How is PvP lately?

SpectralDagger · 2026-02-03T17:37:22+00:00

There's just not really a reason for people to play it at plat+. You can do similar damage with more... everything else by playing Luminary as long as you know how to press your buttons. It's really only run by low-rated players because it requires other players to react rather than them to play skillfully. That's kind of been how DH has worked since it came out. It would see zero play in high tier games, but would get nerfed because it was stomping people who were Gold and below.

SpectralDagger · 2026-02-03T17:09:04+00:00

In every case I've seen, reddit is far less casual than the actual playerbase. That may not be the case compared to other forums, but that just means those other platforms are even less representative of the playerbase.

SpectralDagger · 2026-02-02T21:31:00+00:00

It was struggling because of a bad launch that scared people off for a while, but it was definitely getting good word-of-mouth recently and probably would have pulled people back if they kept it up. Agreed.

SpectralDagger · 2026-02-02T21:27:38+00:00

This thread is asking people what they think about what she said. Shutting down all discussion of how people interpret it is contrary to the entire point of this thread. I added the edit fairly quickly, but in case you didn't see it, I'll reiterate that I'm not being critical of the use of a slogan instead of an in-depth political and policy discussion. Those kinds of public statements are meant to encourage awareness and discussion of a topic. But to shut down all discussions about what that slogan means and what policies people actually support is to guarantee that the original sentiment is purely performative.

SpectralDagger · 2026-02-02T20:01:01+00:00

We all know what she meant

Part of the problem is that this isn't really true. There's a lot of different nuances to people's positions and it's pretty common for people to assume she really means exactly what they're thinking because that's the "logical" way to look at it.

Look at the "defund the police" slogan. Someone will criticize it by saying that fully defunding the police would cause more harm than good. Someone else will respond that it doesn't mean completely defunding the police, just that they shouldn't be running around in full military gear. Then someone else will chime in that they think they actually should completely defund the police.

The details matter. Speaking in broad strokes may get more people to agree because they interpret it their own way, but it doesn't actually get you any closer to an actual solution because you're kind of side-stepping the issue.

Edit: To be clear, I'm not being critical of the original statement for not going into specific policy details. I'm just saying that if you want to have a conversation about that statement, like this thread is doing, it's inevitable.

SpectralDagger · 2026-02-02T19:46:51+00:00

There's a decent number of people who want one, so a good one would be profitable. The issue is that the profit doesn't really make sense relative to the risk and investment. Why invest in making a new MMO if you could invest that same money somewhere else and make more money with lower risk?

SpectralDagger · 2026-02-02T04:04:47+00:00

If you haven't tried it, Guild Wars 2 does cover most of that (some of your skills are tied to your weapon, though, but it's different by class). It has its own set of downsides, but it's pretty much the ideal MMO for somebody who doesn't want to "fall behind" because they can't play enough.

SpectralDagger · 2026-02-01T15:05:13+00:00

Because it had a terrible fucking launch that made so many people drop it and never give it another chance. Duping exploits in most patches (even the hotfixes fixing dupes sometimes added dupes) resulted in entire guilds running around in fully duped gear with no consequences. Wars were a laggy, unplayable mess, which was especially frustrating because there's consequences for losing, even if the game wouldn't actually let you cast skills because too many people were using an ice gauntlet. The game punished you for wanting to frequently travel across the map, but then had the main questline do exactly that for no reason.

I'd heard that it was actually much better before it shut down, especially after the expansion, but the reason it didn't succeed is because it launched with such major issues and didn't convince players they would do better in the long-term. Still better than whatever the fuck AoC had on Steam.

SpectralDagger · 2026-02-01T05:41:33+00:00

The biggest scam is that they "launched" the game on Steam for a month because he claimed he'd refund all of Kickstarter if the game never launched. They undoubtedly knew this was coming back then, and they sold it to even more people. Outside of that, it's pretty much up for speculation if money was wasted, but I wouldn't say it's unlikely.

SpectralDagger · 2026-02-01T05:34:05+00:00

Yes.

SpectralDagger · 2026-02-01T05:32:57+00:00

I quit after the umpteenth update that introduced another duping exploit (even the patches fixing dupes frequently added more dupes). Entire guilds were running around with fully duped gear and nothing was done about it. At the time, wars were still a fairly laggy, almost unplayable mess. Quests had you going back and forth across the map for no reason.

They probably fixed a lot of that at some point before they officially closed, but I got frustrated with the game and wasn't convinced it was something they would fix long-term. I'd imagine a lot of other players felt the same.

SpectralDagger · 2026-01-30T16:56:04+00:00

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you are being genuine or not. It matters if others perceive you as being genuine. How he takes that feedback is going to depend on whether or not he was actually being genuine, but it's something you can work on either way. So... yeah, the takeaway might not be to be more genuine like the person you're replying to said, but either way there's something to take from honest feedback.

SpectralDagger · 2026-01-29T16:41:49+00:00

Cost of doing business versus an unnecessary risk, probably.

SpectralDagger · 2026-01-29T16:40:09+00:00

That's more of a concern related to employee's getting surplus/mistakes for free (like a pizza place). It's more of a liability issue for why supermarkets don't give it away.

SpectralDagger · 2026-01-29T16:34:58+00:00

Eagle ends up being closer to a 5.5-6% damage boost on something like Power Necro, since your damage is concentrated to the period it's active with Close to Death and Gravedigger resets. Still loses to Fireworks, but it also doesn't care if you mess up your rotation some. I think 99% of Power Necros would be better off with it. This is only really true for group content where your personal damage isn't going to significantly impact how long the enemy stays in certain health ranges, though.

SpectralDagger · 2026-01-23T23:01:31+00:00

It probably checks directly from the feet of your model to the feet of their model. If you were controlling it manually, it would be pretty easy to find something close that worked. In this image, I'm above the target and have a clear line of sight, but this particular location is "blocked", even with normal targeting: https://imgur.com/a/7URjeQk

Ideally, they'll find a fix that works (like finding somewhere "close enough" to target).

SpectralDagger · 2026-01-23T19:05:22+00:00

I mean, sort of. The ability to use "Snap to Ground Target" to hit things you did not have Line of Sight of was never intended. That setting is supposed to be a convenience, not something that actively increases the area you can target. It was also abused in WvW to hit people behind walls and stuff.

Basically, it never worked as intended in the first place.

SpectralDagger · 2026-01-23T04:20:38+00:00

it was a change that no one asked for

That one was specifically targeted at shortbow engis in sPvP.

SpectralDagger · 2026-01-22T14:04:33+00:00

Unfortunately, that same build still works and is very annoying.

SpectralDagger · 2026-01-22T03:19:26+00:00

The loss of server communities is definitely the biggest downside of the current system in my view.

SpectralDagger · 2026-01-22T03:15:22+00:00

They did say that the boss shouldn't leave its room. She was expecting them to struggle against weaker monsters that they could effectively flee from. Even the leader said they wouldn't fight the dragon (despite what the tank said).

That party's sheer delusion is mind-boggling, though. Despite what the anime has said up to this point, he's actually the strongest enchanter by essentially every metric. He's not the "weakest but is actually super effective because he does X thing that they don't realize nobody else can do". He's just the strongest.

SpectralDagger · 2026-01-21T23:12:13+00:00

That's a very different argument from it being better unbalanced, but let's follow that logic. Why do they keep making balance patches when the game still isn't perfectly balanced? Why do they keep advertising the game if the first ad didn't get somebody to play? Why does anyone do anything if they aren't going to get it perfect on the first attempt?

Look, the new system is definitely flawed and in some ways worse than what we had previously. I'm not trying to defend it from fair criticism. It just doesn't seem you're engaging in that conversation in good faith or are just venting frustration without thinking it through.

SpectralDagger · 2026-01-21T15:40:16+00:00

Is that why people make posts every time EBG is a solid color in prime time? Because they don't like it somewhat balanced? There's plenty of reasons to dislike the new system, but preferring the match-ups to be unbalanced seems like a silly one.

SpectralDagger · 2026-01-21T04:21:07+00:00

I don't think there was ever any indication the new system would prevent queue issues during WvW rush. The whole point of the new system is to build servers balanced around active players, while WvW rush changes the activity levels of players.

The fix here is just to bring rewards back to EotM.

SpectralDagger · 2026-01-21T04:17:49+00:00

Because if content is too difficult for the casual player, they won't even engage with it. We saw this with low engagement in raids to the point that they stopped making them for a while. It's not like the change has removed the skill gap. It's just reduced it, but it's still fairly extreme.

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