I am not a professional game designer. But here’s my comment on making mechanics that have no counterplay in this game.
Un-counterable mechanics kill the fun for players trying to outplay the other player / zerg. There is literally nothing you can do while the other player wins – not because they’re good, but because the mechanic is broken and there is no way to surefire counterplay the matter.
One stunning example of this is stealth. No class in this entire game has built in stealth detection. The devs tried to input these clunky, unusable, and difficult to use traps that reveal stealth in WvW, but the truth of the matter is that no one uses them and they’re not realistic for usage in a pitched battle. (It also costs supply to build.)
Stealth is interesting, because only a few classes have stealth and even few of those make optimal and actual use of the mechanic. (Namely, mesmers and thieves.) Mesmers are not a problem – they have limited options for stealth and they have fairly short term stealth options. (Eg. Veil – 2 seconds, Decoy – 3 seconds. Mass Invisibility is something like 5 seconds, but it’s on a minute and a half cooldown.) Thieves on the other hand are famous for their 20+ second stealth combos in fights, their ability to disengage at will with exceedingly long stealth durations, as well as permastealth options if they trait for it.
Now, stealth wouldn’t be as bad if thieves were already not so slippery (but I’m not here to complain about thieves.) Let’s be honest – ANY class, with the stealth capabilities of a thief, would be just as annoying to deal with. Can you imagine a stealth warrior using killshot? Or sneak up behind you with a surprise quickness boosted 100 Blades? And then you being unable to do anything to retaliate because they have chain stealth options to disappear after they’ve hit you? People try to defend stealth by saying ‘if the stealthed person ran from you, you won!’. That’s not true at ALL. Did I spike him? Did I get a loot bag? No? Then I didn’t win. If no one dies in a skirmish, we call that a draw in reality. Time to move away from that fantasy world of coddling stealth.
IMO, torch skills should have been based around AoE burning and stealth reveal. Not only because torches are as ignored as they are, but because for every mechanic, there should be a counterplay to it. No, not ‘swing around and spam 1 button to maybe hit a stealthed opponent!’ counterplay argument people make. Actual, usable, stealth reveal. For example, a torch ability on a 20 second cooldown that reveals and burns all units around the user for 5 seconds with the revealed debuff. It’s not overpowered, and has good utility – and most importantly, provides an option to counterplay chain stealth without wrecking the mechanic. A 15 second window is more than enough to do what you need to do while still creating a window of vulnerability for the stealth mechanic.
Another example is retaliation. Retaliation is a flawed mechanic within itself for a huge reason – it discourages players from attacking other players. Now, I don’t know why other people may play WvW and PvP, but I play to attack and feel the thrill of killing other people. Confusion wasn’t even half as bad – this stuff could be avoided and cleansed, but retaliation is an entirely different issue.
In high tiers of WvW, entire zergs roll with retaliation on due to guardians who spam this boon to their allies. First off, for classes that use repetitive, multiple target abilities, this mechanic is immediately perceivable as flawed – a glass cannon ranger using barrage on a zerg can take over 10,000 damage to their selves through the duration of a barrage without ever having been touched once by an enemy. And most interestingly – there is no counterplay to this mechanic. No class has built in lifesteal or life back on hit. Instead, they’re punished to kill themselves by attacking other enemies. If an engineer or a ranger cannot attack someone in fear of killing themselves due to retaliation feedback, you have FAILED in designing this game to be balanced properly. You advertise that we can play with whatever build or setup as we wish, yet here we are. It’s painfully obvious the design team has never played something like a grenade or flamethrower engineer or a longbow ranger in WvW ever before in their lives or bothered to check out the repercussions of their retaliation mechanic.
I’d like to ask. If there any AoE boon ripping in this game? % based Lifesteal built into classes? Any way to counter the power % based retaliation damage in this game that has taken over as a staple of WvW?
No, there isn’t.
Get a new game design team, Anet. I’m not a game designer, but even I can see the flaws in these mechanics that are causing a lot of grief to players.
(edited by Lyndis.2584)