Edge of the Mists - February 4th

[Lane]

Well, I've never been a proponent of "raid" bosses in GW2. I thought that GW2 was going to be different kind of MMO than that, but I guess they finally had enough people QQing about raid-like content that they decided to start devoting resources to it.

Personally, I don't like it at all and I hate the fact that they've tacked on something useful as the meta achievement (rather than another stupid back piece skin) with no other means of obtaining it than participation in said encounters, which I'm sure was done on purpose. Now they can claim it was a HUGE success just looking at the metrics like they seem to do with everything else.

Then again, I really don't like these 'specialized' patches. I prefer it when they have a little something for everyone to do, not "this patch is for the dungeon crawlers, next patch will be for the WvWers, next patch will be for... people who really love clicking F a lot." Somewhere along the line they lost the variety the LS updates used to have.

[Maarius]

Well, I've never been a proponent of "raid" bosses in GW2. I thought that GW2 was going to be different kind of MMO than that, but I guess they finally had enough people QQing about raid-like content that they decided to start devoting resources to it.

This is something entirely different than classic raids, why else would some people still cry about the content being non instanced and "too casual". Personally I can't stand raids in other games, but I really enjoy those open world bosses.

about that "QQing"... GW2 had open world bosses since release, only the difficulty needed adjusting. They learned a lot, looking at the current zerg-breaking well balanced interesting encounters. Finally a battle where you can be proud to succeed rather than farming those "superior beings" via autoattack.

[Svifnymr]

Well, I've never been a proponent of "raid" bosses in GW2. I thought that GW2 was going to be different kind of MMO than that, but I guess they finally had enough people QQing about raid-like content that they decided to start devoting resources to it.

Sure, just meant that in normal internet style, everyone makes broad sweeping declarations of how the update was supposed to be huge, but it's not huge, when "huge" is relative. "They only gave us two expanded world bosses, that's nothing!" or "they only have us a WvWvW overflow zone, who are they kidding!"

The updates had some substance to them, their "size" is relative to how useful the content is to the individual user.

Personally, I don't like it at all and I hate the fact that they've tacked on something useful as the meta achievement (rather than another stupid back piece skin) with no other means of obtaining it than participation in said encounters, which I'm sure was done on purpose. Now they can claim it was a HUGE success just looking at the metrics like they seem to do with everything else.

It's pretty easy to get via the dailies, but we already discussed that in the other thread. I agree it's not optimum.
For myself, I enjoyed it, but it is already fading on my server, 3 weeks from now no one will remember it's going on.

Then again, I really don't like these 'specialized' patches. I prefer it when they have a little something for everyone to do, not "this patch is for the dungeon crawlers, next patch will be for the WvWers, next patch will be for... people who really love clicking F a lot." Somewhere along the line they lost the variety the LS updates used to have.

"I rebound the F key to G, now it's like a whole new game!"

[Lane]

Fundamentally, I seem to lack whatever trait it is that causes this feeling of "pride" upon accomplishing a group task. Maybe if all things were optimal, but that is almost never the case. Either you don't have enough people, or the right class balance, or people aren't doing what they're supposed to do, etc. Success in a group encounter, for me, is more a triumph over humanity than it is over creature mechanics in a game. That doesn't fill me with a sense of pride, just relief. Relief that we managed to succeed despite others.

Regardless, agree to disagree over "raid" content. It's still basically the same thing if you took any given WoW raid boss and plopped it in the open world.

[Fencers]

Instanced raiding is not "classic" or "traditional" raiding.

Instanced raiding is modern and refined raiding. It came afterward, as a response to certain game design conceits having open world encounters forced in the 1st and nascent MMO era.

What people could say more accurately is Guild Wars 2 "raids" are closer to classical raids as opposed to the popular, modern instanced raid.

I know this is a World of Warcraft fansite but have some genre and medium perspective.

Classic and traditional do not mean common or popular.

[Svifnymr]

Fundamentally, I seem to lack whatever trait it is that causes this feeling of "pride" upon accomplishing a group task.

I enjoy the marrionette, but too much can go wrong with it. It's still a lot more fun than the new Tequatl event, IMO. I don't know that I feel "pride" for defeating it, anymore than I do with Shatterer or anything else. At least it's more interactive, which is what I want sometimes. I'm not doing it for the challenge, directly.

Maybe if all things were optimal, but that is almost never the case. Either you don't have enough people, or the right class balance, or people aren't doing what they're supposed to do, etc. Success in a group encounter, for me, is more a triumph over humanity than it is over creature mechanics in a game. That doesn't fill me with a sense of pride, just relief. Relief that we managed to succeed despite others.

I agree with you sometimes, disagree others, as is natural, but sometimes it just comes down to "MMO's would be great, if it wasn't for all the damn people!".

Maybe if they had some sort of MMO-Entrance Exam, insuring that the folks you encounter in the world would be at a certain level or something. Until then, it's always about working around folks.

Regardless, agree to disagree over "raid" content. It's still basically the same thing if you took any given WoW raid boss and plopped it in the open world.

They have Open World raid bosses in WoW/ Mists, I brought them up in one of the other threads, but have not personally run them. What I read on them wasn't impressive from a mechanics standpoint, but of course I was assured they were much more intricate in actual play or something.

[Deleted]

New WvW map they say? I hope they promote making small group assaults on buildings, rather then 100 player zerg-cluster fuck. Doubt they will, but we can hope, I really have fun in WvW when i find a small group of 5-10 players capping small structures.

[zed zebes]

Small groups can take resource nodes on EotM map. They can also take shrines as well. Shrines can be important, but it depends on how they end up balancing them. Early on in the beta, the Charr Statue was powerful and then got toned down. In the first beta, the solar shrine was OP and got nerfed. So the shrines have potential importance and don't require a zerg to take. It just remains to be seen on the final balancing/powers they choose to attribute to the shrines.

[Lane]

I enjoy the marrionette, but too much can go wrong with it. It's still a lot more fun than the new Tequatl event, IMO.

It doesn't take much to be more fun than Tequatl. :P I feel like I could like the Marionette encounter, but -- like today -- my lane had all but one champion down and, for whatever reason, one platform was really struggling with it despite having the full 5 players and nobody down/dead. The lane after that (judging by map chat) had the exact same problem, so we ended up failing it.

I agree with you sometimes, disagree others, as is natural, but sometimes it just comes down to "MMO's would be great, if it wasn't for all the damn people!".

Well, I have never liked team-reliant activities. I have had nothing but bad experiences with them both in games and in real life. Unfortunately, the only way to avoid the 'bads' is to join (what I consider) elitist guilds and I don't have the mentality for that either. Ideally, I'd find a guild of like-minded people who are laid back and don't suck, but that's like finding the Holy Grail. Raiding, or team activities of any kind, have only ever been fun with friends.

[Meledelion]

Ideally, I'd find a guild of like-minded people who are laid back and don't suck, but that's like finding the Holy

Do you mean laid back as in calm or "casual"?

[Lane]

Do you mean laid back as in calm or "casual"?

Little bit of both. One of the things that made me fall in love with my WotLK guild was that the GM & raid leaders didn't chastise the raid or individual players, didn't make excessive demands of us, didn't push us too hard, always kept things light & fun, etc. We also didn't have an insane schedule and it wasn't a big deal if you didn't make every raid. We may have taken a little longer to get through the raid content, but we got there and it was a lot more enjoyable. Every other raiding guild I'd been a part of prior to that was the exact opposite.

[Achaman]

meh since all the "good" guilds/players left for other servers my server is pretty hopeless when it comes to wvw so queues are never a problem

[Maarius]

Fundamentally, I seem to lack whatever trait it is that causes this feeling of "pride" upon accomplishing a group task.

Teamspeak and the right people in it helps a lot. It's a social game after all.

- - - Updated - - -

Instanced raiding is not "classic" or "traditional" raiding.

Your'e right, I still have the perspective of WoW as being the first mmo, which isn't true of course.

- - - Updated - - -

Unfortunately, the only way to avoid the 'bads' is to join (what I consider) elitist guilds and I don't have the mentality for that either.

Well you start to show this elitist mentality yourself at the moment. Those 'bads' might be pretty decent people; they might have to go afk once in a while because their baby is crying or something like this. In Teamspeak we have some of these players and we absolutely respect the facts. It's not a problem for anyone if someone has to leave the keyboard or is physically handicapped and does what he does. The design of those open world bosses allows such "bads" and people should learn to respect that. As always, communication helps. I would miss some of those people if they would not participate.

[PACOX]

People are forgetting that this will primarily be a WvW patch. Edge of the Mist provides something for WvW players to do while waiting for queues or when BLs are empty. Is is really that awful for WvW players to get an update every once in awhile, espically for a problem that needed a solution months ago?

[Exroyal]

Edge of the mists is a map type i'd expect in an expansion so it wouldn't surprise me if in some interview ANet said "so we tried releasing some expansion worthy content in LW updates, like EotM for example." Well it pretty much works, as long as the interest is there and they somehow tie the big content with the current LW story

[Arlee]

People are forgetting that this will primarily be a WvW patch. Edge of the Mist provides something for WvW players to do while waiting for queues or when BLs are empty. Is is really that awful for WvW players to get an update every once in awhile, espically for a problem that needed a solution months ago?

It's not that people mind WvW people getting a patch. The issue was in December Areanet said the next for content patches would be Living Story patches to finish out Scarlet's arc. So them releasing in Edge of the Mists now feels weird because of how Arenanet set-up expectations. It is goo for WvW players, and it also means that Season 2 of WvW will probably be able to start sooner than if they had waited until the LS arc was done. That's good. It is just different than the expectation we were given going into this patch. Add in the fact three of the LS devs did a livestream a few weeks ago where they specifically said the 2/4 patch would answer a ton of questions about Scarlet and would give a lot more info about Kasmeer and Marjory... it's just not what was expected.

[Smitzelplix]

It's not that people mind WvW people getting a patch. The issue was in December Areanet said the next for content patches would be Living Story patches to finish out Scarlet's arc. So them releasing in Edge of the Mists now feels weird because of how Arenanet set-up expectations. It is goo for WvW players, and it also means that Season 2 of WvW will probably be able to start sooner than if they had waited until the LS arc was done. That's good. It is just different than the expectation we were given going into this patch. Add in the fact three of the LS devs did a livestream a few weeks ago where they specifically said the 2/4 patch would answer a ton of questions about Scarlet and would give a lot more info about Kasmeer and Marjory... it's just not what was expected.

They could have a lot of story be told through a story instance like they did this patch in Lion's Arch and in Scarlet's secret lair while all the pew pew, kill all the things game play is being done in the Edge of the Mists. Plus the Aether Blades are invading the mists and will be present in this new map so there's chances for some story info to be in there as well. We'll just have to wait and see what they do.

[Maarius]

It's not that people mind WvW people getting a patch. The issue was in December Areanet said the next for content patches would be Living Story patches to finish out Scarlet's arc. So them releasing in Edge of the Mists now feels weird because of how Arenanet set-up expectations.

who tells you that this is gonna be a WvW addition. The map itself could be a PvE map for this livng story update just like any other PvE Map we got, only one server and a lot of invading Scarlet-minions.

The EOTM WvW version will probably go live after this update.

[Lane]

Anet already has a history of 'forcing' PvErs into WvW for LS meta achievements as well as littering WvW up with LS PvE stuff. It would not surprise me at all if that is the case here as well.

[Fencers]

Anet already has a history of 'forcing' PvErs into WvW for LS meta achievements as well as littering WvW up with LS PvE stuff. It would not surprise me at all if that is the case here as well.

It's a device to reconcile opposing game modes. Warhammer, Dark Age of Camelot and Shadowbane also tried to get PVE & PVP to "mingle" as part of the core game functions.

Guild Wars 1 did it too. Probably most well known in Factions. Because, well, factions.

It is worth keeping in mind that WvW is meant to be casual PVP just like JQ and FA were in GW1. So it's not too new a device in genre or on Anet's end of development.