Kos Luftar
Member
They way it's being played these days, it isn't valid as a WvW mode at all.
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shysaursoft
Member
Valid as in, it's got the same karma trains, the same commander bickering, and the same zerg on zerg clashing as EB, with fewer havoc groups.
EotM is a great training ground for people to get used to WvW, before heading into EB or a borderland. So I see it as that. That makes it valid in my opinion, even if the hardcore WvW'ers look down on it, as if them zergballing in EB makes them any better.
(I really hate elitist attitudes, and WvW generates some of the worst attitudes in that regard, so anything that sticks in the craw of such people, like EotM, I approve of. You are not your goddamn server rank.)
shysaursoft
Member
As for Brisbane, I don't think those map changes are live yet.
Or they are, (I'm there now), but there's no way to reach the changed area yet.
Or they are, (I'm there now), but there's no way to reach the changed area yet.
Best BLC change ever.
Valid as in, it's got the same karma trains, the same commander bickering, and the same zerg on zerg clashing as EB, with fewer havoc groups.
EotM is a great training ground for people to get used to WvW, before heading into EB or a borderland. So I see it as that. That makes it valid in my opinion, even if the hardcore WvW'ers look down on it, as if them zergballing in EB makes them any better.
(I really hate elitist attitudes, and WvW generates some of the worst attitudes in that regard, so anything that sticks in the craw of such people, like EotM, I approve of. You are not your goddamn server rank.)
EotM is a horrible training ground. It's only use is moving karma trains from WvW to EotM.
"Don't defend anything, we get more karma flipping it"
Easy ha. Yeah. More like a WP that was needed to make it reasonable was put back after being cruelly wrested from its already-diffcult clutches.
Yeah that sounds about right. Oh well.Unfortunately, it looks like AC Spider Queen was not changed, the person who reported the unlisted change likely just had someone out of melee range.
edit: did you try it yourself Miktar?
shysaursoft
Member
Nah, people on reddit were refuting the claims, saying they tried it and it's still the same. I'll try it myself tonight.
EDIT: But, someone just said:
Coriolanus
Banned
You need 1380 tokens for an armor set.Considering how fast the dungeon goes even without stacking, and how few tokens you need to get a full set, I think it's perfectly balanced. I didn't even have to run AC that much to get my Gift of Ascalon. I think people are being *way* overzealous in how much reward they expect for their effort. GW2 has spoiled people somewhat.
It is impatience that makes people run the same dungeon again and again without taking a break, so if it gets boring, I blame the player, not the dungeon.
Unfortunately, it looks like AC Spider Queen was not changed, the person who reported the unlisted change likely just had someone out of melee range.
Another 800+- for two wep sets.
Your single path run will give 70 marks
31 runs for a set and weapons is excessive. Well past the point of being boring. Even if you do each path once a day then loop, you're still talking about about 10 runs per path.
Also, it's two year old content, what's the harm? That we'll start seeing even more gear diversity? The horror.
Fixing stacking would be as easy for dungeons as modifying the already existing player count on melee radius check, which is currently used to determine whether the boss will start using their usually far deadlier ranged attacks. Something along the lines of if playcount in boss face, 30º angle or whatevs at under 400 =4/5, fearbomb/aoepingpongpunt/flamethrowerofdeath.
Up to you on why they don't do it.
Kos Luftar
Member
If you get bored of the Dungeon, one thing that is possible now is that you can follow a specific dungeons track in PvP which is pretty cool. You can get tokens and if you complete the track, you can get 1 armor piece and through out the rewards I think you can get a couple of weapons form the dungeon.
Can you really not see the inconsistencies in your statements?
Here you've clearly established you dislike the culture of WvW and characterize it as zerging.
Wait a second, if EotM reinforces all you don't like about WvW, then how is it a great training ground?
Now I'm really confused- if WvW is just karma train zerging, and EotM is a great example, then why would the hardcore WvWers disapprove of it?
I would submit that "knowing the nature of WvW better than hardcore WvWers" is an elitist attitude.
woah. Gear diversity, what? Are you talking about the armor/weapon aesthetics or not? Depending on what you are looking for you can get the stat arrays from a number of different dungeons, crafting, Karma, or just buying them on the TP (and you're getting 1.7+ gold every single on of those runs you're talking about). If you want the full AC set, all armor pieces, plus 4 weapons, purely for their appearance then yes, you have to run it that many times- except now you can also do PvP for tokens and weapons/armor outright from every dungeon. I really don't think there's a big issue with dungeon gear rewards in their current state and more importantly it's a bit of crappy way to look it at if you're doing dungeons simply in terms of how many you need to do before you get the reward you want and then stop forever.
Coriolanus
Banned
I'm aware. Im just engaging the idea of whether the current token reward system in place is too generous =)
Pvp, as is, is great (aside from gimping your character if you choose to gain pve levels through it, due to tome of knowledge based leveling).
Aesthetics. Gold does not factor into badge acquisition rate discussion (plus, y'know, there's far better options for that >_>). Math was on two 2hweps or 1 2h+ 1mh+oh. Would be even worse with 4 1h weps.
And again, my argument is that there is no reason not to increase token rewards. The side-effect of increasing token rewards is burnout reduction. Given how alt-friendly the game currently is, this is a very desirable effect.
I'd be more comfortable with a universal token system, like badges of honor are.
It's not too generous. At launch it was too stingy, especially with diminishing returns. Seems like it's in a good place to me now. Especially with PVP as an alternate or augmenting route of acquisition. Nooo idea where leveling came into play here, I thought we were just talking dungeon weapon and armor skins.
You know, I still haven't even tried sPVP. I really need to get round to it. What rewards do you get from it?
Coriolanus
Banned
Then we are in agreement. Hotdogs and booze for all. No ketchup or mayo, tho.
Stuff i put in parentheses are usually asides.
Brax: edumacate thyself.
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Wait, wut. Getting a loss in teamPvp is as good as a win in custom arena? FIFTEEN GOLD daily reward cap?
Ffs, we need to git on dat.
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For reference, if the wiki is correct, completing the reward track will give you 240 tokens + 1 piece of dungeon gear + other stuff. eh...
Wiki could be incomplete, tho. Reward tracks for other dungeons are sorely lacking in detail.
Oooh, finisher rewards too. And john st. john is the announcer. Explained why he so corny. Hrmmm
Kos Luftar
Member
If you're merely talking about aesthetics then it's a hard sell, it could be twice as much and I wouldn't care, like the gold expense of cultural armor. It's just how much it costs. It's already been made more generous since launch. And I don't know if you're talking about just the low level dungeons, but another side effect of increasing token rewards would be an increased influx of gold into the economy because token are frequently converted into ectos... which also serves as a reason not to do it. Dungeons are already the best source of gold in the game, arguably by a considerable margin if you're converting every 180 tokens you get. I'd also argue that making anything in the game easier that is not currently too difficult would indicate the game had a desire to trend toward "just being easier over time" which strikes me as another reason not to do it.
I loathe the idea of a universal token system especially with the addition of PvP tracks as an alternate route of acquisition. The armor pieces are supposed to at least nominally be associated with completing that dungeon and thus reflective of it aesthetically.
Even if I couldn't come up with a reason not to do it, targeting burnout reduction by amplifying the rewards of already-easy content seems to be pretty backwards to me. If you feel personally burnt out on a dungeon you should merely not do it anymore. You now even have the option of getting the entire set without even doing the dungeon a single time if the track is on rotation, which I actually don't even like conceptually that much, but consider it a fair trade because of how difficult skin acquisition used to be in PVP.
Allllll kinds of good stuff.
You pick a track and follow it through to completion, here's just one example: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Balthazar_Back_Item_Reward_Track
3 weapons, 1 piece of armor, and 240 tokens. plus yeah transmutation charges, tomes of knowledge, crafting mats, stuff to salvage+sell etc
Maybe some kind of PvE focused featured dungeon track of the week would be nice for people that need to see some bar to work towards and don't want to get into SPvP to do it. I'm viewing this from the perspective where people may not want to do SPvP to fill out the track the same way that they view WvW and SPvP as totally separate game modes that require a certain mentality to get anywhere to begin with.
I don't hate SPvP but I find that having to play a game mode a lot/over time to achieve dungeon rewards doesn't work for me in particular especially as a primarily WvW player. It's not to say I'm never in there as it's great to shakedown a build you want to try but it doesn't pull me the same way WvW does. I'm probably rambling now since I've left this post to sit multiple times already.
I don't hate SPvP but I find that having to play a game mode a lot/over time to achieve dungeon rewards doesn't work for me in particular especially as a primarily WvW player. It's not to say I'm never in there as it's great to shakedown a build you want to try but it doesn't pull me the same way WvW does. I'm probably rambling now since I've left this post to sit multiple times already.
shysaursoft
Member
I know which of my statements were intentionally facetious in tone, and which ones weren't. I forget that it doesn't transmit well across the internet unless you know me. My bad.
Someone on reddit told me to go "Back to your hole filthy whiteknighting casul" because I didn't think Anet personally and literally hates dungeon players and intentionally does everything to make them upset. It's that kind of day.
But anyway: I think EotM is a good place to *acclimate* to what WvW is (multiple servers, actual /people/ you fight, objectives to hold, what siege does, how taking a keep works (PvDoor), what it means when two groups of differing numbers meet up, etc). Yes, there's a lot of zergballing and karma training in EotM, just like there is in EB. And since EotM is multiple instances (I once counted over 20 different map instances), you get a big variety of playstyles. Maps with no commanders actually trying to accomplish things, maps with commanders just flipping stuff for karma, etc.
When I want to get people into WvW, I take them to EotM first. So EotM to me, is valid in terms of the greater concept for WvW.
It's also a good place to go when the commanders in EB tell you go 'go back to PvE or go die in EotM you useless shit".
(I like WvW, I got no beef with it, or the self-identified "hardcore" WvW players.)
Coriolanus
Banned
Making older content easier signals that the game is trending towards making older content easier, which it has already signaled. Several times over. Like every mmo ever. With the usual exception. Again like every mmo ever. (would be easier to drop this point, since the current patch just decreased boss blitz difficulty, and the previous one increased rewards)
Hard to argue that Glob acquisition rate getting a boost would affect the economy to any great extent. Plus, possible to manipulate ecto acquisition rate percentages at any time, if they wish. Also, making the world boss schedule fenomenally increased ease of ecto acquision rate. This is how the price of globs was impacted:
click all.
The heck happened in february?
Crafting mats and ToK are replacements for what you'd get by doing absolutely anything else (tok replaces xp gains). Yeah, i missed the weps, its right in the bigger container name, sigh >_>
I can't even relate to your anti-anti-burnout point, sorry =/
To me it's simply "will it negatively affect me? then no fucks given."
For sure... we will Saturday night but maybe there'd be desire to do a weeknight as well?
YES!!!
That's still a lot of stuff people normally may not use in their lifetime. It's like how I tell myself I'll use boosters but never get around to it.
I don't know what you think makes that a positive, and I am happy to have my idea reinforced. I do not want guild wars 2 to do things that every mmo ever has done. Boss Blitz is new and temporary content.
sorry, don't get what you mean.
That's fine. no reason to change it.
Coriolanus
Banned
The first is on your idea of what you don't like. I pointed out that the game already is heading in the direction i proposed. Whether you like it or not is irrelevant. That is the path it is headed. As it has consistently displayed.
This is a complete tangent, btw. I am arguing for increasing rewards on content completion. You are arguing for not making the content easier. These are not the same.
The second is an analysis of your supposed negative effect of moar ectos, which shows that the fear of increasing rewards is unwarranted.
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Weird, could swear i was junior member in the morning. PROMOTIONS FOR ERRYBODY!
It's also a good place to go when the commanders in EB tell you go 'go back to PvE or go die in EotM you useless shit".
Maybe you should've pushed when he told you to push.
Just kidding, glad we sorted it out. I get overly ornery when I feel sPvP/WvW players are unfairly branded as "toxic."
shysaursoft
Member
Eh, the commander in question is a known idiot who leads his bag zergs over cliffs and into enemy zergs twice the size, then complains when everyone (himself included) died in the opening volley, and will proceed to blame practically every individual (by name) on the map for the failure, since clearly it wasn't his "legendary" commanding skills, and just the fault of the "weekend casuls" ruining the WvW experience. Of note: he does not go on TS, he doesn't communicate with the other commanders. But because he's got a tag, and people follow tags...
I know what you mean though. As someone who does sPvP regularly, and has done his fair share in WvW (though I'm not fond of Fort Aspenwood), it's annoying when an entire community is painted with a single colour. I didn't mean it to look like I was doing the same, but rather, I was mocking that it happens in the first place - when I was making the comparison to how EotM and EB aren't that different since they're both just "zergball karma bag trains", it's said entirely tongue in cheek.
i don't agree the game is headed in that direction, so that's relevant.
you're right, I misspoke
can you clarify how you did that at all? what previous change were you attempting to illustrate having an effect/no effect on the economy?
Likely hit a certain number of posts, congrats on member status!
Coriolanus
Banned
You mention that AC was nerfed to the ground every. single. time. we do it.
Is it the only dungeon that has been made easier over time?
I can go through patch notes, if you like, but the first one i clicked already showed a lot of rebalancing.
You are free to disagree. You'd only be stubborn, tho.
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You sed you did not want token increases cuz one of the concerns would be more ectos
I linked historical price on ectos, showing that when supply significantly increases, price decreases, and that when they've recently made ecto acquisition easier, price was not majorly impacted. Also showing that anet gives no fucks about rare mat boosts, given the february data >__>
And thanks
Awesome!
I was at the Queen's Gauntlet before, rotating between a few other guys attempting it. One of them failed on the pirate crew at the last second, the next person jumped in to try Liadri.. The remaining pirate was still in there attacking them alongside Liadri. Funny bug!
The best part is, when the second person killed the remaining pirate, they got the chest reward for doing the crew!
really now.
I mention that AC Story was nerfed to the ground.
Is AC Story the only dungeon that's been made easier since launch? Of course not. Arah Story was nerfed a bit, and I think there was some change to Simin to make that (godawful) fight more reliable. SE1 was ludicrous at launch and became one of the easiest in the game. Alpha and one of the other bosses in CoE had their HP reduced, and apparently CoF story was made easier, though I don't really remember a big change. There was also non-dungeon stuff that was made easier; open-world Orr and some of the temple bosses had their difficulty reduced.
Most of that took place within a year of launch, and skimming that patch it looks like a majority of it took place in January, 2013.
Okay. If the story ended there you would be 100% right and I wouldn't have a remote argument to stand on. But is that the case?
AC Explorable, in the patch directly after the one in which AC Story was made easier, was completely redesigned and made more difficult. To the point where what was previously considered the easiest path is now considered the most difficult of the three.
There was a change in the update today, to the exact dungeon we are talking about, spawning this entire discussion, to make it more difficult.
More examples of content in at launch or close to it that has become more difficult rather than making things easier or more generous:
-Ironically enough, the redesigned, more difficult Cave Troll from the AC Explorable redesign was introduced into AC Story that month as well, making it slightly harder (it's random if he shows, but he can still wipe pug groups in seconds)
-COF 1 and 2 believe it or not used to be even faster than they are now, and at the time endlessly repeatable
-Dungeons were changed mechanically to prevent running back to boss fights while people were still in combat
-An existing path of TA was replaced not with an easier one, but one of the most challenging dungeon paths in the game.
-The Temple of Grenth fight was buffed to require more coordination
-The Jungle Wurm, Frozen Maw, the Claw of Jormag, Shadow Behemoth, the Golem Mk. II, have all been buffed, either slightly or dramatically
-Tequatl, of course, has been in since launch, used to be facerolled, and is now one of the most difficult encounters in the game
-The altered Ice Troll in HOTW1, added on the April 15th patch, made the path more difficult
-Fractal redesign made the upper levels more challenging, and reset fractal levels to ensure they had to be earned again
I just think the concept that the game is merely trending toward older content becoming easier is completely ridiculous. The crazy-hard version of AC Story that I bemoan the loss of existed for about 3 months total. There are also numerous instances of rewards being nerfed to older content, which while a different topic, also seems to buck the trend you seem so convinced is occurring. To me it is obvious that while some things have gotten easier and some have gotten harder, at the very least they are unafraid to revisit old content and make it more challenging, which is indeed something they have consistently displayed.
Which event making ecto acquisition easier are you talking about?
Sorta sums up my experience with SBI lately.
Since its introduction, there is something funky with the way ferocity scales down. So down-scaled stuff like the low level dungeons are exploded by zerk groups. AC seems the biggest victim. Dungeons in general could use a tweak-patch to fix some of the more exploitable stuff.
the more you're scaled the more stuff like that is impacted, so AC is definitely hit the most. I wouldn't mind a tweak to raise HP slightly for AC and CM, but meh. The way it works now benefits "mixed" groups too, and it's not like the zerk speedrunning groups are gonna complain. Besides, if they can't stack for the spider queen anymore, that's something.
Coriolanus
Banned
The february burst i assume was some scarlet related nonsense. You can check offer volume in that link too. The most recent one would be the World Boss Schedule, which is a very reliable way of obtaining ectos, especially when coupled with the megas.Either way the point stands, if ecto supply increases, price decreases to accomodate, so fearing economical impact without (some) evidence is just FUD.
Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine, i'll go through the patch notes tracking every single instance of making dungeons easier i can find, then we'll compare penis sizes. Sigh. The things i do to prove people wrong. Will do after work, obv.
The World Boss Schedule, meaning the new way the timers work post-megaserver?
Though I'm not sure it had a particular impact (especially to the average player), it was easier to get ectos before. You could guest to any server where an event was active to complete it and get the ~20 rares in a single three-hour session... most people didn't take this approach, but simply saw a slight reduction in the number of available daily events per hour.
I don't understand, are you denying the points I made are things that occurred? Or they don't count? :/
I can't follow this argument because there are two ways of defining "dungeons have become easier over time":
1) Developers deliberately changing dungeon parameters- there are examples of patch notes that made dungeons easier, harder, or just different. Developer intent can be subjective.
2) Players become familiar with dungeon content thus it becomes easier- this is an inescapable trend affecting all PvE content. Developers can change parameters to shake this up too, but it amounts to turning over an hourglass.
This may seem like semantic musing, but I often ponder the link between PvE difficulty and familiarization with the content. As many have said, send a party of fully geared 80s who don't know the content into Ascalon Catacombs and they will wipe repeatedly. A month later, this same party will run the dungeon AFK. What, if anything, can I conclude about the difficulty of the dungeon?
1) Developers deliberately changing dungeon parameters- there are examples of patch notes that made dungeons easier, harder, or just different. Developer intent can be subjective.
2) Players become familiar with dungeon content thus it becomes easier- this is an inescapable trend affecting all PvE content. Developers can change parameters to shake this up too, but it amounts to turning over an hourglass.
This may seem like semantic musing, but I often ponder the link between PvE difficulty and familiarization with the content. As many have said, send a party of fully geared 80s who don't know the content into Ascalon Catacombs and they will wipe repeatedly. A month later, this same party will run the dungeon AFK. What, if anything, can I conclude about the difficulty of the dungeon?
Kos Luftar
Member
Can Hawk and Corlionus stop fighting?
I'm talking about this sort of change with regard to "older content" of any stripe. I'm arguing that developer intent is not merely to make it easier over time.
Of course, separate phenomenon. I think the endgame result is that for an experienced, skilled group AC Explorable takes roughly the same amount of time as it used to even though it is mechanically more challenging.
Well, certainly nothing. I was drawing my conclusions from changes made with intent; Ghost Eater used to have no mechanics and died in 10 seconds, now it requires some coordination and unique mechanics. Old tequatl easy, new tequatl hard. Mere "ease by familiarity" is unavoidable, and not what either of us are referring to hopefully.
okay no problem, sorry for keeping it going so long.
shysaursoft
Member
Problem with this: many dungeon changes to fix easy exploits are never documented. Like the changes to the Spider Queen today - that's not on the patch notes. The dungeon community is constantly complaining about dungeon changes that fix exploits/cheese tactics, not being in the patch notes. And the things being fixed, usually make the dungeons harder.
An example:
Not that I know what you're trying to prove anyway. I don't think dungeons have been explicitly made easier other than AC story. Most changes were fixes, adjustments, smoothing out rough edges, which when combined with stat creep (Ascended) and players becoming familiar with content, can make it seem like things have been made easier, but in reality, they've just been made *better*.
oh... shit. that's actually going to be a bit trickier -_-. I guess the traps will keep the people down there alive, but now it should be your two highest DPS down there rather than the two with the best sustain.
Or maybe it'll be best to ignore the middle trap now, and have 3 people damaging her...
edit: The turret golem will move around now! Yay!
...that makes him just like the Butcher. Boo!
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