Guild Wars 2

Warning: Long read ahead.

Hello again everyone. I am Naetell, writer and software programmer, as well as the current guild leader of the world boss slaying guild Draco Venantium. Today, I bring you an analysis on the state of PvE combat and possible paths of improvement, as well as providing a place for combat improvement ideas to be gathered.

It should be no suprise that PvE combat needs some rethinking. As a game that tauted both “No Trinity” and “Play as you want” as main selling points, the state of PvE is disappointing to everyone but the most hardcore of DPS players.

Remember why the removal of the trinity was cheered on?
“People will no longer be forced to play tank or healer. Everyone can play what they want!”
The two have always been closely related. However, in the current PvE meta, players are being forced to play full glass berserker DPS. This isn’t an improvement at all. Instead of 3 roles, we have 1.
While the game offers a lot more stat combinations, only a share of these see some use in WvW and sPvP. Open world PvE and dungeons favour pure melee DPS so much it has created exactly the environment Arenanet tried to avoid while creating the game.

This ties in with the “WHY MORE ZERGS?!!?” and “Build Variety, what happened to it?” comments you see every so often on these forums.
Because the game mechanics in PvE favour DPS so much, there is essentially one role during events. Killing the enemy.
This creates a natural mindless zerg mentality to arise, because people have been conditioned to pay no heed to anything but DPS while dodging a couple of pretty circles and slow swings.

To fix this, we can’t simply blame berserker stats or DPS players. The problems aren’t just stats. That’s what makes this a complicated discussion.
A balance change is but the first step, Arenanet have alluded to as much themselves, but where do we go from there to open up build variety and bring some life to the PvE game?

I’ve seen some people on the right track already: Removing defiant, giving CC roles more of a purpose, retooling AI, buffing healing power, fundamental changes to how condition damage works. They’re all part of a bigger idea.
However, many of these changes would break PvP.

The first thing we need to accept is that PvP and PvE cannot be balanced the same way, not unless we get AI opponents that play as players do. The current state in AI development isn’t quite there yet, so it’s a painful concession that needs to be made.

A cursory analysis already gives us some good insights in what makes the game tick, and what it lacks. The good news is that it’s been on the right track, while the bad news is that there has been a strange stagnation about it that has prevented the game from reaching its full potential.

Next post: Analysis of the current state of combat

Analysis time.
A simple top-down analysis already tells us that the proposed goals of “No Trinity” and “Play what you want” are diametrically opposed, and thus couldn’t provide a stable gameplay experience no matter what the developers did.
However, we also don’t need to sacrifice this, as the “No Trinity” goal was cheered on because of “Play what you want” for a large segment of the users.
There are at least two possible paths to take (on the highest level): Less role-oriented and more role-oriented.
To put that in human words: Less role-oriented means striving to be a game where there are no roles. These games traditionally focus on solo experiences and the idividual, without giving the player many options to set themselves apart from other players.
More role-oriented means striving to be a game with many roles. Old RPG and D&D players will know what this means. There used to be more than 3 roles. Everquest and World of Warcraft pushed a 3-role system, now known as the Trinity, but there used to be more. Games that have more than 3 roles traditionally focus on teamwork and team composition, forcing players to rely on others and work together to get the desired result. There is less room for solo players under these systems.

Furthermore, this analysis can already point out that the current state of “everyone can do everything at any time” serves no one. “No Trinity” wasn’t cheered on because it was going to take choice away from players. No one wanted that, including development. Trivialising defensive options and support abilities was a wrong choice.
Giving the player the ability to do everything well is not interesting game design.
It forces players to play in one way, and alienates the players that do not prefer to play like that. If we are to have a truly open system that allows people to play as they want, then we’ll need to turn this thinking around entirely. No one likes to play god.

Customisability: traits and stats.
Creating a build requires both traits and stats. Choosing a set of stats should speak for itself. It makes a character stronger. Stats should have an equal impact on a player’s abilities depending on the choice of stats. If a player chooses DPS stats, his DPS should increase by the same factor as player’s support abilties’ power when choosing support stats.
In the current game, DPS stats make a player 750% more powerful on average, where as the support stats only improve support abilities by 100% on average. The same can be said about the state of control abilities.
This massive disparity in the effectiveness of stats cannot be ignored.

On the other hand, traits are often underwhelming to the point of disuse. Between traits that feel uninspired to traits that are simply not worth taking, there are a couple that do stand out as good traits. The trait system has seen an expansion recently, but it still has a long way to go. For instance, it feels counterintuitive to have traits influencing stats. If traits modified characters beyond what stats can offer, and stats could only be found on gear, the difference between the two and their place in a build would be far more pronounced. It would make the game easier to learn for new players, and give long-time players access to better tools. It also makes more sense for a trait to do something extraordinary now they have to be found in the world.

Combat fluidity.
Combat in Guild Wars 2 feels fluid. It plays pleasantly and has a good pace. Controlling a character feels good and intuitive.
However, the game at times seems to doubt whether it’s an action MMORPG or a classic MMORPG. For all its innovations on combat mechanics, it sometimes feels as if the developers have been holding back, opting for conservative measures rather than going all the way.
One of these compromises is the dodge mechanic. It’s there, it’s shared by all classes, but it never seems to break out of its tiny role. Dodging is such an integral part of the combat it should be more in the spotlight.
Ultimately, I believe the game should stop doubting what it wants to be and take the action route to the next level.

Enemy Design and AI.
Probably the biggest failing of the PvE game is the AI. Arenanet knows this already and it seems measures are being taken to make the AI more interesting. I’ll be looking forward to that.

Next post: Proposal goals

In this thread, we will aim to provide a desired framework for PvE combat, while adhering to the core ideas set by development.

Goals:
#1: No Trinity
No matter what, going back to Tank, Healer, DPS as the mandatory state for all PvE encounters is not desired.
However, the game already does work with a proposed soft trinity. DPS, Control, Support. Keep these in mind, though adding a 4th or more roles to that would also be acceptable.

#2: Players play what they want
The goal here is to make as many builds viable as possible without making them unmissable.
Ex: I shouldn’t need to have 1 Melee DPS, 1 Tank, 1 CC, 1 Condition DPS, 1 Healer, 1 Reflecter, 1 Ranged DPS and 1 Decorative Object to form a party. However, if I happen to have a combination of these they shouldn’t be a liability either. (Well, except for the decorative object…)

#3: Works in both Open World content as well as Dungeons.
These are the large PvE communities in GW2, and we should keep both in mind. A proposal that works in dungeons, but fails in the Open World is only 50% viable. Aim for a full 100% viability whenever possible.

#4: Easy to understand and easy to use. QoL is the name of our game.

Some sacrifices must be made though.

1) PvP and PvE split.
As said before, balancing both at the same time, while the environments couldn’t be more different, is beyond what one analist can provide. If you team up with several others, you may be able to find a solution to this one, but I don’t recommend it. Despite that, do note that WvW is considered a PvE mode by the game and all PvE mechanics apply to WvW as well!

2) “I play what I want”
Doesn’t mean you can play naked and traitless and still win. (You can, tbh)
It should mean that there should be a variety of viable builds available to all classes. These should be clear in purpose and role. Done right, this will make us go from mindless zerg to organised zerg at the very least. (The latter is a lot more enjoyable to play)
It also doesn’t mean a given build has to work 100% of the time. In some encounters, melee DPS is going to be bad. In some encounters, conditions are going to be bad.

3) No Trinity means No Tank, No Healer, Only DPS.
For the simple reason, this is contrary to goal #2, “Players play what they want”.
If someone wants to be a tank, be a tank. If someone wants to be a healer, be a healer.
There’s no point in doing away with the trinity if you’re going to force someone to play something they don’t want to play. Again, this comes with the disclaimer that no build will shine in 100% of the encounters in the game. Sometimes, all you have is a wrench when you should have brought a hammer.

4) The current trait system.
It’s part of the problem, and it’s probably the largest sacrifice that has to be made to ensure build variety. Builds are composed of 2 factors, traits and gear. Currently, traits make up for very little of one’s build, and they’ll need to have a much greater impact if we are to reach our goals.

5) Ascended gear locked stats
Given the price and time required to make ascended gear, we’ll need to be able to choose our stat combinations. Locking everyone into one choice for a long time is not where the game should be headed.
Note that they may one day implement Legendary gear for all slots with this ability, so it would make sense not to give that ability to ascended in that case.

Keep these goals and sacrifices in mind. Basically, it means you shouldn’t be too fussed about the current state of the game and reach for the sky.

We will have 3 kinds of proposals possible:

Enemy redesign
Stat redesign
Trait redesign

Try to figure out where your idea lies and tag it accordingly. (It can be multiple).

Next post: My proposal focus.

Proposal focus: Traits & Stats

I feel the current trait system has too little impact on the player’s overal build.
This, paired with the fact there are a large number of uninteresting traits, make the the current system less than desirable.

Looking at the most popular builds, most of the selected traits for PvE are the ones that give a damage bonus.
Not surprising, no, but the question is if these traits should even be there in the first place.
They’re not interesting traits, and they basically have the same role as the stats on gear.
Traits and gear should be different things.

In a new and improved trait system, stats should be on gear and traits should provide unique bonuses that change the way a class plays.
Example of a good trait: Venom Share.
This trait makes venoms apply to people around you and yourself instead of just yourself. It changes the role venoms have as abilities.
The trait system should have many of these types of traits, traits that alter abilties, instead of damage boosts or cooldown reductions.
Trait lines giving stats is also not desirable.

Minor traits: If a stat boost should be anywhere, it should be on these. It definitely shouldn’t be on a major trait. Still, unique effects would be greatly appreciated over boring stat increases (leave those for gear).
Major traits: Should make your build work and alter what your character can bring to the battle. It’s good that everyone has a baseline of effectiveness, but traits should make a set of your character’s abilties much stronger than that baseline.

Example:
Both elementalists and guardians have a skill that can resurrect people from downed state, but their cast times and long cooldowns make them difficult to use and often a poor pick.
A good major support trait would be to change this skill so it can also resurrect dead players.

Obviously, it takes a lot of creative thinking to create many traits that significantly alter player abilities. But given that there are already a number of good traits in the system, I do believe it’s possible.

Given that we can switch traits anywhere, switching roles shouldn’t be harder as swapping out traits.
Sure, you might have brought the wrong gear, but that’s a different problem. For people who swap a lot, celestial gear is a good answer. Versatility is a power in and by itself.
With full legendary, you could swap to any dedicated role. Swapping all the traits and stats between every battle would be a pain though, so I’d like to propose to reintroduce build templates like GW1 had, but then with stats on legendary gear and traits included.
That way, you could swap to a different role in the blink of an eye.

When it comes down to stats, I feel a lot of problems stem from the fact the game currently offers this:

DPS:
Power, Precision, Ferocity, Condition Damage, Condition Duration

Control:
Condition Duration, vitality, Toughness

Support:
Healing Power, Boon Duration.

The problem should be obvious. The game is DPS oriented because DPS stats make up for half of the available stats.
It could even be argued Toughness and Vitality have no real place anywhere in terms of role.
Looking closer, we see this:

Berzerker: 3 stats
Condition user: 2 stats
Control user: 1 stat
Support player: 2 stats

It should be no surprise to anyone berserker comes out on top.

Solutions:
A) Reduce the number of stats on gear.
B) Reduce the number of DPS stats.
C) Add more stats to balance these out amongst roles.

From these, I’d say C is the preferable option.
Q: “But wouldn’t adding stats make the game more difficult to learn?”
A: There are in fact more stats in the game already, you just don’t find them on gear at the moment.

I’d start with giving everyone more stats to choose from.
Gear combinatios as they are now don’t give the player any real choices. It’s always a case of “I want to play X so I need stat combo Y”.

Let’s rethink this.
Players can only have 3 stats on a single item. If we want them to make choices, we’ll need more than 3 stats per role, or we have to make sure no combination of stats in the game is ever truly “right” for a role.
Given that the latter option would remove most gear sets from the game and make no one happy, let’s add more stats.

Next post: Roles and Stats

Aside: Making Control and Support roles viable.

As it currently stats, being a DPS means bringing all the control and support a party could ever need along as well.
This is because the baseline power of control and support skills is high, while baseline damage is low.
In other words, you can boost your damage a lot with gear, but you can’t boost your control or support abilties a lot through gear.
To make them viable, baseline power of control and support skills will have to be toned down dramatically.
(Imagine if baseline cripple was 5%; chill 10%, immobilise lasts 0.5 sec, etc.)
So traitless and gearless, you’d be a jack of all trades, master of none. Your stat and trait choices will determine what your character will do much better as others.

We have two types of DPS in the game. Direct and condition based damage over time.

Stats for direct DPS:
Power, Precision, Ferocity, Attack Speed, Cooldown reduction

The first 3 speak for themselves.
Attack Speed may seem new until you notice that Quickness might as well read “raises attack speed by 50%”.
It’s a stat that mimics quickness, while not taking anything away from quickness at the same time.
This stat makes your character’s attacks go faster, and make them harder to dodge.
If the enemy AI could dodge, it would be even better.

Cooldown Reduction is currently found on traits. It should be on gear.
For Thieves, cooldown reduction should also increase initiative regeneration since their weapons skills aren’t limited by cooldowns.

Condition DPS could look like:
Condition Damage, Precision, Ferocity, Condition Duration reduction, Cooldown reduction

Condition damage should be obvious.

Precision and Ferocity, yes I’m telling you conditions should be able to crit. This will help close the gap between condi and direct dps.
Basically you have 2 types of DPS in any game, sustained and spike. This will open up sustained and spike routes for both direct and condi dps.

Condition duration reduction.
This is going to raise some eyebrows. Currently, it is so that your condition power will determine how much your conditions tick for, and increasing the condition duration will give you more ticks before the condition has to be renewed. However, this makes the condition duration stat too valuable when you consider the control conditions.
By flipping this around, you get some interesting interactions.
Condition damage will be calculated when the skill is used. The condition will spread its total damage out over time. Reducing that time means you will deal that total amount of damage faster.
This also scales better with critical hits.
Basically, it means that stacking condition duration minus will up your DPS but make your control skills laughable, while going the opposite way means giving up your burst DPS for more control.
The only exception is confusion, which requires enemies to do something.

Cooldown reduction.
Not too sure on this one. But with all the condition duration reduction it might be worth looking into.
This would be my first pick to remove if I could think of a better stat to put here though.

Next post: Control characters

Control, we have only one form of control in the game. Condition based control. I’d like to expand this to include tanking as well.
This doesn’t mean you will have to roll tank, or that you will need a tank for a dungeon. It just means tanking is an option, and it might be good without being necessary.
Best of both worlds.

That being said, condition control stats would be:
Condition Duration enhancement, Condition Intensity, Endurance, Aggro Boost, Vitality

Condition duration, very important. It makes your debilitating conditions last longer, but it’ll screw over your DPS.
(Not that we mind that in full control.)

Condition Intensity.
This is a new stat. Basically, this stat will make your debilitating conditions more effective. It’s condition damage for everything that doesn’t deal damage.
So if cripple was 5% before, this will raise to its former glory and above.
Chill will go from 10% to its nice 66% and even above for those who main this stat.

Endurance.
New? No, you have an endurance bar in the game already. It’s your dodge.
Basically, this stat will extend your dodge bar and eventually give you more dodge bars.
It won’t speed up your endurance recovery, so while you have more dodges, you still have to be careful not to run out.

Aggro Boost.
As a control player, if the mob is chasing your around the battlefield in vain, it’s not wreaking havoc either.
You do need something to increase your odds of having those baddies follow you though. It’s not going to be pretty if that melee DPS guy has to run from it instead.
Q: Won’t aggro boost mechanics make the game too easy and predictable?
A: You can still add something like an aggro drop mechanic to every enemy in the game, where if the AI notices what you’re doing it will reset aggro and go for someone else. This requires the control players to stay on their toes as well, because mobs running around unchecked tends to go really wrong really fast. Some enemies may use downright different aggro mechanics alltogether and always go for a different type of character. You can do a lot more with aggro mechanics than a simple “bash highest aggro” script.

Vitality.
Kiting a ranged mob is going to see you take damage. Enemies may put conditions on you.

The other kind of control: Tank
Toughness, Vitality, Endurance, Parry, Aggro boost

Most of these stats speak for themselves. Tanks traditionally enjoy having a lot of armor, health, a big dodge bar, and lots of aggro.

Parry.
A new stat.
Tanks like being stationary. Any melee DPS who has ever run after a mob because the tank just won’t stay still knows how annoying that can be.
Parry is a skill given to all players. It allows a player to parry an opponent’s attack and reflect a portion of the damage of that attack to the enemy.
The parry stat increases the amount of damage reflected and the parry level. (Anyone can parry normal attacks, but big slow attacks can break through a standard guard. Upgrading your parry stat means you can stand against even the heaviest of blows)
However, the window for a successful parry should be so small it takes a lot of player skill to use.
It should use the endurance bar as well.
Thus, everyone gets the choice between the easier and safer dodge mechanic, or risk it all for an all or nothing parry. Failing a parry could even incur penalties like reduced armor rating for that attack.

Next post: Support and Hybrid characters.

Support.
We have healing skills, we have boons to help us out.
Like with conditions, baseline boons will take a huge hit. Might may only boost 1 power instead of 10, protection may only be a 5% reduction, retaliation may not do much at all (Maybe it could affect the parry stat, hmmm).
Being a healer in GW2 would already be very different from other games. A shortage of targeted heal skills assure us of that.

The healer would probably like:
Healing Power, Cooldown Reduction, AOE Size increase, Attack Speed, Precision

Yes, precision is in there. Critical heals for everyone.

Healing power:
Will need a huge boost in its effectiveness. Healing everyone for 3K isn’t that much when our baseline healing skills do much better on a low cooldown.

Cooldown reduction.:
More support skills are good. (This could even the kind of cooldown reduction that swaps cooldowns. Shorter defensive cooldowns, longer offensive cooldowns. Or should that be a trait?)

AOE size increase:
Try healing people in the game atm. If we stay clear from targeted heals, those targeted aoe heals are going to need to be bigger if we want to heal people reliably.

Attack Speed:
Faster Attacks mean the window between “activate skill” and “heal comes out” shortens.

Boon Support would probably like:
Boon Duration, AOE Size Increase, Boon Intensity, Cooldown Reduction, Boon Power

Boon Duration:
Because longer boons are good for the majority of them.

AOE Size Increase:
Also makes boons reach people from further away. Less stacking required.

Boon Intensity:
Makes most boons better, like Protection.

Cooldown Reduction:
More boons. Between this and boon duration, some balancing is required to make it harder to reach permanent boons on everyone.

Boon Power:
Makes some boons more powerful. Especially affects Regeneration and Retaliation.

Yeah, pure roles, but that’s not all, is there?

Of course not, there are also hybrid roles. A hybrid, unlike popular notion, doesn’t need to be worse at both its roles. It simply may use a second role to empower to add to its primary role.

A form of DPS-Control could be the Reflect Gladiator:
Picks a combination of Parry, Aggro Boost, Precision, Ferocity, Toughness, and/or Attack Speed.

Less defenses as a tank, but his parries put the hurt on the enemy. Extremely effective against slow and powerful enemies, but requires greater skill to master.

DPS-Support, the War Priest:
Power, Precision, Healing Power, Cooldown Reduction, AOE Size Increase, and/or Attack Speed.

Deals damage while healing, and has pretty good self-sustainability.

Control-Support, a paladin type:
Aggro Boost, Toughness, Vitality, Healing Power, Cooldown Reduction, Precision.

Has to make sure to dodge when it counts, but can handle most trash mobs with surprising ease and is less reliant on another support player.

Q: But I like being able to do anything!
A: The game pretty much gives you the answer on a silver platter already: The Celestial Knight

DPS-Control-Support:
Celestial Stats!

Can take on any role at any time, but will never have stats as high as the others. It’s the price of versatility.

With the implementation of build templates, a system like this would give everyone the ability to be any role at any time, without taking away from build variety or class identity. A thief for example won’t facetank something, but might have more dodge and thus achieve the same goal through different means.

I know it’s been long. Thank you for your patience.

I appreciate your elaboration on this topic. I found that arena net’s insistence during development that in reality, no one wants to make red bars go up as a monk (GW1), was ill-thought and insulting. Sure, I want to help out my team in a general sense, but I also wanted to do it in a specific sense, as a dedicated protection or healing character. Maybe most people wouldn’t have enjoyed that role, but I did; the fact that it wasn’t given as a viable play style still infuriates me to this day. Talk to any dedicated monk in pvp and ask if healing/protting was mindless or easy. It was the opposite. I’d love to fulfill that specific role again. If I can’t have a dedicated monk class, at least make it viable. I’m sure this applies for many other CC roles that currently don’t exist for players who craved that niche.

Everyone wants to feel like they have specific role on their team. Anet said as much. It just isn’t panning out like that in game.

santa.8196:

I appreciate your elaboration on this topic. I found that arena net’s insistence during development that in reality, no one wants to make red bars go up as a monk (GW1), was ill-thought and insulting. Sure, I want to help out my team in a general sense, but I also wanted to do it in a specific sense, as a dedicated protection or healing character. Maybe most people wouldn’t have enjoyed that role, but I did; the fact that it wasn’t given as a viable play style still infuriates me to this day. Talk to any dedicated monk in pvp and ask if healing/protting was mindless or easy. It was the opposite. I’d love to fulfill that specific role again. If I can’t have a dedicated monk class, at least make it viable. I’m sure this applies for many other CC roles that currently don’t exist for players who craved that niche.

Everyone wants to feel like they have specific role on their team. Anet said as much. It just isn’t panning out like that in game.

I know the feeling. I’ve been a DPS player for as long as I can remember, but when a friend lended me her raid healer once I had a blast. I always roll an alt healer character if I can nowadays.
There’s no reason why healing has to be “filling up bars”, “passive”, or “reactive”. Part of making the game more of an action MMO would be finding a way to make healing an active role as well. Positioning, cooldown management, and shielding, are but some of the ideas that could set the role apart from the healing roles of other games.

Anet recently hired an AI programmer for something.

http://intrinsicalgorithm.com/IANews/2014/04/now-consulting-at-arenanet-on-guild-wars-2/

Hopefully it means Anet has big plans for the future of boss AI. I’d like to see them introduce mechanics which closely mimic real player behavior, with a wider variety of skills. Imagine if mobs had frequent smaller hits, like auto attacks. Healing power would be useful in mitigating them.

You just tried to reinvent the whole game I think. Well thought tho, but they’re never going to reinvent the game

I think your post is too big, and talks about too many different things at once. i agree with some, but if all your points are central to your overall thesis, then the ones i disagree with may throw your conclusions off.
for example the most used traits on most classes arent dps focused. Id say the most used ones are generally resource boosting/managing ones, and special new effect ones. Most zerker builds dont have all dps traits, they focus on dps stats, and increase versatility through traits.

you need to be able to play as a healer or as a tank
sorry but you cant really do this. The ability to consistentlly focus attention on yourself would alter every encounter in terms of viable strategies
a strong healer would either make most content too easy, or require enemies that can do a lot more dmg.

i do agree that a major problem with dps builds is the fact that your stats for the most part only effect dps skills. All other skills get little to no benefit from stats, hence even if you are going control or support dps is probably your best set if you are skilled.

This has got to be the most interesting post I’ve read on combat mechanics. Not only you identify with uncanny accuracy the core issues within the current gameplay implementation, but you offer clear and direct solutions of surprising quality.

Your changes would make GW2 a game I would love to play. They will never do it for a variety of reasons:
1- Time and cost.
2- No reason to alter the game. It continues to be very successful, financially.
3- Conflicting interests. Their gameplay designers have fundamentally different ideas. (They should be fired, along with Mike O’brien)

But I commend you for your creativity and effort.
You have talent my friend. Have you thought about launching a kick-starter campaign. I would surely buy any game designed by you.

I’d rather see the baseline of damage be raised than condition baseline be lowered.

Xenon.4537:

Anet recently hired an AI programmer for something.

http://intrinsicalgorithm.com/IANews/2014/04/now-consulting-at-arenanet-on-guild-wars-2/

Hopefully it means Anet has big plans for the future of boss AI. I’d like to see them introduce mechanics which closely mimic real player behavior, with a wider variety of skills. Imagine if mobs had frequent smaller hits, like auto attacks. Healing power would be useful in mitigating them.

Yes, so I’ve read. It’s great news and is the reason why I didn’t go into a lot of detail in terms of AI. I’m all for more interesting bosses.

UnitedChaos.8364:

You just tried to reinvent the whole game I think. Well thought tho, but they’re never going to reinvent the game

Many of these mechanics and stats already exist in the game. It’s merely the application of these that I’ve addressed, though the fact endurance and dodging is quite 2-dimensional did require a certain amount of creativity on my behalf.
Throwing the whole game around like that wouldn’t be advised anyway. If anything, I consider the time span to make such changes so long term we’d likely see anything like it by the time GW3 comes out. Still, implementing things one at a time would not alienate players while working towards the goals set by the developers themselves.

phys.7689:

I think your post is too big, and talks about too many different things at once. i agree with some, but if all your points are central to your overall thesis, then the ones i disagree with may throw your conclusions off.
for example the most used traits on most classes arent dps focused. Id say the most used ones are generally resource boosting/managing ones, and special new effect ones. Most zerker builds dont have all dps traits, they focus on dps stats, and increase versatility through traits.

you need to be able to play as a healer or as a tank
sorry but you cant really do this. The ability to consistentlly focus attention on yourself would alter every encounter in terms of viable strategies
a strong healer would either make most content too easy, or require enemies that can do a lot more dmg.

i do agree that a major problem with dps builds is the fact that your stats for the most part only effect dps skills. All other skills get little to no benefit from stats, hence even if you are going control or support dps is probably your best set if you are skilled.

Resource boosting traits often grant more DPS. I completely agree that special effect traits are great and should remain. I’m merely advocating splitting stats and traits enterily so that traits = special effects, stats = stats, instead of traits doing a bit of everything.

The game already plays like that in practise. Everyone is constantly focused on themselves, and not on others. Difficulty is not an issue. The game is already preposterously easy. For instance, it is possible to solo multiple dungeons as a Guardian traitless and naked. The introduction of additional roles would not change that. It is up to encounter and AI design to create the base difficulty, and it is silly to think one could alter the player dynamic to this degree while keeping the enemy dynamikittenouched. That would never work, and such thinking would only lead to stagnation.

Skyline.3480:

This has got to be the most interesting post I’ve read on combat mechanics. Not only you identify with uncanny accuracy the core issues within the current gameplay implementation, but you offer clear and direct solutions of surprising quality.

Your changes would make GW2 a game I would love to play. They will never do it for a variety of reasons:
1- Time and cost.
2- No reason to alter the game. It continues to be very successful, financially.
3- Conflicting interests. Their gameplay designers have fundamentally different ideas. (They should be fired, along with Mike O’brien)

But I commend you for your creativity and effort.
You have talent my friend. Have you thought about launching a kick-starter campaign. I would surely buy any game designed by you.

Whether or not this proposal is feasible is a different question, and one that can only be answered by a feasibility study.
Implementing all of it at once would indeed be impossible, but when considered as a long term goal, perhaps even for GW3, it becomes possible to implement bits and pieces once at a time without affecting the overal game drastically at one point in time. This also gives the additional benefit of being able to perform a rollback in case a feature does not work out as planned.

As for myself, I could probably program a game given the time, but I’m terrible with graphics, so I’m never going to make one. I wouldn’t mind working in the games industry, but I’m primarily a writer, and I have novels to attend to. ^^
Analyses like these is something I just do to relax.

Sartharina.3542:

I’d rather see the baseline of damage be raised than condition baseline be lowered.

The problem isn’t that damage isn’t high enough, it’s that mobs have too much HP atm.
See the difference between berserker gear and clerics gear in terms of damage output.