Guild Wars 2

I like complex systems

I made a thread about this recently as well. I think priority should go as follows: your combo field, party members field, everyone else’s field.
Pros:

• It gives you more control and that’s a good thing
• it keeps you from wasting a blast, leap, whirl, etc. finisher from being wasted on a useless combo field that you weren’t trying to use

Cons:

• It may take time away from other big things that are being developed
• Someone may lay down a field to do damage not thinking about the fact that they ruined their chance to blast a better field underneath their own but that goes hand in hand with learning how to play better and prioritize your attacks to use instead of spamming them

All in all the positives far outweigh the negatives and I hope to see this sometime in the near future.

I think what I’d prefer:

An option to choose how combo fields are prioritised, with the default being "oldest field".
If you switch away from default, you can create your own order of field priority for your finishers, by ordering a list of field types.

JonPeters.5630:

List Method
There is a personalized list where you get to pick the order that you care about.
Pro: You get to decide
Con: It is a pretty advanced decision that I never expect 90% of players to understand so it doesn’t solve the problem for the majority of the playerbase.
Con: Whatever you setup outside of a specific combat situation isn’t necessarily going to be the right thing once you get in combat. If instead there is a logic rule instead of a chosen one you can adapt your tactics to follow that rule and get the situational results you desire.
Con: Probably the most work of any of the currently proposed solutions without solving the problem for every user.

Alright Jon, here are some reasons I think you are wrong on that one:

Whatever you setup outside of a specific combat situation isn’t necessarily going to be the right thing once you get in combat. If instead there is a logic rule instead of a chosen one you can adapt your tactics to follow that rule and get the situational results you desire.
The “logic” rule is as logic as the “chosen” rule, in the same way the “chosen” rule is as chosen as the “logic” rule. The difference is that in one case, the player can use his logic when it comes to chosing(e.g. water>fire>air>light), where in the other case, the developer already chose for him.
While running around in wvw I noticed how often certain coordinated efforts were impeded due to players droping down light/dark fields. The majority of these fields were not placed down by trolls, but by players who wanted to help, but failed to do so. And because they tried to help with buffing swiftness, the zerg ended up with area retal instead and way less swiftness and when PvD’ing instead of stacking might or healing, they got retaliation (and protection/swiftness).
To give an example here: What would be the problem if I choose Water>Fire>Air>Light for WvW, aside from the obvious trolling, which already can be done? I can’t find any others. This change would help players coordinating their efforts without punishing certain classes for having a combo field built in their auto attack.
Keep in mind that just because I chose to prioritize one field over the other does not mean I’m no longer able to use the other. Such a change could be considered as something like “damage control”.

Of course another, probably much easier option would be to decrease the amount of lightfields out there and/or replace the skills on which these are located. They pretty much have no cd, long durations, big AoE and are often tied towards things you want to be have (guard hammer#1, staff#3). Changing their “location on the skillbar” would improve one the “mindful use of resources”.

Now you mentioned two other things here, and I don’t want to sound rude or too harsh, but these really bug me:
Probably the most work of any of the currently proposed solutions without solving the problem for every user.
Most work: Should work be a factor when it comes to improving something? How do you expect something to become really good without a lot of work put into it? You can’t improve on a system if you just talk about it, noone knows how a change will turn out. People would probably have laughed at you if you told them “warriors are an issue in tpvp” one year ago, but just one patch changed that upside down.
without solving See the above.
every user this ties into the next part of my rant.
It is a pretty advanced decision that I never expect 90% of players to understand so it doesn’t solve the problem for the majority of the playerbase.
Advanced decision Is it really? A sheet with A > B > C > D > E isn’t really what you would call advanced, is it? Yes there are decisions to be made, but:
90% of the players to understand You really need to get away from trying to spare players from “jumping in at the deep end”. Eventually they will face a point where they either have to deal with their class or face dire consequences.
For a bunch of players this seems to be D/D thief, a decent “bunker” or Hammer warrior in WvW. Players rarely get exposed to dodging crucial abilites like earthshaker, staggering blow or cloak and dagger. But if they don’t dodge these skills, they are likely to get 1v5’d by a player that understood this concept and when thinking about dealing with this issue, what comes to their mind is QQing on forums, drowing subcategories with pointless threads.
I don’t ask you to be the “PoE of mmos” when it comes to complexity, but forcing the player more often to adapt on the game, instead of trying to have the game adapt on every player will give better results. Forums can help with the complexity a game has to offer. Giving good guides/overviews for certain aspects/classes stickes to make it easier for users to spot the “good posts” between the “junk posts” can improve even further on that.

cheese.4739:

I think what I’d prefer:

An option to choose how combo fields are prioritised, with the default being “oldest field”.
If you switch away from default, you can create your own order of field priority for your finishers, by ordering a list of field types.

That’d be far to convenient for the player. That’s be like letting thief choose what stolen skill they get each time. A more bland system would do far better job here, like was listed before and maybe some more. Like an ele can create fields for days, so maybe a “self prioritize” + “most recent” or “oldest”. For example, they use burning retreat to escape some damage and immediately switch to water to put down a field to blast, and by accident the field from #4 fire was in the way.

NinjaEd.3946:

cheese.4739:

I think what I’d prefer:

An option to choose how combo fields are prioritised, with the default being “oldest field”.
If you switch away from default, you can create your own order of field priority for your finishers, by ordering a list of field types.

That’d be far to convenient for the player. That’s be like letting thief choose what stolen skill they get each time. A more bland system would do far better job here, like was listed before and maybe some more. Like an ele can create fields for days, so maybe a “self prioritize” + “most recent” or “oldest”. For example, they use burning retreat to escape some damage and immediately switch to water to put down a field to blast, and by accident the field from #4 fire was in the way.

In PvP scenarios, the thief does choose their stolen skill each time, since they only get one per profession.

As for personal field management, that’s pretty easy to do, and if the Ele is casting and blasting their water field over the top of Burning Retreat they’re the one at fault (though this change would help them out, I’ll admit).

What the list of field priority would do is help out in less organised areas, where you can’t really expect players to coordinate their fields – in Solo Queue sPvP, for example, a Warrior’s full Longbow burst will produce a huge fire field (covering more than an entire capture point) that sticks around for several seconds, but which will prevent an Engineer from using their heal effectively (assuming Turret) without leaving the battlefield. In an organised team players can discuss this beforehand and be aware of what their allies are running, but Solo Queue players often can’t do that.
The same is true of PuGs running dungeons, or zergs in WvW that have picked up randoms.

I stand fairly neutral on this entire subject but would like to point out the critical suggestion that this option, if any, should only be accessible out of combat.

Such a change should not make the game Menu-Navigation-Speed Wars 2.

@Agony, the simple problem with a list is this: extra database data per character/account. Probably character.

That’s a tall order as far as such a “trivial” (given how few players are probably bothered by this) is concerned.

A fixed system – prioritizing own fields at all times, otherwise oldest one – is much easier, and easy to grasp.

@Carighan, oh silly me, I forgot how hard it is to add another column to an already existing database.
That statement is about as accurate as allowing additional stacks for conditions would overload the servers or how simcity needed to be always online so the servers could “handle tasks your pc wouldn’t be able to”.
A fixed system – prioritizing own fields at all times, otherwise oldest one – is much easier, and easy to grasp. but wont get rid of the problem.

frifox.5283:

I do not see any drawbacks to this suggestion.

Try guardian, then you will see drawbacks galore.

cheese.4739:

NinjaEd.3946:

cheese.4739:

I think what I’d prefer:

An option to choose how combo fields are prioritised, with the default being “oldest field”.
If you switch away from default, you can create your own order of field priority for your finishers, by ordering a list of field types.

That’d be far to convenient for the player. That’s be like letting thief choose what stolen skill they get each time. A more bland system would do far better job here, like was listed before and maybe some more. Like an ele can create fields for days, so maybe a “self prioritize” + “most recent” or “oldest”. For example, they use burning retreat to escape some damage and immediately switch to water to put down a field to blast, and by accident the field from #4 fire was in the way.

In PvP scenarios, the thief does choose their stolen skill each time, since they only get one per profession.

As for personal field management, that’s pretty easy to do, and if the Ele is casting and blasting their water field over the top of Burning Retreat they’re the one at fault (though this change would help them out, I’ll admit).

What the list of field priority would do is help out in less organised areas, where you can’t really expect players to coordinate their fields – in Solo Queue sPvP, for example, a Warrior’s full Longbow burst will produce a huge fire field (covering more than an entire capture point) that sticks around for several seconds, but which will prevent an Engineer from using their heal effectively (assuming Turret) without leaving the battlefield. In an organised team players can discuss this beforehand and be aware of what their allies are running, but Solo Queue players often can’t do that.
The same is true of PuGs running dungeons, or zergs in WvW that have picked up randoms.

I meant in the sense you steal from anything and you always got to choose what you got. You can’t steal from a thief and get consume ecto. Letting people control every little detail of a system is just too much. It should allow some say in it, like prioritize your fields over others, but not “I want water fields #1, fire #2” etc. I agree, in hotjoin or wvw zergs you can’t really control who puts down what field as much, and there should be some way that you can control how you’re playing, and not have other people override a combo you set up. There should be options at the very least.

Self Priority

PROS: Predictability. If I plan combinations, I need to predictably have them go off.
Control. I control my effects
Benefits casual and PUG play a LOT.

CONS: Penalizes Coordinated Play where you can really synergize your blasts with others.

Can we start with the following question, what are the options that could happen?

1. My fields are priority.
2. First field is priority
3. Last field is priority
4. Class based priority system (thieves blast smoke first, guardians blast light first)
5. You select based on a menu or priority setting system

Missing anything? We need the options first to discuss pros and cons.

In general, I think SIMPLE works better as combinations are quite difficult to learn for a new player in general, imagine the learning curve of selecting priorities!

I play a Persisting Flames elementalist and the might stacks and fury are one of the reasons why I play that class most often in dungeons. I have often been frustrated byt guardian light fields.

Having said that I also play a hammer guardian. I usually save my guardian’s blast finisher for when a fire field pops up (and sometimes I run my own). Because the hammer places light fields as an auto attack and so many of my other incredibly useful skills are light fields, if my combo fields took priority I would get very frustrated trying to blast fire fields. It would really hurt the co-operative element of party play imo.

Currently I can manage to blast my own fire fields on my elementalist. Sure there is the odd time where unlucky field placement negates my fire field, but I have gotten good at timing my blast finishers when I need them.

I think if my combo fields were prioritised it would be a step away from co-operative party play.

NinjaEd.3946:

I meant in the sense you steal from anything and you always got to choose what you got. You can’t steal from a thief and get consume ecto. Letting people control every little detail of a system is just too much. It should allow some say in it, like prioritize your fields over others, but not “I want water fields #1, fire #2” etc. I agree, in hotjoin or wvw zergs you can’t really control who puts down what field as much, and there should be some way that you can control how you’re playing, and not have other people override a combo you set up. There should be options at the very least.

A Thief can only steal Consume Ecto if there’s a Mesmer within range, but also you can only blast a water field if someone’s placed a water field – it’s not like we’re wanting to let people choose the effects of their blast finishers without having prerequisite fields, which is what your Thief-Steal example sounds like.

At any rate, if most people are very strongly against a personal priority list, or if it’s technically just too much hassle to implement soon, I’m still very much in favour of my-fields-take-priority – this would mean that (for example) Guards could aim their blasts carefully to trigger fields they wanted to, and Eles could still use their important combos without wasting all their blasts on retaliation.

I’m going to revise a previous post I made, since I feel like this idea isn’t getting as much attention as it should.

Idea:
Allow each applicable and unique combo field to be finished by a finisher. If you blast on a Fire, Water, and Poison field, you will get Area Might, Area Healing, and Area Weakness.

Why:
This will allow players to more fully take advantage of the combo system while avoiding many problems caused by having undesired fields take effect.

Pros:

• Allows people to stack combo fields to greater effect
• Avoids players preventing other players from gaining desired effects when they place a different field
• Avoids additional menu management were players to have choice in field priority
• Doesn’t allow players to stack the same effect (eg. one blast in 3 separate fire fields will not grant 9 might, but rather 3 as if you had only blasted one field. ). One field type, one effect.
• Change isn’t “wasted” on players who might never utilize a combo priority system.
• Allows access to less available boons/conditions through group synergy

Cons:

• Increased amount of effects might get out of hand in venues like PvP or WvW where combo fields are (assumed to be) already fairly utilized.
• Certain fields may increase the amounts or “stickiness” of conditions/boons such as poison, weakness, retaliation, etc. to undesirable amounts.

Observations:

• Combo Effects might need to be more accurately balanced when you can gain all the effects of stacked combo fields, for better or worse.

Svarty.8019:

frifox.5283:

I do not see any drawbacks to this suggestion.

Try guardian, then you will see drawbacks galore.

If you are a guardian you are in control of what field you lay. It’s your own fault if you laid a light field but wanted to blast your purging flames. What is NOT in your control is some other guard spamming light field. Prioritizing your own purging flames combo field over the oblivious hammer spamming party member fields lets you to actually blast the fire field you laid.

Same goes for thief constantly firing pistol 5 to blind mobs. An ally places some field and tries to blast it for a desired effect but most likely will end up blasting area stealth simply because fellow thief keeps renewing his perma smoke field on the enemy.

I’m in the camp of keeping the current system. The issue I see with the suggested changes is that come down to, “I don’t want my teammates being a drawback to me!” But that ignores the fact that those same teammates are often trying to help you. It’s a coordination problem.

As for the case of that particular Elementalist trait, you could make an interesting change where you add a drawback to it. Something like, “your blast finishers now only combo in fire fields,” or, “all your blast finishers act like fire field combos regardless of field.” A hardcore drawback would be something like, “fire fields you create always have top priority for blast finishers done by you or your allies.”

Proven.2854:

I’m in the camp of keeping the current system. The issue I see with the suggested changes is that come down to, “I don’t want my teammates being a drawback to me!” But that ignores the fact that those same teammates are often trying to help you. It’s a coordination problem.

That’s silly, they aren’t “trying to help you”. They are trying to pull off their own combos in their own rotations because that is individually what their builds are made for. A hammer guardian is spamming light fields and canceling ele fire fields because it is part of his auto-attack. A staff ele is spamming fire fields (lava font) because that has his best damage against stationary targets. A pistol off hand thief drops smoke fields from black powder because it is how they maintain their survivability.

The idea behind combos is getting the most out of the limited number of skills we have to work with. Not necessarily teamwork as they require a huge investment of coordination and planning to pull off without stepping on each others toes.

Why not just allow players to set each skill (finishers) priority manually.

Maybe i want my blast to prioritize Water, Fire, Light, Ethereal. Maybe i want my projectiles to prioritize Dark, Water, Ethereal ….

Seems to me that allowing players the ability to customize their own way would add more depth and complexity without being a burden.

Lostwingman.5034:

Proven.2854:

I’m in the camp of keeping the current system. The issue I see with the suggested changes is that come down to, “I don’t want my teammates being a drawback to me!” But that ignores the fact that those same teammates are often trying to help you. It’s a coordination problem.

That’s silly, they aren’t “trying to help you”. They are trying to pull off their own combos in their own rotations because that is individually what their builds are made for. A hammer guardian is spamming light fields and canceling ele fire fields because it is part of his auto-attack. A staff ele is spamming fire fields (lava font) because that has his best damage against stationary targets. A pistol off hand thief drops smoke fields from black powder because it is how they maintain their survivability.

The idea behind combos is getting the most out of the limited number of skills we have to work with. Not necessarily teamwork as they require a huge investment of coordination and planning to pull off without stepping on each others toes.

Combos were originally called Cross Profession Combos, so their original idea was teamwork. And I don’t think a handful of skills and traits should be a reason to rework an entire rules system.

So what’s the outlier? If it’s just Elementalist fire fields (needed for damage) and a single trait, that’s what should be looked at first.

how about communication (group) and training (wvw zerg)?

Please let this happen.
I’m tired of setting up a might stacking combo as an engineer mid combat and getting crap like aoe retaliation and chaos armour, then having to wait 20+ seconds to try the combo again.
It kind of makes me not want to might stack during combat which in turn takes some complexity out of classes like the engineer and elementalist.

hooma.9642:

how about communication (group) and training (wvw zerg)?

Because sometimes people want to play with strangers, or they don’t happen to have 4 other friends online, or the zerg ends up picking up some extra people who aren’t part of the guild?
Then there’s sPvP, with solo queue being entirely based around randomly matched teams who have pretty limited communication options (some pinging on map, or you can stop fighting to type in chat).

If every single interaction was within an organised group, I might be okay with expecting everyone to work out how to place fields to make best use of them – but there are too many situations that it’s just not possible in.

It appears that guardians are the case that people cite as problematic with a self-fields priority here. If symbols are a problem, change them not to be combo fields and compensate elsewhere if needed. Guardians still have other light fields.

You could give symbols some other effect like making friendly combo fields cast on top of a symbol last 20% longer.

That’s also another option, but there’s also people discontent with Black Powder Thieves.

scerevisiae.1972:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Just allow us to blast them all, when several fields are in the same location.

This. Able to blast up to 3 fields (of different types) at once, but with a diminishing returns system:

if #fields > 1, each field effect duration is decreased by 20%, cumulative, so:

• most recent field – 80% usual duration
• 2nd most recent – 64%
• 3rd – 51%

and/or…

Fields can interact, to form new fields, eg:

• fire + water field = steam field (cures conditions and grants regen)
• ethereal + dark field = void field (convert boons -> conditions)
• ethereal + light field = celestial field (convert conditions -> boons)
  etc

Obviously wouldn’t need to be exhaustive.

I was actually thinking along these lines verbatim. It would be interesting to also see two combo fields creating some sort of synergy when a finisher is used in both at once for intricate team play.

It would be satisfying when you get it intentionally, but still annoying when you wanted a heal blast and you get regen instead…

The diminishing returns system could work, though it might be a bit of a strain for the servers…

cheese.4739:

hooma.9642:

how about communication (group) and training (wvw zerg)?

Because sometimes people want to play with strangers, or they don’t happen to have 4 other friends online, or the zerg ends up picking up some extra people who aren’t part of the guild?
Then there’s sPvP, with solo queue being entirely based around randomly matched teams who have pretty limited communication options (some pinging on map, or you can stop fighting to type in chat).

If every single interaction was within an organised group, I might be okay with expecting everyone to work out how to place fields to make best use of them – but there are too many situations that it’s just not possible in.

well i think its wrong. if u dont want some random dude destroying your combofields… well dont pick him. the same goes for solq and the difference to teamq. its natural that the teamplay should differ. i think its a question of skill and a great place to grow.. but yeah remove that too and at some point nobody needs groups anymore. welcome to pugwars 2

hooma.9642:

cheese.4739:

hooma.9642:

how about communication (group) and training (wvw zerg)?

Because sometimes people want to play with strangers, or they don’t happen to have 4 other friends online, or the zerg ends up picking up some extra people who aren’t part of the guild?
Then there’s sPvP, with solo queue being entirely based around randomly matched teams who have pretty limited communication options (some pinging on map, or you can stop fighting to type in chat).

If every single interaction was within an organised group, I might be okay with expecting everyone to work out how to place fields to make best use of them – but there are too many situations that it’s just not possible in.

well i think its wrong. if u dont want some random dude destroying your combofields… well dont pick him. the same goes for solq and the difference to teamq. its natural that the teamplay should differ. i think its a question of skill and a great place to grow.. but yeah remove that too and at some point nobody needs groups anymore. welcome to pugwars 2

Y’wot? There will always be a need for less-organised groups – how is a game supposed to be social (y’know, massively multiplayer) if it doesn’t let people interact with each other?
And I really don’t understand how you say “don’t pick them” relates to soloq.
Are you saying that soloq should go away, so that we’re only left with teamq? This would mean that more people queued solo in teamq and you’d still have randoms paired with randoms out of necessity.

With regards to the blasting of multiple fields: what happens if there are more field types down than your combo requires? Will players get all the benefits of each field blasted, or some watered-down mix (which would still be infuriating for people trying to stack might or swiftness or get off a healing burst)? There’ll still be a need for priority of some sort (or stupidly powerful 5-field combos).

Hmmm, this is an interesting topic.
I think most logical system would be a priority ranking system.

First breakdown is by whom the field is created by in relation to whom is triggering it.

• 1st priority is your own fields.
• 2nd your party members.
• 3rd it’s other players.
• 4th NPC’s and other effect.

Then it’s a breakdown of the combo fields themselves, where some have greater priority then other.
Say:

• 1) Water
• 2) Fire
• 3) Smoke
• 4) Light
• 5) Ethereal
• 6) Lightning
• 7) Dark
• 8) Ice
• 9) Poison

-
For example, if I were to put down a light field on my Guardian then Blast into it with my hammer, it would trigger for me, even thou an party member used a water field in the same position.
For the rest of my party members, the water field would take priority.
As it would for anyone else not triggering one of their own combo fields, or one of their party members.

Even if I continue to place down light fields, the water field will continue to take effect for most players so long as it is active, and nothing else takes priority.

-

Pros
It has very clear and concise rules that is not effected by chaotic elements like timing and duration.
If you want to trigger certain fields, you can trigger them without others fields getting in the way. Either by creating them yourself or via party members.
And high value fields like water and fire will always take priority over less reliable fields, reducing chaotic elements with large numbers of players.

Cons
The exact order in which fields take priority is a matter of opinion and is up for debate.
Could be difficult for the programmers.

So is this still being considered?

Fingers crossed for the feature patch. If not, my faith in ANet will drop even lower.

As a staff using elementalist who’s entire build revolves around Persisting Flames I pretty much can only benefit from my build when I am able to blast specifically my own fire field. For me this would be a major quality of life improvement.

If for other builds it doesn’t work, I don’t see why it can’t be a gameplay option in the options menu.

fadeaway.2807:

So is this still being considered?

I really hope so. Since the release of the feature patch hammer guardians are more viable due to double sigils. We all know how dominant light fields are with hammer guardians.

Noah.4756:

fadeaway.2807:

So is this still being considered?

I really hope so. Since the release of the feature patch hammer guardians are more viable due to double sigils. We all know how dominant light fields are with hammer guardians.

I so wish I could just disable my light fields. That’s like 90% of the issues with fields and priorities. Screw light fields, I hate em! And I’m a guardian! =b, I’m half serious about this, because they do have some uses, but far more often they’re causing issues rather than helping.

If you think a zerg AoE bombardment is laggy now. It will be unplayable for most of us if the game has to determines which finishers belongs to which player. Zerg vs zerg is already laggy as it is.

Playability >>>>> ruining your combo.

I agree with this;

~snip~
Con: Probably the most work of any of the currently proposed solutions without solving the problem for every user.
~snip~

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If you think a zerg AoE bombardment is laggy now. It will be unplayable for most of us if the game has to determines which finishers belongs to which player. Zerg vs zerg is already laggy as it is.

Playability >>>>> ruining your combo.

I don’t think that’s how it works. Your blast finishers prioritizing your own fields is an extremely simple client-side calculation that can be made instantly.
If anything it should already be built into the code of who put down what field.

World Of Warcraft can track the source of every single condi (debuff) on the boss, every single source of heal/DPS (AoE or not), etc. And that game is like 10 years old.

Wintel.4873:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If you think a zerg AoE bombardment is laggy now. It will be unplayable for most of us if the game has to determines which finishers belongs to which player. Zerg vs zerg is already laggy as it is.

Playability >>>>> ruining your combo.

I don’t think that’s how it works. Your blast finishers prioritizing your own fields is an extremely simple client-side calculation that can be made instantly.

Well…the calculation would never be client side, because that opens it to hacking vulnerabilities. But even on the server side, this would be a negligible change.

The server already has to run an algorithm to determine which of the N combo fields will create the effect, and which player triggered it. The server also needs to know specific stat information about the triggering player to calculate the final numbers (boon duration for might stacks, healing power for water blasts, condition duration for weakness, etc.)

All this would do is add an extra “stat” for the player that would determine the priority of fields to blast. It’s not even a big priority list, since there’s only 9 fields.

Yeah, it seems like a rather small change. The fields most likely already know their creator (if not it would be easy to add that 1 field of information), and the server already selects the oldest one right now. Just change the algorithm. Ofc, I suspect the list of potential fields is programmed so that it auto-sorts by age, and element 0 is simply returned at all times.

As such, the programming change might be a wee bit larger than we imagine it to be. As right now, they never have to iterate the array of fields.

I think the ultimate problem with combos and fields is that most players have no idea wtf they are doing when they are using their skills. There is NO teaching method in the early levels of ‘This is a field and this is how it is used’ and ‘This is how you synergize with the various finishers’. Instead, they are taught to spam mindlessly and then they get dropped into group work without knowing how to properly work with others. The amount of times where I have tried might stacking on my elementalist, only to have some poison field or water field thrown down, ruining my ability to make things run smoother and quicker…I have lost count.

There needs to be a newbie crash course or something added way early in the game for new players to understand what is going on.

rabidsmiles.5926:

I think the ultimate problem with combos and fields is that most players have no idea wtf they are doing when they are using their skills. There is NO teaching method in the early levels of ‘This is a field and this is how it is used’ and ‘This is how you synergize with the various finishers’. Instead, they are taught to spam mindlessly and then they get dropped into group work without knowing how to properly work with others. The amount of times where I have tried might stacking on my elementalist, only to have some poison field or water field thrown down, ruining my ability to make things run smoother and quicker…I have lost count.

There needs to be a newbie crash course or something added way early in the game for new players to understand what is going on.

Coming from that perspective the worst possible thing you could do then is throw a fairly useless field into an AutoAttack chain kitten .
That stupid light field is the reason I don’t bother with the Hammer on my Guardian.

rabidsmiles.5926:

I think the ultimate problem with combos and fields is that most players have no idea wtf they are doing when they are using their skills. There is NO teaching method in the early levels of ‘This is a field and this is how it is used’ and ‘This is how you synergize with the various finishers’. Instead, they are taught to spam mindlessly and then they get dropped into group work without knowing how to properly work with others. The amount of times where I have tried might stacking on my elementalist, only to have some poison field or water field thrown down, ruining my ability to make things run smoother and quicker…I have lost count.

There needs to be a newbie crash course or something added way early in the game for new players to understand what is going on.

I agree with the idea that this game doesn’t teach players to utilize combo fields. This is caused by two things:

• Skills and combo fields work ambiguously. There is a very good explanation what each skill does but nowhere in the game does it state what each combo field does. Therefore the immediate first reaction of the player is to focus on skills instead of combo’s.

• Lack of small team events at lower levels. You either level solo by going from heart to heart or you join in on world events with big zergs. Dungeons are very player unfriendly at lower level.

Early PS/Tutorial should have the race’s DE member instructively putting down fields and telling the player what skill to use that has a finisher and what the effect is. Doesn’t have to go through all of the fields but if players were given a practical introduction to fields and finishers it would make things a lot easier down the line.

I also would like more lower level type instance things. Maybe have zone level specific dungeons that are actually explorable (as in modestly length’d dungeon crawls) that introduce people to the mechanics. I’m not sure how receptive ANet would be of that though, they seem against group instances in favor of open world type things. Maybe add more places like that catacomb area in Plains of Ashford, maybe a little longer and provide a section for those types of areas in the LFG.
Just idle thoughts really.

C-C-C-Combo Breaker- Make Guardians’ hammer AA #3 a fire field.

Another one: Make Guardians’ symbol of swiftness a lightning field.

This would be fun: change a couple of the necro wells to smoke fields instead of dark…

On Topic:
When i bought gw2 i also bought the hardback guide. This listed (amongst lots of useful stuff for a newb) the combo fields and all of the effects of each type of finisher in each field. That one page made me want to use combo fields as much as possible, both my own and others’. If i had not bought the guide i would have randomly seen the effect, wondered how to replicate it, wondered how useful it was and probably not have given any more thought to combo fields.

What would be a good way for combo fields to be prioritised?

Given such a diversity of variables, i think that prioritising my own fields (as i understand it- for my character only) gives the most control to a player. This could be organised by a tab in the hero panel or in-game menu (like F11 for example) listing each type of field. We would then have the options to choose ‘Own Fields’ or make our own list from a tick-box table where we could numerically choose say 5 or 6 out of all the available options; the ones left unticked would operate under the current system. This way we could adjust our priorities when out of combat, preparing for certain encounters etc.

Ps: +1 for the suggestions of rabidsmiles and Lostwingman.

Ghotistyx.6942:

I’m going to revise a previous post I made, since I feel like this idea isn’t getting as much attention as it should.

Idea:
Allow each applicable and unique combo field to be finished by a finisher. If you blast on a Fire, Water, and Poison field, you will get Area Might, Area Healing, and Area Weakness.

Why:
This will allow players to more fully take advantage of the combo system while avoiding many problems caused by having undesired fields take effect.

Pros:

• Allows people to stack combo fields to greater effect
• Avoids players preventing other players from gaining desired effects when they place a different field
• Avoids additional menu management were players to have choice in field priority
• Doesn’t allow players to stack the same effect (eg. one blast in 3 separate fire fields will not grant 9 might, but rather 3 as if you had only blasted one field. ). One field type, one effect.
• Change isn’t “wasted” on players who might never utilize a combo priority system.
• Allows access to less available boons/conditions through group synergy

Cons:

• Increased amount of effects might get out of hand in venues like PvP or WvW where combo fields are (assumed to be) already fairly utilized.
• Certain fields may increase the amounts or “stickiness” of conditions/boons such as poison, weakness, retaliation, etc. to undesirable amounts.

Observations:

• Combo Effects might need to be more accurately balanced when you can gain all the effects of stacked combo fields, for better or worse.

This.

Balance issues:
In sPvP it’s at most 5 on 5. Some Combo field combinations will become quite strong, but most combinations can not be hold more then 5 seconds per minute I would guess. Needs some rebalancing, but will ultimately make the game more interesting and could be used to actually increase efficency of some build choices.

WvW is a mess in Zergs anyway. Enemies will have the same mess as attackers. For small goups the sPvP patches should suffice.

PvE is completely broken anyway. This will not make it worse.

As I main a Necromancer, I am the one who gets all the glory hate for dropping wells (my cleave… as my only cleave weapon is underwater). I don’t have finishers either except for killing my minions, or using AA on Staff, which nobody ever uses (right, underwater we have finishers, good ones). In PvE the current system actually increases the hate for Necromancers. A “blast it all” system would do us good, while the dark and poison field effects still stay pretty unspectacular in PvE. Same as light.

JonPeters.5630:

Con: It is a pretty advanced decision that I never expect 90% of players to understand so it doesn’t solve the problem for the majority of the playerbase.

You can have it both ways by having a simple scripting system that players can customise to their heart’s content, with a reasonable default setting that you can return to at the touch of a button. Based on certain parameters it would prioritise fields in a hierarchy of 1 to 6. An example of that default could be:

If own Health < 50%, set Water priority 1, Smoke priority 2, Ethereal priority 3, Ice priority 4 etc.

You’ll be able to specify multiple rules with the highest-ranked rules taking priority over lower-ranked rules when there is a conflict. It would allow you to set parameters to check whether there are there any allies or enemies within the area of effect, or even to check which there are more of (eg if enemies > allies prioritise dark field over water field). You could even have separate priorities for different finishers. If you enjoyed tinkering you could set rules as specific as:

for projectile finishers: IF there is 1+ allies in area of effect, AND that ally has > 2 conditions on them, set light field priority 1

or

for blast finisher: If allies in aoe < 1, set dark field priority 1; IF DOWNED allies in aoe > 1, set smoke field priority 1, else set water priority 1.

It sounds complicated, but if you had a reasonable default nobody would bother, and players would share their own presets with each other so that 80% of the playerbase wouldn’t need to learn to script.

Con: Probably the most work of any of the currently proposed solutions without solving the problem for every user.

Can’t help you with that

Actually no, I CAN help you with that! There are far too many different combo fields in this game, it’s hard to see all the different ones in combat, and it’s not immediately clear or predictable what you’re gonna get from each. If you were to amalgamate them to half the number you would make the job of scripting priorities a lot easier!

For instance you could easily merge Light and Ethereal fields: what they do is pretty complementary because Retaliation (granted by Light fields) is one of the boons granted by Chaos Armour (granted by ethereal fields).

Moreover, a lot of the interactions between fields and finishers only affect either allies or enemies. By merging those interactions (and having the same finisher inflict a different effect on allies and a different effect on enemies), you could amalgamate even more fields: for instance, you could merge Dark and Smoke fields very easily, by having blast/leap finishers inflict blindness on enemies within the area, and stealth on allies within the area simultaneously. There’s plenty of other marginal fields – not many skills create frost fields, they could be merged with something else, and I think there’s only ONE (!) lightning field in the whole game!

This sort of treatment would solve another problem with combos: their redundancy. In many cases, skills that create a poison field already inflict poison, skills that leave a frost field already chill, so using a finisher on that field doesn’t reward the player with any real bonus (maybe a bit in pve, but not in pvp/wvw where there’s lots of cleansing). If you merge some fields you can get rid of the more lacklustre field/finisher interactions and keep only the more interesting and powerful combos.

The tl;dr is: by reducing the number of fields you would make it easier for players to remember what each does, reduce annoying overlaps and accidental interactions with the wrong field, keep only the most powerful combos so as to make them more meaningful and rewarding, and make it easier to coordinate team plays and cross-player combos.

Other ideas floating out there

• Fixed Priority – Always the same priority for all players.
• Time Based – The most recent or least recent field is what triggers.
• Self Priority – Your own fields take priority (this would have to be a rule that stacks on top of another system.

I don’t think any of those is perfect, but I do believe there needs to be a predictable and documented priority system, so players can know with some certainty what will happen when they drop their finishers. If my suggestion therefore sounds like too much work, you should pick one of these, it’ll be an improvement over the random system we have today.

I’d be against merging field types- it kills diversity. In your examples, the poison field elongates the poison duration of the skill (blast has a different effect unachieveable by blasting into any other type of field) and you eliminate the dark fields’ lifeleech when you merged it with the smoke field completely for some unknown reason.

As i spend a lot of time soloing in pve i extensively use fields because of their additional damage and effects; they are very helpful for tagging enemies to get event credit, considering that most of the world events are now zerged to death due to their set times.

But under my suggestion you’d be able to tag even more enemies, as combo interactions that now only affect either allies or enemies would be merged to affect both. The poison might be useful in pve but I’m sure you can get pretty high uptime anyway, and in pvp/wvw long durations are meaningless due to cleansing. And the lifeleech is totally marginal, both the damage and the healing is minor.

I think giving as much control as possible to the player would be a good thing, or at least letting me choose not to blast the kitten light fields.
It’s really just that, I hate playing with guardians in PvE because they kill my might with their autoattacks. It’s like griefing, but unintentional so it’s even more obnoxious because I have nobody to complain about.
Let us have 3 options:
1) First down first used (what I think the current system is).
2) Yours are prioritized, then first down first used.
3) Field-type based priority, for each finisher type (i.e. you would set which field is prioritized for which finisher. You could even just have it be the first 1-3, to minimize effort).

I’m pretty sure that would make everyone happier.