[Bored] [Druid] [Thread] Follow

I approve.

I'll still need a bribe of some sorts.

Naps are useless without an offer to babysit; but $10 could probably buy another Blue's Clues video, which is just as good.

At character level cap, the "best" equipment is statistically capped at the same point for everyone. So when I get my Legendary sword, it will have the same itemization (or total distributed stats) as Exotic ("best" gear type available). This means that I will not be locked out of content due to item level (to use the WoW reference) nor will I have to pointlessly grind for gear drops. I won't have to suffer several weeks in rBGs for honor, nor pug 30 instances to get to iLevel whatever before I can even queue for an instance.

Obtaining the statistically optimal gear isn't difficult, obtaining the rarest aesthetic gear is. These allows players who want to put in the time to get the rarest gear to be able to without forcing all other players to be sub-optimal (numbers wise).

For me, I'm just f'ing sick of pugging for weeks after taking a break for a tier just so the system will allow me into a raid or difficult content. Having to get onto a treadmill every tier which requires that I log in everyday to farm badgers in order to remain statistically competitive doesn't make me a happy cupcake. I do love hunting for rares (just got my AQ-archeology mount last night after farming since the launch), but I hate being disallowed from entering a raid because I have a weak ring or something.

Many people seem to prefer the idea of constantly getting gear that makes their character "more powerful" but fail to realize that that's not what is happening. As gear levels rise, so do end-boss HP and damage levels. We haven't gotten more relatively more powerful than anything since the expansion hit, only the numbers are larger. But I totally understand why people find entertainment from the illusion of greater power. It's fun to see big numbers pop up all over the place =)

Anyway, room enough for both games on the shelf I think! Cheers!

I get the problem and it is one of the things in WoW that annoyed me because gearing up alts sucked bigtime, however this is completely the wrong way of fixing/avoiding that for me. I don't care that much about aesthetics of my gear, I care about progressing with my character and improving my character. If there is no improving to be done, why should I bother trying to get that super rare gear? Even aside from the question of whether or not I find it good looking at all.

And a cynical tidbit at the end: People expect legendaries to be legendary and thus, better than the tier of gear below that. I'm half expecting devs to give in to that and buff legendary stats which gets you into the gear race anyway.

Other way 'round, bosses get stronger the further into a game/xpack you get so I want better gear to be able to beat them so I can get to the next boss who will require even better gear etc etc.
If that difficulty line is flat you lose the feeling of progression and accomplishment which is what MMO's are built around. If there's no progression to follow, what is going to be the carrot on the stick that gets you to keep playing for another month, year, 5 years?

I WANNA BADGERS!

19 posts since Saturday... I am disappoint, gusy. Usually you guys spit out two pages in the time it takes me to write a reply. What gives?

 

I do agree with you on the bit about legendaries. If legendaries aren't going to be legendary, we shouldn't have them at all. I don't see the point.

Now. Something that Therion and mine's guild from WoW states in their charter (or whatever you want to call it) is that gear is a means to an end. We raid because we enjoy figuring out the puzzle of how to down each boss. Sure, we all like getting gear, but it's not the focus of our raid groups in Sparkle Magic. Or at least, it's not supposed to be. I don't mind gear that makes you more awesome, it's just the incessant grinding to be able to raid that irritates me. I'd much rather play a game that focuses on making raid bosses challenging without pumping up a boss's HP pool or giving him an enrage timer, or whatever. Blizzard has been pretty good about keeping raids interesting, but there's too many other parts of the game that I just don't find fun anymore. The only way I could really raid right now anyways, is with LFR and @#%^ that sh*t. LFR is a cesspool, and it's not challenging in the least.

It fits this song better:

Major design flaw #1: 80% of players are not very skilled and never will be. Ever. All those players will effectively be locked out of content if the content is challenging to the more skilled players. Either that or the more skilled players are going to be bored.

Excellent point but, hey, a boy can dream right?

I am hoping that Arena Net sticks to the difficulty and not go nerf-bat crazy when the whining really gets going. There was some in beta, but nothing like it will be on wide release. I can only imagine how delicious the tears will be when some of the wow kids hit the gw2 dungeons... oh, the tears will flow like wine! DELICIOUS!!! mwahahaha!

Edit: And for the record I don't consider myself an ultra-elite player of anything. Slightly above average at best. Accordingly, I expect to be somewhat successful in difficult games but no more.

Edited, Aug 22nd 2012 3:50pm by TherionSaysWhat

I dunno, I feel like skill in video games is relative to education... in the sense that if people WANT to get better, they will and they can. There probably is some sort of cap to this of course, but I think if a game has higher standards of skill, and doesn't cave in to lower it, people will generally try to be better to meet that level. The same is true in education. Part of the problem that we have now is that the standards keep getting lowered, and when you do that students will only rise high enough to meet your standards and then fall short. If you keep your standards higher, students (and gamers i think) will reach farther to try and reach those standards. They may not reach the standards that you have for them, but they'll do a lot better than if you had kept your standards lower.

I dunno if that makes sense to anyone else, but it makes sense to me.

Hey, it's only been like 240 posts since I last stopped by. You all need to post moar.

So what's going on with everyone?

That's ridiculously awesome. But I was disappointed because I didn't get to be a 1920s mobster.

For education, I agree with you. For MMO's, not so much since if the game has high standards and too many people can't meet them, they're not going to keep trying, they'll just move on to the next game that does give them the sense of accomplishment they're looking for instead of getting frustrated.

There's no reason for Blizzard to nerf D3 because there's no need for anyone to play Inferno so if some people never make it through, that'd be fine. They don't need to keep people playing either yet they still nerfed content (twice now) to cater to the people who couldn't make it. And you're just plain wrong on the last part, the casual players are the prime target for the store. Look at games like Champion's Online, the one Maz was talking about earlier and the other fifty superhero MMO's, they're all lacking endgame and they all cater to the casuals who just enjoy making their characters look cool, they also all have shops to buy more looks from.

They do want those players buying items in the cash shop, though, and buying expansions, and bringing in word-of-mouth referrals. I think putting people on equal-footing with respect to gear is a good idea for PvP. For PvE, I think capping gear means you're capping character progression, and at a certain point people will reach that carrot, find a look for their character that they like, and say, "What next?"

Sounds about right, yeah.

Whoops.
The casual players that are not competative for that hard content are the financial target for the shop which is their main profit center.

I mistyped erhmegerd!

Diablo 3 will rely on their auction house income which I imagine requires as many players farming inferno as possible, no?

Other than that, made baby back ribs last night and discussed where to put our carboys for beer making'. No still this year but making beer and the garden are great (mainly due to my awesome lady). What's up with everyone else?

WHOA whoa whoa there big fella. Hold your horses and tell me right this f'ing second where I can get the omgwtfbbq pink thong of doom. I needs it!

I got the feeling that the inferno nerf was to draw back people who weren't logging in anymore to farm, and therefore stimulate the real money AH. But I'm often wrong and this could be one of those times. Honestly, I never got to that difficulty due to wanting to smash my bored as hell face into a wall while trying to suffer the "storyline" the third time. Face smashing makes playing hard so I'm leet, right? =P

Edited, Aug 23rd 2012 10:22am by TherionSaysWhat

The people who quit quit because it wsn't challenging enough, for the most part. At least from what I've gathered. So I highly doubt those will be back.


And yeah, I don't know what it is about Diablo but it keeps me entertained. Worked for D2 too. That said, if you care about storyline, Diablo is not a good game for you, it only barely has more story than Mario Kart.

But what did you expect from Diablo? It's not exactly known for it's stellar storytelling. I expected nothing more from the game that to give me various entertaining ways to hack and slash my way through millions of zombies/demons/teddybears and that's exactly what I've gotten.

And so far, I've played through the entire story.. euh... about 15 times or so.

Edited, Aug 24th 2012 8:28am by Aethien

Diablo has been the Gold Standard™ for gear grinds for decades.

Already had it, pretty good yeah. I like their West Coast IPA too.

Well, you get a notification.

Moving in two days!
Girlfriend left earlier today already, but I'm still stuck here for two days. Two days of beer, and Final Fantasy VIII.
Yeah, I started that game again, after years of it dusting on the shelf. I'm on disc 2 currently, and so far the hardest part has been climbing down a ladder. Then I remembered it's better to use the arrows instead of the ''joystick''-thingies.