Originally posted by Castillle

Most people dont know wtf to do with combo fields.  Once you get used to it, youll notice your survivability skyrocket. 

Instead of a tank, now you need either interrupts, blinds, or weakens.  I prefer weakens tbh.   And after that, you NEED  to exploit those.  Easiest combo is thief with a shortbow.  Blinds?  check every 30 seconds. Weaken?  Check. All you need the thief to do is poison field -> blast finisher and it will go a LONG LONG way in keeping everyone from dieing as long as someone puts up a friggin water field and not put all the fields together and waste them.

Fields are fine if you know you will make good use of them.  For example, a hunter on the side and youre all beating on a boss.  Pop that spring up and use one with the beast + zephyr with a shortbow and shoot like a machine gun.  Thats fine and it will probably give something like 20-30 seconds of regen.  But if you had muultiple burst finishers or a thief with short bow, pop it on the boss and let the thief healbomb everyone there.

I also like Necros and their combo fields. Lots of condition removal and life steal to keep a group alive. Shame my Ele spec only comes with the good old fire field that ArenaNet loved to talk about.

Originally posted by Volkon

Originally posted by sonoggi

Originally posted by Drachasor

Originally posted by sonoggi

there is absolutely no problem in not having trinity. "tanks" arent really tanks as they crumple under conditions. everyone has CC. 

basically, you can break the specs down to support, burst dps and sustain. but often, a spec can do two of those. 

Eh, despite what Anet says you really can't break it down into just 3 rolls as best I see it.

You have damage, everyone does that to some degree. - DPS

You have condition application, which some people do. - DPS

You have condition removal, which some people do. - SUSTAIN

You have boon application, which some people do. - SUPPORT

You have boon removal, which some people do. - SUPPORT

You have healing, which some people do. - SUSTAIN

There's damage avoidance, which everyone has to do (though some conditions and boons assist here). - SUSTAIN

There's damage mitigation, which is much like avoidance, but still different. - SUSTAIN

 

there. i get what youre saying though. there are MANY builds within those 3 categories. 

What's interesting is that my mesmer is actually an "all of the above".

Funny thing is that my Scepter/Dagger Elementalist can do it all too and still be effective at all of them. 

I can deal some burst damage in lighting & fire. Apply conditions in earth. Remove conditions whenever I switch to Water. Apply boons whenever I swtich to any attunement. Provide some fairly strong group heals every couple seconds. Avoid damage with my blinds and mitigate it with Weakness. So I certainly don't fall into any category of the trinity, yet my spec has proven to be incredibly effective in dungeons.

Sure it seems like I'm trying to be the jack of all trades and the master of none, which is generally a big "no no" in MMORPGs. However there's really a good synergy with the choices I've made with my build and it shows that you don't have to truly focus on 1 thing (e.g. dealing tons of damage) to be effective.

The funny thing is that I just finished doing the level 50 dungeon Twilight Arbor (story mode) with 2 guildies and 2 randoms.  It ended up being a 2 hour slog through the dungeon, with wipe after wipe. And when we started it was certainly a chaotic mess, but as we progressed, we as a group really gelled together.

People seem to think that because there's no real holy trinity, that everyone is just DPS, spamming their particles and hoping the target dies quickly and that is largly untrue. Well rounded group compositions are vital. I play a Hybrid Support Elementalist, so I'm built to provide AOE heals & buffs, yet I can also deal a good amount of damage. But I wasn't the only one providing support, because we also had a Banner Support Warrior, the Ranger was providing some support with his elite and even the Thief was providing support by using AOE stealth to res people. There really wasn't anyone trying to be a pure dps, because people are slowly learning that when when you go pure glass cannon in a PvE dungeon, then expect to die more often.

Anyway it really was the last fight in the dungeon that really illustrates how important a group composition and knowing your role in the encounter is. Like my role was to keep the bosses all blinded & CC'd, so that we could burn them down quickly. It took a half hour of wipes to get to that point and I can't imagine anyone doing that encounter without any tactics.

Originally posted by voxnor

Originally posted by Master10K

*snip*

  This pretty much.

ArenaNet went for the stylistic approach to the cutscenes, not only because it goes with what they are trying to do with the rest of the game's asthetics, but also because it is a hell of a lot cheaper than what SWTOR & TSW went for. It is also why the rest of the game, beyond the personal story, doesn't feel severly lacking.

 

Sure the voice over ranges from OK to awful, I personally think that where GW2 excels (in regards to VO) is with the sense of immersion in open world. From the ambient environmental noise, to the thousands of lines of random NPC & PC chatter that you'll come across, along your journey. That's where the true immersion lies in GW2. Not in some cutscene.

Interesting thoughts. I guess I am unclear as to how its much cheaper? The voice acting is done in each case - the characters are mouthing the words in 3D in both cases - what exactly is cheaper? (Note that I am not doubting you, I am just curious).

 

I like your thoughts about the other styles of immersion - I hadn't considered those. I think I am still caught up in launch fever and perhaps now slowing down enough to see things like that.

Implementing the cutscenes for SW:TOR really was a huge money drain because of the simple fact that they got a lot of high profile voice talent. But when considering both SW:TOR & TSW in comparison to GW2... those 2 games have cutscenes that require a considerable amount of time and effort to get them to the state we see them in. And thus cost more money. Things like motion capture, getting good cinematography and such. However TSW did save quite a bit of cash by having a silent protagonist, whereas GW2 have 2 per race, so maybe that evened things out in their case.

I also remember a dev blog post when ArenaNet finally implemented their new lip-sync and cutscene tech for GW2. It illustrated how easy it became for them to make one of their cutscenes. All they had to do was input the dialogue (in a phonetic fashion) and add the emotional behaviour they want the character to express and that was most of the work done.

Well anyway, the story may not be that immersive but the world certainly is.

Originally posted by Creslin321

I agree that SWTOR's story presentation is better.  But I think they chose the backdrop style because it is zounds cheaper to do than making a custom animation for every cutscene.

I really think that, that is a large reason why SWTOR is in trouble.  The story content was just too expensive to sustain.

In the end, I'm really not thrilled about single player story inside of an MMORPG...and if an MMORPG is going to have one, I would rather it doesn't dominate the game.  So I'm actually happy that the story didn't receive a huge amount of the game's budget :).

  This pretty much.

ArenaNet went for the stylistic approach to the cutscenes, not only because it goes with what they are trying to do with the rest of the game's asthetics, but also because it is a hell of a lot cheaper than what SWTOR & TSW went for. It is also why the rest of the game, beyond the personal story, doesn't feel severly lacking.

Sure the voice over ranges from OK to awful, I personally think that where GW2 excels (in regards to VO) is with the sense of immersion in open world. From the ambient environmental noise, to the thousands of lines of random NPC & PC chatter that you'll come across, along your journey. That's where the true immersion lies in GW2. Not in some cutscene.

Level 54 | 99hours 55mins | 26% map completion.

I've barely even PvP'd. I'm just taking my sweet time with this game.

Originally posted by MMOExposed

Originally posted by Loke666

So you got upset because they are fixing your exploit or what?

Reward should always be paid according to risk. If you just walk with a caravan without any attack you should get some reward but not much. If on the other hand you get an epic battle and save the day you should get a good reward.

How this can upset someone is a mystery to me.

problem with your logic.

 

If a player is escorting supply, than that means they are no longer in the main zerg, which is attacking building, and gaining fast, large sums of exp from them.

 

its a fair trade off as it was. Because players that take the time to escort supply dont miss out on the exp rewards and karma.

 

from the change, a player that defends supply trasnports gets no exp, which extents the leveling speed to a snail pace in WvW. Playing hours in WvW and getting not a bar of exp as a low level is not interesting.

And there's a rpoblem in your logic. You want players to be rewarded for doing absolutely nothing. Well I think not and ArenaNet also seems to think not, right is why they've removed it from the game whilst they figure out how to re-balance the rewards it. Someone earlier posted a decent fix to this; give players miniscule rewards for escorting a Dolyak and increased rewards for actually defending it.

Spent all of the launch week unable to access the trading post when I wanted, unable to do instanced content with a party and coming across some bugged out content. I've really got to appreciate how quickly ArenaNet are able to isolate the serious issues with the game, test the solutions within a live environment and then roll out a fix.

Yesterday has been my best day with the game. Trading post was up all day, so was the mail system. Could run multiple dungeons and I didn't come a across any bugged out content. Just hope ArenaNet doesn't break what they already fixed, with anymore patches.

Originally posted by Searias
You sure you weren't doing anything when they banned you? I would go to reddit and post you account name and character name and the Arena Net staff will tell you why you got banned. Also, did you remember to enter in your retail key?

The Reddit thread last week, with all the banned people getting named and shamed, was legendary. Shame I can't seem to find it.

Originally posted by kaiser3282

Yeah trading post has been up for me since patch this morning, and have hd no issues with it yet.

Agree you my want to rename it and just spell it out that Trading Post and Support Forum is open.

Also did anyone else notice some of the other things that have been improved ove rthe past few days? One big thing I noticed a couple of days ago was actually being able to be in party and see my party members on the opposite end of zones rather needing to be practically on top of eachother already in order to see wher ethey are. Nice improvement.

Yeah, the partying system seems to have been fixed. Heck, I was even able to do a couple dungeon runs today with no real issue (expect 1 time I dc'd). Also just did the level 50 dungeon Twight Arbor and I really enjoyed it, even the actual story.

Originally posted by Aerowyn

*snip*

noticed this as well my buddy is in his 30s and was in a zone said something along the lines of "damn not as many DE's in this zone" I asked him if he had explored around and talked to npc's to try and start DE's himself.. his repsonse "you can start DE's yourself?"

That's something I really like about the game. That I can be on my way to the next stage in my personal story and randomly hear an NPC talking/yelling about his/her plight. Most of the time I click on them and get a notification of a DE I would have missed if I simply ignored the NPC as ambient noise. So many times have these NPCs distracted more for upto an hour, from my personal story.

It's really hard to tell, because sure the game has quite a lot of bugs and issues since it launched. However most of these major issues weren't even issues during the beta (trading post and the numerous guild & party issues). They only became an issue once ArenaNet opened the floodgates to the masses and realized that the stress tests couldn't prepare them for it.

So I won't vote, because the poll needs more options.

Originally posted by Mannish

Originally posted by Ozmodan
Why don't they admit it is a f2p game and stop wasting time on merging servers and set the game up as a f2p game.

It really needs to go ftp. I think if it would have launched as a ftp it would be alot for succesful.

The cash shop is ready and waiting for the F2P conversion. All they have to do is milk as much money as they can from the subscribers and then flip the F2P switch. Just like TSW is doing.

Originally posted by Thillian

Actuall this is true on every respect.

If the entire game SCALES UP or DOWN to your level, or your power SCALES UP or DOWN to the environment, you don't need an RPG system in the first place. No need for advancement or character progression.

It kills the sense of improving your character versus the environment.

You seem to be misinformed because the game DOES NOT automatically scale you up, whilst PvE, which is what the OP is refering to. So leveling still does matter in this game, because leveling provides you with more options for skills, gear, traits & content.