Guild Wars 2

Dalanor.5387:

Tuomir.1830:

Dalanor.5387:

Tuomir.1830:

I would like to point out, with improved aggro management with some small changes to the aggro mechanics, “tanking” can be a role that’s not passive, and would be supported by defensive stats in the same manner as DPS is supported by offensive stats. Defensive stats would provide passive damage mitigation to some level, for sure, but to hold the aggro would be the part requiring player skill.

Tanking works fine, just not as dumb as in others game with artificial threat mechanics.
Archy and Mossman are great examples how can you make an advantage of the situation when the boss sticks to you. Thats why guardians often use Knights gear there so while they grab the agro and rotating blocks or simply backpedaling while the boss is slowed down, the rest of the party can damage the boss at free will. Of course when the kitten hits the fan and the boss suddenly turns around to rip off that poor ele’s face than you should react and hope the guard dude get the agro back soon.

It just requires more situational awareness. Watch the game, not the UI.

I think you missed my proposed aggro changes from earlier the same page. Situational awareness is exactly what I am driving. With enhanced aggro mechanics, raid encounters can be designed with aggro management role in mind.

I read that. The problem with the idea (more or less with the current one as well) that often the one would get agro who is the least threat for the enemy.
“Hey that dude poke me with 500 damage per hit but let the ele melt my left arm with a gazillion of damage.” You get it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we would have more area and / or room wide effects to force everyone in the raid to defend itself somehow instad of getting hit one by one. And if you think about it why would it good if 1 player gets the boss attention while 9, 14, 24 or whatever number of other players just slice it into little pieces?

tl;dr: Agro management is currently acceptable in 5 man dungeon content while in raid environment it’s an encounter design issue.

Well, even overall, how on earth can you possibly maintain aggro with GW2 combat system?

First off, theres no trinity. Thus, no need to maintain aggro. Otherwise, if you intend to encourage someone maintaining aggro, why on earth do away with the trinity?

Second, even if you ignored the fact that theres no trinity, what abilities does any class have that will constantly keep aggro on one person for more than a brief second? I cant think of any and if there are some abilities, its very brief and won’t be a reliable “taunt”.

I don’t think aggro management can work in Guild Wars 2 overall, let alone dungeons or raids.

However, if you’re talking about “who has the highest DPS gets the aggro” well then that person likely doesn’t have enough mitigation to withstand the attention of a raid boss.

Again, I don’t think it works.

Dalanor.5387:

Tuomir.1830:

Dalanor.5387:

Tuomir.1830:

I would like to point out, with improved aggro management with some small changes to the aggro mechanics, “tanking” can be a role that’s not passive, and would be supported by defensive stats in the same manner as DPS is supported by offensive stats. Defensive stats would provide passive damage mitigation to some level, for sure, but to hold the aggro would be the part requiring player skill.

Tanking works fine, just not as dumb as in others game with artificial threat mechanics.
Archy and Mossman are great examples how can you make an advantage of the situation when the boss sticks to you. Thats why guardians often use Knights gear there so while they grab the agro and rotating blocks or simply backpedaling while the boss is slowed down, the rest of the party can damage the boss at free will. Of course when the kitten hits the fan and the boss suddenly turns around to rip off that poor ele’s face than you should react and hope the guard dude get the agro back soon.

It just requires more situational awareness. Watch the game, not the UI.

I think you missed my proposed aggro changes from earlier the same page. Situational awareness is exactly what I am driving. With enhanced aggro mechanics, raid encounters can be designed with aggro management role in mind.

I read that. The problem with the idea (more or less with the current one as well) that often the one would get agro who is the least threat for the enemy.
“Hey that dude poke me with 500 damage per hit but let the ele melt my left arm with a gazillion of damage.” You get it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we would have more area and / or room wide effects to force everyone in the raid to defend itself somehow instad of getting hit one by one. And if you think about it why would it good if 1 player gets the boss attention while 9, 14, 24 or whatever number of other players just slice it into little pieces?

tl;dr: Agro management is currently acceptable in 5 man dungeon content while in raid environment it’s an encounter design issue.

On the first paragraph, I don’t really see that being an issue. Damage would still cause aggro, and with my proposed changes, only the amount of control over aggro would increase, they wouldn’t make the enemies automatically stick to one player, it would just make it more practicable to manage the aggro with active playing and situational awareness.

Concerning second, I never said this would be about bosses specifically. If you lay a good framework of combat roles, you can design much more elaborate and interesting encounters. And since you mention bosses, an additional mechanic I thought of would be for a boss to switch to single-target attacks and the like if one player had an overbearing amount of aggro when compared to the rest. This situation would never happen spontaneously, but if an organized group were to need a break from AoE attacks for any reason, they could attempt that, at the cost of halting damage. It could even offer a viable tactic of coordinated bursts with pauses to let the aggro manager grab the attention again inbetween.

TL;DR, Aggro management holds potential for interesting gameplay and encounter design.

Looks like I missed out on the initial concerns discussion as it seems to be focused on mechanics… There are just way too many concerns about this type of content that leads me to believe it won’t be implemented to benefit the community as a whole. With the community being the #1 problem that this content would be designed for.

Issues/Concerns: (in no particular order)
1. Time Commitment – How long should a raid be? The #1 problem with raids in other games is that they essentially require you dedicate an uninterrupted 4 hours of your life on a set night of the week for the lifetime of the game. As soon as you aren’t faithful in attendance or another issue comes up during play; you get sidelined by the group, never to raid again.
2. Catch-22. Requires experience to join. Can only get experience in raid. So you are never experienced enough to compete. Unless you are already skilled AND get in on the intro of the raids, expect to never get in. Especially if the content is time-locked (# per week) and has failure conditions.
3. (insert meta build) Zerker or GTFO. Already seen the defenders popping up in the thread with violent fervor. Content which forces you into a single build to complete the content should be avoided. Problem exists in other areas of the game as well.
4. Difficulty – Some claim only the elite should be able to complete, others want everyone. Unless we are completely ignoring the mantra that GW2 was supposed to be the regular/casual person’s mmo, content should be inclusive. That means that yes, some of the extreme groups will burn through it in a week and complain, but that is going to happen no matter the difficulty set. Introduction of Optional achievements/encounters could add difficulty without impacting the main mission.
5. Rewards – Raids in other games are the end of the line, so they offer the best gear possible. This should 100% be avoided here. People are claiming to want raids for the difficulty, so provide no or absolutely minor unique rewards (such as a reskin or a title). Unless the desire is to drive people into this content for end game, the rewards should be similar to other activities found in the game, whether it be PvP, WvW, or other PvE content.

While there are a few things the devs can do to implement a better design, most of the problems associated with raids are the result of the community. Unless the content is designed perfectly, I expect the same toxic community to take control of raids here, turning it into the same old build your life around the raid, or don’t play the game.

Crystal Reid.2481:

moiraine.2753:

Chris,

I want to ask you something.Will Defiance be redesigned?Is there any plan for it at all?Because right now it is removing the need of any CC in the fights.If raids come will interrupts,stuns,fear become an actual mechanic?Will they be more useful from now?

All I can say on this is we have been talking about it internally and trying to come up with different solutions that make CC valuable without allowing players to “stun lock” creatures (which would be a very real problem if we did not have Defiance). I can’t say any more on that at this time, so here’s a better question for you:

If we removed Defiance, how would you propose a replacement that makes CC (interrupts, stuns, fears etc) valuable without creating a situation that allows players to CC a creature to death.

I think defiance works fine in most situations, but its not perfect.

I (and its just my opinion) would prefer if defiance stacks were unique to the player rather than to the boss or the group. So, instead of 15 stacks of defiance on the boss, every player would see 5 stacks of defiance that applied only to them. This would allow individual players greater control over when their ccs would work and when they wouldnt.

I realize that may offer a technical challenge not possible with your game engine, however (I am just guessing).

If that is the case, I would propose a hybrid solution – keep defiance just as it is now, but add the Three Toed Tootsie method to your toolkit as well. Even with bosses that have defiance, use a short cc-vulnerability window for those huge attacks that have to be interrupted to avoid failing the encounter. Again, use it sparingly if you go this route, but it is an option.

Crystal Reid.2481:

All I can say on this is we have been talking about it internally and trying to come up with different solutions that make CC valuable without allowing players to “stun lock” creatures (which would be a very real problem if we did not have Defiance). I can’t say any more on that at this time, so here’s a better question for you:

If we removed Defiance, how would you propose a replacement that makes CC (interrupts, stuns, fears etc) valuable without creating a situation that allows players to CC a creature to death.

I think the “easiest” solution would be to get immunity to CC for the next X seconds after you got CC’d (would be nice for players too, but meh.. ), so you can’t chain CC but can rupt the important ones.
Actually as the boss get immunity to CC for a few seconds, if someone timed the CC wrong, the boss’ important skill cannot be rupted, which makes it a bit harder maybe but imo still better than the defiance we have now.

On gear diversity. I think most of the beserker focused meta comes from the fact that gear choice being narrow has more to do with the fact that all the beserker stats are the most “active”. Vitality and Toughness have a set amount of effectiveness when it comes to defense and that defense becomes less and less required as you learn to dodge stuff in encounters , while power, precision and ferocity all increase in effectiveness the more skilled you get and the better you can land your skills.

Personally I think trying to figure out a way to “force” the use of defensive gear is counter-intuitive and look at other active stat sets that aren’t the beserker stat combo and learn how to make them more effective.

2 Stat sets I see as underused are Boon Duration and Condition Duration. Boon Duration has a number of group DPS uses (Might, Fury) and active defense uses (protection, aegis, Vigor, Swiftness, Stablity) so adding it into a stat set might force more interesting decisions like (do I sacrifice ferocity so we can keep might and stablity up X% longer), similiar idea with Condition Duration.

Bubi.5237:

Crystal Reid.2481:

All I can say on this is we have been talking about it internally and trying to come up with different solutions that make CC valuable without allowing players to “stun lock” creatures (which would be a very real problem if we did not have Defiance). I can’t say any more on that at this time, so here’s a better question for you:

If we removed Defiance, how would you propose a replacement that makes CC (interrupts, stuns, fears etc) valuable without creating a situation that allows players to CC a creature to death.

I think the “easiest” solution would be to get immunity to CC for the next X seconds after you got CC’d (would be nice for players too, but meh.. ), so you can’t chain CC but can rupt the important ones.
Actually as the boss get immunity to CC for a few seconds, if someone timed the CC wrong, the boss’ important skill cannot be rupted, which makes it a bit harder maybe but imo still better than the defiance we have now.

I was thinking of flipping the script. Make it so the boss is Vulenerable to CC for X seconds after Defiance is broken then deviance returns as normal. If you break Defiance early, it could really screw up a group trying to interupt a key skill or push the boss into a certain area.

guardian.6489:

I was thinking of flipping the script. Make it so the boss is Vulenerable to CC for X seconds after Deviance is broken then deviance returns as normal. If you break deviance early, it could really screw up a group trying to interupt a key skill or push the boss into a certain area.

It all comes down to the question of what do you want to achieve.
Shutting down the boss for X seconds or rupting the boss every X seconds.. As a bigger group has enough rupt to achieve it if the game mechanics allow it.

Well the reason I like current defiance is that you can use your CC to get around the Boss’s CC immunity however I don’t like the fact it’s ridicilously hard to coordinate who’s taking off the last defiance stack and who’s getting off the best CC move after deviance is broken without 2 people accidently firing at one defiance stack at the same time and resetting deviance again.

Making breaking Defiance creating a CC window means you don’t have to coordinate that precisely but you still can’t spam CC mindlessly or else the Boss will get a fresh stack of Defiance when you really need to CC him.

cesmode.4257:

Again, I don’t think it works.

Bolded part is important. Agro management works, people just ignore it as well many other things to prove their point or whatever reason they have.

Tuomir.1830:

Dalanor.5387:

Tuomir.1830:

Dalanor.5387:

Tuomir.1830:

I would like to point out, with improved aggro management with some small changes to the aggro mechanics, “tanking” can be a role that’s not passive, and would be supported by defensive stats in the same manner as DPS is supported by offensive stats. Defensive stats would provide passive damage mitigation to some level, for sure, but to hold the aggro would be the part requiring player skill.

Tanking works fine, just not as dumb as in others game with artificial threat mechanics.
Archy and Mossman are great examples how can you make an advantage of the situation when the boss sticks to you. Thats why guardians often use Knights gear there so while they grab the agro and rotating blocks or simply backpedaling while the boss is slowed down, the rest of the party can damage the boss at free will. Of course when the kitten hits the fan and the boss suddenly turns around to rip off that poor ele’s face than you should react and hope the guard dude get the agro back soon.

It just requires more situational awareness. Watch the game, not the UI.

I think you missed my proposed aggro changes from earlier the same page. Situational awareness is exactly what I am driving. With enhanced aggro mechanics, raid encounters can be designed with aggro management role in mind.

I read that. The problem with the idea (more or less with the current one as well) that often the one would get agro who is the least threat for the enemy.
“Hey that dude poke me with 500 damage per hit but let the ele melt my left arm with a gazillion of damage.” You get it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we would have more area and / or room wide effects to force everyone in the raid to defend itself somehow instad of getting hit one by one. And if you think about it why would it good if 1 player gets the boss attention while 9, 14, 24 or whatever number of other players just slice it into little pieces?

tl;dr: Agro management is currently acceptable in 5 man dungeon content while in raid environment it’s an encounter design issue.

On the first paragraph, I don’t really see that being an issue. Damage would still cause aggro, and with my proposed changes, only the amount of control over aggro would increase, they wouldn’t make the enemies automatically stick to one player, it would just make it more practicable to manage the aggro with active playing and situational awareness.

Why not? The player gets the agro with the least amount of damage dealt. How is it not an issue? Or am i wrong with following your idea?
Bolded part is already true.

Tuomir.1830:

Concerning second, I never said this would be about bosses specifically. If you lay a good framework of combat roles, you can design much more elaborate and interesting encounters. And since you mention bosses, an additional mechanic I thought of would be for a boss to switch to single-target attacks and the like if one player had an overbearing amount of aggro when compared to the rest. This situation would never happen spontaneously, but if an organized group were to need a break from AoE attacks for any reason, they could attempt that, at the cost of halting damage. It could even offer a viable tactic of coordinated bursts with pauses to let the aggro manager grab the attention again inbetween.

TL;DR, Aggro management holds potential for interesting gameplay and encounter design.

Trash bosses even if though ones shouldn’t be an issue that you need to count with agro management. Period.
Mai Trin on the other hand is a great example in this. When you stand far away from her you can literally bait out her pistol shot and block it thus defend the party. No threat mechanics, no taunt, no stupid math in the back ground just proximity based attacks and proper gameplay. And with the whole fight you need to watch who is getting agroed and act accordingly to lure her into the electric fields. Agro management from the first second til the end.

Dalanor.5387:

Bolded part is important. Agro management works, people just ignore it as well many other things to prove their point or whatever reason they have.

Please tell me how you manage to maintain 100% aggro given the mechanics of GW2 and the skills of a given class?

Because if you are able to do this and you aren’t lying, you have successfully proven that the trinity DOES exist in GW2, and Im pretty sure it doesnt.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

NoTrigger.8396:

Naetell.3815:

In all the content we have in GW2 today, one mistake does not even down a DPS player. A big mistake might, a massive mistake does, but I don’t like defending the oneshot mechanics some bosses have either.

first of all thats a content problem. the pve content we have is not really challenging and difficult to beat, except when you are soloing stuff.

now let me give you one example.
imagine in a 15 man raid a boss has a really tight enrage timer and 15 players are required to use dps gear and optimal rotations to kill the boss before the enrage timer hits.
now in this fight there is healing required, more than just your personal healing skill.
how will players deal with this? they will heal each other with water fields, defensive boons.
so EVERYONE in the raid will be required to provide as much support as possible, teamwork and on top of that dps.
or in other words, everyone has to play well and pull their weight.
and all of that happens while players are dodging dangerous hits and abilities.

now lets say 12 people are required to use optimal rotations and dps gear and you have 3 dedicated healer. will this make the encounter more challenging and fun?
it will actually reduce teamwork, coordination and the requirement that players try to play as good as possible, because focusing on only one thing is much easier to do, and doesnt need as much teamwork.

actually situation 1) is exactly why i love the gw2 combat system.

people always say “just dps, just dps, just dps”. what they dont understand, its exactly the other way around.
its support, support, support with the nice bonus that you can deal alot of dps on top of that at the same time.

how much dps you can deal on top of providing tons of support depends ONLY on how good the player is at the game. a player who doesnt react properly, is inexperienced, and doesnt know when and what to dodge needs defensive gear to survive.
a great player doesnt need defensive gear, because he is learning how to react to X situation faster, how to react proberly etc………

this is actually just amazing. because its entirely based on player skill.

i dont know if you understand what im trying to explain here. but i can recommend every player who thinks “only dps dps dps, no support, no cc” to learn to solo arah paths in berserker gear. once you have done that and reached a certain skill level in gw2, you will look at the game and the combat system from a very different perspective that not alot of players seem to understand even after 2 years of playing the game.

I agree 100%. I now don’t understand why folks are arguing.

Cris

Also going to +1 this post, and agree with Chris. It’s difficult to find the relevant posts through pages of arguing.

This is disappointing that both of you would essentially validate the existing zerker meta. The reason it developed was because defensive gear is detrimental to your survival even if you are just learning. Because of the design of many of the mobs and the focus on active defense, defensive gear provides little benefit. With defensive gear, you may die in 3-4 hits instead of 1-2, the fights take longer, if not more than double the time in zerker gear, leaving you open to be hit that much more. Defensive gear still requires you to know active defense, so you may as well slot the zerker gear.

Defensive gear has uses in WvW and PvP, but in the PvE world, the design of the mobs/ai make it so there is next to no option but to focus on damage over defense.

cesmode.4257:

Dalanor.5387:

Bolded part is important. Agro management works, people just ignore it as well many other things to prove their point or whatever reason they have.

Please tell me how you manage to maintain 100% aggro given the mechanics of GW2 and the skills of a given class?

Because if you are able to do this and you aren’t lying, you have successfully proven that the trinity DOES exist in GW2, and Im pretty sure it doesnt.

Aggro management has nothing to do with having one person hold aggro permanently. It just means you are adapting to who has aggro and acting accordingly. So for example the person with aggro will backstep and kite. If aggro switches then the players role switches. This is an every day occurence against mossman, arch diviner and mai trin. Different bosses aggro different ways. And they often have different rules on different attacks. And although most bosses dont have clear aggro patterns you can manipulate them to some degree to control the aggro and help your group. You can manage that with the proper knowledge and experience.

spoj.9672:

cesmode.4257:

Dalanor.5387:

Bolded part is important. Agro management works, people just ignore it as well many other things to prove their point or whatever reason they have.

Please tell me how you manage to maintain 100% aggro given the mechanics of GW2 and the skills of a given class?

Because if you are able to do this and you aren’t lying, you have successfully proven that the trinity DOES exist in GW2, and Im pretty sure it doesnt.

Aggro management has nothing to do with having one person hold aggro permanently. It just means you are adapting to who has aggro and acting accordingly. So for example the person with aggro will backstep and kite. If aggro switches then the players role switches. This is an every day occurence against mossman, arch diviner and mai trin. Different bosses aggro different ways. And they often have different rules on different attacks. And although most bosses dont have clear aggro patterns you can manipulate them to some degree to control the aggro and help your group. You can manage that with the proper knowledge and experience.

This is not aggro management. Call it organized chaos, and it is no different than anything else currently in GW2. In any given dungeon, the boss will bounce back and forth between party members depending on certain factors. There is no true measure to controlling the aggro. To be honest, it makes zero difference to me if the boss is hitting the elementalist or the thief in the group. My gameplay doesn’t change. When the boss turns to me, I…dodge or whatever. I wouldn’t exactly call that managing aggro. Lets not glorify this. Lets call it for what it is…moving away from a baddie and staying out of bad floor.

If you label that as aggro management…then when the boss is fighting the guardian and throws a bad floor on me, I dodge…did I just manage aggro? I dont get it.

Im not sure why people are even talking about this. How is adapting to who the boss is hitting considered aggro management? I mean, I guess you can label just about anything..so if you want to label a groups “reaction to who the boss is fighting” ‘aggro management’, then so be it. To me, it it is simply “Whelp hes beating on the thief now…dps dps dps, oops coming at me now, dps kite dps, now hes going after the engineer…” Its borderline random(even though there are factors that play into who has aggro), chaotic, uncontrollable, and non interactable…at least not in the sense of how people would like it to be.

spoj.9672:

cesmode.4257:

Dalanor.5387:

Bolded part is important. Agro management works, people just ignore it as well many other things to prove their point or whatever reason they have.

Please tell me how you manage to maintain 100% aggro given the mechanics of GW2 and the skills of a given class?

Because if you are able to do this and you aren’t lying, you have successfully proven that the trinity DOES exist in GW2, and Im pretty sure it doesnt.

Aggro management has nothing to do with having one person hold aggro permanently. It just means you are adapting to who has aggro and acting accordingly. So for example the person with aggro will backstep and kite. If aggro switches then the players role switches. This is an every day occurence against mossman, arch diviner and mai trin. Different bosses aggro different ways. And they often have different rules on different attacks. And although most bosses dont have clear aggro patterns you can manipulate them to some degree to control the aggro and help your group. You can manage that with the proper knowledge and experience.

What he said. ^

EgonVenkman.1907:

This is disappointing that both of you would essentially validate the existing zerker meta. The reason it developed was because defensive gear is detrimental to your survival even if you are just learning. Because of the design of many of the mobs and the focus on active defense, defensive gear provides little benefit. With defensive gear, you may die in 3-4 hits instead of 1-2, the fights take longer, if not more than double the time in zerker gear, leaving you open to be hit that much more. Defensive gear still requires you to know active defense, so you may as well slot the zerker gear.

Defensive gear has uses in WvW and PvP, but in the PvE world, the design of the mobs/ai make it so there is next to no option but to focus on damage over defense.

It’s intended to use berserker gear and ignore passive defensive stats and rely on your skill layout and own personal skill to mitigate damage and of course your team mates.
Watch please example#1 and example#2 and realize how your statements become false.

But on topic. The idea is, everybody wins. Okay. But the question is where we should draw the line? Obviously setting up the challenge to the level where actual speed running guilds play is going against the vision (whatever it is currently, so its a guess) of GW2 because it would exclude way too many players. On the other hand the other side of the spectrum, the ubertanky full defensive setups shouldn’t be the etalon and focus of balance decisions. So … what now?

As a bonus, watch this everybody.
Extra Credits – When Difficult Is Fun – The Difference Between Challenging and Punishing Games

edit:

I wouldn’t exactly call that managing aggro. Lets not glorify this. Lets call it for what it is…moving away from a baddie and staying out of bad floor.

With that analogy we just pushing buttons which a toddler could do so it’s meaningless to speak about challenge. Strawmans at it’s best.

one thing that is certainly needed:

Tone DOWN the particle effects! :P at the moment fighting in groups of more than 5 is a horrible mess. a low glow is perfectly fine instead of giant effects making you’re screen flash every 3 seconds

Crystal Reid.2481:

moiraine.2753:

Chris,

I want to ask you something.Will Defiance be redesigned?Is there any plan for it at all?Because right now it is removing the need of any CC in the fights.If raids come will interrupts,stuns,fear become an actual mechanic?Will they be more useful from now?

All I can say on this is we have been talking about it internally and trying to come up with different solutions that make CC valuable without allowing players to “stun lock” creatures (which would be a very real problem if we did not have Defiance). I can’t say any more on that at this time, so here’s a better question for you:

If we removed Defiance, how would you propose a replacement that makes CC (interrupts, stuns, fears etc) valuable without creating a situation that allows players to CC a creature to death.

i’ll see your quote, and raise you my quote from another thread, since it seems relevant here:

Forgotten Legend.9281:

[BRAINSTORM ABOUT DEFIANT STACKS: DIMINISHING RETURNS]

(a) a more script intensive idea would be to give diminishing returns to successive uses of successful control effects with specific time periods.

examples: once you knockback a boss, the next knockback within 10 seconds is only half the distance, et cetera… until the full 10 seconds expires without knockbock. another example would be immobilize the boss for 4 seconds, but then if any other immobilize skill is used against the boss within 10 seconds, whatever the immobilize would have been, is cut in half. if immobilized a 3rd time before resetting, then halved, and the result would be halved again.

(b) there would have to be an additional rule that any effect lasting less than 1/4 second is just plain ignored.

example: boss gets stunned for 4 seconds, 5 seconds later, a 2 second stun hits the boss, so it’s halved, so it’s a 1 second stun. 3 seconds later, a 3 second stun hits the boss, but it’s halved, and then halved again (diminishing returns diminish per stack), so 3/4 second stun. 9 seconds later a 2 second stun hits boss. gets halved, halved and then halved again, so it’s a 1/4 second stun. 4 seconds later a 4 second stun hits the boss, gets halved 4 times. so 1/4 second stun. if the diminishing returns aren’t reset at this point, the stun duration will be less than 1/4 second and won’t stun the boss.

(3) now, the diminishing returns would be exclusive and independent to each control effect, not a global diminishing return for ALL control effects.

examples: so if diminishing returns affected stun duration, and nobody dazed the boss yet, then diminishing returns would not apply to daze yet. and since each control effect has it’s own independent diminishing return, daze could be at level 3, stun could be at level 6, knockback could be at level 2, immobilize could be at level 9, all at the same time.

but that would require a LOT more scripting than simple defiant stacks. and this doesn’t address any of the “build up to large attack at x stacks of y” mechanics

[RELATED UI SUGGESTION]
as a side note: UI could be better customizable for me to relocate my target’s healthbar to a place on my screen where i can actually pay attention to defiant stacks and such. i have a 30 inch monitor. my target’s healthbar is always at the top of the screen, where i never look during combat. allow me to move it somewhere i can monitor it better please.

if players can’t even see the target’s buffs / debuffs during combat due to UI restrictions, of course they won’t be actively thinking about things like defiant. and if they’re new to the game, they won’t even KNOW about defiant unless tutored on it.

[TUTORIALS BOOKS AND IMMERSION] (semi-related, but edited out due to character limit. can read this section in original post in other thread)

cesmode.4257:

This is not aggro management. Call it organized chaos, and it is no different than anything else currently in GW2. In any given dungeon, the boss will bounce back and forth between party members depending on certain factors. There is no true measure to controlling the aggro. To be honest, it makes zero difference to me if the boss is hitting the elementalist or the thief in the group. My gameplay doesn’t change. When the boss turns to me, I…dodge or whatever. I wouldn’t exactly call that managing aggro. Lets not glorify this. Lets call it for what it is…moving away from a baddie and staying out of bad floor.

If you label that as aggro management…then when the boss is fighting the guardian and throws a bad floor on me, I dodge…did I just manage aggro? I dont get it.

Im not sure why people are even talking about this. How is adapting to who the boss is hitting considered aggro management? I mean, I guess you can label just about anything..so if you want to label a groups “reaction to who the boss is fighting” ‘aggro management’, then so be it. To me, it it is simply “Whelp hes beating on the thief now…dps dps dps, oops coming at me now, dps kite dps, now hes going after the engineer…” Its borderline random(even though there are factors that play into who has aggro), chaotic, uncontrollable, and non interactable…at least not in the sense of how people would like it to be.

Ill try again as i failed to explain it properly. In fractals it is often the job of the guardian to manage the aggro of mossman, arch diviner or the champ ettin. To do this he has to remain at closer proximity to those bosses and maintain respectable or frequent damage to the target. This way the target will focus mainly on the guardian. However if other players move too close or get too far ahead on the damage then aggro can change. Often the guardian can re-aquire aggro by using knowledge and experience of the encounter.

For example when i kite the ettin while the rest of the group kills the other 3 mobs. I used to lose aggro all the time because i kited too safely. I learnt that staying close and making sure my teammates did not damage him at all reduced the chance of him losing aggro. I also learnt that if he decided to change aggro i would have to run right up to him and immobilise him to get him to switch back to me. I was managing his aggro as best i could despite there being no proper threat mechanic. This can be done in any gear but many have claimed that aggro on this particular fight is easier to maintain when using knights gear.

BlakThornArrow.2389:

one thing that is certainly needed:

Tone DOWN the particle effects! :P at the moment fighting in groups of more than 5 is a horrible mess. a low glow is perfectly fine instead of giant effects making you’re screen flash every 3 seconds

One of the more useful contributions. I didnt think of this…but good one and I agree. Particle effects are out of control in larger encounters.

spoj.9672:

cesmode.4257:

This is not aggro management. Call it organized chaos, and it is no different than anything else currently in GW2. In any given dungeon, the boss will bounce back and forth between party members depending on certain factors. There is no true measure to controlling the aggro. To be honest, it makes zero difference to me if the boss is hitting the elementalist or the thief in the group. My gameplay doesn’t change. When the boss turns to me, I…dodge or whatever. I wouldn’t exactly call that managing aggro. Lets not glorify this. Lets call it for what it is…moving away from a baddie and staying out of bad floor.

If you label that as aggro management…then when the boss is fighting the guardian and throws a bad floor on me, I dodge…did I just manage aggro? I dont get it.

Im not sure why people are even talking about this. How is adapting to who the boss is hitting considered aggro management? I mean, I guess you can label just about anything..so if you want to label a groups “reaction to who the boss is fighting” ‘aggro management’, then so be it. To me, it it is simply “Whelp hes beating on the thief now…dps dps dps, oops coming at me now, dps kite dps, now hes going after the engineer…” Its borderline random(even though there are factors that play into who has aggro), chaotic, uncontrollable, and non interactable…at least not in the sense of how people would like it to be.

Ill try again as i failed to explain it properly. In fractals it is often the job of the guardian to manage the aggro of mossman, arch diviner or the champ ettin. To do this he has to remain at closer proximity to those bosses and maintain respectable or frequent damage to the target. This way the target will focus mainly on the guardian. However if other players move too close or get too far ahead on the damage then aggro can change. Often the guardian can re-aquire aggro by using knowledge and experience of the encounter.

For example when i kite the ettin while the rest of the group kills the other 3 mobs. I used to lose aggro all the time because i kited too safely. I learnt that staying close and making sure my teammates did not damage him at all reduced the chance of him losing aggro. I also learnt that if he decided to change aggro i would have to run right up to him and immobilise him to get him to switch back to me. I was managing his aggro as best i could despite there being no proper threat mechanic. This can be done in any gear but many have claimed that aggro on this particular fight is easier to maintain when using knights gear.

Ok, I hear what youre saying…

So if you can effectively manage the aggro of a boss, because of your toughness value(I have heard that too) and if you can keep the boss focused on you 95% of the time…isnt that tanking? If so, I thought GW2 did away with the trinity.

That to me sounds like tanking.

Dalanor.5387:

Why not? The player gets the agro with the least amount of damage dealt. How is it not an issue? Or am i wrong with following your idea?
Bolded part is already true.

I don’t see why damage should be the only priority for aggro. I don’t think you think that way either, but that’s what you are essentially saying here. Actively attempting to hold aggro should have high aggro priority. I am suggesting intuitive ways of doing just that. However, I would say ceaseless melee max DPS should cause the highest amounts of aggro, for balance reasons.

Concerning second, I never said this would be about bosses specifically. If you lay a good framework of combat roles, you can design much more elaborate and interesting encounters. And since you mention bosses, an additional mechanic I thought of would be for a boss to switch to single-target attacks and the like if one player had an overbearing amount of aggro when compared to the rest. This situation would never happen spontaneously, but if an organized group were to need a break from AoE attacks for any reason, they could attempt that, at the cost of halting damage. It could even offer a viable tactic of coordinated bursts with pauses to let the aggro manager grab the attention again inbetween.

TL;DR, Aggro management holds potential for interesting gameplay and encounter design.

Trash bosses even if though ones shouldn’t be an issue that you need to count with agro management. Period.
Mai Trin on the other hand is a great example in this. When you stand far away from her you can literally bait out her pistol shot and block it thus defend the party. No threat mechanics, no taunt, no stupid math in the back ground just proximity based attacks and proper gameplay. And with the whole fight you need to watch who is getting agroed and act accordingly to lure her into the electric fields. Agro management from the first second til the end.

I don’t really see your point. Your example with Mai Trinn isn’t about managing aggro, it’s about reacting to it. That’s the same difference as active defense to healing. And no encounters in a good raid should be trivial, and while I don’t think every one of them should require proactive aggro management, it would be good if a considerable portion of the game would encourage it by design.

cesmode.4257:

spoj.9672:

cesmode.4257:

This is not aggro management. Call it organized chaos, and it is no different than anything else currently in GW2. In any given dungeon, the boss will bounce back and forth between party members depending on certain factors. There is no true measure to controlling the aggro. To be honest, it makes zero difference to me if the boss is hitting the elementalist or the thief in the group. My gameplay doesn’t change. When the boss turns to me, I…dodge or whatever. I wouldn’t exactly call that managing aggro. Lets not glorify this. Lets call it for what it is…moving away from a baddie and staying out of bad floor.

If you label that as aggro management…then when the boss is fighting the guardian and throws a bad floor on me, I dodge…did I just manage aggro? I dont get it.

Im not sure why people are even talking about this. How is adapting to who the boss is hitting considered aggro management? I mean, I guess you can label just about anything..so if you want to label a groups “reaction to who the boss is fighting” ‘aggro management’, then so be it. To me, it it is simply “Whelp hes beating on the thief now…dps dps dps, oops coming at me now, dps kite dps, now hes going after the engineer…” Its borderline random(even though there are factors that play into who has aggro), chaotic, uncontrollable, and non interactable…at least not in the sense of how people would like it to be.

Ill try again as i failed to explain it properly. In fractals it is often the job of the guardian to manage the aggro of mossman, arch diviner or the champ ettin. To do this he has to remain at closer proximity to those bosses and maintain respectable or frequent damage to the target. This way the target will focus mainly on the guardian. However if other players move too close or get too far ahead on the damage then aggro can change. Often the guardian can re-aquire aggro by using knowledge and experience of the encounter.

For example when i kite the ettin while the rest of the group kills the other 3 mobs. I used to lose aggro all the time because i kited too safely. I learnt that staying close and making sure my teammates did not damage him at all reduced the chance of him losing aggro. I also learnt that if he decided to change aggro i would have to run right up to him and immobilise him to get him to switch back to me. I was managing his aggro as best i could despite there being no proper threat mechanic. This can be done in any gear but many have claimed that aggro on this particular fight is easier to maintain when using knights gear.

Ok, I hear what youre saying…

So if you can effectively manage the aggro of a boss, because of your toughness value(I have heard that too) and if you can keep the boss focused on you 95% of the time…isnt that tanking? If so, I thought GW2 did away with the trinity.

That to me sounds like tanking.

In a way it can be considered off tanking i suppose. Not all bosses can be manipulated in this way. But the key difference is you dont need passive defence to do this role. Theres no forced tank. Any player with any gear can do it. And even a full nomad warrior would probably have some trouble staying alive against mossman if he just tried to facetank. Active tanking with no guaranteed aggro is a lot more interesting than UI tanking with 100% aggro.

guardian.6489:

Well the reason I like current defiance is that you can use your CC to get around the Boss’s CC immunity however I don’t like the fact it’s ridicilously hard to coordinate who’s taking off the last defiance stack and who’s getting off the best CC move after deviance is broken without 2 people accidently firing at one defiance stack at the same time and resetting deviance again.

Making breaking Defiance creating a CC window means you don’t have to coordinate that precisely but you still can’t spam CC mindlessly or else the Boss will get a fresh stack of Defiance when you really need to CC him.

If defiance continues to be a thing, I’d like it if it behaved somewhat similarly to the revealed debuff. Ideally once you get rid of defiance stacks, the target loses defiance for 3 seconds and can be CC’ed numerous occasions for that time. Then defiance would come back.

This gives you a window to do things like land frost bow 5 or unload a fear chain.

Dalanor.5387:

It’s intended to use berserker gear and ignore passive defensive stats and rely on your skill layout and own personal skill to mitigate damage and of course your team mates.

And you don’t find this problematic? That the game on other hand tells us “those are new stat sets, get them while they’re hot”, but quickly adds “…though you’d have to be dumb to actually use them”.

Basically, if game design is going to trivialize existence of defensive stats, then why do they even exist?

Dalanor.5387:

But on topic. The idea is, everybody wins. Okay. But the question is where we should draw the line?

The general rule would be “at the level where more people like the content than dislike it”. Of course, like and dislike is also dependant on other factors (like rewards, for example), so you should push the difficulty threshold lower anytime you make the desirability of running content go up (besides, of course, the desirability that is derived directly from challenge).

Crystal Reid.2481:

moiraine.2753:

Chris,

I want to ask you something.Will Defiance be redesigned?Is there any plan for it at all?Because right now it is removing the need of any CC in the fights.If raids come will interrupts,stuns,fear become an actual mechanic?Will they be more useful from now?

All I can say on this is we have been talking about it internally and trying to come up with different solutions that make CC valuable without allowing players to “stun lock” creatures (which would be a very real problem if we did not have Defiance). I can’t say any more on that at this time, so here’s a better question for you:

If we removed Defiance, how would you propose a replacement that makes CC (interrupts, stuns, fears etc) valuable without creating a situation that allows players to CC a creature to death.

Create one Special attack that can’t be dodged/blocked/parried/reflected or something like that.The only possible way to stop it is by assigning a player who will interrupt that specific Spell(Only interrupt will work on it nothing else).The special attack has to be well telegraphed and visible.

To make the mechanic more group oriented the Special hit will occur on a specific intervals of time so the rest of the group has to remove the defiance stacks really fast or they won’t be able to avoid the dmg that will follow.The group will take a lot of dmg.

There is a 2nd element here too. I like the idea about increasing stacks so lets add a few tweeks on top of that to make it harder.The group has to be very precise or they can wipe from the huge amount of the dmg that they will suffer.
For instance the boss has 1 Special attack and 4 defiance stacks.That will make 1 interrupt for the special attack and 4 more to remove the stacks.That makes total of 5 interrupts.BUT If the group is not precise enough and makes 6 interrupts instead of 5 that will stack defiance again but with more than 4 stacks this time.And this will be bad for the group.It’s really important to remove the idea about mindless spamming of CC and add more precision in it.

I’m having trouble articulating my points exactly but:
Frankly that is not a game I’d want to play, it sounds like a single player game. In single player you’re always going to succeed so the rewards are always yours, in an MMO that doesn’t hold true if you’re not as skilled at the game it doesn’t hand hold and you’ll quickly realize not all the rewards are yours.

And that’s fine. Don’t let the door hit ya.

What I choose to wear is based off 4 things,
1. Does it look good together (contrary to popular believe we don’t just stick on the rarest weapons and armor we have.)
2. What does this skin say about me.
3. How rare is this skin.
4. How likely am I to see someone else wearing this? (looking at you legendaries)

What I choose to wear is based off one thing:
1. Does it look good on my character?

Much simpler.

Its a problem because it diminishes the challenge. Raids are supposed to be challenge.

I am not a fan of “hard line” challenge. That is, I’m not a fan of challenge in which the skilled succeed and the unskilled fail completely. That just isn’t fun for those that aren’t particularly good at it. I prefer challenges in which the unskilled still succeed, but just take longer at it, while the role of the skilled is not “do you succeed or fail,” but rather “how WELL do you succeed?” The simplest example is new Teq. If you can’t complete it within 15 minutes, then you get no final reward, which I think is too little time for the average pug map to achieve. But the really top gear maps can compete to try and get the very best minimum times, well bellow that 15 minute threshold, and I see that as being the best point for challenge.

When raids are released and have been out long enough that the best strategies are well understood, the bragging rights for top-skill teams should not be “we managed to complete the raid,” it should be “we managed to complete the raid in closest to the minimum posted time,” or “we managed to complete the raid with zero deaths,” or other impressive, but not strictly necessary conditions. It would be helpful if the game could track these sorts of things internally.

Medium skilled, tanky geared players should, with a little practice, be able to clear these raids, but they should never be able to compete at the highest level in the time race. Think of it like golf. Nobody “fails” at golf, the only difference between the average Joe and a PGA champ is that the latter completes the course in far less time and fewer swings.

Tanking works fine, just not as dumb as in others game with artificial threat mechanics.
Archy and Mossman are great examples how can you make an advantage of the situation when the boss sticks to you. Thats why guardians often use Knights gear there so while they grab the agro and rotating blocks or simply backpedaling while the boss is slowed down, the rest of the party can damage the boss at free will. Of course when the kitten hits the fan and the boss suddenly turns around to rip off that poor ele’s face than you should react and hope the guard dude get the agro back soon.

It just requires more situational awareness. Watch the game, not the UI.

On the topic of tanking, couldn’t there be a built in tank mechanic to the fight? Like maybe have a field the player can pass through or some other interaction that would give you a buff, and this buff makes you have very high agro, with the mechanic being that certain characters deliberately take on massive agro, and then just have to survive the experience while the rest of the team does other tasks. I think this would be a lot more clear cut than fiddling with the current agro management systems.

If we removed Defiance, how would you propose a replacement that makes CC (interrupts, stuns, fears etc) valuable without creating a situation that allows players to CC a creature to death.

I mentioned a system above (similar to DT Moa’s current mechanisms), but another mechanism I think would be good is a “consolation prize” system, in which when you try to apply a debuff on an enemy that is immune to it, something else happens instead. For example, Tendrils are immune to pulls/pushes. I think when you use a pull/push effect on them, it should do bonus damage, to note that you’re basically yanking at their roots. Similarly, an enemy immune to immobilize could have it turned into Cripple, an enemy immune to Cripple could have it turned into Vulnerability, an enemy immune to Fear could have it turned into Weakness, etc. Since these effects often cap out anyways in zerg fights, perhaps these could be “new” stacks that stack separately from the default ones, so a boss could have a full stack of “normal” weakness, and also a stack of “consolation Weakness” from applying Fears. Hard CCs would still have an impact on the fight, even if you could not hit the full effect.

Crystal Reid.2481:

moiraine.2753:

Chris,

I want to ask you something.Will Defiance be redesigned?Is there any plan for it at all?Because right now it is removing the need of any CC in the fights.If raids come will interrupts,stuns,fear become an actual mechanic?Will they be more useful from now?

All I can say on this is we have been talking about it internally and trying to come up with different solutions that make CC valuable without allowing players to “stun lock” creatures

A simple solution for example would be a boss who gets a very strong active heal you have to interrupt. During the animation he gets 5 stacks and stability. So on the one hand, you have to take down the 5 stacks, on the other hand you have to remove stability to interrupt this heal. If you miss it the boss will get immediately full hp.

It’s a poor example but there are so pretty much ways to make CC important and to improve the coordination which should be needed for successful teamplay.

Furthermore, you should really introduce challenging bosses which reward good players.
Guild wars 2 has a unique combat-system with the possibility to avoid damage. Therefore, you’ll need bosses that can hurt you pretty much, if you won’t make use of this special ability.

Crystal Reid.2481:

moiraine.2753:

Chris,

I want to ask you something.Will Defiance be redesigned?Is there any plan for it at all?Because right now it is removing the need of any CC in the fights.If raids come will interrupts,stuns,fear become an actual mechanic?Will they be more useful from now?

All I can say on this is we have been talking about it internally and trying to come up with different solutions that make CC valuable without allowing players to “stun lock” creatures (which would be a very real problem if we did not have Defiance). I can’t say any more on that at this time, so here’s a better question for you:

If we removed Defiance, how would you propose a replacement that makes CC (interrupts, stuns, fears etc) valuable without creating a situation that allows players to CC a creature to death.

One thing that could be done is after you CC a mob they gain a buffs that stacks in intensity, let’s call it defiance, and this lasts for let’s say 5s or so, and when they have defiance the next time they’re CCed they gain another stack of defiance as well as a window of CC immunity, the CC immunity would last longer for each stack of defiance they gain to make it so you could CC lock for a short duration, but doing so would leave you in a very vulnerable situation where you can’t CC the boss for a long time.

Or maybe just make it so whenever they’re CCed they then gain a flat CC immunity so stun locking isn’t even a factor, but it’s still possible to interrupt a skill or just flat out CC the boss. If this approach is taken Id absolutely make moves that are too dangerous to not interrupt.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning,

Ok I have been up all night reading the posts and thinking about this CDI.

To be frank this is not a good CDI, specifically because whilst some folks are trying to be collaborative and have valuable discussion others are just bullying with their different agendas.

I have always said that if a CDI loses its value on both sides that it will be stopped.

So I am at some what of a loss. I can’t tell anymore if it is of value to this group. Whilst it certainly has been valuable for us it has been extremely time consuming to get to the good stuff.

So I will leave it up to you folks. If you feel you can work more collaboratively then by all means let me know that you want to carry on.

If you feel that it is a lost cause then I will ask for everyone’s top three priorities for raiding and call it a day.

I want to say thank you very much to all those who tried to follow the rules of the CDI and who had a healthy discussion. I also wanted to say a big thank you to TTS and DnT. We appreciate your feedback.

Chris

In that case Chris, I’m going to make one last preposal based on rewards and the different player types I’ve noticed over the months of being a TTS leader.

I have barely been involved in this round, but I agree that every time I try to catch up, it’s just a sea of people arguing. It’s not productive at all, and it only shows the faintest signs of being productive in future. I think everyone should get in whatever last posts they can, then we should sadly close this up and, I hope, move on to the next phase, maybe GvG or something else entirely, even if it’s just offering your ideas for what the next CDI should be about.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning,

Ok I have been up all night reading the posts and thinking about this CDI.

To be frank this is not a good CDI, specifically because whilst some folks are trying to be collaborative and have valuable discussion others are just bullying with their different agendas.

I have always said that if a CDI loses its value on both sides that it will be stopped.

So I am at some what of a loss. I can’t tell anymore if it is of value to this group. Whilst it certainly has been valuable for us it has been extremely time consuming to get to the good stuff.

So I will leave it up to you folks. If you feel you can work more collaboratively then by all means let me know that you want to carry on.

If you feel that it is a lost cause then I will ask for everyone’s top three priorities for raiding and call it a day.

I want to say thank you very much to all those who tried to follow the rules of the CDI and who had a healthy discussion. I also wanted to say a big thank you to TTS and DnT. We appreciate your feedback.

Chris

Thank you for the honesty and for all of your efforts in pushing this thread forward.

I lead a guild with a roster of 356 players, 200+ of whom are what I would consider very active in the game (log on at least 2-3 times a week). We arent as well known as a TTS or DnT, but we are a very tight knit group and include some of your game’s most ardent and loyal supporters. While I respect the opinions those guilds bring, I hope you respect that the potential raiding community is MUCH larger and much more diverse than those guilds.

The discussions I bring to this thread are on behalf of my guild members – and something we have discussed many times as a group. I can say that raiding is something the vast majority of my guild would really enjoy if done properly.

At this point, I think you’ve seen the points that most people care about in this CDI. While more could be said/discussed, you’re probably justified in calling an end to this thread. The hate and arguments have taken over to the point they are drowning real discussion.

Again, thanks for the efforts and patience in this thread. Many of us truly appreciate the chance to be part of the discussion.

As a side/final note, if you’re looking for a topic for the next CDI, I would vote for a discussion about guild missions.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning,

Ok I have been up all night reading the posts and thinking about this CDI.

To be frank this is not a good CDI, specifically because whilst some folks are trying to be collaborative and have valuable discussion others are just bullying with their different agendas.

I have always said that if a CDI loses its value on both sides that it will be stopped.

So I am at some what of a loss. I can’t tell anymore if it is of value to this group. Whilst it certainly has been valuable for us it has been extremely time consuming to get to the good stuff.

So I will leave it up to you folks. If you feel you can work more collaboratively then by all means let me know that you want to carry on.

If you feel that it is a lost cause then I will ask for everyone’s top three priorities for raiding and call it a day.

I want to say thank you very much to all those who tried to follow the rules of the CDI and who had a healthy discussion. I also wanted to say a big thank you to TTS and DnT. We appreciate your feedback.

Chris

I’m impressed you kept the CDI going this long. It felt like a lost cause to me back around page 10.

My top 3 would be:
Not restricted to guilds
Scaling or sufficient raids of specific sizes for people to choose from
Multiple paths/groups to discourage blob behavior

Thanks for trying to run this. Is there another CDI planned? If so, what topic?

There’s a few individuals here who are spending far too much time trying to advance their personal agendas rather than attempting to brainstorm ways to make GW2 raids fun and unique.

Chris, my suggestion would be to close this main phase of the CDI and break down your requests into much, much narrower topics. For example: Raid Boss Mechanics, Raid Rewards, Raid Progression Systems, etc.

Additionally, I’d suggest focusing conversation by shifting into specific questions faster. Leaving the floor open for anybody to contribute anything may seem helpful, but it tends to be that constraints bring out creativity.

Reward Tiers

Proposal Overview
Different reward tiers with different requirements per Raid. Each tier is increasingly hard to complete.

Goal of Proposal
To create multiple difficultly levels without changing a raid

Proposal Functionality
Basically each Raid would have a base reward, which is rewarded regardless of how well you do however each Raid would also have “bonus” loot based how well you do. These would be separated into 4 tiers, Bronze, Siliver, Gold and Platinum. These requirements for how well you do could vary Raid to Raid, it could be how quickly you complete the Raid, how well you complete bonus objectives or how soundly you beat the various Bosses. As an example here’s what they could be for various Raids:

Battle of LA/ Battle on the Breachmaker:
Mechanism: Time based
Bronze: Whatever time
Silver: If you wipe 1 or 2 times you still may get this tier if your quick
Gold: Your not likely to get this tier if you wipe even once
Platinum: No wipes, you must have an optimized group and go through the entire Raid almost perfectly, melting bosses and going from step to step as fast as you can.

The Marionette:
Mechanism: The Aetherblade Cannon chrage
Bronze: You didn’t fail
Silver: 50% or less of a charge
Gold: No Marionette chain break attempts failed or equilvient amount of champs got through
Platinum: No champs got through, no chain attempts failed. 0% Charge

Tower of Nightmares:
Mechanism: There are people trapped in the tower you need to rescue, they die after a period of time.
Bronze: We had to save people?
Silver: 25% saved
Gold: 75% saved
Platinum: Nobody left behind.

As you can see Platinum requirements would be tuned to be absolutely insane, something so that “world’s first” would be something worth bragging about. This could have an additional one-time reward tied to it which could include an achievement with a title and good reward like an ascended item or something similar in value (something you could add to your ascended armor to add a new selectable stat would be nice). This would mean each base Raid would be completable but there would be something insane to go for the most hardcore amongst us.

Associated Risks
-Rage if a certain base reward tier isn’t met
-A time based requirement could strengthen the berserker meta more
-Harder class requirements for Platinum rewards
-Veterans could be less accepting of newbies for fear of losing out a reward tier.

I’m basing this on the fact that in TTS I’ve noticed over time there are the glory hunters who joined us for the Triple Trouble first kill but played less once we achieved the first kill, the farmers who just want their loot, and the explorers who just want to experience everything the game has to offer. I noticed in the beginning the glory hunters joined us for the glory of getting the first kill then over time they got their kill and moved on then the farmers who wanted the Wurm’s unique loot settled in once our strategies settled down and they’re still with us almost every day. The explorers come and go every once and a while and join in for a couple kills then move on.

Platinum is for the glory hunters, that’s why the main reward is one-time, once you get the epic achievement, to them repeatable rewards are kinda meh. Bronze through Gold is more for the farmers, multiple tiers will keep them entertained and keep the Raid tense even after the 100 times. The reason I didn’t want too many more repeatable rewards at Platinum is so there’s less conflict between explorers who won’t be knowledgable about the fight and Farmers who just want the best reward.

Keep in mind all 3 of these types of players (and any I missed) will all be in the same Raid together, their needs affect each other.

On a side note, I have always been bothered by one aspect of the dodge system. By allowing to avoid any damage by simple dodging at the right time, it puts a very strong emphasize on the timing awareness and considerably decrease the need of location awareness. I have felt that as annoying on several encounters such as the watchknights during Battle for LA: they had very large AoE attacks that you could avoid by carefull placement near the safe melee range area, or that you could completely ignore by simply dodging at the right time.

Both mechanics are interesting but I feel that the emphasize on timing awareness is to strong at the moment.

In the latest release, the underground troll champion uses an interesting mechanics: several circle AoE attacks that have a “long” (4-5s) lasting effect. Since they hit quite hard, they therefore make timed dodging useless when the endpoint of dodge is still in the AoE and therefore they put an emphasize on location awareness: “I will have to care where my dodge lands”.

I therefore suggest that raid encounters should use a mix of both instant AoE and long lasting AoE to both promote timing and location awareness. Long lasting AoE effects do not deny dodging all use since dodging can help players to move out (not within-during in that case) of AoE without taking damage.

On a side note, I have always been bothered by one aspect of the dodge system. By allowing to avoid any damage by simple dodging at the right time, it puts a very strong emphasize on the timing awareness and considerably decrease the need of location awareness. I have felt that as annoying on several encounters such as the watchknights during Battle for LA: they had very large AoE attacks that you could avoid by carefull placement near the safe melee range area, or that you could completely ignore by simply dodging at the right time.

I like the balance between the two. It usually means that if you have good timing, you can stay in close and melee, which does more damage, while if you don’t have good timing you can hang back and range, which is less efficient but safer. The Legendary Giant is a good example of this in action. Since dodge is a limited resource, you can’t just dodge constantly (unless you really build for that), so sometimes you still have to be very careful where you land, but you shouldn’t be forced to completely leave the area of the attack all the time.

Another sidenote: I trully love the very large scale events designed thus far that require cooperation accross the map (Nightmare Tower, Battle for LA/Marionette, lastest release) . It puts such a strong emphasize on that feeling of beeing one small part of large army, of actually playing a *MM*ORPG.

As much as I love raiding, I hope that raid development will not hamper the development of these open world activities (unless raids can come to accomodate such mechanics and number of players)

Ohoni.6057:

On a side note, I have always been bothered by one aspect of the dodge system. By allowing to avoid any damage by simple dodging at the right time, it puts a very strong emphasize on the timing awareness and considerably decrease the need of location awareness. I have felt that as annoying on several encounters such as the watchknights during Battle for LA: they had very large AoE attacks that you could avoid by carefull placement near the safe melee range area, or that you could completely ignore by simply dodging at the right time.

I like the balance between the two. It usually means that if you have good timing, you can stay in close and melee, which does more damage, while if you don’t have good timing you can hang back and range, which is less efficient but safer. The Legendary Giant is a good example of this in action. Since dodge is a limited resource, you can’t just dodge constantly (unless you really build for that), so sometimes you still have to be very careful where you land, but you shouldn’t be forced to completely leave the area of the attack all the time.

A “long” lasting AoE is not necessarily a circle that prevents any access to melee range. It can be cone, a double cone, many dots, whatever, its goal being to force players to think at where they are going, not to prevent them from attacking.

And there may also be specific encounters mechanics aimed at promoting the ability to efficiently switch between melee and ranged combat by making one of the ranges temporarily unavailable (read too hostile to survive in).

IMO, this latest patch should be looked at as a broad example for a raid. In sense, it is a raid sorta, as different commanders may take position at each base, calling for aid, and defending. And the final goal is great too, with rewards pending on how well you do.

If anything, a system like that for a raid would be interesting, where you are scored and rewarded for said score. The medals rewards system can be used and then tallied up at the end.

“Did you complete all the objectives and mini objectives?”
“Did you beat the event in a timely manner?”
“How many people died?”
etc.

tally it up at the end, it could determine how hard the boss is, and/or how rewarding the final chest is.

Mechanic wise, the encounter event should be preventing the group from always staying in one spot. The environment needs to be dangerous, the boss should force the players to leave him be for a time and go defend or capture something else. As well as as his health lowers, his tactics change.

As for accessibility. Yes, anyone should be able to do it using the LFG tool. But chances are, a PUG group may not easily get the max tier reward if not coordinated enough.

Serophous.9085:

IMO, this latest patch should be looked at as a broad example for a raid. In sense, it is a raid sorta, as different commanders may take position at each base, calling for aid, and defending. And the final goal is great too, with rewards pending on how well you do.

If anything, a system like that for a raid would be interesting, where you are scored and rewarded for said score. The medals rewards system can be used and then tallied up at the end.

“Did you complete all the objectives and mini objectives?”
“Did you beat the event in a timely manner?”
“How many people died?”
etc.

tally it up at the end, it could determine how hard the boss is, and/or how rewarding the final chest is.

Mechanic wise, the encounter event should be preventing the group from always staying in one spot. The environment needs to be dangerous, the boss should force the players to leave him be for a time and go defend or capture something else. As well as as his health lowers, his tactics change.

As for accessibility. Yes, anyone should be able to do it using the LFG tool. But chances are, a PUG group may not easily get the max tier reward if not coordinated enough.

I agree with you that the latest release actually looks like some of the encounter designs suggested in this thread and also creates a kind of raids that is less common in other games around (large raid being more traditionnaly devolved to WvW/RvR).

Raids implemented in such a way would actually offer two very different but both very enjoyable goals. In my experience, reaching for the highest levels with a small group of select highly trained players is as much rewarding as being able to motivate and bring up to higher levels a large crowd of less trained players. I would really love if raids were implemented in such a way that they would allow both experiences.

I remember that, somewhere around the Marionette LS, developpers told us about a goal they had to progressively make more complex open world “raids” in order to drive the community to higher “raiding” grounds as a whole. I found it a very interesting idea.

Crystal Reid.2481:

moiraine.2753:

Chris,

I want to ask you something.Will Defiance be redesigned?Is there any plan for it at all?Because right now it is removing the need of any CC in the fights.If raids come will interrupts,stuns,fear become an actual mechanic?Will they be more useful from now?

All I can say on this is we have been talking about it internally and trying to come up with different solutions that make CC valuable without allowing players to “stun lock” creatures (which would be a very real problem if we did not have Defiance). I can’t say any more on that at this time, so here’s a better question for you:

If we removed Defiance, how would you propose a replacement that makes CC (interrupts, stuns, fears etc) valuable without creating a situation that allows players to CC a creature to death.

i showed this during the last discussion so yall may have already seen it.
basically bosses should build a resistance to control effects that lowers the effect duration based on how much CC and how powerful/long the CC that has been done to it.

so when you use a few cc effects, your 2 second effect may only last .5 seconds(when its at 75% reduction)

When it reaches 100% it will completely negate all crowd control until the resistance degrades below 100.

here is an example with jsfiddle, if you press the hsho(headshot) button and the stun button you can see how the resistance goes up.

i would, upon adding this system increase the base boss action speed (so they do more stuff)
Also, though i didnt program it in, i would make stuns under a certain amount of time get negated, but still add to the meter.
so lets say you headshot 75%, it wont actually stun/interupt, but it will add to the meter.

http://jsfiddle.net/phyicus/N3WCk/

so now, stuns would become less effective when spammed, but still usuable unless you are spamming.
a pro at using control would maximize the use of the CCs, and what they have available. Some times using fast interupts, some times using long controls. when his bar is high, only the strongest(longest CCs) will get through his resistance, but only last a moment (basically an interupt)

I was under the impression that argumentative/off-topic/sphincter-gazing posts would be admonished/deleted to keep the discussion on point?

Personally, I’d rather see that plan put into action instead of shutting down the discussion. More challenging instanced content is something that the game has sorely needed for a while, and I’d hate to see the CDI shut down over a few narrowminded individuals.

Crystal Reid.2481:

moiraine.2753:

Chris,

I want to ask you something.Will Defiance be redesigned?Is there any plan for it at all?Because right now it is removing the need of any CC in the fights.If raids come will interrupts,stuns,fear become an actual mechanic?Will they be more useful from now?

All I can say on this is we have been talking about it internally and trying to come up with different solutions that make CC valuable without allowing players to “stun lock” creatures (which would be a very real problem if we did not have Defiance). I can’t say any more on that at this time, so here’s a better question for you:

If we removed Defiance, how would you propose a replacement that makes CC (interrupts, stuns, fears etc) valuable without creating a situation that allows players to CC a creature to death.

I would like to redict you to my post at the 6th page:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/6#post4524493
About multi-targettable bosses where each body part has its own individual condition/ stun stacking. This would make players spread their CC towards several different parts, instead of being able to perma-lock a single target.

I would then add, on top of my idea, a “lighter”, inversed version of defiance: CCing a boss would increase a “defiance stack” that, after a certain value, would trigger its effect for several seconds.

Gonna go ahead and just give my top three. I think raiding may have been too nebulous a topic, it contains too much, and there’s too great a variety of views people have of it.
I think the simple use of the word “Raid” may have been this thread’s biggest hurdle.
Anyways:
1. Challenge – Above all, medium sized instanced cooperative group content needs to provide an interesting and cohesive challenge that keeps people coming back for months on end. It doesn’t have to be the pinnacle of difficulty, just a cohesive challenge. An “easy mode” or “flexible mode” for people who want a chance to play but are impeded for what ever reason could be included, but nothing should compromise the experience of the “normal mode”.
2. Player skill – a player shouldn’t be bogged down in farming just to enter the raid, nor should farming (gear progression) impede their progress. From one boss to the next, the only thing holding your group back should be learning the fight and having the skill to perform.
3. Accessibility – raids should be like dungeons in that there’s no concrete entry requirement. No guild upgrades, gear checks, or time-based lockouts. Just collect the needed members and head in. PUGing is an important tool to get people playing, and it should be supported.

Another thing I noticed about this CDI thread while typing out my top three:
The format doesn’t match the question. Chris has been trying to get us to focus on GW2’s mechanics in raiding (a very important topic), but that really doesn’t conform to the current “top 3 priorities” format at all, and it doesn’t fit very well with the thread’s initial “proposal/function/risk” answer format either. Just something to keep in mind.

phys.7689:

here is an example with jsfiddle, if you press the hsho(headshot) button and the stun button you can see how the resistance goes up.

i would, upon adding this system increase the base boss action speed (so they do more stuff)
Also, though i didnt program it in, i would make stuns under a certain amount of time get negated, but still add to the meter.
so lets say you headshot 75%, it wont actually stun/interupt, but it will add to the meter.

http://jsfiddle.net/phyicus/N3WCk/

so now, stuns would become less effective when spammed, but still usuable unless you are spamming.
a pro at using control would maximize the use of the CCs, and what they have available.

This is one of the better ideas I’ve seen to solve the CC issue, props for putting up an interactive example that really clarifies the concept!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning,

Ok I have been up all night reading the posts and thinking about this CDI.

To be frank this is not a good CDI, specifically because whilst some folks are trying to be collaborative and have valuable discussion others are just bullying with their different agendas.

I have always said that if a CDI loses its value on both sides that it will be stopped.

So I am at some what of a loss. I can’t tell anymore if it is of value to this group. Whilst it certainly has been valuable for us it has been extremely time consuming to get to the good stuff.

So I will leave it up to you folks. If you feel you can work more collaboratively then by all means let me know that you want to carry on.

If you feel that it is a lost cause then I will ask for everyone’s top three priorities for raiding and call it a day.

I want to say thank you very much to all those who tried to follow the rules of the CDI and who had a healthy discussion. I also wanted to say a big thank you to TTS and DnT. We appreciate your feedback.

Chris

I’ve read back a few posts and utterly confused as to why you think this. I’m seeing plenty of healthy and good discussion going on – much of it is useful. The problem is that there are different discussions between different devs and the community going on, so discussions are getting mixed. It’s also an enormous thread, which suggests a general raiding thread was too broad, and maybe since you have asked many times for a focused discussion, the thread should have been re-titled for each discussion or a new thread per focus.

Not sure I’m seeing the issue really. There was always going to be conflicting “sides” to this raiding theory, that is uncontrollable. Personally I think the discussion has come out very much intact, if a little scattered given the nature of the subject.

Crystal Reid.2481:

All I can say on this is we have been talking about it internally and trying to come up with different solutions that make CC valuable without allowing players to “stun lock” creatures (which would be a very real problem if we did not have Defiance). I can’t say any more on that at this time, so here’s a better question for you:

If we removed Defiance, how would you propose a replacement that makes CC (interrupts, stuns, fears etc) valuable without creating a situation that allows players to CC a creature to death.

An inverse defiant system could work well and I would imagine shouldn’t be too difficult to implement, given the already existing mechanics in GW2.
Defiance would act as a sort of boon, where bosses GAIN a stack of defiance every time they are CC’ed. Each stack would reduce the effectiveness of CC on the boss (similar to the stun duration reduction on Melandru runes), and the boss would gain CC immunity upon reaching a certain number of stacks (stacks TBD based on balance). Each stack would have its own duration (duration TBD based on balance), so over time the stacks will individually fall off on their own, allowing you to once again CC the boss.

This system would allow for more interesting use and combo’ing of CC, but would prevent CC-locking since consecutive uses become less and less effective, eventually leading to immunity. Balancing the system would be very flexible, since you can adjust the #of stacks and duration of stacks based on the frequency you want to allow bosses to be CC’ed.