Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.
.You can tell it’s not a grind or a treadmill because they say it’s not. Also this “add a new tier of gear” thing is totally not something they plan to do every three months. Only every time they add an expansion pack worth of content.
: Zubon
You’ll be facing WvW opponents who will get the top gear, so let’s add DAoC problems, too. Trifecta! If the horizontal endgame isn’t working as planned, why not pivot to a vertical endgame?
The horizontal endgame of Guild Wars 2 does not seem to be working as well as intended. Players are using all eight dungeons, but this is not working at all in the open world. The high-level loot is too concentrated in Orr to encourage level 80s to hang out in lower level zones, so non-bot 80s visit the dragons, the dungeons, and Orr. Lost Shores will add an option to that list but not encourage using the 0-70 content. You can find action in the newbie zones, and channeling players together still works pretty well, but most of the world seems very sparsely populated even in prime time (outside the holiday event). The dynamic event model has fewer problems with low density than Warhammer Online, but you group events can sit there for hours, and the same for events not labeled as group content but effectively unsoloable. I am amongst the many people who talked about how you could play in any zone at level 80, so all these good things will come of that, but the reward structure is not supporting that. There are some people who play the content they enjoy without thought of the rewards; they are mostly not MMO players.
You still run into dynamic events that are bugged from launch, and with the less frequent server resets, those can also sit there for a very long time. This lets a lot of players see them, which furthers negativity. If an event can reach a bugged state from which it cannot advance, it will eventually get there, so over time more areas reach bugged states that cannot be cleared. Logging on Sunday morning for my 5 daily events, 2 of the first 4 I found were bugged, along with a waypoint stuck in a bugged contested state from a previous event. This is an uncommon run of luck, but I was not exactly surprised. I am still judging games based on how long you can play until you see a bug, and GW2 is not doing enormously well there.
: Zubon
If they fix the problem from my first paragraph, come back here a month later to hear me complain about how level 80s are swarming newbie events because the problems with scaling let you kill much faster at lower levels.
MMO news sites have been popping up this morning (post embargo) with sneak peeks at the content patch for Guild Wars 2 set to drop this weekend. The content patch is titled Lost Shores. MMORPG.com and GW2 Hub seem to have the most depth and commentary, respectively. Be sure to check them out. Thoughts follow.
Southsun CoveÂ
The new open world PvE map is Southsun Cove. It is a playground for level 80 characters fighting a new enemy, the karka. However, during the lead-in event everybody can be upleveled to play on the map. Afterwards it is losing that upleveling ability.
Besides all the usual goodies, there isn’t much to comment on yet. More content is good. Less emphasis on Orr is good. New enemy type is good. What I am most interested in is to see how ArenaNet responds to the current playstyle of level 80 content. It seems they’ve emphasized the karka’s armor to the point where there is a new shader in the game to show armor falling off. Will this armor mechanic shift the current “area of effect” spam meta?
Regardless, I think it will be a nice change of pace from Orr – bright sandy beaches with heavily-armored, four-legged Half Life 2 creatures. Continue reading [GW2] The Next Content
“Now that I’m at 10% hit points, I’m not completely sure I like the terrain this fight is on. I think I’ll turn invulnerable and regenerate all my health while walking about ten paces away.”
: Zubon
Borderlands 2 is very fond of sending you into obvious traps. I keep running into sidequests where you are clearly going to be betrayed, to the point where the quest text makes sarcastic comments about it. The main storyline requires you to take orders from someone while she is betraying you. It goes beyond stupid to suicidal.
Also under the heading of traps, playing a sniper character is increasingly unsatisfying as fewer and fewer areas spawn the enemies before you are in aggro range. Maybe this will reverse at some point, but all the bandits are in their huts, the skags are in the holes, and the rakk are over the horizon until red dots appear on your screen. Robots fly in from orbit and enemies burrow up literally beneath your feet. If I could blast those huts with my rocket launcher, that would change things, but the enemies just don’t exist until they are within pistol range. I need to play multiplayer and send someone else in as bait first. I’m sure the enemies will spawn into that obvious trap.
: Zubon
Frequent changes make evaluation difficult.
Going through Guild Wars 2 a second and third time, I am finding it easier. I do not know how much of that is familiarity with the particular content, better knowledge of game mechanics, more experience with a class, playing a different class, having better equipment, or changes to the game itself. Those game changes could also be subdivided into changes to the content, game mechanics, or classes. Those could be further subdivided into bug fixes, intentional adjustments/rebalancing, and unintended effects of other changes. In group content, multiply all these by your number of players.
I know that some early complaints, mine included, came down to whining that the game got hard at the end. Orr and the dungeons differ, with a difficulty curve like Psychonauts (not, blessedly, Psychonauts at release). The same tactics that thrive in Plains of Ashford events will get you killed walking to a cypress sapling in the Straits of Devastation. I am confident that Orr is easier due to learning, but I do not know if the other factors are more important.
Underwater content, for example, is still ugly on my elementalist. I have gotten better at it, but the class is just lousy in the water. My ranger has few problems, with higher DPS when I hit 1 and AFK than my elementalist sees using all 20 skills. My guardian is at least as effective underwater as on land; spear’s 2 is just ridiculous. I am confident that the difficulty of underwater content varies with class, but there are other factors also in play.
These examples are from Guild Wars 2, but I did not use the [GW2] tag because this happens with all games that rebalance, particularly when they update frequently. Sometimes I feel really awesome on patch day, only to discover that some mobs were nerfed. Sometimes I return to an old game and think I have forgotten how to play, only to discover that “how to play” changed while I was not looking.
: Zubon
All joking aside, I think ArenaNet is making Guild Wars 2 work for its business model. Lost Shores is going to introduce permanent content, but ArenaNet wants fanfare. They want a crush of concurrency to surround the unveiling of that content. This is not a mistake either. ArenaNet is one of the few MMOs that can sustain itself on waveform player concurrency.
Conventional MMOs do have waveform player concurrency too, but it operates usually on huge expansions. It takes months to build up the excitement, and then it takes a month or so to go back down as players eat the expansions content up. Filled, they wander away. Most seem to rely on a plateau concurrency, especially subscription MMOs. Some players call it “grindâ€; some call it “end game treadmillâ€. Either way, conventional MMOs want consistency. They want a plateau of player activity even if it is always going to be slanting downhill. Continue reading [GW2] Player Concurrency – Water Level Vs. Waveform
Before working on my WvW exploration, I tried to work on my personal goal of working through every story mode in the Guild Wars 2 dungeons before hitting Zhaitan. I joined a party of two that had been sitting in Lion’s Arch for half an hour trying to get people to join them for Sorrow’s Embrace. We exchanged pleasantries and the group leader starting saying that I had been the only bite for the mid-level dungeon’s story mode in quite a while. She was clearly depressed at the thought of working for another hour to pick up another two party members at that rate. I decided I might not have time for the party wait plus the dungeon and excused myself.
ArenaNet has been adamant against creating a “LFG†system that would bring people looking for the same activity together. There is a lot of confusion both for ArenaNet’s decision and their definition of a “LFG†system. Continue reading [GW2] The Underflow – Bringing People Together
There are a few ways to run around in Guild Wars 2 World vs. World (WvW) mode. Everybody’s favorite to love and hate is the zerg, which is just a critical mass of players rolling over objectives and against other zergs. It’s disorganized and powerful at the same time. The skilled players not in zerg siege mode tend to join smaller strike squads which requires significant communication and directives to disrupt and slow the enemy as much as possible. Last night I realized that a solo player could be particularly useful as well.
Selfishly I was running around Isle of Janthir’s borderlands with little intention of helping the cause. I had a goal to complete the map. Right now in our matchup the Isle is the whipping boy while my server, Sanctum of Rall, is trying its best to stop Sea of Sorrows from winning too much. It seems like next week us three will be at it again too. Since I had completed Sanctum of Rall’s borderlands, I decided hitting up the losing server’s borderlands would provide easier exploration than elsewhere. Continue reading [GW2] Solo in a World War
