but not in the world, a lot of skills just don't work how you would expect them to (cone skills that center on a target instead of working like CoC in WoW, for example) and just a crap load of other small, annoying, random issue. You can work around a lot of bugs by simply playing differently, but the ones you can't it is way beyond irritating.
Anyway, my summary is very simple: If WoW had something more like GW2s combat system and implemented a handful of it's convenience features (the collections tab and OOC regen being the main 2) I would be all over that game. WoW is better in a fuck ton of ways, but I can't bring myself to play it because it just feels too slow with an absurd amount of skill bloat. GW2 feels way more skillful and rewarding to play well.
It's incredibly difficult to compare WoW and GW2 to be completely honest, so I just picked the most important things to me personally. Combat makes or breaks games for me, and I think it would be unfair to WoW if I didn't point out how insanely unfinished GW2 feels due to it's excessive amount of bugs.
GW2 doesn't have a sub, so if you're buying one on a whim, that's a damn good reason.
I like WoW for the sheer silliness and the Lovecraftian slant. The fee does feel a little annoying, however.
GW2 has a more serious atmosphere, but I like the random events where everyone teams up.
I wish WoW had more of that.
I don't know if it gets too much more Lovecraftian than the elder dragons. I mean they're forces of nature with incomprehensible motives who've shown up to simply destroy life.
... in WoW? Only two of the dragons have tried to kill everyone and both had gone insane.
Also the Old Gods are way more Cthulu-esque.
No, The GW2 Elder Dragons. I am sorry I was not more specific to the game.
They're essentially a re-imagining of the old gods type of concept into a dragon form. They drive people mad, make minions from people both alive and dead, one of them lives in the deep ocean. . . Etc.
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
The Dragons in GW2 are cool, but there is NO WAY they are as cool as the Old Gods in WoW, back in Vanilla. Blizzard did a serious disservice to their own lore over the years. That glaive was the single coolest thing I ever stared at in an MMO.
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
The Dragons in GW2 are cool, but there is NO WAY they are as cool as the Old Gods in WoW, back in Vanilla. Blizzard did a serious disservice to their own lore over the years. That glaive was the single coolest thing I ever stared at in an MMO.
I agree with this, and when looking back now on that and comparing it to what I know now of how Anet decided to take the Elder Dragons, or at least the one we've seen (Zhaitan), it seems like WoW had the better, deeper evil and they squandered it over time, whereas the Elder Dragons so far don't feel so force of naturey as they seemed to before, and more like just a evil totem to hit and not fear or care about. I didn't get the same dread with Zhaitan as I did with C'thun.
I hope ArenaNet can deepen their plot and make Zhaitan the most obvious, while having the dragons gradually become more complicated in motivation and the scope of their power and history.
I feel like the Old Gods in WoW are a clean example of how Blizzard either creates bad original lore or just straight-up references stuff.
At least Zhaitan feels somewhat original for something as played-out as dragons. After playing Rift, however, the whole "Fight evil dragons" loses punch. I feel Rift did it better.
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I think it's going to take time to retrain people so they become used to how GW2 does things.
Would it help if Anet somehow facilitated the process of putting a group together. I think so. A better LFG tool(and making people aware of it so they use it) might work. It's worth a shot.
Should GW2 institute a LFD type tool? I'm not sure. It's a really convenient tool and I'm really fond of it but there are gameplay consequences to adding it.
Could a LFD tool work with GW2's more challenging dungeons? I think so, as long as that remains the norm. But this means the onus is on Anet to do a good job balancing dungeons to meet this ideal and setting player expectations.
Otherwise, if you're right, they need to get off their high horse. At the moment they have very few dungeons, many of which are both not very fun and unrewarding to play. "This will make you appreciate them better!" should be way, way lower on their priority list than "these just aren't very good, let's do better".
Just let me swap one dungeon's currency for another, maybe not even at 1:1. Some of the dungeons are just completely horrible experiences right now. Like, I know some of you like Arah, but I can't stand that place and it takes longer to do than it took to clear all of an average raid in WOW
Edit: also a way to convert dungeon tokens into wuvwuv badges
Just make a goddamn common currency or something. Maybe a mix of both.
WoW has a common currency from dungeons so you don't have to run the same damn place 1000x.
Having personally put together parties for years in MMOs, I've never found this to be true. PUGs are PUGs, regardless of how they are assembled.
The LFG tool didn't foster that mentality, the dungeon design did. LFG tools just act to expedite the processes already going on. People ran heroics the same before and after LFG. They just did it faster and with less need for Dalaran Horse Trading before hand.
Now you maybe have a point that said effort made people more invested in their group and thus less willing to leave at the drop of a hat, but at the same time that effort presented a large barrier to player enjoyment both before the dungeon and should someone choose/be forced to leave mid-dungeon.
But I think you are right about Anet's differing views on dungeons. The problem is, I don't think those views line up with much of their playerbase. And I don't mean in terms of just "run it fast and hard and often", but in terms of what people want from an MMO.
I think alot of people were looking forward to and are still looking for a 5 player endgame dungeon running experience.
Well if you wanted to, you could get 1-2 yellows for every GW2 dungeon run rather than saving up for exotics. It would take 5 runs to get a full set of yellow armor.
1-2 upgrades from WoW dungeons seems pretty lucky. From what I remember in WoW, I would get upgrades about once every 2 runs since it depends on the luck of the drops and the luck of your roll against other people. So possibly 10 runs to get a set of armor. Even so, that is still comparable effort/reward to getting a set of yellows in GW2.
Now, that is substantially less than what it takes in GW2 for exotics (~30 runs) but it is still only blues and only for one tier. Get a full set of exotics in GW2 and you are max.
Generally you can get a given set of stats from about 2-4 different dungeons, so mix it up?
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
He's probably talking about gear from Justice points.
Who gives a shit about stats? No one runs dungeons in GW2 for the stats, you run them for the look.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
Is there something I'm missing here? What more could you want? I never got to WoW's endgame so I have no real idea what the allure there is other than playing dungeon slot machines.
For me, playing the game isn't about moving from one goal to the next and making "progress" (in the form of levels or loot).
It's more like playing Team Fortress 2. I've played those maps hundreds of times, I've pushed carts and captured the intelligence more times than I can remember...but I keep doing it because it's fun to do. I don't really care that I've done it before, or if I'm getting any items for it.
I somehow missed the point when "progress" became the reason to play an MMO.
If other people can't view it that way, it's okay. No big deal.
I'm not sure where the value in showing "Yeah, I ran the exact same dungeon 25+ times" is.
What level of organization do you need to achieve this?
Well it is essentially the same thing you are doing except with less "I want that visual" but more "I want to be stronger" and for some "I like the story and want to see what happens". WoW's "beginning" endgame is a less grindy, more polished, version of GW2 end game grind.
Because they can immediately try again with another group instead of sticking something out...
be in a guild with more than 4 other people and ask them...
Whether or not GW2 should have a dungeon-finding tool is best left to that specific thread. It's good that this never really became a heated bicker battle among the fans of either game, but if you all can't stay on topic, then maybe this thread has served its purpose and should end.
Right, which is why I'm asking you to think about how well organized your group is to pull this off.
If Anet is expecting alot of the people running explorable modes, they are not gonna satisfy a more low skill level many are looking for. If dungeons in GW2 are equivalent to raids in WoW, you are gonna get people complaining theirs no equivalent to heroics.
More then 4 and hope they all want to do dungeons, are online at the same time for the same stretch and are competent enough to pull it off in an organized fashion.
We're giving you solutions and anecdotal evidence to the contrary but all you seem to want to say is "IT IS TOO HARD!"
I personally think WoW felt like a complete waste of time until you got to max level when there was finally something to do. GW2 to me felt like I had something I could do at every level that felt worth my time.
You aren't giving any evidence to the contrary though. Hell, you don't even seem to understand what I said.
GW2 explorable dungeons are much more challenging then what at first glance seems their equivalent in WoW.
Yeah, this is a pretty notable difference between WoW and GW2. GW2 is (by design) not about getting stronger stats, it is about tuning your stats to your build and improving your skill with your chosen build (and getting cool/epic/fancy-looking gear).
GW2 dungeons have plenty of story though. The stories tie in to their zones like dungeons in WoW do, but they also tie in to your personal story. Also, it is cool to see the "aftermath" of the initial story-mode plot when you do explorable-mode.
Although in either game you pretty much ignore the story after the first couple runs.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
Yeah, that's kinda what I was getting at and I think that will throw alot of people. I think many LIKE having a WoW-Heroic-level group PvE content that's actually worth doing. (GW2 story modes aren't after you do them the first time)
Which is I'd say a big fundamental difference between the two games.
If I were Anet I would probably make story mode easier though. There isn't a huge difficulty gap between story and explorable, and explorable is supposed to be the hard stuff.
The only WOW raid I ever did was zul'gurub, and the hardest thing about it was herding 20 cats into the same instance at the same time. It's why I always liked raiding in theory moreso than in practice.
GW2 has a more serious atmosphere, but I like the random events where everyone teams up.
I wish WoW had more of that.
Last night I tried to log in to gw2 to do something, and after 15 minutes of looking for a group I found one for HotW exp. We did paths 1 and 2, and it was so ridiculously boring. Everything is just a big meat pinata. For melee bosses you just kite them forever. For ranged bosses, I didn't even have to look at the screen, just literally strafe back and forth and spam all my abilities while watching Hulu. Then I realized that I already have all max gear stats, transmuted to look how I want it to look, so there wasn't really any reward for running it anyways...
I don't know if it gets too much more Lovecraftian than the elder dragons. I mean they're forces of nature with incomprehensible motives who've shown up to simply destroy life.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
The sluggish camera is completely killing enjoying the game for me. It became even more apparent after playing MoP. I had the same issue with ToR except their implementation would make my camera fly around at random.
I would really like to know who came up with this idea that camera/mouse acceleration was ever a good thing over clean 1:1 movement.
It was never a problem for me, but I know it can be for some players and that ANet was working on it.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
I'm expecting them to fix it like they fixed WvW player culling and the audio system crashing.
... in WoW? Only two of the dragons have tried to kill everyone and both had gone insane.
Also the Old Gods are way more Cthulu-esque.
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WoW is straight up crippled if you play it without addons, to some degree, which is something I didn't want to invest a lot of time into setting up since I was pretty unsure about playing the game longterm again. Even with that out of the way the gameplay felt painfully slow, and there was just a whole lot less going on than in even the most basic fights in GW2. Even though I had like 500 skills, the gameplay felt extremely shallow and repetitive. I missed a ton of the interactivity of GW2, like weapon swap being meaningful, but most of all I missed dodging.
Dodging adds a whole other layer of interaction to gameplay because those spells you can't stand in without getting wrecked don't need to show up for 2-3s before landing. The pacing change that dodging provides (along with casting while moving, to a lesser extent) allows for a better player experience in my opinion, while still maintaining a lot of the challenge to encounters even though it essentially gives invincibility.
On the whole, I think there are fairly obvious pros and cons to both games. PvE content is not even a contest in terms of quality for instance. GW2's dungeons are very reminiscent of classic WoW where the designers didn't seem to understand what makes fights interesting or challenging, so they're still in the "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" phase. The lack of a Holy Trinity system also limits encounter design to a huge degree in some areas. The AI also feels really poorly designed which can cause enemies to tunnel a single person until they simply run out of survival tools, which is not fun or interesting. PvE content in GW2 is just something that needs time to fix. Even though the combat is great, dungeon design just isn't there, and if they want to make PvE into something they can sell the game on, it needs a lot of work that I'm not sure they're going to do.
GW2 also has a crazy amount of bugs. There are literally pages and pages of posts on their forums just full of problems, from abilities being outright non-functional to buff durations being wrong. Tooltips are incredibly vague in a lot of places, some skills work in WvW and SPvP but not in the world, a lot of skills just don't work how you would expect them to (cone skills that center on a target instead of working like CoC in WoW, for example) and just a crap load of other small, annoying, random issue. You can work around a lot of bugs by simply playing differently, but the ones you can't it is way beyond irritating.
Anyway, my summary is very simple: If WoW had something more like GW2s combat system and implemented a handful of it's convenience features (the collections tab and OOC regen being the main 2) I would be all over that game. WoW is better in a fuck ton of ways, but I can't bring myself to play it because it just feels too slow with an absurd amount of skill bloat. GW2 feels way more skillful and rewarding to play well.
It's incredibly difficult to compare WoW and GW2 to be completely honest, so I just picked the most important things to me personally. Combat makes or breaks games for me, and I think it would be unfair to WoW if I didn't point out how insanely unfinished GW2 feels due to it's excessive amount of bugs.
GW2 doesn't have a sub, so if you're buying one on a whim, that's a damn good reason.
No, The GW2 Elder Dragons. I am sorry I was not more specific to the game.
They're essentially a re-imagining of the old gods type of concept into a dragon form. They drive people mad, make minions from people both alive and dead, one of them lives in the deep ocean. . . Etc.
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I agree with this, and when looking back now on that and comparing it to what I know now of how Anet decided to take the Elder Dragons, or at least the one we've seen (Zhaitan), it seems like WoW had the better, deeper evil and they squandered it over time, whereas the Elder Dragons so far don't feel so force of naturey as they seemed to before, and more like just a evil totem to hit and not fear or care about. I didn't get the same dread with Zhaitan as I did with C'thun.
I hope ArenaNet can deepen their plot and make Zhaitan the most obvious, while having the dragons gradually become more complicated in motivation and the scope of their power and history.
At least Zhaitan feels somewhat original for something as played-out as dragons. After playing Rift, however, the whole "Fight evil dragons" loses punch. I feel Rift did it better.
Now apparently they are responsible for everything from every big evil ever to Thrall stubbing his toe in the morning.