I think some of my point was either misunderstood or lost here, in particular reading Nikes comments on the youtube section so I’ll try and clarify more simply:
We like the way combat works right now, we really don’t plan to change it much other than add more options with elite specs. It works the way we intended: you can play control, support, and DPS actively. To folks who prefer to define by the holy trinity, Gw2 doesn’t force you to pick one of the three from heal, tank, or DPS and only do that – it blends a mix depending on your build and allows you to actively swap roles or soft play between roles. Our goal was to remove the forced singular role per you’re locked into, people often mistake this as saying gw2 has no trinity elements, that isn’t true – we just don’t believe in a forced role per for Gw2 for the reasons I covered in the live stream.
That said the point I really wanted to make in the live stream was the issue with the combat system in PvE isn’t the combat system. It’s that the mobs and encounters we have provided so far very rarely allow/encourage you to make use of the combat system as intended. There are some exceptions, but one of our goals with HoT is to help allow more room for players to experience the full range of the combat system in PvE. From the common world mobs up to the challenging group content we will talk about later, we are asking our design team to design encounters in PvE more focused on using the system we have built.
Hope that helps a bit! – CJ
This thing above, since majority of PvE in GW2 is still no different from “Free-MMOs” where we only use passive defense and only one viable damage source “Direct dmg”.
The excellent combat system in GW2 (in my opinion) has been left unused for very long time already in PvE, because “Full-Berserker-DPS-PassiveDefense” is superior over builds with more utility and variable team play.
Any decided time that this will happen? Would be nice to know when it will happen, since I’m already playing GW2 only in Silverwastes, which sometimes is rendered unplayable due to lack of extra map copies, lack of “change map copy” function and chest farms.
Did they say they were going to update the core PvE encounters? I thought they said this would apply to HoT, and encounters going forward. Pretty sure I read they were mostly leaving core GW2 as is….
I read that as new maps and the mobs in there only. I don’t see them going back and reworking vanilla maps for a long time, if ever. That would take a lot of work and their attention is outward from the core maps now, towards the next dragon.
The excellent combat system in GW2 (in my opinion) has been left unused for very long time already in PvE, because “Full-Berserker-DPS-PassiveDefense” is superior over builds with more utility and variable team play.
Any decided time that this will happen? Would be nice to know when it will happen, since I’m already playing GW2 only in Silverwastes, which sometimes is rendered unplayable due to lack of extra map copies, lack of “change map copy” function and chest farms.
It already exist.
Though it takes more than parroting and actually understanding the combat system.
Seems you fall into not understanding it.
Every build out there is viable in PvE. What you’re doing is lumping a subset of gameplay (Speed Running) with the rest of the game.
The meta as perceived by people who don’t seemingly understand this is deemed as wrong.
Those that do understand it realize what the so called Meta Comps are actually doing which is actively utilizing the combat system to its fullest by having everyone contribute something to the group. Meta groups rarely if ever rely on passive gameplay, let alone passive defenses. It’s active mitigation that enables it to thrive.
TL;DR – Change you not the game, and you’ll enjoy it more.
There will be no vanilla gw2 pve update. Gw2 pve is awesome.
Zerker is love, zerker is rule, join the zerker raids and get all the much worse combinations out of the game!
The issue though is say I make a guardian full tankish. All vitality toughness and healing power. I will fail every single event because not enough damage was done. That makes an issue if we try using other roles as nothing but dps
Why wouldn’t they fix every vanilla map?
Cursed Shore, for example, is supposed to be enemy territory with dreadful foes who can kill you if you’re not utilizing the combat system completely.
Instead there are Risen that:
For once, I’d love to have more use for my Necromancer, class which specializes on conditions and boon manipulation, these kind of things are extremely rare in vanilla PvE content, and is outperformed by Full-Berserker-DPS builds.
Boon manipulations has had one use, in the Kodan dungeon last boss!
Yes, you can play any build, but you’re always outperformed by Full-Berserker-DPS…
What it should be: Any build will take some time and damage to kill foe, player also receives some damage depending on their active defenses. “Stand-Spam-DPS” should be glass cannon tactic
(edited by FrostSpectre.4198)
The excellent combat system in GW2 (in my opinion) has been left unused for very long time already in PvE, because “Full-Berserker-DPS-PassiveDefense” is superior over builds with more utility and variable team play.
I would like to point out that there is an error in your matrix there.
Full berserker DPS only works because of active defenses, not passive. Passive defenses are things that allow you to survive without your input. Full berserker DPS has no stats in passive defenses.
Why wouldn’t they fix every vanilla map?
Cursed Shore, for example, is supposed to be enemy territory with dreadful foes who can kill you if you’re not utilizing the combat system completely.
Instead there are Risen that:
- attack you every 3-5 seconds
- deals average of 1000 dmg per attack
- utilizes HP as the defense instead of armor, blocking, Protection or dodging, which leaves them all extremely vulnerable to “full berserker DPS” and resistant to conditions
- uses boons and conditions extremely rare and inefficient
- dodging is not needed at all if you can kill them before they deal enough dmg
- healing and CC are generally useless since foes cannot do anything than deal small bits of damage with long delays
For once, I’d love to have more use for my Necromancer, class which specializes on conditions and boon manipulation, these kind of things are extremely rare in vanilla PvE content, and is outperformed by Full-Berserker-DPS builds.
Boon manipulations has had one use, in the Kodan dungeon last boss!Yes, you can play any build, but you’re always outperformed by Full-Berserker-DPS…
- Condition build: You take damage and kill foe after some time
- CC build: You take damage and kill foe after some time
- Healing build: You take damage and kill foe after some time
- Hybrid Direct DMG and Condition build: You take damage and kill foe after few seconds
- Crit Direct DMG build: You kill foe within few seconds, you take abit or no damage at all
The problem is very clear…What it should be: Any build will take some time and damage to kill foe, player also receives some damage depending on their active defenses. “Stand-Spam-DPS” should be glass cannon tactic
You do know that at release cursed shore (and all of orr) was much harder. nearly all the mobs had some form of pull or decent CCs and you were virtually forced to fight your way across the landscape.
Then they made it easier because babies cried about “not wanting ti fight when I just want to run to a harvesting node” and they sort of kept going with that “you can fight stuff in the world, but only if you feel like it” idea.
Then they realized that design approach was a big fat sack of boring and unnecessary failure and remedied the problem in HoT
At this point I wouldn’t expect any updates to core tyria, as Anet figured out what every pve developer before them already figured out: When you make faceroll content, people get bored repeating it, so you need to prioritize regular releases of new content.
They hit the nail on the head with the LS2 master achievements and it has been reported that the HoT storyline will work on the same episodic-with-secondary-challenges system. From what i’ve played for the HoT content it feels sufficiently lethal, but the open world remains unrewarding and repetitive due to a lack of any remarkable incentive for fighting through tougher areas more than once, and the fact that they still haven’t come to terms with the fac that you can’t balance the open world enough to brevent map-wide zergs from trivializing any and all content in it within the confines of the GW2 combat system. Luckily they’re adding more fractal scales (and hopefully more fractals) as well as investing heavily in the idea of challenging raid content for people who aren’t content with the status quo of one handed silverwastes farming as actual content.
Original Orr was terrible and I hope that Mordremoth territory is just as bad until the post-Mordremoth Living Story update.
Original Orr was just downright mean. The mob density, respawn and the fact that you were likely in garbage masterworks or rares meant that you had to fight tooth and nail for every inch of progress. It was awful, but also a little great at the same time. You can more or less just waltz through Orr now and it feels bizarre in comparison.
You do know that at release cursed shore (and all of orr) was much harder. nearly all the mobs had some form of pull or decent CCs and you were virtually forced to fight your way across the landscape.
Orr at release was more annoying, the fights themselves weren’t harder, you just had to fight all the mobs instead of running past them and so you wasted time. That didn’t make the fights harder though, you could still face tank all the risen, but after the “update” you can now completely avoid them.
Why wouldn’t they fix every vanilla map?
Cursed Shore, for example, is supposed to be enemy territory with dreadful foes who can kill you if you’re not utilizing the combat system completely.
Instead there are Risen that:
- attack you every 3-5 seconds
- deals average of 1000 dmg per attack
- utilizes HP as the defense instead of armor, blocking, Protection or dodging, which leaves them all extremely vulnerable to “full berserker DPS” and resistant to conditions
- uses boons and conditions extremely rare and inefficient
- dodging is not needed at all if you can kill them before they deal enough dmg
- healing and CC are generally useless since foes cannot do anything than deal small bits of damage with long delays
For once, I’d love to have more use for my Necromancer, class which specializes on conditions and boon manipulation, these kind of things are extremely rare in vanilla PvE content, and is outperformed by Full-Berserker-DPS builds.
Boon manipulations has had one use, in the Kodan dungeon last boss!Yes, you can play any build, but you’re always outperformed by Full-Berserker-DPS…
- Condition build: You take damage and kill foe after some time
- CC build: You take damage and kill foe after some time
- Healing build: You take damage and kill foe after some time
- Hybrid Direct DMG and Condition build: You take damage and kill foe after few seconds
- Crit Direct DMG build: You kill foe within few seconds, you take abit or no damage at all
The problem is very clear…What it should be: Any build will take some time and damage to kill foe, player also receives some damage depending on their active defenses. “Stand-Spam-DPS” should be glass cannon tactic
You do know that at release cursed shore (and all of orr) was much harder. nearly all the mobs had some form of pull or decent CCs and you were virtually forced to fight your way across the landscape.
Then they made it easier because babies cried about “not wanting ti fight when I just want to run to a harvesting node” and they sort of kept going with that “you can fight stuff in the world, but only if you feel like it” idea.
Then they realized that design approach was a big fat sack of boring and unnecessary failure and remedied the problem in HoT
At this point I wouldn’t expect any updates to core tyria, as Anet figured out what every pve developer before them already figured out: When you make faceroll content, people get bored repeating it, so you need to prioritize regular releases of new content.
They hit the nail on the head with the LS2 master achievements and it has been reported that the HoT storyline will work on the same episodic-with-secondary-challenges system. From what i’ve played for the HoT content it feels sufficiently lethal, but the open world remains unrewarding and repetitive due to a lack of any remarkable incentive for fighting through tougher areas more than once, and the fact that they still haven’t come to terms with the fac that you can’t balance the open world enough to brevent map-wide zergs from trivializing any and all content in it within the confines of the GW2 combat system. Luckily they’re adding more fractal scales (and hopefully more fractals) as well as investing heavily in the idea of challenging raid content for people who aren’t content with the status quo of one handed silverwastes farming as actual content.
I was wondering if you would be so kind as to link these reports about how the new PS (HoT storyline) will function in the same manner as LS S2. Thank you in advance.
You do know that at release cursed shore (and all of orr) was much harder. nearly all the mobs had some form of pull or decent CCs and you were virtually forced to fight your way across the landscape.
Orr at release was more annoying, the fights themselves weren’t harder, you just had to fight all the mobs instead of running past them and so you wasted time. That didn’t make the fights harder though, you could still face tank all the risen, but after the “update” you can now completely avoid them.
The fights themselves were quite often harder due to greater overall mob density and faster respawn timers.
Also, it’s completely dumb that it’s so easy to walk past mobs in most of the high level zones filled with dragon minions and such. Fighting is more interesting than walking. The problem is that the fighting itself didn’t feel rewarding enough so it felt like a thankless chore getting in the way of what you really showed up to do.
Would you rather have a landscape owned by the massed armies of evil that’s easily traversible, or one that’s an active challenge to navigate, but rewarding because of that extra challenge?
Personally, I’d pick the second every time. That’s what was fantastic about GW1. If you didn’t have a town unlocked, it was always a legit journey to get to the next place, and you had interesting fights and got interesting loot while doing it. It was so hazardous, in most cases, that people (including myself) actually made a living serving as runners to shepherd new characters through certain areas to save that time. We have the same “unlock a fast travel point” design in GW2, only with a seriously uninteresting open world in most cases that’s being increasingly designed around farming events in zones that are mostly just complete cake walks.
I’m fine with the existing core tyria to continue to be this way, after all it is, in the theme and lore of the game actually the safest part of the world and the primary home of its major races for the most part.
Going forward though? I’d rather be “annoyed by mobs” than have mobs that are completely non threatening and functionally inept to such a point that they’re just annoying rather than seriously making players think about taking longer or alternate routes if they don’t want to fight, and a waypoint density that fiarly breaks up the zone in to chunks without making death completely trivial.
“Full-Berserker-DPS-PassiveDefense” is superior over builds with more utility and variable team play.
Are sure you wanted to write that ? Because the thing with berserker gear is that you only rely on active defence (block/dodge/reflect/control/positioning) because you reduced the passive one to its minimum : 1000 toughness, 0 healing power and no additional HP.
The thing is there is much more team-play in meta team than random team. Team-play exist at every level. Though their is no on-line resources for it there are so many possibilities to create teams in this game… only one is meta but I’m sure you can create your own team which will provide the same things but in a different manner.
Open world maps are not design for team obviously and for every level of player… I mean if you can’t reach the last starting points of your personal story, the not-too-much-involved players won’t be able to finish their story.
That said I don’t think the core experience will be ever revamped. Maybe some mobs in core Tyria will be granted a defiance bar (sources about that are sometime contradictory) but nothing more. HoT new zones will be more difficult (at least during the first 3 months) but mainly because the new mobs have been granted different behaviours and you can’t just give a new code to old creature without spending a huge amount of time and resources to test the effect of it.
Not affiliated with ArenaNet or NCSOFT. No support is provided.
All assets, page layout, visual style belong to ArenaNet and are used solely to replicate the original design and preserve the original look and feel.
Contact /u/e-scrape-artist on reddit if you encounter a bug.