Curse

Lews · Mar 22, 2005, 02:04 AM // 02:04

Gwen was great, except the fact I thought she was my friend. I gave her a flute and let her follow me. I rescued her from the otherside of the river. And what does she do?

"Lews Von Xanten, do you want to die?" And then the next thing I know, I am burning. I wonder which admin was in charge of that change of scenery. Was hilarious.

thaumaturge · Mar 22, 2005, 02:08 AM // 02:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by neoflame

You shouldn't really be soloing in GW anyway.

I think this is a problem, I realise that the game is not meant for solo players, and it's more enjoyable as a team but some people will want to solo, why not make this otherwise great game even better for those who want to go it alone? They let you grind if you want, the let you quest if you want, the let you pvp, they let you gvg, they let you do coop, they let you dye your clothes! But they stop you from soloing

worthless · Mar 22, 2005, 02:12 AM // 02:12

Who ever said it above: YES! i would love it if you could do internal gvg matches, where you could battle your friends in little 4v4 matches over and over thatd be so fun

for the soloing, that would be interesting if they could scale the difficulty depending on amount of party members, i dont know how hard this would be for developers but im sure its something theyve already considered

Chev of Hardass · Mar 22, 2005, 02:24 AM // 02:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by thaumaturge

I think this is a problem, I realise that the game is not meant for solo players, and it's more enjoyable as a team but some people will want to solo, why not make this otherwise great game even better for those who want to go it alone? They let you grind if you want, the let you quest if you want, the let you pvp, they let you gvg, they let you do coop, they let you dye your clothes! But they stop you from soloing

No they don't stop you from soloing. It is just beyond your current ability. If GW was suddenly easy enough to solo, then the group effort would make it too easy. I like retrying an area with the same group and getting to know them, teach them, and learn from them. This is fun. If you make it possible to solo, the havok that a group of four well trained Guild Warriors would bring on the Charr would keep me from playing the game. Make it hard, make it chalenging, make me cry

, and when I win I want to celebrate

. Otherwise, I might as well just surf the internet

.

If you want to solo go get Diablo 2, Champions of Norath 1/2, ?WoW? Come on this is GUILD Wars not solo wars.

You could alway get good enough that you can solo the game. Then you would be a real hardass

Dragonne · Mar 22, 2005, 02:36 AM // 02:36

Well, saying that you shouldn't solo isn't really the answer.

Making soloers understand that they need to use Henchmen is the first part of the solution.

The second part is some rudimentary control of those henchmen that NEEDS to be implemented before release.

The third and final part is to rebalance the Henchmen's skills/levels to match the increase in difficulty in the seared ascalon areas that was done.

Once all that is done, player soloing will be more feasable. Single character soloing on the other hand will likely never happen. On that one I'm going to have to pull the "GUILD Wars" card. The game is meant to be played as a team, even if that team is only one player and a bunch of henchies.

thaumaturge · Mar 22, 2005, 02:47 AM // 02:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chev of Hardass

No they don't stop you from soloing. It is just beyond your current ability. If GW was suddenly easy enough to solo, then the group effort would make it too easy. I like retrying an area with the same group and getting to know them, teach them, and learn from them. This is fun. If you make it possible to solo, the havok that a group of four well trained Guild Warriors would bring on the Charr would keep me from playing the game. Make it hard, make it chalenging, make me cry

, and when I win I want to celebrate

. Otherwise, I might as well just surf the internet

.

If you want to solo go get Diablo 2, Champions of Norath 1/2, ?WoW? Come on this is GUILD Wars not solo wars.

You could alway get good enough that you can solo the game. Then you would be a real hardass

You could solo and group in Diablo 2, it had a nifty bit of code in it that would essentially ramp the hit points and xp of monsters up as more people joined, so it would be just as difficuilt no matter how many players except you would find it tough to solo with lots of people playing. All I am asking is code that ramps down the hit points and even the xp(so no leveling) and even the drops when you have a one member party. So while you can do it alone, it's much more advantageous to group up. It will still be a challenge to group up for sure (I love it too) but I still say promoting some more solo aspects while not altering groups would be better.

PawnBoy · Mar 22, 2005, 02:48 AM // 02:48

I have to say that I'm all for being able to solo. Besides the fact that this is not, in fact, "SoloWars", there are days when I just don't feel like putting up with the grind of gathering a party, or have had some bad experiences with disconnects and un-loyal party members recently, and sometimes just want to go exploring or gather the last ingredient for a quest and don't want to trouble anyone. I mean, I don't want to piss anyone off by gathering what I want and then leaving them.

I don't really want to have to control the henchmen, I mean, they are supposed to be their own being, and emulate a flesh and blood teammate. I just think that in some cases the henchmen "could" use a little beefing.
I also know someone who I'm trying to "sell" the game too, and he refuses to buy it unless it's possible to solo it with henchmen at an equal level to a successful party. Though I wouldn't mind having a little more trouble than with a flesh party, it'd be nice if it were possible to do everything with henchmen with a respectable amount of work.

Kiwi · Mar 22, 2005, 02:49 AM // 02:49

I want to see the DP go away from pets. It's really annoying when your dumb AI pet goes around and gets itself killed then you suffer for it.

Burodsx · Mar 22, 2005, 03:16 AM // 03:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kiwi

I want to see the DP go away from pets. It's really annoying when your dumb AI pet goes around and gets itself killed then you suffer for it.

I totally Agree with removing Death Penality for when pet's die.

I'm trying to "SNIPE" off a huge char seige force and my STUPID #%(* pet runs around about 3 cliffs and now is head to head with 20 Char. (Talking about the mission right after the Ruins of Surmia)

I Can't help it my Pet is dumb. You can't help it if your pet is dumb. Please remove the dumb death penality.

Tur713 · Mar 22, 2005, 03:29 AM // 03:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by =WM= Azrael

-Having an auction area to either A) sell items here only or B) leave the item and come back for either the item or the gold i.e. theres an auctioneer in old ascalon. you leave a hammer there with a minimum bid of 20 gp and say 24 hours. You come back in 25 hours and pick up your 50 gold as the highest bid in that 24 hour span was another character who paid the auctioneer 60 gold and walked away with a hammer, the auctioneer took his cut, and the player got 1.5 times more then he expected. Also, no one has to see the players repeating the same crap over and over in town.

Let's face it, some people still wouldn't go to a specific trade area they'd still fill up the chat with their WTS, WTB, WTT, crap. What we really need and what many people have been saying is to add a specific trade chat for towns that will go between districts.
Was it just me or did they remove the "all" chat in between districts, because whenever I replied to party offers and things, they'd always end up in the same district. Was this a change of amazing coincidence? I did prefer to get chat from the other districts.

Also, I have a few PvP ideas. There should be a feature where about 100 random people go into a huge Roman-like arena and fight, gaining exp from those they kill and possibly even awards according to their rank. When they die, they could either have the option to leave or watch from the side, others could just sit and watch too, maybe even a betting system could be implemented to place bets on who you think will win and have odds based on their win/loss rate and average ranking overall.
Another fun PvP would be similar to this, but have a few arenas that are just running constantly, people teleport in as others die. Have this be a continuing fight fest. If a rank system were to be implemented for this, (or just something for personal record) it could record most time alive and most kills.

EDIT: I haven't done any PvP yet, if anything similar exists, PM me and I'll edit this to more apply to the current things in place.

Kyraith Mentara · Mar 22, 2005, 03:32 AM // 03:32

They should add in better pet control with stay, follow, attack commands

John Thomas · Mar 22, 2005, 03:33 AM // 03:33

It happened again...my fellow travellers and I were near the end of our journey when POOF! one of our traveling companions (our primary Monk) vanished into thin air...nothing left but a whisp of...of...well...nothing, just a blue tag where a red one used to be...dangit! Abandoned again...*grumbles*

I think it rude when it's abandonment, and sad when it's a disconnected user. When a party loses a character...NOT one that dies, but just leaves...I think it would be TOTALLY WONDEROUS if a henchman of the same class appeared in their stead...even if it were a signet of "Arnok the Bumbler had to go get the kids from daycare"...Henchies can hold their own in most circumstances and I'd rather have a level 10 "bot" than a level 17 "see ya later gotta go"...

Netrol · Mar 22, 2005, 03:46 AM // 03:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by leoam

I think it would be nice to be able to use the alt key to see your current team mates when putting a group together (same way as when in battles). This helps when you are in an area with alot of people and just want to move close to your group also. And/or be able to click on teammates in the group box so you can just move to them that way also (again same as when in battle).

EDIT: sorry, i'll make a new post for this.

In public area click on team mate name in box press space bar. You will run to your team mate.

Pulpmill · Mar 22, 2005, 03:57 AM // 03:57

This was my first BWE and I really enjoyed the game a lot. Three straight nights of staying up to 4 in the morning. Woo.

I have played WoW and I own CoH, and Guild Wars is by far the most beautiful, visually stunning of the three. It was a real pleasure just to walk around in the world. I liked the PvE combat too, and once I figured out some hotkeys, PvP too.

However, having played all three games, there are things from the others that I missed here, and I'd like to suggest implementing GW versions. Most of them have to do with ease of communication.

1 - It would be nice to hear a tone when someone in your party or guild writes to you. There was so much emote chatter going on in the chat window that I often would miss my team-mates talking to me. A little beep would warn me to look at the window.

2 - The names of party members should be a different color than the rest of the population. It was hard to pick out my pals in the crowded cities.

3 - Word balloons over people's heads when they're talking. I know this doesn't make as much design sence here as it does in the comic book world of CoH, but it was very difficult to know who was talking and if they were near me or far away. It made the cities feel very 'silent.' Maybe it would be more "Guild Wars" if scrolls appeared above their heads.

4 - Add a right click drop down menu when you click on other players so you can invite them to your team or add them as friends without having to type out long, bizarre fantasy names that are way too easy to mispell. My in-game name was Neimos Sempramortes. I pity the players who tried to add me as friend.

5 - Allow more customization of the character's looks. The faces and hairstyles were great. Better modeled than either WoW of CoH. But in the game, you never get close enough to another player for those subtleties to read very well. Even though I went for the most contrasty choices I could, I still had a hard time picking myself out from all the other warriors who looked just like me. And when I put my helmet on, my hairstyle went away and I looked even more like the other warriors. Even if it was only allowing us to chose the color of our clothes at the begining it might make a difference.

Picking out your pals is one reason for this, the other is bonding with your character. In CoH, once you're done with creating your character, you are that character. You know how they talk, feel, think and react. They have a personality. I know this is more fighting game than RPG but I would enjoy the action more if I felt I was an individual rather than another clone in brown leather. And buying dyes seemed to me more annoying than challenging. Why do I have to pay to be an individual?

6 - This is a foolish nerdy rant and feel free to skip it, but.... The character design! Yikes! Like I said beautifully rendered, but if you are trying to create an internally consistant fantasy world, you should pick a time period/historical style and stick with it. These guys look like they were put together by 6 different design teams who weren't allowed to talk to each other. The Warrior is Roman Legion, the Monk is Wu-Shu lite, the Mesmerist is Harliequin Romance Regency, the Elementalist is Louis the 14th's hairdresser, and the Necromancer is wearing Goth Club vinyl. They shouldn't look the same, by any means, but they should all look like they came from the same culture. Or at least from the same guy's sketch pad.

Okay, ranting done. Please don't let it affect your judgement of the other suggestions, which I think would actually improve the game play. Thanks.

Ignotus · Mar 22, 2005, 04:33 AM // 04:33

"Say" "City/District" Channels
Need /say & /city or district channels. There is no ability to speak to those in your vicinity without spamming the entire district. If you need to spam the district, use /city or /district. Also need a /trade or a trade district.

Collectors
There needs to be some item details for collector rewards. The collector may offer 3-5 items for you to choose from, and the only info provided is the item's name. I would like to hover over the item and see what it does. On the topic of collectors, please add the item they collect, along with the rewards, to the quest log. It wouldn't hurt to also add which creature(s) drop the items. "I would imagine that bandits use [worn belts] to carry their tools". I didn't see a single "worn belt" or "colossal jawbone" in any of my travels in pre-searing Ascalon.

Looking For Group
LFG tool, similar to EQ1. I would like to enable "looking for group" and have a flag of some sort show visually. It would also be quite handy to have an actual interface for viewing and browsing groups that need players or players that need groups. EQ1 handled this better than any other MMO I've played.

Weapon Stat Details
Need to be able to view weapon speed or DPS (dmg per second). It's somewhat of a guessing game when it comes to deciding on which weapon to use. Having all weapons of the same type attack at the same speed seems a little lazy too.

Auto Follow
Need the ability to type /follow or /fol to auto-follow an NPC or player character. Have a command system that is intelligent enough to determine that /fol = /follow if there are no other commands that start with "fol". This should apply to all "slash" commands.

Invite Command
I also favor a /invite command. If "Guild" Wars is truly meant for guilds and groups, then make it easier to form them.

Show Players on Map
Friends or allies show up on the map when you go to the overview map. This is very useful in World of Warcraft. If you need to find someone in a large, highly populated district, you could /invite them, and then see them on your map.

Area Switching Confirmation
Some sort of notification that a party member has left the area and a confirmation for the person that does the leaving. I had someone help me open the northern gate in pre-searing Ascalon, and then they promptly went back through the gate to get back to town. They took me with them. They had no idea that it would happen that way. They needed a confirmation that they were going to drag the group with them. I could have used a confirmation letting me choose to leave the group and stay where I was. There already is a similar confirmation displayed when a group member attempts to map travel. It warns you that you will leave your group and asks if you still wish to do it.

Targeted Emotes
If I target "player b" and type /laugh, on my screen it should say "You laugh at player b". Player b should see "Ignotus laughs at you". Everyone else should see "Ignotus laughs at player b".

Bank
Bank, or other type of storage is needed. At level 10 I had my original inventory slots and one 5 slot pouch. My inventory was always very tight.

Mail
A mail system would be great! World of Warcraft is the only MMO I've played that has on, and it's very useful. It seems to require a lot of resources on Blizzard's part though, so I'm not sure if it's feasible for a game with no subscription.

Party Window
It needs to provide more info than simply the HP of the other members. It should also provide the energy of the other members at the very least.

Loot Distribution
The ability to "pass" on a dropped item that has been reserved for you would make inventory management less of a hassle.

Who Command
I never found the equivalent of a /who command. If it doesn't exist, please implement one. This is the only MMORPG that I've ever played that doesn't have a /who command. I would like to see what level my guildmates are and where they are located at the very least.

Target Command
This would help with finding a specific NPC or player in a crowded area. It also helps with finding specific mobs or PvP targets. If someone says "target the monk", you should be able to type "/tar player name" and have it target them. If there is only one person/NPC in the area whose name starts with "ric", then "/tar ric" should be sufficient.

Group Window Location
I solo'd all of the pre-searing sections. I moved my group window to the bottom right corner of the screen, and I had the mini map in the top right. Every time I entered a new area, the group window would move back to the default location. This was annoying.

Ignore Command
Is there a /ignore command? I want to put everyone who randomly invites me onto the ignore list.

Academy
I had no clue what the academy was. If it gave me any warning, I missed it. I was standing around talking to my guild while my groupmate was getting owned. We lost the encounter. I didn't choose my partner, and I had no idea that PvP was involved.

Linking Items
Add the ability to ctrl or shift click an item to link it to the current chat window.

Info In Pre-searing Ascalon - Gwen

Quote:

there's no real mention of how if you give her [Gwen] a working flute, or the red flowers, or the cape, these too will achieve an in-game goal, plus they are good training.

I had no clue that this accomplished anything. I gave her a new flute. I also gave her a couple of flowers. She kept wanting to follow me. Does any of this accomplish anything? There was a cape that could be purchased from an outfitter, but I wasn't sure if it was for her or not, plus I couldn't afford the 200g for it. This type of information was definitely lacking.

Off Topic
This last part has nothing to do with the topic other than I saw it while reading it. Either this person does not understand the definition of the word "mob" in MMORPGs, or they wish that it wasn't used this way.

Quote:

The term 'mob' is already plural people. A single mob is a single GROUP of creatures, not just a single creature. Learn your english grammar please.

Anyway, here's what it means, and it is singular.

Quote:

Short for a "Mobile Object". The term commonly used in MUDs and MMORPGs. Denotes a non-playable character that is usually attackable and often a monster of some sort.

One monster is referred to as a "mob". Blizzard calls them "creeps", but most people call them "mobs". It has nothing to do with the official definition of the word mob.

Chev of Hardass · Mar 22, 2005, 05:16 AM // 05:16

When being invited to join a group the rest of the group should be visible not just the leader.

Nuf Said IMOH

Silmor · Mar 22, 2005, 05:26 AM // 05:26

I'd like a button to toggle forced walk, i.e. ignore the bounding boxes of enemies/friends and just walk to where was clicked. I use mouse targetting for all of my movement and combat, and moving into the middle of a group of four enemies (for melee-distance area of effect nuking) was sometimes quite difficult due to not being able to direct my character to walk to 'behind' the enemy.

The Nature Ritual changes seem very nice (no more issues with death penalty discouraging their use), but the summoned spirit was so big it often interfered with targetting, or just blurred sight (I tend to play at a low angle though). Additionally, the glowing ring around the spirit seems rather pointless, since it does not indicate the spell effect range at all (the actual range being much much larger) and stacked nature rituals can soon become a blinding bother. For instance in the Borlis Pass mission the packs of Shiverpeak Longbows liked casting Winter without deciding who would do it, leading to four stacked casts of Winter with mostly overlapping effect areas, needlessly slowing down computers.

Given the intense effect accompanying nature rituals, it would be nice to see some effect on your pet when activating beast mastery shouts; currently only a subtle green field shows up beneath the caster, no indication on the pet whatsoever. A green upward arrow on the pet (similar to enchantments/hexes/conditions) would additionally be a nice reminder that the shout is still active.

The change to selling items took some getting used to, which led to some unfortunate sales at the start of the BWE - the old drag and drop system (or with insta-sell on drop) seems more secure. Also, pressing enter seemed to confirm a sell as well, which was rather tricky when trying to ask a guild member if they wanted a certain item - enter usually opening the chat prompt.

An off-character storage of any sort would be nice. The diversity of crafting materials and more recently the creature-specific drops (mergoyle skull, grawl necklace etc.) meant the more permanent (intended for collecting, not salvaging or selling) part of my inventory quickly got cluttered, eventually leading me to give up on the collector quests altogether and just selling the creature-specific drops for 1g a piece. Additionally, being able to receive even 100g for each completed set of creature-specific drops would give a nice incentive to keep them around - currently there were a lot of collectors that offered starter weapons or items my character could not use very well, a money option in those cases would give the idea the collecting did not go to waste.

The added emotes are nice, but it would help if the action was not written out in public areas (since they have little purpose there other than amusing the bored), thus cutting down on the chat spam. A filter to block them out would work as well.

An option to toggle the guild capes would be greatly appreciated. My guild mostly plays PvE, and we know which guild we are in already. In a weird moment where the guild information didn't load for my monk, I was suddenly able to appreciate the look of the backside of the armour, seeing it for the first time. It would be quite natural for RP'ing guilds to desire something similar; during PvP guild capes could be locked back into place as they function in some part to indicate who is who. About this however: we tried out some PvP at the start of the BWE, and were facing a guild in the red team that had a mostly blue guild cape, leading to some confusion instead of making things clearer. I wouldn't know what to suggest for this however, since the guild cape design is the pride of many guilds, and forcing it to any colour would not likely meet with their approval.

A fellow guild member (on dialup) had some issues with the loading screen - he spent a lot of quality time there (which is understandable and accepted given the streaming content phenomenom), but was quite annoyed by the constant 100% processor time taken during the downloading, effectively rendering him unable to do anything else on his computer in the thirty minutes of waiting. Ofcourse after the game is released downloading will be much less of a problem even for those on dialup, but reducing the processor load during downloading might be something worth looking into.

When rebalancing skills, please take into account that it affects mission difficulty as well - the reduced cast time on the Necromancer corpse animation spells was a welcome change, but especially the hordes of zombie warlocks in the Gates of Kryta and d'Allessio Seaboard missions loved every bit of it, quickly conjuring up masses of minions to swarm over the unsuspecting players if they did nothing to stop them (such as removing the corpses with soul feast or casting Frozen Soil to lock them in place). If players stopped their raising of minions the mission was suddenly quite easy, if they didn't they'd soon find themselves dead, and suddenly mission success relied on the fate of a few corpses on the ground, leaving the actual scripted boss battles just an afterthought.

Finally I'd like to say the mission challenge was great, regardless of those slight inbalances caused by skill rebalancing. Groups charging in without second thought or coordination got punished, and this felt quite right. For certain areas in the Gates of Kryta and Wilds mission, we had to devise careful strategies to avoid facing too many enemies at once (absolutely love the patrolling enemies - the sense of urgency when fighting one pack as another slowly approaches is great), and just discussing these things was a very entertaining activity already. Sometimes when we were unable to complete a mission we explored a little, finding new skill trainers in remote locations that offered new skills to give us that extra edge to succeed where we failed before. Pet death penalty seemed right as well - those players taking Charm Animal along only for a cheap second body were finally forced to notice some adverse effect.

Tur713 · Mar 22, 2005, 05:42 AM // 05:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silmor

Pet death penalty seemed right as well - those players taking Charm Animal along only for a cheap second body were finally forced to notice some adverse effect.

I never thought about this before. THis is a very good point, but the AI should be boosted more in this scenario because right now the penalty sucks if your pet runs off to kill anything that it sees moving.

astzzz · Mar 22, 2005, 06:15 AM // 06:15

I probably should read the entire thread, but:

Perhaps rename soul reaping to something else, and instead of energy per creature death, it gives an arrow of energy regen? For instance, from levels 1 to 4 you get 1 extra arrow of energy regen, 5 to 8 is another, and 9 to 12 a third.

If ranger rituals could undergo such a drastic change, why cant this? This way it would be useful in PvE and PvP, or am I crazy (ie too powerful or worse than it is in it's current state)?

Beelzebubba · Mar 22, 2005, 06:32 AM // 06:32

Quote: