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Pure "your mileage may vary" thing. You prefer hard set roles as to many others. In that case this won't be the ideal game for you, it's as simple as that. Personally, I like the dynamic element to the combat where roles are dissolved and instead you use the attributes of your skills (damage, control and support elements) in the right situation for best effect. My only beef with your statement is that you left "control" out of "every character was essentially a dps/support". We're all dps/control/support at need. We also should keep in mind that we synergize with each other for added benefits (cross-profession combos). Simple example, one utility I carry is Null Field. Lovely skill it is... a target AoE field which strips boons off enemies and conditions off allies. That by itself is pretty sweet... but when I cast that lovely shimmering ring inevitably someone is firing projectiles through it adding stacks of confusion to the enemies. Someone else will use a stomp or other blast finisher and suddenly everyone in the area is sporting Chaos Armor. One spell, used right, does all this... especially when combined with other skills used right.
Sorry... got to babbling there. Point being, we like what we're comfortable with. If a trinity system best suits you then it is what it is... there's no faults to you, ANet, WoW or the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Different people are different, after all.
Oderint, dum metuant.
So ever since a poster replied that they had implemented the band-aid fix to the culling exploit using a TERA-like render of folk, I went and tried.
Just got out of 6 hours of WvWvW, from Oceanic prime to 5pm Est. by that time I was just sickened.
It was bad at oceanic prime, not gonna sugar coat it, but I figured I was rusty in seeing it and I read rogues and mesmers were changed, so I let it slide. After, for a couple hours numbers on the JQ/SoS/SoR match-up weren't that large so really couldn't get a proper gauge...
but by Est prime, it was just sad. There was no low-res render, they was 3-5 folk and WHAM 50+ out of nowhere in your face or on your dead corpse.
rinse repeat, rinse repeat.
Either this is the game, or it's tactics (or both), but it's definitely not fun, and why I left the first time.
Nothing has changed, nothing has been fixed, nothing is remotely better.
Hmm... seems better to me, and I spend a good many hours in WvW on JQ. A little weird to see friendlies fade out, but I can usually see the bad guys. Of course, there are those that use the thief stealth AoE to do what you mention, and that stings... but it happens.
Oderint, dum metuant.
The objective is not getting max stats.
The objective is to remove the stats from the equation - once everyone has max stats it is all about skill.
And how would do 5% more damage boost your gameplay experience? Is just numbers used in an equation.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Sorry to jump in, but your argument is fairly flawed.
You're saying that because you 'want' to do all aspects of the game (GW2), you are therefor forced to do all aspects of GW2. That's fairly contradictory, don't you think? Furthermore, that is NOT what a grind is. A grind is a form of gated content in which you are literally forced to repeat content over and over in order to advance within a game. If you've ever played games like EQ / EQ2, Lineage 1 or 2, FFXI, etc. you probably know what i'm talking about. The first, and most obvious form of a 'grind' is camping an area and killing the same mobs over and over again (for exp, loot, w/e). While you 'can' do this in GW2, it's entirely optional.
As for dungeons, you are not forced to do dungeons, at all. You can lvl to 80 without doing dungeons. You can get competitive max stat gear (with the slight exception being ascended items atm) without doing a single dungeon. In fact there is only 1 thing (stat wise) that are limited to dungeons. The specific rune you get from each dungeon. Everything else is purely cosmetic / convenience.
- In contrast, if you look at SWTOR, if you want to do dungeons, you NEED to have a certain lvl of gear or else it becomes impossible to complete the dungeon. This is especially true once you get into nightmare modes. With GW2, it's mostly skill based. There's people that have soloed many of the dungeons already. Just for fun, I've ran a few of the dungeons naked with friends (still using weapons of course) and managed to complete them. I can't do that in SWTOR.
In PvP, you are literally screwed in SWTOR until you get your PvP gear. Players that have already grinded out their PvP items will dominate you, until you get enough marks to start getting your own. This isn't true for GW2 either.
In summary: What GW2 does is offer you pleanty of options to play the game how you want. Many people mistake this philosophy with 'now i have to do all these things i don't want'. No one is forcing you to do something you don't want to. They are purely optional, and are there because different people like doing different things. No game can 100% cater to everyone, and GW2 is a game that is well aware of that fact.
This ^
And I'd also add, that the objective is customization. By making max stats so easily obtainable, what the game does is open things up to players having multiple setups per character. Indeed, many of the higher-lvl players stock multiple armor sets for different builds. Many stock multiple different looks depending on how they feel like playing their character that day. It's all about options & choice.
While GW2 does it's best to hide it, the game really isn't based around a traditional skinner-box model. And that's where the confusion lies. It has mechanics (like the mystic forge) which manipulate such a system, but at it's core it doesn't rely on any of those tools to be played.
It definitely has a long way to go (hence part of why they delayed the WvW update). Speaking of JQ, one of the tactics I see you guys using quite often is the bullrush tactic. Which basically entails stacking up large numbers of people in one spot, and then zerging an area before the game has a chance to render the accurate number of players. Often in conjunction w/ the stealth mechanic.
It's fairly effective, but it does illustrate just how broken the culling is in this game at times. It definitely hinders the experience to say the least.
only time I was able to stay alive during the zergs was using an arrow launcher, throwing arrows up at areas I felt they were, and low and behold, watching the damage register, on an invisible patch of land, though spells, all sorts being launched from it.
otherwise, run into a fight, thinking facing 2-5 enemy, and yeah 50+ appear after the spell bombs light show, so many times, I just quit before I flipped my table. Tired of buying new tables because of GW2.
Beta weekend starts tomorrow for an actual game that has a trinity, voice chat, lfg system, and real combat. The first of a great crop of games for 2013. I really don't see GW2 hanging in there long even if they fix the issues (which they most likely won't). Might also be a major factor as to why NCSoft wasn't able to get ArcheAge, because they really have no interest beyond profit....starting to make EA look legit...scary!
I'm on JQ, and SoS and SoR was doing the same thing, it's the game, no it's a tactic..imho it's an exploit.
and it's a game ending bug for a game hyped as a pvp game.
Thief AOE stealth hides only 6 people (thief+5)
Mesmers Mass Invisibility hides 11 people (mesmer+10)
Mesmers Veil hides unlimited number pf people
Mesmers portal is most effective way of using culling (aka portal bomb)
And best way to avoid being stomped and break tables is to stop running with /random zerg because youll get stomped culling or no culling and people you play with will know how to best avoid above mentioned methods contrary to /random zerg (which some posters clearly show. Me like eating /random zergs for breakfast
they are best suruce of badges and lewt )
So let me get this right, you're big and proud because you like to exploit a broken mechanic in a pvp game and think that's skillz?
really?
Rock on, GW2 God!
I remember the people I played with from EQ as friends, who I got to know, specifically because of downtime chat.
I remember no one from subsequent games with faster paced combat.
Take from that what you will.
The LF guardian thing is not really about a specific class, rather a specific mechanic that's easier with that class. Guardians can reflect a lot and help remove status conditions party-wide fairly easily and consistantly. My Mesmer, for instance, can do the same thing (as can my elementalist, though she's more fragile), but my reflection is target on an enemy and my condition removals require ground/party targetting as well, plus has longer cooldowns. That said, I can and have taken a Guardian's place in a group effectively. This doesn't really change until you hit the 30+ portion of fractals where the Agony starts getting out of control even with high AR, at which point you'll want heavily defensive characters in your team and Guardians are just too delicious to pass up. You can get by without them, but it's really nice to have them there.
So you're half on it, class combos are a plus, but it's more because certain classes can do things easier than others, even if 'better' is debateable. And yeah, people are playing much better these days. Did a fractal run at level 12 yesterday, got dredge, harpy and swamp fractal combo + bonus. We finished it in 40 minutes, no wipes. This was a PUG group btw, snatched them off gw2lfg.com. Likewise I level my alts in dungeons and people are doing really well there, as well. I think the combination of balance patches and time have helped people better understand and work within the bounds of gw2's combat.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Funny, I remember the guy I bumped into whilst trying to unlock a door to a yeti hiding a chest. We both got talking and he told me about a cave nearby where we could go find some chests. Funny enough that ended with us fighting 2 bosses and finishing a jumping puzzle. Friended that guy.
I also met a few guys who were looking for one more person to go into a dungeon with, we finished the story mode of Ascalonian Catacombs and we did it so smoothly (these guys were new) that we all friended each other just so we can do more dungeons. We finished two explorable mode dungeons the next day.
I think this statement is appropriate here; "To each his own".
This is not a game.
Which map were you in? I'm wondering which guild(s) that may have been. FIRE doesn't really bother with that for example, but I can't speak for others. Of course, the same argument could be made for the other two servers as well. I've seen the entire Agg zerg run behind a wall, wait a moment, then run back out to take advantage of the delay in loading. It'll be nice once ANet cleans that up more, I admit.
Oderint, dum metuant.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
if running around like headless chicken is your thing, knock yourself out.
It works both ways.
Adapting to a situation and intelligent reaction to a situation are sure sign of something...or you can break tables...its also sure sign of something. To each his own.
And you can conside culling as just another tacical challenge, and thats exactly what smart people do.
And, with your style of play, you would get stomped anyway by some a bit more organized group, culling or no culling. /random zerg gets stomped 99% of the time, numbers dont really matter there.
i remember people from any so called "solo MMO" i played.
But then, people you get to know in so called "solo MMO" are much more valuable because they arent FORCED to group with you.
OTOH i remember lot of anonymous people from forced grouping games who were there just because they were forced to group to play.
The worse cumputer you have the worse you are affected. So the first step was "model placeholders" so even bad compters can actually load models in the first place.
1. The zerg was elsewhere doing it's own thing, I was taking back a heated control point needed for resources for the purpose of testing. My purpose was to find the effect of culling and if it was fixed, being amongst a zerg would not have helped that test. So take your stereotypical zerg-fest projection and place it onto yourself where it belongs.
2. Again, real pvp players will not waste their time playing a bugged pvp game, much less brag about using that bug as a tool to win.
Culling occurs in WvWvW the most often, and as we find from some of our most vocal defenders of GW2, it's actually used as a tactic to win in WvWvW.
You won't see much of this in PvE if at all, maybe in a dragon raid, but culling is primarily a pvp issue that shouldn't be occurring in a promoted RvR game.
The game has a problem rendering multiple PC after 5 in a radius around you (it can lag up to 3 seconds before rendering). Add to that the brilliant tactic of using thief and mesmer abilities to hide groups and entire zergs, and well what occurs is an extended cull, beyond that 3 second window. If they are really good, they can keep the cycle up infinitely. Thus you never actually see your targets, just their spells or combat effects. This is more apparant if your using seige. You can use an arrow cart for example (I did this yesterday), launch it onto the area of culling you think is taking place, and yup....you'll see the numbers float from damage, and your allies, but won't see any signs of the enemy, just the damage you are doing.
No one was forced to socialize, the games you have mentioned, and EQ had the tools to do so. It was part of the game. Part of the game that defined Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.
In GW2, it actually is a hindrance to do so. You can do better ignoring chat completely, and just do your own thing. Taking your own analogy, you do not see a problem when one is forced to not socialize in an MMORPG? Do you not think that would form some anti-social behavior in players?
A simple solution would be an in-game voice chat and an lfg system, but since they don't exist in-game, the game lacks a basic form of community shown to exist in all the other games you mentioned above, and EQ.
Also a game you didn't list, but should be very apparant that you should, a game with a huge focus on community and chat...GW1.
Clearly typing isn't optimal while playing in GW2.
On the other hand one can say that pat of Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game is to to play with mass amounts of people.
In GW2 that happens without forced communication. In other games, to reach those massive numbers you would have to raid and to do that you will mostly have forced communication.
It is just different types of socialization - GW2 caters to the short, casual encounters (yesterday while playing in cursed shores, my friend and I saw a fallen player by the SP in the labyrinth - we fought to reach him, one of us rezzed him while the other distracted the mobs, we killed the mobs got the SP, and we fought our way out of it, only a few words exchanged, but we shared a moment together) and if players want to go further they''ll have to go on voice.
A positive side effect of you actually having to have both hands occupied is that the amount of BS one sees in chat is alsmost non existant.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
1. If you were alone then you wouldnt experience culling, you STILL havent figured out what culling is and how it works even if it was explained to you, like, million times
2. Real PvPers are smart people that adapt to situation and figure out how to deal with it, bad PvPers start breaking tables because of things they dont understand, and blame everything and everyone but themselves for their failures
1. The only thing thats required for socialization are 2 people and means to communicate. Theres no such thing as "tool for socialization"
2. You dont know what anti-social means, and "forced socialization" is pretty much definition of anti-social
3. those would be nice, but definately not necessary, especially "LFG tool" like WoWs, thats certain way to anti-social behaviour and no community whatsoever
4. Communty is great on my server, YMMV depending on the server, but theres no guarantee every server will develop same/good community whatever you do.
Reread what was being said. Someone claimed to experience everything in other MMOs, you need to grind. (I'm paraphrasing here). So I said if you want to experience that same everything in GW2 you need to do dungeons.
Doing a dungeon is different from grinding a dungeon.
The difference is in some games you need to grind to do the content. In GW2 you do the content and then grind if you want.
The only argument you would have is that to do the story you need to play open world pve and to do dungeons you need to reach level 30.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders