Servers are never down because they figured out how to do something no other mmo has. They do not need server maintenance and they have somehow managed to introduce patches without being offline. So every week when every mmo is down for several hours you still see GW2 running strong. They got really good ideas from somewhere and someone smart enough to pull them off. They solved so many problems other mmo's just ignore or cannot figure out how to fix. Worried about that tank rolling on your dps items in a dungeon? GW2 fixed that. Hurry get that iron node before that lvl 90 runs through and grabs it. GW2 fixed that too. OMG you aren't in a group for the major event taking place now you get 0 exp. GW2 fixed it. I was just saying to that guy this is not a company to be laughed at. They have done extremely well and not to mention they are buy to play. Most buy to play games just get left in the dust and somehow they have managed to do constant updates.
Dungeons were farmed too much, but fractals were worse imo. The same kind of shit over and over with just a ramping difficulty curve is much more of a grind than tackling the harder explorable mode paths of various dungeons.
As for the raids, wouldn't know about that, not playing the game currently.
This sort of seems like a petty excuse not to make more interesting dungeons.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
It sounds more like a nerf to farming than focusing on fractuals because they think its more worth while content. It's a hell of a lot easier to gather a small group for repeated farming of the same content ad nauseum that it would be for larger content. Have to boost those cash shop sales imho
Because dungeons were the worst and most exploited content in the game. Their ease-of-play and lack of demands created a one-role, one-strategy situation (the zerk-only-stack-in-a-corner-meta) which did much to make the game's endgame a laughing stock.
Furthermore, their high rewards, comprising almost entirely of liquid gold, were the single largest contributor to inflation in the Guild Wars 2 economy. Yes, Silverwastes can allow a player to earn even more gold, but the majority of profits from the Silverwastes are from the trading post - the biggest gold sink in the economy. Guild Wars 2 experienced an unprecedented level of deflation following the release of the Silverwastes.
The big flaw here, however, was that the easy content with excessive gold returns set a bad precedent for the game as a whole. Better, more difficult content, like Fractals, has fallen into relative disuse because the gold rewards for difficult, lengthy content just can't keep up. Without nerfing dungeon gold, Arenanet runs the risk of the same thing happening to the new Fractals and Raids.
Nerfing dungeons, however, creates a nice sliding scale of endgame.
Dungeons are your entry-level endgame content. They're fast. They're easy. They allow you to earn free exotic gear to help new players into the more advanced endgame content streams - Fractals and Raids. In addition, dungeon collections, exclusive runes, and achievements should help dungeons maintain some relevance.
Fractals are your difficult-but-casual content. By this, I'm not implying that they are in themselves casual-minded, but, with their upcoming rework, their short length fits well into the daily schedule of a working player. They give you a light serving of hard content, and there is a lot to gain from rising in the ranks and replaying them.
Raids are your weekly hardcore content - the cream of the crop. And Guild Wars 2 is going to want to push them to the forefront.
One has to remember that Dungeons have always had a lot of problems. For one, the difficulty has always been off and as a result a lot of people who did the story-mode dungeons, initially had a terrible experience. "Dungeons in GW2 sux".
One of the big problems with the dungeons was also the integration of story and cutscenes. Like in SWTOR it creates a rift between people who want to experience it and those who run it.
Fractals is a system with a lot of potential. They are changing it so you run one island instead of 3. Then the next step is adding a whole lot of extra fractals. The more you add the more diversity you add. Fractals feature a lot of unique gameplay that is a lot more than beating trash, followed by boss, beating trash followed by boss, rinse repeat, like in other games. There are fractals that facilitate dodging, timing, jumping, underwater, puzzles, split team coordination.
Secondly, the rise in difficulty is great.
I think they should take the dungeons in the game and put them inside the fractal system. it makes the existing dungeons more challenging (higher difficulty upon each run) but it also puts dungeons and fractals under one umbrella.
I'm not into raids. It's not a problem for me. Obviously this content is designed for people who wanted scrutinizing gameplay. As long as I don't have to run it to get the "most powerful gear" I am okay with it.
Right now I am hoping we will see new fractals. Perhaps scenarios from Cantha and guild wars 1!
well it was about really bad PR statement. They dont abandon the 5man dungeons (they are called fractals and they are not the braindead grindd fest of dungeons.) The original GW2 Dungeons will remain but they wont be a place to grind only to visit but i believe f2p accounts might keep them alive.. This which worries me, is the pack at Anet they develop new fractals or will develp new raids. They work really slow and i am afraid raids will stale realy fast like fractals. In 2 years fractals got only once a upgrade and nothing else... Meanwhile they have introdunced some cool dungeons during living story which the majority survived as fractals and one gone into a dungeon bt none visits it
I never realized there was some huge difference between a dungeon and a raid. I mean, aren't they both instances where groups of players get together to complete the main objective for their appropriate reward? So they pushed for raids for the latest expansion and are getting away from dungeons. I don't see the point in that as they are basically the same thing.
Yep, but that's exactly what Anet is doing, they are moving the Dungeon system to Raids and swapping Dungeon for Fractals as main group content.
I believe people already prefer doing Fractals than dungeons in group gameplay, so the decision has been dictated by player habits. If you still like the dungeon experience you can still Raid, so basically they got it all covered.
Does anyone else remember how difficult dungeons were the first few times you played them? Man, the good ole days when shit was actually hard in this game.
Does anyone else remember how difficult dungeons were the first few times you played them? Man, the good ole days when shit was actually hard in this game.
Does anyone else remember how difficult dungeons were the first few times you played them? Man, the good ole days when shit was actually hard in this game.
I remember forum posts about dungeon nerfing. They were tooo hard!. Yes, I do remember all the bitching and complaining. No one understood how to play without a trinity. I remember going in to dungeons and getting wiped repeatedly. People were rage quitting in droves.
GW2 moving the genre forward, who needs dungeons or roleplay or in fact anything suggested in the term MMORPG. GIve me a good story, a game that plays itself, solo online gameplay and make it easy and casual. Perfect fun for the family including the dog.
5 mans have always been the most fun grouping size for me.
It is sad to see them say this, and yet in the last Beta Weekend, they shut down beta testing because they didn't have the RAID UI working. LOL. They will nerf dungeons, yet don't even have RAIDS up in Beta yet? And release is less than 4 weeks away!!!
LMAO, Anet, really...
You are laughing at what is easily the best mmo developer. They are leaps and bounds ahead of any mmo ever made. Hey next time when their servers are down lets have a talk. Oh wait their servers are never down.
Until recently I thought the same as you. I even praised GW2 as the game of best quality, since there were so many well thought out things in it. But HOT is bringing a new type of GW2. A game were grind will become more traditional, where gear is more important and trinity is beginning to rear it's ugly head. So far, they worked very hard to make and maintain a game that is for everyone, but especially for casuals. They worked very hard to make new and exiting ways of progression and getting things to do and of simply having fun. GW2 has been a game which you played for fun. Now, with trinity slowly becoming more important, gear checks becoming a reality and information being delegated in ZOS style, it is becoming a game for elitists and no-lifers. Them abandoning work on dungeons is a clear sign they intend to focus on raids. And considering how many players play them, it's a decision made out of desperation. So, where is that well thought out development GW2 has been famous for? Just look at their latest event, which was so badly designed and implemented, something very rare happened. Almost entire forum community was shocked to see something like that coming under Anet's hands. But, on the other hand, it was a sign of how things will look in the future (HOT).
Them abandoning work on dungeons is a clear sign they intend to focus on raids. And considering how many players play them, it's a decision made out of desperation. So, where is that well thought out development GW2 has been famous for? Just look at their latest event, which was so badly designed and implemented, something very rare happened. Almost entire forum community was shocked to see something like that coming under Anet's hands. But, on the other hand, it was a sign of how things will look in the future (HOT).
All the GW2 content updates have had many bugs and required a few days to be ironed out. It seems to be a sub product of the Event system and all the moving NPCs.
Fractals are just dungeons and the current dungeons are not the best design - most of the players that do them skip as much as they can and simply stack might in a corner.
Post edited by Gaia_Hunter on
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
I just don't understand the new focus on instanced raids. This was something unique about GW2, the large outdoor raids. I realize they were chaotic, but it was something GW2 offered more of than most of their competitors. Now they are one of the many, raid or die. *snore* As far as Dungeons and Fractals, I never found either to be terribly entertaining.
I agree to the 50% dungeon earnings nerf considering that I can get 1.26 gold by spending literally 10 minutes in CoF P1 and 1-3 gold for other dungeons that take around 20-30 minutes.
I mean 50 gold is considered pretty decent amount of gold, and 500 is considered rich.
Let's do the math. In about 8-10 hours, I can make around 50 gold... If I go hard, then in about a week I can possibly make 500 gold including all drops. Dungeon gold rewards nerfs by 50% were the correct choice.
5 mans have always been the most fun grouping size for me.
It is sad to see them say this, and yet in the last Beta Weekend, they shut down beta testing because they didn't have the RAID UI working. LOL. They will nerf dungeons, yet don't even have RAIDS up in Beta yet? And release is less than 4 weeks away!!!
LMAO, Anet, really...
You are laughing at what is easily the best mmo developer. They are leaps and bounds ahead of any mmo ever made. Hey next time when their servers are down lets have a talk. Oh wait their servers are never down.
The best? I wouldn't go that far. lol.
GW2 is a good game, but it has many flaws and lacks vision. It experiments with ideas on live servers before even testing them on a private server, then when it fails, they abandon the idea (dungeons being the latest victim of their failed experiments). You mention servers never being down, but that's because the majority of people stopped playing already.
Lol what? There's more people playing GW2 now than ever before. Please don't talk about things you have no idea about.
GW2 is actually catering efficiently to all kinds of MMO players. I've yet to see an MMO out there which has so many different things to do.
They often try things and they often make mistakes... so what? Every developer does. The expansion again is more content for all kinds of players.
It's leaps and bounds better than any other AAA mmo out there at the moment.
I see the company shills are lurking as usual anyways many more are leaving partly for this reason and others just go to reddit where things arent so controlled for what people say.
This is a good call on their part, GW2 dungeons were not very well done. I really disliked the path system, none of the fights were particularly interesting, and the lore reasons for being there never felt believable (a lot of the game has this problem, though, they really skimped on writers).
I hope that by "focusing on fractals" they mean adding a significant amount more variety. When I used to play there just were not enough different ones.
GW2 and all other MMOs that limit you to picking and choosing a handful of skills struggle to make interesting PvE content. When you know exactly how an encounter will pan out, you do not really have the choice to try and use your skills in interesting ways. With so few skills and no interesting way to use them, each fight becomes a matter of nothing more than "where do I stand" (occasionally 'where do I click'). They need to find a way to make PvE encounters less predictable. Something I thought they had some success with in the past was making the movement as crazy and interesting as possible, which leads to people bringing skills to move around.
As ticked off as I am with how ANet has handled GW2 since release, I still love the classes and the core design. I'd like to see them do something good with it.
It sounds more like a nerf to farming than focusing on fractuals because they think its more worth while content. It's a hell of a lot easier to gather a small group for repeated farming of the same content ad nauseum that it would be for larger content. Have to boost those cash shop sales imho
Well, it also means that we wont see any new dungeons in the near future but probably some more fractals.
Personally do I prefer the dungeons. And adding raids were a bad idea, they should have added something new instead of just copy what others already do.
I warned people about anets shady tactics ages ago and got attacked by many of you, its your own faults for buying the expansions and it serves you right.l
I warned people about anets shady tactics ages ago and got attacked by many of you, its your own faults for buying the expansions and it serves you right.l
What are you blabbering about? There's nothing shady about it. They're shifting the PVE focus to raids and fractals, so now people won't feel like they need to speed farm piss-easy dungeons.
I never realized there was some huge difference between a dungeon and a raid. I mean, aren't they both instances where groups of players get together to complete the main objective for their appropriate reward? So they pushed for raids for the latest expansion and are getting away from dungeons. I don't see the point in that as they are basically the same thing.
Raids use large groups of well coordinated players to take down a large boss. Dungeons use a smaller group of players to take down a boss or series of bosses as you fight your way through mobs to get to bosses.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Comments
As for the raids, wouldn't know about that, not playing the game currently.
This sort of seems like a petty excuse not to make more interesting dungeons.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
Because dungeons were the worst and most exploited content in the game. Their ease-of-play and lack of demands created a one-role, one-strategy situation (the zerk-only-stack-in-a-corner-meta) which did much to make the game's endgame a laughing stock.
Furthermore, their high rewards, comprising almost entirely of liquid gold, were the single largest contributor to inflation in the Guild Wars 2 economy. Yes, Silverwastes can allow a player to earn even more gold, but the majority of profits from the Silverwastes are from the trading post - the biggest gold sink in the economy. Guild Wars 2 experienced an unprecedented level of deflation following the release of the Silverwastes.
The big flaw here, however, was that the easy content with excessive gold returns set a bad precedent for the game as a whole. Better, more difficult content, like Fractals, has fallen into relative disuse because the gold rewards for difficult, lengthy content just can't keep up. Without nerfing dungeon gold, Arenanet runs the risk of the same thing happening to the new Fractals and Raids.
Nerfing dungeons, however, creates a nice sliding scale of endgame.
Dungeons are your entry-level endgame content. They're fast. They're easy. They allow you to earn free exotic gear to help new players into the more advanced endgame content streams - Fractals and Raids. In addition, dungeon collections, exclusive runes, and achievements should help dungeons maintain some relevance.
Fractals are your difficult-but-casual content. By this, I'm not implying that they are in themselves casual-minded, but, with their upcoming rework, their short length fits well into the daily schedule of a working player. They give you a light serving of hard content, and there is a lot to gain from rising in the ranks and replaying them.
Raids are your weekly hardcore content - the cream of the crop. And Guild Wars 2 is going to want to push them to the forefront.
For one, the difficulty has always been off and as a result a lot of people who did the story-mode dungeons, initially had a terrible experience. "Dungeons in GW2 sux".
One of the big problems with the dungeons was also the integration of story and cutscenes. Like in SWTOR it creates a rift between people who want to experience it and those who run it.
Fractals is a system with a lot of potential. They are changing it so you run one island instead of 3. Then the next step is adding a whole lot of extra fractals. The more you add the more diversity you add. Fractals feature a lot of unique gameplay that is a lot more than beating trash, followed by boss, beating trash followed by boss, rinse repeat, like in other games. There are fractals that facilitate dodging, timing, jumping, underwater, puzzles, split team coordination.
Secondly, the rise in difficulty is great.
I think they should take the dungeons in the game and put them inside the fractal system. it makes the existing dungeons more challenging (higher difficulty upon each run) but it also puts dungeons and fractals under one umbrella.
I'm not into raids. It's not a problem for me. Obviously this content is designed for people who wanted scrutinizing gameplay. As long as I don't have to run it to get the "most powerful gear" I am okay with it.
Right now I am hoping we will see new fractals. Perhaps scenarios from Cantha and guild wars 1!
raid rewards are going to be....
http://medias.luna-atra.fr/gw2/char_tool/CT_imageGenerator.php?pseudo=Centurion Mikal&lang=EN&code=&code=TSwtLDUsLSw2LC0sMjksOSwyMiwyMywyNCwtLDEwMiwzNiw4MSw4NCw4OQ==
This which worries me, is the pack at Anet they develop new fractals or will develp new raids. They work really slow and i am afraid raids will stale realy fast like fractals. In 2 years fractals got only once a upgrade and nothing else... Meanwhile they have introdunced some cool dungeons during living story which the majority survived as fractals and one gone into a dungeon bt none visits it
I believe people already prefer doing Fractals than dungeons in group gameplay, so the decision has been dictated by player habits.
If you still like the dungeon experience you can still Raid, so basically they got it all covered.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Until recently I thought the same as you. I even praised GW2 as the game of best quality, since there were so many well thought out things in it.
But HOT is bringing a new type of GW2. A game were grind will become more traditional, where gear is more important and trinity is beginning to rear it's ugly head.
So far, they worked very hard to make and maintain a game that is for everyone, but especially for casuals. They worked very hard to make new and exiting ways of progression and getting things to do and of simply having fun. GW2 has been a game which you played for fun. Now, with trinity slowly becoming more important, gear checks becoming a reality and information being delegated in ZOS style, it is becoming a game for elitists and no-lifers.
Them abandoning work on dungeons is a clear sign they intend to focus on raids. And considering how many players play them, it's a decision made out of desperation. So, where is that well thought out development GW2 has been famous for? Just look at their latest event, which was so badly designed and implemented, something very rare happened. Almost entire forum community was shocked to see something like that coming under Anet's hands. But, on the other hand, it was a sign of how things will look in the future (HOT).
It seems to be a sub product of the Event system and all the moving NPCs.
Fractals are just dungeons and the current dungeons are not the best design - most of the players that do them skip as much as they can and simply stack might in a corner.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
I mean 50 gold is considered pretty decent amount of gold, and 500 is considered rich.
Let's do the math. In about 8-10 hours, I can make around 50 gold... If I go hard, then in about a week I can possibly make 500 gold including all drops. Dungeon gold rewards nerfs by 50% were the correct choice.
I hope that by "focusing on fractals" they mean adding a significant amount more variety. When I used to play there just were not enough different ones.
GW2 and all other MMOs that limit you to picking and choosing a handful of skills struggle to make interesting PvE content. When you know exactly how an encounter will pan out, you do not really have the choice to try and use your skills in interesting ways. With so few skills and no interesting way to use them, each fight becomes a matter of nothing more than "where do I stand" (occasionally 'where do I click'). They need to find a way to make PvE encounters less predictable. Something I thought they had some success with in the past was making the movement as crazy and interesting as possible, which leads to people bringing skills to move around.
As ticked off as I am with how ANet has handled GW2 since release, I still love the classes and the core design. I'd like to see them do something good with it.
Personally do I prefer the dungeons. And adding raids were a bad idea, they should have added something new instead of just copy what others already do.
http://medias.luna-atra.fr/gw2/char_tool/CT_imageGenerator.php?pseudo=Centurion Mikal&lang=EN&code=&code=TSwtLDUsLSw2LC0sMjksOSwyMiwyMywyNCwtLDEwMiwzNiw4MSw4NCw4OQ==
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey