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Tharsul.2654

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  1. After playing the re-balanced rifle mechanist for a bit, and seeing how the damage output is on the dummy and in different pieces of content, I've come to a peculiar conclusion which will sound insane at first, but hear me out till the end; it feels like an acceptable amount of damage, and the game would play better overall if all the classes had their auto attacks buffed up into the same territory. If everyone's auto attacks had a similar damage output, the resulting skill floor would allow average players to have a fighting chance in endgame content, allowing them to focus on the mechanics of the fight without compromising their ability to bring down the boss. This plays into an overarching idea I've had with regard to endgame PvE group content, which is that the way GW2 handles endgame group content is very toxic to the average player, simply by the nature of the overall combat balance among the classes. If you need to be playing specific classes at their peak potential while wearing the fanciest pants with the shiniest upgrades, in order to simply clear certain content at all, it is toxic to anyone who isn't playing that specific class, and doubly so to people who do but cant play at their peak for whatever reason. For example, here's a more "friendly," way to design the engagement: if the entire group manages to stay alive the whole time, clearing all the boss mechanics and skill checks without dying at all, a group of any classes, in spec appropriate exotics, should be able to clear the fight on auto attack within the timer. But it should be really tight, like, if a single person goes down for more than 10 seconds, it should compromise the fight, if that's really the level the group is playing at. This would work best if there were scaling rewards, with almost nothing for barely scraping by within the timer, and progressively better rewards for completing the engagement faster, to encourage and reward high level gameplay. If things were laid out in that way, the game would be encouraging everyone to participate while still rewarding people who can perform better, instead of discouraging participation by gating any rewards behind high skill gameplay. Sure, that makes the bragging rights of being able to simply complete the content less valuable, but instead, people will be able to gloat about how much faster they could kill the boss. This would work exceptionally well if we had public leaderboards for fractals, raids, and strikes which showed the group composition and names of players who finish the content fast enough, should they choose to provide them, especially if the leaderboard also shows the available rewards for completing the content within certain time ranges. lol, anyhow, I'm sure there are a ton of problems with this that haven't crossed my mind, but anyway, that's the extent of the idea so far, thanks for sitting through my TED talk.
  2. I realize the term pvp puts up red flags for a lot of people; please keep in mind that the only reason I used the term is because the pvp/wvw menu systems which are used to monitor our stats, queue for battles, and enter the instances seem like they could be re-used to queue for races, teleport to race instances, and keep track of best lap times per-course and other personal stats. I want to be very clear, I am not advocating for a system to attack other players during the race, that would basically be adding a new game mode, and would require balancing and the development of new mechanics; I am simply advocating a system to streamline and enhance the existing races, to increase player participation in an incredibly fun type of event which is difficult to enjoy with other players in it's current state. I agree that a fee would discourage players, which is why a fee should only be implemented on the structured racing league, with no charge to people using the other functions of the system, such as teleports to race courses for time trials, private race instances for guild events, and unstructured instanced races for people who just want to race for fun. Payment should be an option, not a requirement, just like with the rest of the game. I agree completely, and had actually already mentioned all of that in my original post :P When the races first came out, I was on a laptop from 2011 that could barely handle the burden of all the shiny people and their mounts with the game on the lowest settings, so I am well aware of the limitations posed by the current race structure, and instances with participant limits seems like the best way to even the playing field for players on older/lower-spec machines.
  3. I think betting would require some way to spectate the racers, like with the moa-races at Dragon Bash, tho if that would slow down the game for anybody, it would defeat the purpose of the instanced races, so idk if that would really be the best solution. Another option I can imagine would be speculative betting, where we would have a panel in the racing menu where we can see the names and stats of racers who had signed up for the tournament, where we could choose to place bets on them, bets which would then be held till the racer's next race and paid out or garnered depending on the race's results. With such a system, the person who placed the bet would receive either a payout or announcement of their racer's loss when the racer finishes their next race. In the end, betting is prolly the least important part of this racing league concept, but it would be a fun bit of flair which would add to the character of the world, and should appeal to all the ecto-gamblers out there.
  4. That's definitely a good idea; since I don't know anything about how to design a structured mode like that, I'd been putting off thinking about how the ranked tournament would work, but that sounds like a solid basis to build from. I especially like the idea of the top 20 racers getting something more than the participation reward everyone would receive, like a dye-selection pack of their choice and racing-trophy junk items to be sold for gold or something, kinda like the rewards from sandstorm and ecto-gambling. In my original post, I mentioned that the racers should pay an entry fee to be collected into a prize pool which should be divvied up among the top racers, and after thinking about it for a while, I feel the top 5 should get that reward, with 1st getting 50% of the total pool, 2nd getting 25%, 3rd getting 13%, 4th getting 7%, and 5th getting 5%, or something to that effect. On top of the prize pool winnings, the 1st place winner should get a title to lord over everyone with, like "Grand Racing Champion" or something, as well as a bunch of AP , and maybe some gems. It would be really cool if the grand champ could get a great big racing trophy guild-hall decoration or something, tho a decoration like that would prolly depend on whether or not there's an asset to re-purpose for it, otherwise the folks at Anet would need to make a new model and textures, which might be asking a lot on top of all the other crazy ideas we've put forward.
  5. I would imagine free-to-players would be allowed to use mounts for free, just without the masteries, kind of like how we can use our character's elite specs in PvP even if we haven't trained them yet, and allowing the f2pers to use mounts in the races without getting the expansions would basically just be in game advertising for PoF and the living world, showing them how awesome the mounts can be first hand. As for race courses, I had simply imagined instances made of the existing courses, with no monsters or npcs in them other than the npc racers and race coordinators, that way all Anet needs to do is draw circles on a map, turn them into instances, set monsters not to spawn in them, then teleport racers in when they're ready to race. I would say Gourdon the racing choya would be a good mascot, but he's one of the racers, so I think Petey would be the de-facto mascot, tho it would be cool if Gorrik were hanging out by the race tracks to give tips to new racers about how to use the beetle properly, kinda like how "Masked Racer F" gives us tips about the content of the courses.
  6. That's understandable, AP is important to a lot of players, and to promote competitive racing it shouldn't be too difficult to make the rewards similarly enticing, with daily racing achievements for AP, reasonable rewards of race medallions and karma potions for participation, and superior rewards of gold and rare items for winning. Plus, we should keep in mind that whenever a new game-mode or event-type is released, there tends to be a month of increased rewards for participation in that new mode/event; when they first released the beetle racing, and it had those daily achievements for the first month, all of the tracks were as busy as the festival tracks tend to be, with as many racers as the map could handle in some cases. Also, to keep in line with the rewards from the other competitive modes, it wouldn't be out of place for race participation to count towards some of the PvP/WvW reward tracks, which would in turn give some of the players who prefer PvE+racing over PvP a chance to get some of the items which are only attainable via the PvP reward tracks, like the legacy armor track and the miniature mist-champion tracks, although it would make perfect sense if things like the Gift of Battle track and the PvP finisher tracks were missing or locked, since they wouldn't really be in line with the racing theme. My general point being that the existing standards for rewards from similar game modes and events would likely be enough for people to want to participate in competitive races, especially if there are titles for winners and icons next to competitive racer's names; bragging rights can be a strong motivator for some people.
  7. Sigh You're probably right about a portal device being the solution they'll choose if they decide to fix the problem. I just hope they see this thread and become inspired by the idea, cause another alarmclock+teleporter seems like an incredibly boring solution by comparison to a structured racing league.
  8. The race at dragon bash may be lucrative, but with the number of people I've seen repeatedly doing the time trial alongside me, which doesn't give a reward after the daily, it appears that people are also racing for the sake of racing, so the popularity of the races at festivals feels to me like proof that there IS an audience for this kind of content, but proves they need a more consistent method of organizing. The way I see it, the glaring problem with the open world races as they currently stand is the fact that there's no convenient in-game way to meet up for a race when one wants to, which prevents the racers who might want to race from being able to unless they've memorized when the races start, or coordinated with other people and waited until the race resets. The addition of a menu which would allow players to queue up for a race without interrupting regular gameplay would allow people to race whenever they wanted to, rather than being required to wait on a poorly defined schedule to participate in a race.
  9. The only reason I had the idea in the first place was after seeing how absurdly busy the current festival race has been at dragon bash; if even half that many people participate in a competitive league, it will be a lively place.
  10. I dont like pvp very much either, that simply felt like the easiest way to try to describe my idea, I'll be changing the title to better reflect that once my account is permitted to do so. I agree completely about seeing people go raging thru the openworld courses, which is why the instances would be for the ranked competitive matches and private groups, with the unranked matches and time trials simply being a teleport to the openworld courses.
  11. That's a good point about pvp in the title being potentially confusing, do you know if it's possible for me to change the title? I've been reading stuff on the forum for quite a while, but this is the first thread I've posted, so I don't actually know the features yet, and I cant find an edit button for the original post.
  12. Greetings, fellow racing enthusiasts! I apologize in advance for the incredibly long post, TL;DR is at the bottom I have had an idea for a competitive mount-racing league, based on the framework and functionality of the pvp interface. I have tried to keep all these ideas within the scope of existing game features as I understand them, with the understanding that it is often easier to create a Frankenstein's monster of a game mode instead of attempting to create something new, buggy, and untested from scratch. The idea would be to use the same variety of menu as the pvp menu to allow racers to queue for a competitive race in instances of the existing races, or to teleport to the normal tracks in the open world for time trials and more friendly races. The use of the pvp menu as a framework should allow for the tracking of the player's stats, such as number of races played, races won, favorite course, best times on each course, etc. With the ability to track stats, it should be possible to have a ranking list akin to the ranked pvp league, with sub-leagues to keep players matched up with opponents of their own skill level (bronze league, silver league, gold, platinum, etc.) and it would also make it possible to have a staggered starting pack, where the best racers start at the back of the pack as a handicap to give less capable racers a fighting chance at improving their rank, and in turn serving to increase the difficulty of the race for the more experienced players who are more likely to be able to handle the difference in starting position. Much like the pvp menu, there could be multiple game modes to choose from, with an unranked mode for people who want to race for fun, time trials for people who want to practice, a ranked competitive league with tournaments and prize pools for the hardcore racers out there, and private racing instances for people who want to have guild-only races or who want to practice by themselves. For unranked and ranked races, the menu would use the same queuing system as the pvp menu, where it prompts the players in the queue with a ready check when enough of them have entered, complete with the choice between a number of different races and the spinner to select from among the selected choices at the end. If an entry fee is implemented for ranked competitive tournament races, say 5-10g, the fees could all pay into a grand pool which would be divvied up proportionately among the final winners of the sub-leagues at the end of the tournament season, with higher tier leagues getting greater percentages of the total prize pool, with the intent to serve as an incentive for the racers to be more competitive by requiring them to put something of value on the line in order to participate, although I believe all racers should receive a participation prize, racing medallions at the very least, to facilitate the last point I will be making. One common problem with the big races we have during events is that the high number of players can cause problems with the graphics of the game on older computers, so in an effort to keep the participant's computers from becoming overburdened by too many players with sparkly infusions and shiny mount skins, it would be a good idea to limit the number of racers that may participate in a competitive race to something like 10-15 players, which would in turn decrease queue times between races, as fewer participants would be needed to start the race. Another measure to facilitate the best possible game performance for the participants would be to perform the races in instanced versions of the existing race courses, to keep other players and unnecessary npcs from cluttering the system memory, allowing for the racers on older systems to perform unburdened by the majority of memory bottlenecks which may prevent them from enjoying the busy races we have right now. And finally, the most potentially-controversial idea associated with this concept: spectator betting. To start off with, I would like to point out that gambling is already relatively commonplace in Tyria, with destabilized ecto gambling and sandstorm in many major cities, as well as betting on the outcome of the Dragon-Bash Moa-races. There is even an in-game precedent for betting on player races, which we know of from the npc chatter in Amnoon before the race starts, where a skritt spectator places a bet of, "all my shinies," on the skritt racer, only to be denied by another npc who says the skritt isn't allowed to bet anymore because they, "never want to part with their shinies." In an effort to keep players from attempting to rig the races by intentionally losing, racers may not bet on a race they are participating in. The only thing that's missing from the races to make them feel more real and to increase audience participation would be to add bleachers to the race courses, with an npc in charge of betting standing nearby, and if I'm not mistaken, that should be incredibly simple, as there are already game assets which can be used as bleachers in a number of places throughout Tyria, such as at the various circus rings dotted around the shiverpeaks. An important feature to encourage audiences to stick around, which feels like it's missing from the current races, especially now that we've seen it in the Dragon-Bash Moa-races, is the ability to spectate a racer of your choice, which should be possible within the existing framework, if not with the tools used for the Moas, then with the seemingly-unused spectator camera which we have controls for in the keybindings menu. If bleachers were employed with a betting npc, there could be either another npc, or a binoculars/telescope item for players to interact with which would then let them choose which player they would like to spectate. To keep betting civil and to keep people with poor self control from spending all their gold, it would likely be best to stick with the betting structure of the Moa-races, where players may bet a predetermined amount of a non-gold currency, the racing medallions I mentioned earlier being the obvious choice, on any number of racers of their choosing, with a method of cashing out their winnings for gold, but no method of buying the currency with gold, which would in turn encourage more race participation from players to acquire the currency needed to place bets. If spectators are given a more official way to enjoy the races and allowed to bet on racers, it would add a level of audience participation to the races which seems sorely lacking from them as they currently are, after all, what's a race without a cheering crowd? TL;DR: Idea for using the structure of the pvp menu and other existing game features as a framework to create a ranked/unranked racing league, with racer stat tracking, spectator observation of racer's viewpoints, and spectator betting on race outcomes. Anyhow, thank you for taking the time to read my post, and have a wonderful day!
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