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[Retro]

Agreed, and it's a pity. There are areas, like the massive ocean section of Straights of Devestation, that is amazing - but the combination of weak underwater professions + Risen crowd control stuff, makes it so people avoid the area generally.

The problem is that with the additional z-axis, movement and spatial awareness becomes an issue. The professions that have all sorts of movement skills are the ones that I find most satisfying because they do some of that work for me so I can focus on the fight. I often find myself pulling enemies because I moved closer than I thought, or didn't notice an enemy above me or behind me. Maybe pulling the camera out further would help with that issue.

I also don't like that reaching the surface removes all of your skills, especially since that's the primary way you rally from downed. I get what they were going for, but I'm not sure it works. Not sure how to fix that since the surface is a transitional state.

But it definitely needs improvement, and I hope they don't leave it hanging for too long.

 

[shysaursoft]

The dangers of selective perception or confirmation bias:

And now, for a good example of what's wrong with PVP.

Context: The person started screaming this at 300 points. We were 150 points ahead of the other team. We got to 300 through solid, careful play of keeping two points, and being where the enemy wasn't. When they sent 4 to home to take it, we'd just move and take center and their home.

Suddenly at 300 points, this tryhard starts abusing the entire team (they were also the lowest-scoring person on the team, incidentally). Lots of screaming like that, even some less-than-pleasant whispering as we continued ignoring them.

And this kind of stuff is *far too common*. Obviously you just /ignore the person and move on, but this is the kind of thing that is becoming a permanent cultural side of GW2's PvP. I was really hoping the game could avoid it, but it seems player vs player, its very nature, is what attracts this kind of attitude.

A real pity, since a) you can't do jack about it, and b) the people that act that way just keep doing so, with zero fear of repercussion or of being reprimanded, because nobody wants to "be the bad guy".

I think I'll stay away from PvP until school starts again, and these kinds of people stop showing up in such large numbers, for what I'm sure is an entirely unrelated reason.

Oh, and a bonus note on Mr. Tryhard up there: this was in *unranked*.

I stuck my head into ranked once since the patch hit. Nope.gif. It's a hundred times *worse* in there, in my experience.

Do wish the game had a League of Legend's style Report function and Tribunal examination of problematic player behavior though. Something like this, left unchecked, becomes cultural and eventually turns the whole community toxic, as Riot knows all too well.

 

[UltimateIke]

On the rare occasions I do PvP, I generally don't go in without a GAF team.


Run, run, run.

 

[Retro]

The dangers of selective perception or confirmation bias:

 

[shysaursoft]

If GW2 was like Destiny:

1. You'd only be allowed to earn a maximum of 300 dungeon tokens per week (per each dungeon). So basically, you could only buy one piece of a dungeon armour, per week, for that dungeon.
2. To participate in the Tequatl event, you need to run the Arah Story mode dungeon multiple times until you've gotten a full set of Arah Armour. Each boss in the Arah dungeon has a chance to drop a piece of the Arah Armour set, but only once per week per boss. Once you have full Arah armour, only then can you physically enter the Tequatl event.
3. To enter Triple Wurm, you need to participate in the Tequatl event multiple times, until you have a full set of Wurm Armour. Tequatl has a chance to drop a piece of Wurm Armour once a week.
4. It'd have complex raids where if a single person messes up the entire group dies instantly, and you have to run them over and over to get gear for the next raid added, that costs $25.

If GW2 was like Warframe:

0. Everyone starts with only Warrior profession.
1. To unlock the additional professions, you must finish each Temple assault event multiple times, until the blueprints of the Head, Chest, Legs and Arms of the profession you want drop (it's random which parts will drop, if at all). Once you've collected all four blueprints for the specific profession, you can craft each part, but only two parts at a time. It takes 18 hours for a part to craft. Once you've crafted all four parts, you can craft the profession (after you buy the profession blueprint off the store for gold) - and it takes 3 days realtime to craft.
2. To be able to craft any kind of weapon, you need to farm a specific boss in a specific dungeon until the blueprints for that weapon drop. Once you have the blueprint, it takes 24 hours in real time for a weapon to craft, if you have all the materials needed.
3. You can have instant access to all professions and weapons, if you buy the Guild Wars 2 Prime Access pass for $49.99.
4. Or alternatively, you can unlock a specific profession for only $9.99 per profession.

Spoiler

I'm just having some fun. I've been playing too much Destiny and Warfarm lately.

 

[Nemesis121]

I don't like Guild Wars 2 PvP I hate the fucking idea of playing king of the hill, I loved Random Arenas in GW1, RA was a blast, I hated KotH in Halo and I hate this shit in GW2..I want straight up player vs player, they can't give me that then i won't be in PvP..

 

[spiritfox]

I don't like Guild Wars 2 PvP I hate the fucking idea of playing king of the hill, I loved Random Arenas in GW1, RA was a blast, I hated KotH in Halo and I hate this shit in GW2..I want straight up player vs player, they can't give me that then i won't be in PvP..

Play only Courtyard then.

 

[Retro]

So Mrs. Retor couldn't wait until Christmas to give me my present;

We're thinking it's press swag from something like PAX. It's in really good shape, a Goodwill in Seattle was selling it on Amazon for insanely cheap (the book has been out of print for ages so it can get up near $200). Nice box, book is in great shape, mousepad is enormous and the thumbnail drive probably has porn or viruses on it so that's staying right where it is. =p

 

[shysaursoft]

Play only Courtyard then.

Courtyard is an absolute blast. I wish people would pick it more when it came up in rotation - but there should be people hosting custom arenas with just Courtyard. If not, I might just do it myself, since I have some time tokens.

 

[nataku]

I bought that art book back when it was sold through the PA store. It's fantastic.

 

[Mxrz]

Don't think courtyard is in custom arenas. At least I haven't seen it in ours yet. Just the hot join maps.

Buying a precursor off the trading post is the most anti-Conan thing ever. But Zommoros isn't cooperating at all.

 

[Retro]

I bought that art book back when it was sold through the PA store. It's fantastic.

Yeah, I flipped through it and there's a lot of great stuff in there including a few pieces I haven't seen before and lots of little line drawings and such. Looks like lots of text about the art too. Reading through it now.

 

[shysaursoft]

Don't think courtyard is in custom arenas. At least I haven't seen it in ours yet. Just the hot join maps.

Buying a precursor off the trading post is the most anti-Conan thing ever. But Zommoros isn't cooperating at all.

I'm 99% sure you can make just a Courtyard custom arena. I'll have to go check.

 

[Thorgal]

sorry for not responding for our fractal run ywsterday ike ,was not paying attentuon to guild chat. by the time i noticed you where gone already.

i was gonna ask to cancel it anyway since i have to work overtime today and did not want to stay up too late.

 

[Moondrop]

I'm 99% sure you can make just a Courtyard custom arena. I'll have to go check.

Yeah you can.

Courtyard isn't that great. It starts out ok but there's nothing to facilitate regrouping after the initial engagement. So whoever wins the first scrum steamrolls the rest of the match. I've literally never seen a Courtyard fight competitive the whole way- and that's small sample size bias, not confirmation.

But I reject any notion that the introduction of Courtyard should satisfy the repeated requests for other game modes. It feels half-finished at best.

But I agree with you in general about PvP toxicity and confirmation biases. I actually tracked my PvP match results for a while this weekend- initially there were several dropouts and almost exclusively blowouts, but then it corrected and I had 5v5s almost the whole way through.

Sometimes I wonder if I've reached a critical mass of blocking where I've got most of the worst offenders covered, so my PvP chat experiences are fairly low key these days.

 

[spiritfox]

Yeah you can.

Courtyard isn't that great. It starts out ok but there's nothing to facilitate regrouping after the initial engagement. So whoever wins the first scrum steamrolls the rest of the match. I've literally never seen a Courtyard fight competitive the whole way- and that's small sample size bias, not confirmation.

But I reject any notion that the introduction of Courtyard should satisfy the repeated requests for other game modes. It feels half-finished at best.

I want a proper CTF mode that's not just Spirit Watch.

 

[Moondrop]

We've seen Anet experiment with different PvP modes across a variety of events dating back to beta. That's what makes the poor state of Spirit Watch and Courtyard so baffling.

 

[shysaursoft]

I've literally never seen a Courtyard fight competitive the whole way- and that's small sample size bias, not confirmation.

I blame the community, not the map. In Unranked anyway, people just stream in and mash buttons, I rarely see people actually *play* the map, hang back and wait for backup to spawn, try to court the other team into moving towards your spawn, etc. The side that wins, is usually the side that actually plays the map. I've seen, once, two teams both play, and it was pretty much a two point win difference in the end, great match. But I think the community has decided the map is crap, so they just don't care. It's lost that "it" factor, and unless there is a big shakeup in perception and attitude, it'll never get "it" back.

I agree Anet can do more, there are issues, etc - but I don't put the blame for the issues of PvP 100% on them. 50% is the playerbase being obtuse, entitled, or just outright stupid. It's like the 'zerk or nothing' "meta" of PvE. Look at how that idiotic meme ran rampant for what, almost since launch? And only now does it feel like people are finally moving away from it, and the benefits of a more diverse statset amoung the population are starting to show.

 

[Moondrop]

Player choices conform to the rules of the game set by the designers. If people are moving toward more diverse stats, then it's because the content has begun to demand it- unlike the launch content that spawned the zerk meta.

I don't believe it's arbitrary that Courtyard, Spirit Watch, and Skyhammer are relegated to the Unranked selection. It's not because of a bad reputation or not giving them a sufficient try. The main problem with these maps, as I've mentioned before, is that the optimal strategy is much more nebulous than the other maps. When you combine that with the lack of communication present in your typical pug group, it leads to bad matches on these maps more than others.

In praise of Anet, revamped Skyhammer is good enough for Ranked now but perhaps, as you've alluded, its reputation is beyond salvage. But I maintain that by Anet's own quality standards, Courtyard feels 30-40% complete.

 

[shysaursoft]

Player choices conform to the rules of the game set by the designers

I think I just heard every game designer in the history of the medium simultaneously explode from laughter. Players seem to never *want* to conform to the rules of the game, they're always breaking it, playing wrong, creating arbitrary meta that becomes popular for god knows why - you could write a damn thesis on just StarCraft in relation to this. Players don't play a game how it is designed, they try to play it how *they* think it's *supposed* to be played, eff what the designer had in mind.

I think David Sirlin has written at length about this phenomenon, but I can't remember exactly which of his articles delt with this exact thing, but I know his Playing to Win article might be relevant here.

Since the launch of GW2, players went into the Zerk meta for a variety of reasons: it was what became popular just because "more damage = good" is a common trope, "kill them before they can kill you" is a great crutch to overcome being bad at the game (minmaxers are a great example of this, being the type to try and cheat the game at it's own game, instead of playing it as designed). It was "unforeseen consequences" in the greater complex system, and hardly ideal. How many all zerk groups would wipe and wipe and wipe at Spider in AC, while a diverse stat group would just walk right over the spider? Yes, perhaps 1% of Zerk-only groups could dps bomb the boss down before having to actually play the encounter as deigned, and thus they had that shit on farm - but they were sure as fuck not "conforming to the rules of the game", they were abusing the system for their own design.

But I do agree that the lessening of the zerk meta is in part due to current encounter designs having forced player's hands somewhat, like Taco not being able to be crit, etc.

But I disagree that launch content is the sole reason for the Zerk meta. I think in part, some of it came over from Guild Wars 1, where by its end days, it was dps uber alles Discordway that could nuke anything before you had to worry about what it could do to you, combined with the appealing "easy" choice of Zerk, since players weren't quite sure what to do. Hell, I'm guilty of that kind of thinking myself - I go Celestial not because of what imaginary benefits it might have for Engineer, but because I didn't want to deal with numbers. People go online, google "best Warrior build GW2 PvE", and then pick the top-ranked thing which is Zerk - even if it isn't relevant anymore.

I do think PvP needs more com tools though, like being able to draw permanently on the map, different colours, different calltarget colours and markers, etc.

 

[Moondrop]

Don't quote Sirlin to me.

If people are choosing "whatever they want," i.e. being scrubs in Sirlin's terminology, then it's because the game is too easy. As the difficulty and competition increases, players must necessarily tend toward those ways of playing which win more often and efficiently than others. Sure many people remain as scrubs eternally, but that's not what I thought we were discussing.

 

[shysaursoft]

Don't get me wrong - players breaking the design and playing their own way can in itself also be a great thing. Desktop Dungeons for example, is practically predicated on giving players the tools with which to find their own designs, and the developers of the game love seeing the shit players are coming up with, things they *never imagined* would or could work.

And eh, I didn't mean to imply people who minmax and try to cheat the game through sheer damage output are eternal scrubs, just that I don't think it's so clear-cut as you make it to be, about how the Zerk meta came to be. I don't think zerk meta was as self-evident, as inevitably emergent, even with the early easy encounter design - in part perhaps, but it was more how the community shaped the game, than the other way around.

I don't think it's always about "optimal" or "efficient" either, because I see people doing "efficient farms" of specific content, and then take twice as long as someone who just faffs about doing diverse content, to get the same resources. People who think they're doing "efficient" are often blinkers on, focused, and not realizing they're expending far more energy for less, than if they diversified. But that's a different topic.

That said: I *do* want ArenaNet to *really* tighten the screws and create super-hard encounters that Zerk simply cannot exist in. Because I dig that stuff, like Llandri and such, even though that encounter had cheap wins thanks to Thief and poison...

But, it should be said, I think when it comes to games you and I are Technician vs Performer. I'm clearly on the Performer side of things, by my own admission, because I don't quite have the capacity for being a Technician. Some days I wish I could, because I feel Technician has it easier with regards to games, but I'm okay being an eternal Performer too. So it's not that you and I are oil and water when it comes to game design, but we really *do* see the same system in completely different ways.

 

[Moondrop]

I still think we're talking past each other here.

I really don't think Sirlin terminology should even apply to GW2 PvE- it's not competitive or particularly difficult in most areas.

I'm sure you're right about the history of GW to the zerk meta, but let's also not forget how launch was dominated by CoF1 speed running. And what happened? The designers changed the rules of the game (i.e. the reward structure), and player behavior changed accordingly.

It's not hard to shake up a zerk meta either: allow the enemies to use more CC and more varied conditions. Season 2 content has been promising in the latter, but we all remember the complaints regarding the former in the original Orr zones. However I believe ultimately the majority of players don't really want difficult content, so I can't imagine zerk every really being dethroned for PvE.

Edit: I like that we see game design in different ways. I thought you were going Myers-Briggs on me for a second there though.

 

[shysaursoft]

I've not had coffee today yet, so I might be talking more to myself out loud, rambling. I wouldn't worry about it.

I agree: I don't think the majority of PvE players want challenge. They want to push the button, get the cookie, and have that button occasionally painted blue, or green, or given a little frill around the edges. So in that sense, yeah, Zerk will likely remain the go-to stat set for people who just want to unbrain and be distracted for a while as they walk towards a reward. Kind of a pity, but the Challenge Mote system proves there are at least people willing to try, if only because of Shinies at the end of it.

At least there's fractals, huh? I think to our 50 runs, and there is *zero* chance those would succeed were we all in Zerk. So that's one place the Zerk meta can't reach, ironically for reasons you highlight: stronger CC from enemies, more emphasis on conditions.

EDIT: I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but even I know Myers-Briggs isn't worth the citations it's given in articles explaining why it's a useless psychometric, and only good for "See which Naruto character you are!" pop-up quizzes on Facebook.

Storytime:

I only recently came across the Technician vs Performer trope, and when I did I found it very insightful since it gave context to something specific for me: When I first started playing Soul Calibur in Arcades, the *only* reason I started is because I saw this idiot on the char select screen:

I literally screamed "lizard dude!" and threw in some tokens and mashed buttons. I figured out which one was block, which one was attack (ooh, horizontal, and vertical!) and which one was kick. I could mash through the first few characters easily enough, and eventually discovered Guard Intercepts and Redirects through sheer trial and error. After a while, I even had some combos going on, through trial and error.

My friend started playing the game too, when he noticed I was interested in it. But before he started playing, he went online, found faqs, movelists, and did a lot of reading. So when he started, he was a bit frustrated since he was trying to do the things he read about, and not quite succeeding yet because, well, he just started actually playing. Theory vs Practical, and all that. But after a while he got the basics down, and we spent the next ten years, from 1998 to 2008, playing that game against each other almost daily. I always played Lizardman, he always played Mitsurugi. We'd probably still be playing it, if I didn't move out of the country in 2008. Sadly, fighting games do not work across the North Atlantic Ocean. We tried, but the lag makes it unplayable. And it's not quite the same anyway, as being shoulder-to-shoulder. A lot of the "yomi" of the game, for us, was reading each other's body language, and tones.

He was always Technician, pulling off flawless, by the book combos and techniques found in movelists and recommended playstyle sections of strategy guides, and me: I never looked at a movelist, I didn't care. I still don't know what Lizardman's official combos are, or what the meta is with him, I just play him how I like to play him, and I play him as a bit of a performance. I like to play to a crowd, going for risky Interrupts or Redirects because, well, they'd be cool to pull of at that moment. It could result in a backfire, and often did, but I didn't care. The *act* of playing was, and still is, to me, more important than anything else. I love "a beautiful game", as someone put it. One stand-out moment for me was when, once, to a crowd, my friend and I had something like a 20+ GI/GR combo sequence, we had each other's timings down so well, we just kept intercepting, redirecting, intercepting each other's attacks, occasional feints.. it was one of those glorious, in the moment zen like places. I don't even remember who won the exchange in the end. The crowd loved it, probably thought it was staged. I can guarantee you, I was *really* trying to get past his damn blocks, trying damn hard. And I'm sure he was too. By the end we were laughing too hard to even see, much less act. I still feel good when I think about back then.

Now as for my Mitsurugi playing friend, we'd likely agree to this fact: neither of us is better than the other. If we had actual win/loss stats for our ten years of playing, I wonder what it might say - but that neither of us bothered keeping score, is to me *far* more important than what that score might have been. I feel we've always been equal, other than the occasional imbalance brought about when one of us would uncover some good strat, or just plain out-think the other because it's that kind of day.

So that's where I'm coming from, anyway, when I think of Technician vs Performer.

Double edit: And just as we talk about Hard Mode content, this giant post appears on the forums: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/The-Case-for-a-PvE-Hard-Mode/

Lot of good ideas in there.

 

[theMrCravens]

Yay, finally got my replacement card.
Now I only got a week (i think) to check Wintersday stuff.

 

[Retro]

Yay, finally got my replacement card.
Now I only got a week (i think) to check Wintersday stuff.

Wintersday ends January 13th, you've got plenty of time.

 

[Minamu]

Where's the Wintersday content mostly located? Haven't seen any at all while doing the story content (jumping into s2 after missing s1 entirely is extremely jarring tbh).

 

[Wanderer5]

Where's the Wintersday content mostly located? Haven't seen any at all while doing the story content (jumping into s2 after missing s1 entirely is extremely jarring tbh).

Most of it is around The Crown Pavilion in Divinity's Reach.

 

[UltimateIke]

Berserker is A+, top notch. Would 'zerk again. Challenge motes, Queen's Gauntlet, Giganticus Lupicus, whatever. Zerk, Zerk, Zerk.

As long as crowd control, evades, blocks, reflects, and blinds are viable, wearing defensive equipment and just taking the hits is the lowest ranked option for survival.

 

[Retro]

This Week in the Gem Store: Shoulder Scarf, New Minis, and More!
On Tuesday, the festivities continue! We have Mine-r-Tron and Log-r-Tron returning, and for the first time ever, we are introducing Reap-r-Tron. The fun doesn’t stop there; we also have new minis, a shoulder customization, and a returning finisher. Read on for details about this week’s offerings.

R-Tron Models
The complete set of these golems is finally available for you! Log-r-Tron, Reap-r-Tron, and Mine-r-Tron are ready and waiting on your summons to take care of your gathering needs 24 hours a day.

New Miniatures
Are you feeling festive? Prove it! Mini Festive Lord Faren is the most festive mini of all time! This mini sparkles with holiday cheer. We also have the otherworldly Mini Avatar of the Tree.

Shoulder Scarf
No matter your choice of armor, you’ll dominate the cold with the Shoulder Scarf. Take your look to a new stylish height and make all of your friends envious.

Minstrel Finisher
One of our flashiest finishers returns. Infuriate your defeated foes with the singing Minstrel Finisher, available for preview in your wardrobe right now!

Berserker is A+, top notch. Would 'zerk again. Challenge motes, Queen's Gauntlet, Giganticus Lupicus, whatever. Zerk, Zerk, Zerk.

As long as crowd control, evades, blocks, reflects, and blinds are viable, wearing defensive equipment and just taking the hits is the lowest ranked option for survival.

You're not wrong, and defensive stats need to have some extra oomph. I'm not suggesting tank-like mechanics, but some defense-oriented bonus that can counter the 'zerker meta in terms of usefulness.

 

[Mxrz]

Yeah, I'd argue all the active defenses like blocks, evades, blinds and stuff make for more engaging play than the usual mmo number vs numbers. The old dungeons are probably the worst example, but if any of the post-release stuff is an indication, new content will be more to do with puzzle-ish fights than straight stack-n-smack.

People want away from the stacking stuff, which is noble and all. But figure it'll reduce the effectiveness of melee to a degree. If you're chasing a mob, you aren't hitting it. While ranged can just plink away. See some traces of this in Season 2. Even on my warriors and guardian, it was easier to just range some of the fights.


Mithril/Elder price jump sucks. I guess everyone is feeding Zommorous.

 

[Wanderer5]

Heh I wonder if they will ever bring back those minis from the first wintersday (snowman, festive golem, and infinirarium). Glad I have the infinirarium around then.

That scarf looks a bit eh, tbh.

 

[shysaursoft]

Berserker is A+, top notch. Would 'zerk again. Challenge motes, Queen's Gauntlet, Giganticus Lupicus, whatever. Zerk, Zerk, Zerk.

As long as crowd control, evades, blocks, reflects, and blinds are viable, wearing defensive equipment and just taking the hits is the lowest ranked option for survival.

The alternative to Zerk, isn't *just* full out defense, y'know... There is an entire massive gradient from Zerk, to Clerics/Whatever. A party of five pure zerks in fractals, I would never join. It'd be a train wreck.

 

[Dog Problems]

Happy to complete the r-tron set.

 

[Retro]

In an ideal (to me, at least) Guild Wars 2, there wouldn't even be stats, so... yeah. It should all be positioning, evasion, blind, block, etc.

 

[Emitan]

In an ideal (to me, at least) Guild Wars 2, there wouldn't even be stats, so... yeah. It should all be positioning, evasion, blind, block, etc.

That's... exactly how bersker armor works. There are so many damage mitigation options in GW2 that toughness and vitality aren't needed if you are good enough.

 

[shysaursoft]

That's... exactly how bersker armor works. There are so many damage mitigation options in GW2 that toughness and vitality aren't needed if you are good enough*.

* And play specific classes for specific encounters, and set up traits, sigils and runes for each encounter, and use the right foods/pots for each encounter, and have people handling the things you cannot mitigate while on cooldowns, and even then, it's debatable if you should run Zerk, or Assassins...

There's no denying that for a very specific, highly specialized style of play, Zerk is totally a viable option. But I disagree with the sentiment that everyone in GW2 should switch to Zerk because anything less isn't "ideal".

 

[UltimateIke]

I definitely agree that there is a gradient. That's the goal in designing an effective PvE build; how far you can take your offensive capabilities and still manage keep yourself and your teammates on their feet. The "ideal" is the bare minimum defense you need to stay alive while outputting the maximum damage you can, while still supporting the party and making sure they are at their peak offensive capabilities as well. Whether that means a party full of berserkers, or Moondrop using Cleric shouts and Miktar blasting Celestial water fields, is entirely up to which individuals are playing.

Berserker/Assassin/Sinister/etc. are at the most extreme offensive end of the gradient, so if you can learn a given fight well enough to keep everyone alive while wearing those sets, you know there's no further you can take it. You obviously had as much defense as you needed.

And "hav[ing] people handling the things you cannot mitigate while on cooldowns" is the whole point of playing in a party.

 

[Retro]

That's... exactly how bersker armor works. There are so many damage mitigation options in GW2 that toughness and vitality aren't needed if you are good enough.

That's not exactly what I meant. 'Zerker armor forces you to do all of those things because otherwise you'd be insta-gibbed, not because that's the baseline for skillful play. The playstyle that 'zerker armor requires is great, but the penalties you take on for wearing it would be defrayed a bit simply because there'd be no need to balance offensive power with defensive weakness.

In other words, the expectation would be "play like it counts" without being a "one wrong step and you're half dead"-type affair. Merciless without being cheap. Right now 'zerker armor feels like things go wrong incredibly quick because of one misstep, when it should be slightly more forgiving than that. Having stats on equipment requires the 'gradient' we're discussing; removing stats means we could have 'zerker-style combat without 'zerker-style penalties (and thus, without tactics like stacking that abuse the mechanics of the game to get the 'zerker approach to work in situations it shouldn't)

 

[Levyne]

People talking about zerk or not zerk just makes me was to lop my ears and eyes off

 

[Quenk]

I mostly have Carrion on my ranger because it was cheaper to craft >.>;

 

[UltimateIke]

People talking about zerk or not zerk just makes me was to lop my ears and eyes off

To zerk, or not to zerk, that is the question.

 

[hythloday]

To zerk, or not to zerk, that is the question.

To Zerk, or not to Zerk--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous bearbows,
Or to take arms against a sea of noobs
And by opposing end them.

 

[spiritfox]

Celestial beings are nobler than berzerkers.

Wait what are talking about again

 

[Ashodin]

That scarf is mine

 

[shysaursoft]

Sage stuff

Point. I'm 100% on board with a warrior running zerk as part of a group, for example. My only point was, I draw the line at groups demanding *everyone* be running zerk, because that's just quaggan foo.

People talking about zerk or not zerk just makes me was to lop my ears and eyes off

I think it's important to have these conversations now and then.

 

[spiritfox]

That scarf is mine

Must... Resist... Avatar... Quote...

 

[Retro]

It's just what he would want you to do.

As far as the Zerk stuff goes, I think it's pretty clear where most of us stand on the issue at this point after many similar conversations, and we're all familiar with each other enough that it never really gets heated. The exchange between Miktar and Moondrop is a perfect example of reasoned discourse. The topic does bubble up from time to time, but I think everyone kind of 'gets' that having one stat distribution trump all others isn't an ideal situation. Some of us are just more bothered by it than others.

 

[Emitan]

I want it to be clear I was never saying people should run Berserker. Run whatever you want, I don't mind. But I do think it is the best stat set in the game if you care about that sort of thing.

 

[Retro]

I want it to be clear I was never saying people should run Berserker. Run whatever you want, I don't mind. But I do think it is the best stat set in the game if you care about that sort of thing.

Nah, I didn't get that impression at all, and I agree that Zerker is probably the best stat set in the game right now. That's precisely why some of us view it as a problem, because there wouldn't be such an obvious 'best' if the game was a little more balanced in terms of stat values, encounter design, class design, rewards, etc...

We're not advocating anything here, just chatting.