Guild Wars 2

I know this will most probably not solve the problem but at least if at your first levels you have an explenation about how to use CC skills on the breakbar and which are the CC skills of your profession a lot more people will know what to do and do their job right when needed.
Since using CC skills is now one of the main pve combat features especially in Hot, a tutorial of some kind is a must have, like the dodge one.
Of course we will still have a lot of people not caring about it but that will save those more casual players that due to not enough time to learn the profession and skills are cutted out of the big encounters and get the blame from the others if the event or the achievement fails.

I hope this will happen in the future..

Cheers!

Heh they tried that once in GW1. Turned out terribly.

Probably a good idea, considering that I’ve seen people explain in map chat what a cc is and give examples before events. They wouldn’t be doing that if there weren’t a lot of clueless people playing.

They could have NPCs of each profession that explain stuff like cc and combo fields, then do skills for players to interact with. They can be in your home instance and you can talk to them at any time you want.

That video is 18 minutes long. I didn’t watch it as I already know which of my skills help break the bar but I wonder what takes that long to explain about the concept.

Nice video. Has nothing to do with the discussion about tutorial NPCs in game though.

Asumita.2174:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJurlhM3hQQ

The sort of people who would watch an external tutorial video on youtube for this game are probably the people less likely to really need it.

I think it would be a good idea to have this kind of tutorial. I stopped doing the shatterer event, as a lot of people don’t seem to know what a cc or a breakbar is, this resulting in failure very often.

The question isn’t whether the tutorial should be there but whether anyone will use the tutorial. There are plenty of players who still cannot dodge (literally) for their lives. In real combat situations knowledge of this type is not going to necessarily be useful since players may play with weapon sets that simply don’t have a lot of CC in them naturally.

There is a total difference between “being prepared for a breakbar” and “being ignorant of how to break a breakbar” and you’d have to cover both and get players to prepare for the bar to begin with. It’s more than one battle, half of which cannot even be fought by Anet due to profession diversity.

Maybe someone should explain what they are in this thread….?

I guess some people are just too lazy and waiting for someone else to do the right thing. That shatterer battle would be funny, if your attack did 0 damage to the defiance bar, you get 1000% damage reflection.

DGraves.3720:

The question isn’t whether the tutorial should be there but whether anyone will use the tutorial. There are plenty of players who still cannot dodge (literally) for their lives. In real combat situations knowledge of this type is not going to necessarily be useful since players may play with weapon sets that simply don’t have a lot of CC in them naturally.

There is a total difference between “being prepared for a breakbar” and “being ignorant of how to break a breakbar” and you’d have to cover both and get players to prepare for the bar to begin with. It’s more than one battle, half of which cannot even be fought by Anet due to profession diversity.

If there is a tutorial and 5% of new players use it and learn from it, then it’s worth having in the game (in my opinion). (Obviously, done well, maybe more than 5% would learn from it.) I don’t know if the cost would be low enough to make that feasible.

One thing that could help ANet decide is if we had some useful ideas for what such a tutorial would look like. I think the dodge tutorial is fun, but I agree that it seems not to be used by the people who might benefit the most from it.

What I’d like to see:

• A set of achievements for learning certain key features.
• A separate instance (maybe using the Hall of Monuments, which is otherwise unused) with a limit of one player, i.e. no leeching.
• Foes would be non-lethal, to reduce the pressure to near zero.
• Tutorial would suggest skills based on profession.
• Ideally, one goal would require hard CC and the other would require soft CC (i.e. foe with stability).

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

If there is a tutorial and 5% of new players use it and learn from it, then it’s worth having in the game (in my opinion). (Obviously, done well, maybe more than 5% would learn from it.) I don’t know if the cost would be low enough to make that feasible.

One thing that could help ANet decide is if we had some useful ideas for what such a tutorial would look like. I think the dodge tutorial is fun, but I agree that it seems not to be used by the people who might benefit the most from it.

What I’d like to see:

• A set of achievements for learning certain key features.
• A separate instance (maybe using the Hall of Monuments, which is otherwise unused) with a limit of one player, i.e. no leeching.
• Foes would be non-lethal, to reduce the pressure to near zero.
• Tutorial would suggest skills based on profession.
• Ideally, one goal would require hard CC and the other would require soft CC (i.e. foe with stability).

For the generic player CC bars are not a top priority though with good reason. In most of the open world you can win without every worrying about them. That said the issue isn’t that people wouldn’t understand the skills based on profession but that they might still not use them because what good is keeping a just-in-case skill in your bar in base PvE?

If people aren’t going to learn to dodge which is useful 100% of all encounters urging them to break a little bar underneath something that dies so fast it doesn’t matter isn’t going to win many over. That is my concern, even if 5% learn how to do it only 1% may pursue content where it even matters.

IMO, what would be a bit better is an additional tooltip info that tells you, based on your current target, the % of the defiance bar will be affected by your CC skills.

Dantert.1803:

I know this will most probably not solve the problem but at least if at your first levels you have an explenation about how to use CC skills on the breakbar and which are the CC skills of your profession a lot more people will know what to do and do their job right when needed.
Since using CC skills is now one of the main pve combat features especially in Hot, a tutorial of some kind is a must have, like the dodge one.
Of course we will still have a lot of people not caring about it but that will save those more casual players that due to not enough time to learn the profession and skills are cutted out of the big encounters and get the blame from the others if the event or the achievement fails.

I hope this will happen in the future..

Cheers!

Dodging is awesome and all but being Australian with a 300-400 ping time dodging is kinda pointless..

Asumita.2174:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJurlhM3hQQ

These mechanics make the game too complex for a lot of people…

I’m sorry if that seems rude but many customers do not want to deal with complex mechanics or aren’t even able too.. I personally understand them after watching that video but to me it seems far to complicated for a game designed to be played as entertainment..

I feel Anet has gone above and beyond on the complexity of these systems to a point where they’ve gotten too hard for a majority to do them or even bother with them..

Another avenue is jumping puzzles, they are so complex now no one even bothers doing them, the rewards do not equal the risk involved etc and i feel the same way about these issues you guys are talking about..

I have been playing since beta with only a few months off, and never heard the term “CC” until some control nut started shouting it during a battle. When I asked what he was talking about, he said “if you don’t know you should not be playing”. No one else volunteered the info. From what I have gathered it means “crowd control”? No idea what that means or what skills that refers to, never heard the term before.

They need a tutorial for a lot of things. Some people (including 80s) don’t even know about rallying, which they tried to get players to figure out on their own during the original starter zone boss fights, but people just complained about getting 1 shot and dying.

They need like a permanent intro level Queen’s Gauntlet where the encounters are specifically designed to require these mechanics in a 1vs1 situation with an announcer giving hints during the battle. If it’s not forced though, like a part of the main story, people will just skip it, especially those that tend to fail at these mechanics, so there really needs to be a good reason to do it.

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

From what I have gathered it means “crowd control”?

Yes. It’s a standard term used in basically all MMOs.

/wiki cc

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

I have been playing since beta with only a few months off, and never heard the term “CC” until some control nut started shouting it during a battle. When I asked what he was talking about, he said “if you don’t know you should not be playing”. No one else volunteered the info. From what I have gathered it means “crowd control”? No idea what that means or what skills that refers to, never heard the term before.

Yes it means crowd control. Daze, immobilize, stun, fear, knockback, cripple ect. basically anything that either stops the enemy from being able to do something or forces them to do something.

A lot of useful information here :
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defiance_Bar

Aidan Savage.2078:

IMO, what would be a bit better is an additional tooltip info that tells you, based on your current target, the % of the defiance bar will be affected by your CC skills.

^ This is a good idea. Albeit maybe hard to implement.

I feel that players, especially newer players, feel the need to spam skills 1-5. Ranger, for example, has Point Blank Shot and Hunter’s Shot both of which shouldn’t ever be used unless for a specific reason, but you see people spamming these while at 1200 range for no reason all the time. If they lowered the damage on these skills and increased the effectiveness of these skills (so the effect is more prominent than the damage), people would be more mindful of when they use them. For example, if they made hunter’s shot do 1/4 the damage, but the stealth last 5 seconds instead of 3, players would realize that actually spamming this lowers your dps. A light would go off in players heads and say: “Wow, this is really weak; but, wow, this stealth is handy.”

Point being: I don’t think they need a tutorial to teach such a basic thing, but I think ANET should keep in mind that every single attack doesn’t need to have a damage equal to the other skills in that set. The skills effect should always be more important than the damage.

UnitedChaos.8364:

I feel that players, especially newer players, feel the need to spam skills 1-5. Ranger, for example, has Point Blank Shot and Hunter’s Shot both of which shouldn’t ever be used unless for a specific reason, but you see people spamming these while at 1200 range for no reason all the time. If they lowered the damage on these skills and increased the effectiveness of these skills (so the effect is more prominent than the damage), people would be more mindful of when they use them. For example, if they made hunter’s shot do 1/4 the damage, but the stealth last 5 seconds instead of 3, players would realize that actually spamming this lowers your dps. A light would go off in players heads and say: “Wow, this is really weak; but, wow, this stealth is handy.”

Point being: I don’t think they need a tutorial to teach such a basic thing, but I think ANET should keep in mind that every single attack doesn’t need to have a damage equal to the other skills in that set. The skills effect should always be more important than the damage.

Anyone who would stop to think about what their skills are doing shouldn’t need this tutorial.

And that after some people hammererd in our heads NOT to use CC on bossfights
in SW ^^

Maybe Mobs should have a big red flag over their head with either “NO CCs” or
“Yes please .. CC me”

Beldin.5498:

And that after some people hammererd in our heads NOT to use CC on bossfights
in SW ^^

Maybe Mobs should have a big red flag over their head with either “NO CCs” or
“Yes please .. CC me”

Well, that was bulldung from the get-go, since the bosses are literally immune to any CC. It’s the myth that the Trasher moves when you CC him (for whatever reason that came to be), when in fact he moves for every 10% you take off his bar, or after some time (and you can skip that by doing enough damage to shoot him into the next segment).

The base problem is that the base game and 99% of the combat in open world PvE is so coma inducing easy that people don’t need to learn anything about their class, the mechanics or their enemy to win. Then comes one enemy that requires something more and people can’t handle it, complain about it and it gets nerfed anyway. See HoT maps being nerfed after BWE and then like 3 weeks after release and now we’re getting ANOTHER nerf. Or how Orr was nerfed. Or how they downgraded a ton of enemies in the open world from Champions to Elites/Veterans.
The other day I had someone tell me I’m wrong by saying you can solo the Vampire HP in VB because you can just break LoS for the leech attack, because that must be some kind of weird OP exploit tactic, despite being rather obvious. But I digress.

A tutorial could help, and I can only go by personal experience, but I don’t feel the NPE did much in terms of helping players understand the game better despite all the gating and pop-up messages trying to explain things. As long as the vast majority of the game will remain this faceroll napping easy, any harder content will be a huge obstacle if not impossible to the average player, and there’s only so many times you feel like explaining what should be basic core mechanics to people in map chat before it gets too tiresome for too little payoff.

There are two problems with the CC thing:

1. It’s not very intuitive that you need to use CCs to break those bars. I understand that it is a mechanic of various fights but it does not make really much sense.

2. This is the biggie. Even if you know you need to CC, and you know what it stands for, there is absolutely no indication in the skill descriptions regarding which skills count as CC.

So you are relying on players seeking information outside of the game: wiki, youtube, forums, and most people are just not going to do that. Which is why we often see someone completely losing it in chat at events like The Shatterer, abusing all and sundry for their lack of CC.

“Soft CC’s” are even less logical. Why does chilled count when burning and poison do not count?

Trying to explain this stuff in the chaos of chat before a world boss is rarely going to work.

DoctorDing.5890:

There are two problems with the CC thing:

1. It’s not very intuitive that you need to use CCs to break those bars. I understand that it is a mechanic of various fights but it does not make really much sense.

2. This is the biggie. Even if you know you need to CC, and you know what it stands for, there is absolutely no indication in the skill descriptions regarding which skills count as CC.

So you are relying on players seeking information outside of the game: wiki, youtube, forums, and most people are just not going to do that. Which is why we often see someone completely losing it in chat at events like The Shatterer, abusing all and sundry for their lack of CC.

“Soft CC’s” are even less logical. Why does chilled count when burning and poison do not count?

Trying to explain this stuff in the chaos of chat before a world boss is rarely going to work.

Going off this, I actually think an alphabetically structured guide in the appropriate section of the Hero panel is needed – you know, actually sitting with the skills and whatnot. When you select the skill or mouse hover over it, its tooltip should say if it’s CC or not, and what kind. Said guide should elaborate on this.

Your currently played profession information would be priority, and whether having the information for other professions would be too much clutter is up for debate – although a handy pointy to where What Them Other People Do is listed wouldn’t hurt if it was thought a bit much.

Beldin.5498:

And that after some people hammererd in our heads NOT to use CC on bossfights
in SW ^^

Maybe Mobs should have a big red flag over their head with either “NO CCs” or
“Yes please .. CC me”

“I love a bit of CC on a Friday night”?

:D

DoctorDing.5890:

There are two problems with the CC thing:

1. It’s not very intuitive that you need to use CCs to break those bars. I understand that it is a mechanic of various fights but it does not make really much sense.

2. This is the biggie. Even if you know you need to CC, and you know what it stands for, there is absolutely no indication in the skill descriptions regarding which skills count as CC.

So you are relying on players seeking information outside of the game: wiki, youtube, forums, and most people are just not going to do that. Which is why we often see someone completely losing it in chat at events like The Shatterer, abusing all and sundry for their lack of CC.

“Soft CC’s” are even less logical. Why does chilled count when burning and poison do not count?

Trying to explain this stuff in the chaos of chat before a world boss is rarely going to work.

Because the term is “Crowd Control”, not “Crowd Conditions” and chill doesn’t have as big an effect as you may think. Chill is the “soft” type…because it reduces movement and cast times, it does not interrupt them.

I generally prefer games that encourage players to think rather than holding their hands and making everything so clear that everyone can get it.

However, since ANet was concerned about the LCD up to just before the launch of HoT, I suppose a CC tutorial would not hurt. With the content model the president prefers (large-scale PvE events), I can see the possible frustration with saying the same crap in chat every time one is at an event and people seem clueless.

All that said, in the unlikely event that ANet were to implement such a tutorial, Healix’ idea about a Gauntlet-style instance sounds good. My fear is that they’d do something like the dodge tutorial. If you look at that from the perspective of someone who knows nothing about the game, it teaches one to use dodge to avoid ground AoE only.

There could be an enemy on each of the starting zones that can be killed only with cc and only once per character. It could be a monster like a wurm or something else heavy or stuck to the ground (Snorlax!) and covering a cave entrance or something similar where is a small reward. Then when you approached it with a new character, a near by npc would ask you to move the creature, because they need something from the cave. The UI would point at the cc bar on the enemy and show a small pop up text with the different kinds of cc (with icons). Logically a player in this situation would then take a look at their skill bar to find a skill with one of the cc symbols. There could also be a small punishment type effect for using any skill without cc on the creature, like a knockback.

DoctorDing.5890:

There are two problems with the CC thing:

1. It’s not very intuitive that you need to use CCs to break those bars. I understand that it is a mechanic of various fights but it does not make really much sense.

2. This is the biggie. Even if you know you need to CC, and you know what it stands for, there is absolutely no indication in the skill descriptions regarding which skills count as CC.

So you are relying on players seeking information outside of the game: wiki, youtube, forums, and most people are just not going to do that. Which is why we often see someone completely losing it in chat at events like The Shatterer, abusing all and sundry for their lack of CC.

“Soft CC’s” are even less logical. Why does chilled count when burning and poison do not count?

Trying to explain this stuff in the chaos of chat before a world boss is rarely going to work.

I disagree that the system is inherently complicated — defiance is a ‘shield’ protecting certain foes; it can be broken by the same effects that affect movement and skill use. ANet makes it more complicated as do a lot of players.

The game doesn’t call anything “crowd control” — we do. The game refers to defiance and to stuns, chills, and so on.

I agree that the description of effects should include the amount of ‘damage’ they do to the defiance bar, just as conditions describe how much damage they do to health.

what i want is stat detail on how much damage the CC does to breakbar…

lagrangewei.8516:

what i want is stat detail on how much damage the CC does to breakbar…

Freeze – 60 * Duration
Stun/Daze/Knockback/Knockdown/Launch/Pull/Transform – 100 * Duration
Stone – 150 * Duration
Wards – 150 per pass
All of these happen in 1 go, so a 2 seconds stone = 300 Instant Damage
Anything under a second is rounded up to a second

Fear – 100 DPS
Taunt – 75 DPS
Immobilze – 50 DPS
Slow – 50 DPS
Chill – 33 DPS
Blind – 20 DPS
Weakness – 20DPS
Cripple – 10DPS

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defiance_Bar

Its why I love Venom Share with Thief, 5 people use CC whether they like it or not. Immo, Chill and 10 applications of Stone. So good when people don’t understand what CC is.

Morte de Angelis.7986:

lagrangewei.8516:

what i want is stat detail on how much damage the CC does to breakbar…

Freeze – 60 * Duration
Stun/Daze/Knockback/Knockdown/Launch/Pull/Transform – 100 * Duration
Stone – 150 * Duration
Wards – 150 per pass
All of these happen in 1 go, so a 2 seconds stone = 300 Instant Damage
Anything under a second is rounded up to a second

Fear – 100 DPS
Taunt – 75 DPS
Immobilze – 50 DPS
Slow – 50 DPS
Chill – 33 DPS
Blind – 20 DPS
Weakness – 20DPS
Cripple – 10DPS

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defiance_Bar

Its why I love Venom Share with Thief, 5 people use CC whether they like it or not. Immo, Chill and 10 applications of Stone. So good when people don’t understand what CC is.

“I’ma make you do what I want, and there ain’t nothing you can do against it!”

DoctorDing.5890:

There are two problems with the CC thing:

1. It’s not very intuitive that you need to use CCs to break those bars. I understand that it is a mechanic of various fights but it does not make really much sense.

2. This is the biggie. Even if you know you need to CC, and you know what it stands for, there is absolutely no indication in the skill descriptions regarding which skills count as CC.

So you are relying on players seeking information outside of the game: wiki, youtube, forums, and most people are just not going to do that. Which is why we often see someone completely losing it in chat at events like The Shatterer, abusing all and sundry for their lack of CC.

“Soft CC’s” are even less logical. Why does chilled count when burning and poison do not count?

Trying to explain this stuff in the chaos of chat before a world boss is rarely going to work.

I didn’t know chilled counted against the bar, and I know to equip skills for certain maps/bosses to break their bar! Even a more aware player (me) doesn’t know everything about breaking the defiance bar :O