Guild Wars 2

Jzaku.9765:

There’s a cap on condition stacks of 25. In a scenario where you have two thieves attacking a boss and one of them can achieve a stack of 25 by themselves, the other one essentially becomes useless because they’ve got nothing to stack on. Is anything being done to address that to make them less redundant?

Colin: Currently no. Interesting statistic for you: every condition in the game costs server bandwidth. ‘Cause we have to track how often the condition is running, what the duration of that condition is and what the stack is. So the more stacks we allow them more expensive it gets because we’re tracking every additional stack on there. And so we could, say, you can have infinite stacks. Number one: that becomes really unbalanced. But number two: it’s actually extremely expensive for us, on a performance basis. That’s one of those weird, kind of back-end server issues that can help make game designer decisions regardless of what you want to do with it.

One of the things people have been talking about is having their own individual stack limit that they can apply, rather than an infinite amount on one boss.

Colin: Yes, it’s tough. It’s certainly something we can look at, it does drastically change the way that the professions play, right? It does say “you can no longer stack all of one type of condition”. It might change the skills on each profession if we were to do that. It would encourage a little more group play to some extent. It’s not something we’re really talking about, but it’s an interesting idea. I’d have to think a lot about what the effects of that would be overall, but it’s an interesting… interesting idea.

So we can derive at least 2 things from this:

*Colin himself doesn’t actually understand his own game and doesn’t realize that 5 condition builds in a party without a condition cap would be outputting equivalent damage as 5 direct damage builds because on an individual level they are equal

*He seems to think it’s perfectly okay to leave it as terrible as it is because fixing it would make hosting more expensive. I.E., it’s okay to leave things completely unbalanced.

Or it would cost just a LITTLE bit of dev time developing a much better optimized method for stacking-type conditions. (hint, you can cut the cpu time exponentially by removing the tracking of stacks individually at 25 per enemy unit and simply increasing the intensity of the ONE condition with some arithmatic operations — operatons which are already done based on previously confirmed “strongest condition already takes precedence” calculations)

Seriously? My parent company does big data and I do a better job optimizing my basic operations scripts than this guy’s team!

Well I do have to say this seems pretty lazy on their part, even if it is some sort of overexertion on resource(which I find hard to believe), they should seek an alternative. Something like this is just all too common of an event to write off as a minor issue. But then again there are known bugs still in the game since beta, so what really can I expect.

Is the condition cap something that is common in other games?

Jzaku.9765:

There’s a cap on condition stacks of 25. In a scenario where you have two thieves attacking a boss and one of them can achieve a stack of 25 by themselves, the other one essentially becomes useless because they’ve got nothing to stack on. Is anything being done to address that to make them less redundant?

So we can derive at least 2 things from this:

*Colin himself doesn’t actually understand his own game and doesn’t realize that 5 condition builds in a party without a condition cap would be outputting equivalent damage as 5 direct damage builds because on an individual level they are equal

*He seems to think it’s perfectly okay to leave it as terrible as it is because fixing it would make hosting more expensive. I.E., it’s okay to leave things completely unbalanced.

To your first point:
I don’t know where you derive that Colin doesn’t understand his own game at all… no where in there does he say anything at all about class performance as far as condition builds versus anything else.

To your second point:
There is such a thing as business overhead. And this game has been running with overhead for 5 years before it was even released… and continues to rack up overhead in costs. There is no monthly sub. So box sales and what gems are bought have to both bring the game out of the red from what was spent in 5 years of development, but also must cover salaries, server maintenance and costs… so on and so forth. It is a pretty well known fact that one of the greatest limiting factors as far as cost goes is server bandwitdth… which is the amount of information your servers can transmit and recieve during a given period of time. The vast majority of his response talks about the technical limitations they are facing in this department and admits that the cost of bandwidth is WHY they chose to place a cap.

The second part of his response is in answer to the original question… I bolded it for you, but I will copy and paste it here, again…

Is anything being done to address that to make them (conditions) less redundant?

To which colin replies that it is a very interesting idea that might foster better team play… in other words a remake of class skills so that there is less overlap. This is a solution that works within the technical limitations he presented in the first part of his response. But he also discusses general quality of life issues such a massive rework would cause for the classes affected if they could no longer stack certain conditions.

All in all… I think he gave a great and informative bit of response there… with a good deal of transparency. What I derive from it is that they have technical limitations right now that limit the amount of bandwidth their servers can use, so they put caps on things in order to preserve the quality of the combat. You would be even more annoyed if your dodges suffered massive latency.

And before you respond telling him to pay for more bandwidth… how much have you spent in the gem store lately? If you want them to be able to overcome limitations derived from the income of the game… support it by spending a small amount of money. 5 or 10 dollars a month isn’t much to you, but it would add up for them and allow them to do more with the resources they have. If it isn’t worth that cost to you… then continue to enjoy the game and hope they continue to release new content, pay their people, maintain their servers, and turn enough of a profit to both keep it online and improve it… I’m certain you have already gotten your moneys worth and then some…

They aren’t evil people who don’t give a kitten… I’m sure they care much more than you do… after all… this is how they are feeding their families. And I’m sure many of them are very passionate about the game… most people who work in a creative industry do…

bluewanders.5297:

Is anything being done to address that to make them (conditions) less redundant?

To which colin replies that it is a very interesting idea that might foster better team play… in other words a remake of class skills so that there is less overlap. This is a solution that works within the technical limitations he presented in the first part of his response. But he also discusses general quality of life issues such a massive rework would cause for the classes affected if they could no longer stack certain conditions.

You clearly haven’t read any other meet n’ greet or AMA or anything else like that because if you did you’d know that “That’s a very interesting idea!” means “We’re not doing anything about it nor have we thought of doing anything about it, but we’re going to say it’s a nice idea to make you feel good about yourself”.

Jzaku.9765:

You clearly haven’t read any other meet n’ greet or AMA or anything else like that because if you did you’d know that “That’s a very interesting idea!” means “We’re not doing anything about it nor have we thought of doing anything about it, but we’re going to say it’s a nice idea to make you feel good about yourself”.

Well jeez, we can’t have all of these nifty Quaggan backpacks AND a battle-system that allows for balanced condition-build groups. Clearly it’s us spoiled try-hards that are overworking these poor developers.

bluewanders.5297:

All in all… I think he gave a great and informative bit of response there… with a good deal of transparency. What I derive from it is that they have technical limitations right now that limit the amount of bandwidth their servers can use, so they put caps on things in order to preserve the quality of the combat. You would be even more annoyed if your dodges suffered massive latency.

You seem to have never been exposed to statements of officials of any corporate entity before. Ask yourself, under the assumption that somebody responsible for product quality really kittened up. How likely, on a scale of 1 to 10 is it for an official in front of the gathered consumers, to admit, yes, we totally kittened up?

No matter what crap you told them, you’d always get an “oh my, that’s a very interesting idea, I’ll totally bring that up on the next dev meeting.”

Jzaku.9765:

bluewanders.5297:

Is anything being done to address that to make them (conditions) less redundant?

To which colin replies that it is a very interesting idea that might foster better team play… in other words a remake of class skills so that there is less overlap. This is a solution that works within the technical limitations he presented in the first part of his response. But he also discusses general quality of life issues such a massive rework would cause for the classes affected if they could no longer stack certain conditions.

You clearly haven’t read any other meet n’ greet or AMA or anything else like that because if you did you’d know that “That’s a very interesting idea!” means “We’re not doing anything about it nor have we thought of doing anything about it, but we’re going to say it’s a nice idea to make you feel good about yourself”.

He openly admits they aren’t considering it in seperate places within just what you quoted in the op. What more do you want? But he also says its interesting and worth a look. How you interperet that, and how you presume to know what there thought processes and internal conversations look like, is all on you.

As for the rest saying it can be done quickly and easily and everything else… you don’t know what tools their engineers have developed for the backend. You don’t know how it works… you haven’t seen it… you don’t know what flaws it has and why… you know absolutely nothing about their code, why it operates the way it does, and why it doesn’t operate in another way.

25 stacks is a lot so if one character can reach that then they have got possibly a min -maxxed build and possible they should balance for more burst damage or heals or survivability . Remember conditions can NOT be measured like for like with most burst damage as conditions are not affected by armour or toughness or protection. Also a full stack of conditions can be removed at once so it would be of more benefit if skills can restack that condition very fast if it is removed suddenly than one massive stack from all professions being removed suddenly and having to wait for some longer skill refreshes.

EDIT: “NOTE TO DEVS”
As more conditions does put such a weight on the engine instead of increasing the cap increase the damage each stack of condition can do. HOWEVER reduce the stacks that can be applied to each skill for one player to balance the current damage output with the new damage output for that player but allowing for a much increased damage output from a number of players stacking.

bluewanders.5297:

He openly admits they aren’t considering it in seperate places within just what you quoted in the op. What more do you want? But he also says its interesting and worth a look. How you interperet that, and how you presume to know what there thought processes and internal conversations look like, is all on you.

As for the rest saying it can be done quickly and easily and everything else… you don’t know what tools their engineers have developed for the backend. You don’t know how it works… you haven’t seen it… you don’t know what flaws it has and why… you know absolutely nothing about their code, why it operates the way it does, and why it doesn’t operate in another way.

1) Seriously go read any other Q&A session and count how many times “That’s an interesting idea!” is said.

2) What I do know is that engine limitations should in no way influence key game mechanic balances.

joneb.5679:

25 stacks is a lot so if one character can reach that then they have got possibly a min -maxxed build and possible they should balance for more burst damage or heals or survivability . Remember conditions can NOT be measured like for like with most burst damage as conditions are not affected by armour or toughness or protection. Also a full stack of conditions can be removed at once so it would be of more benefit if skills can restack that condition very fast if it is removed suddenly than one massive stack from all professions being removed suddenly and having to wait for some longer skill refreshes.

1) Not even close, any remotely good condition build can and will be stacking a minimum of 15 stacks on a regular basis.

2) Extremely circumstantial advantages of condition damage should not be considered when comparing it to direct damage. How often are you going to be fighting enemies like that? Are you going to respec to a conditions build JUST to fight these mobs?

3) Easily solved by having each individual person have their personal stacks. Skills like epidemic can just spread the highest stacked bleed at the moment of casting.

bluewanders.5297:

As for the rest saying it can be done quickly and easily and everything else… you don’t know what tools their engineers have developed for the backend. You don’t know how it works… you haven’t seen it… you don’t know what flaws it has and why… you know absolutely nothing about their code, why it operates the way it does, and why it doesn’t operate in another way.

And we are not payed to understand their backend tools. If an internal system is not capable of doing a very simple task, I don’t need to know how and why exactly it is broken, I only care for the fact that it doesn’t work.
If the engine can’t handle a task like this, somebody kittened up when they programmed the engine, so “it’s just broken because that’s how it is” really is no excuse.

wintermute.4096:

bluewanders.5297:

All in all… I think he gave a great and informative bit of response there… with a good deal of transparency. What I derive from it is that they have technical limitations right now that limit the amount of bandwidth their servers can use, so they put caps on things in order to preserve the quality of the combat. You would be even more annoyed if your dodges suffered massive latency.

You seem to have never been exposed to statements of officials of any corporate entity before. Ask yourself, under the assumption that somebody responsible for product quality really kittened up. How likely, on a scale of 1 to 10 is it for an official in front of the gathered consumers, to admit, yes, we totally kittened up?

No matter what crap you told them, you’d always get an “oh my, that’s a very interesting idea, I’ll totally bring that up on the next dev meeting.”

Don’t presume to know anything about my experiences, knowledge, or insights.

It is only your opinion that they “kittened up” and need to own up to it. What is an oversight to you can just as easily be a creative solution to those who had to deal with the problem. You also don’t know whether he actually does think it is an interesting and idea and does intent to present it to his engineers as a possible solution.

And… what is wrong with trying to sound like you are engaged with consumer feedback? Just because it was given doesn’t mean they can implement a solution to every problem every user ever had.

I can say something similar to you by intoning that you must never have been in a position of responsibility where you had to both interact with customers, as well as make decisions that would affect your product.

Nerf berserker warriors in pve and conditions become perfectly balanced.

kRiza krimos.1637:

Or we can act as spoiled silver spoon brats, demanding it and not careing for objective reasons to why there are such limits.
I stoped taking you seriously moment you said that lead designer doesn’t understand game he made. Luckly there you are to teach him since you understand it way better than people that created it.

If a game is promoted as a triple AAA MMORPG that will be as good as any sub based game then that is what people expect, when it turns out the game lacks resources and makes bad design decisions based on the lack of resources, expect people to be complain about that.

They made a game where if you have more than one condition build playing it is likely it will become a disadvantage, three condi builds plus it certainly will, this is the game that was promoted as “play the game your way”.

As for game designers, they fail to see stuff all the time, knowing the technical side, does not magically make them perfect, which is why most games have public test servers. (Never played a game where so many bug “fixes” either don’t work or create another bug)

You want an example of how devs sometimes cannot see the obvious, Rift, they decided to implement passively applied 50% healing debuffs, lots of “mere” players told them it would not work, because they had seen it fail in other games, because you could not balance the healing when sometimes it would have a near constant 50% debuff on, others none at all, guess what the players were right, Rift dumped the passively applied healing debuffs some time later.

Jzaku.9765:

bluewanders.5297:

He openly admits they aren’t considering it in seperate places within just what you quoted in the op. What more do you want? But he also says its interesting and worth a look. How you interperet that, and how you presume to know what there thought processes and internal conversations look like, is all on you.

As for the rest saying it can be done quickly and easily and everything else… you don’t know what tools their engineers have developed for the backend. You don’t know how it works… you haven’t seen it… you don’t know what flaws it has and why… you know absolutely nothing about their code, why it operates the way it does, and why it doesn’t operate in another way.

1) Seriously go read any other Q&A session and count how many times “That’s an interesting idea!” is said.

2) What I do know is that engine limitations should in no way influence key game mechanic balances.

joneb.5679:

25 stacks is a lot so if one character can reach that then they have got possibly a min -maxxed build and possible they should balance for more burst damage or heals or survivability . Remember conditions can NOT be measured like for like with most burst damage as conditions are not affected by armour or toughness or protection. Also a full stack of conditions can be removed at once so it would be of more benefit if skills can restack that condition very fast if it is removed suddenly than one massive stack from all professions being removed suddenly and having to wait for some longer skill refreshes.

1) Not even close, any remotely good condition build can and will be stacking a minimum of 15 stacks on a regular basis.

2) Extremely circumstantial advantages of condition damage should not be considered when comparing it to direct damage. How often are you going to be fighting enemies like that? Are you going to respec to a conditions build JUST to fight these mobs?

3) Easily solved by having each individual person have their personal stacks. Skills like epidemic can just spread the highest stacked bleed at the moment of casting.

I edited my post as quick as I could with he following:

EDIT: “NOTE TO DEVS”
As more conditions does put such a weight on the engine instead of increasing the cap increase the damage each stack of condition can do. HOWEVER reduce the stacks that can be applied to each skill for one player to balance the current damage output with the new damage output for that player but allowing for a much increased damage output from a number of players stacking.

In regards to repeccing builds or traits on the fly. I don’t mean this. Just like there isn’t a min maxxed holy trinity build there doesn’t need to be a min maxxed conditions versus burst damage build. Instead of building for maxxed conditions just permanently build in some burst damage instead or put in more survivor or healing skills.

bluewanders.5297:

I can say something similar to you by intoning that you must never have been in a position of responsibility where you had to both interact with customers, as well as make decisions that would affect your product.

So few (in comparison to sample size) have been in that kind of position, or been responsible for a balancing act, that a lot of people just don’t think about it. This isn’t an attack, or an insult, it’s just how it is.

“It’s an interesting point, which deserves to be looked into” is a polite wrapper around several different possible phrases:

- “Huh, I hadn’t thought about that.”
- “We’re aware you think it’s a problem, we don’t see it, so it’s interesting you think it’s an issue. What are we missing?”
- “We would love to look into it, but we neither have the time nor resources to devote to doing more than poking at it with a stick in our off-time.”
- “We’ve already noticed it but haven’t come up with an actual solution yet.”
- “It’s an interesting point you make, and it should be looked into.”

Please don’t be intentionally dense, they obviously mean “Use the playstyle you want” when they say “Play the game your way!”. Meaning that every form of damage should be equally viable for any content. Condition damage is clearly absolutely nothing close to that vision seeing as how any 2 condition damage builds attacking the same mob will be stepping on each other’s toes and rendering any more condition damage players absolutely helpless.

If fact burning alone can be maintained PERMANENTLY by any ONE warrior/guardian/elementalist easily rendering any burns after that essentially 0 dps. It really is the worst offender of conditions being bad in group situations.

Sigdur.4025:

kRiza krimos.1637:

Or we can act as spoiled silver spoon brats, demanding it and not careing for objective reasons to why there are such limits.

Because criticizing major flaws in a game’s design is acting like a spoiled brat.

kRiza krimos.1637:

I stoped taking you seriously moment you said that lead designer doesn’t understand game he made. Luckly there you are to teach him since you understand it way better than people that created it.

“Miss Finster! Miss Finster!”

Calling dev incompetent because things are made to be sustainable, and not to your likeing, sounds real mature. So does your school analogy, which tells me alot about your level of maturity too.

Now i really do wonder how the server code track conditions, as this sounds messed up…

Jzaku.9765:

Please don’t be intentionally dense, they obviously mean “Use the playstyle you want” when they say “Play the game your way!”. Meaning that every form of damage should be equally viable for any content. Condition damage is clearly absolutely nothing close to that vision seeing as how any 2 condition damage builds attacking the same mob will be stepping on each other’s toes and rendering any more condition damage players absolutely helpless.

If fact burning alone can be maintained PERMANENTLY by any ONE warrior/guardian/elementalist easily rendering any burns after that essentially 0 dps. It really is the worst offender of conditions being bad in group situations.

Your insulting behaviour is just you belittling yourself and does nothing for your argument. The argument I have for your statement for use the playstyle you want is that you as a player can use that playstyle. By no means does that playstyle have to be open ended or unlimited and by no means does it mean it also should be as such when playing with other players with the same playstyle.

digiowl.9620:

Now i really do wonder how the server code track conditions, as this sounds messed up…

Its information exchange problem if i understood Colin right. Server has to send information back and forward to client constantly, since conditions number and timer, and stacks number change from second to second, which is eating alot of bandwith.

Thats how i understood it at least.

I can’t believe he’s citing a tech reason (bandwidth) as the driving reason behind a game system as important as conditions. Other games do it, Colin. How?

The condition system is poorly designed and implemented. The buffs/debuffs are too short… they aren’t fun to manage, and lo-and-behold, it as resulted in weird gameplay issues like this.

The condition system isn’t poorly designed. On paper. But in reality it doesn’t work. Because it doesn’t respect technical contraints.

Being in the software industry myself for more than a decade I know this problem fairly well. Designers designing incredible stuff without taking technical contraints into consideration in order to fully unleash their creative power. Which isn’t a bad thing unless there’s someone at some point bringing both teams to the table so that compromisses can be made.

Looking at the current conditions system and its limitations it cannot be denied that it does not work, as simple as that. If the stacking of conditions and their monitoring produces too much load the only solution seems to get rid of the “stacking” and turn it into a single debuff per player. This way up to 25 players can place a condition onto one mob.

Of course this would lead to a complete overhaul of many condition skills. Something ANet will probably never do due to their limited resources.

I don’t understand why certain classes can’t bring 1 type of condition that can stack to 25 and each condition has their own debuff, that way if you needed certain debuffs you would NEED those classes in your groups. its called class diversity anet …pls, I know everyone “hates” wow but pls learn from it.

Elvahaduken.3609:

I don’t understand why certain classes can’t bring 1 type of condition that can stack to 25 and each condition has their own debuff, that way if you needed certain debuffs you would NEED those classes in your groups. its called class diversity anet …pls, I know everyone “hates” wow but pls learn from it.

That’s an interesting proposal. I don’t play WoW so i don’t know for sure how that works but it kind of also reminds me of the old EQ1 “stacking spells” conundrum. Most casting classes had debuffs somewhere in their arsenal but there was a limitation on how spells interacted. Some DoT spells wouldn’t stack, some debuffs would overwrite others (other longer-lasting or more useful ones) and in general you ran into really having to learn a lot of stuff which wasn’t really clear to players inherently.

In GW1 conditions of the same type didn’t stack, but they reset duration when a new instance of it was applied. They also functioned somewhat differently – the most health degen you could stack was -10 pips which meant anything after that was wasted. MANY groups could reach this. Many single classes could reach this if they tried hard enough, even Rangers (for a short glorious duration).

Here the issue would seem to be that in large engagements you can hit 25 stacks real fast. Even in a group where more than one class can stack Bleed/Poison you can reach it fast. And the game isn’t sorting by which effects offer what damage amount over time (so I understand anyway, I could be wrong), so if someone with less Condition Damage drops Bleed over your high-powered Bleed, it’s what’s used instead of the biggest actual number from the applied stacks.

I’ll note this really seems a big issue in the PvE side of the game and not the PvP/WvW. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but other players suffering under 25 stacks of Bleed isn’t quite the same as the Risen Priest of Grenth suffering under it.

Elvahaduken.3609:

I don’t understand why certain classes can’t bring 1 type of condition that can stack to 25 and each condition has their own debuff, that way if you needed certain debuffs you would NEED those classes in your groups. its called class diversity anet …pls, I know everyone “hates” wow but pls learn from it.

Requiring any class in a party is against the whole ethos of Guild Wars 2 hence no holy trinity.

By the way I still think the answer to stacking is keep the max stack at 25 but only allow each player to achieve a much more limited amount of stacks for more damage to balance it out.

For example make each stack do 5 times more damage but make the max amount of stacks any single character can manage at once to 5. Therefore the calculation would be instead of currently one player or five players able to only manage 25 stacks max of damage for 250 damage per tick (as an example), one player can still manage 250 damage per tick over 5 stacks or five players 1250 damage per tick over 25 stacks.

So one single player is balanced out to give the max damage he can at the moment but 5 players can do so much more. (The above calculation is just for an example only)

The reason its not a pvp issue is because everyone and their mum has a million cond removal. Anet preach play your way but when your forced to spec different otherwise your dead weight surely there should be a huge fking uproar.

Ive only been playing 3-4 weeks. I played wow for 2 years, i left because our guild died. Im a hardcore heroic raider. 2nd best guild on my server (not sure anymore) Im seriously considering going back to wow because im fking appauled that this system made it through beta and that this so called lead dev has failed to correct it in the 6 months this game has been out.

If your an ex wow player, everyone hates on ghostcrawler. But after seeing this you have to think to yourself that he does somewhat deserve a major pat on the back for actually designing class balance on wow how it is.

this has nothing to do with the trinity rofl, why can’t each class have a cond for example necro has poisons which can stack to 25, thieves also use poisons and ele’s use burns etc and that poison debuffs healing and increases other classes cond duration on that target. so ya know, classes like thieves and necro are actually wanted in dungeon/fractal groups instead of faceroll warrs/guards.

again, nothing to do with the trinity. but allowing class diversity instead of people only wanting the overpowered and the rest can gtfo.

Elvahaduken.3609:

I don’t understand why certain classes can’t bring 1 type of condition that can stack to 25 and each condition has their own debuff, that way if you needed certain debuffs you would NEED those classes in your groups. its called class diversity anet …pls, I know everyone “hates” wow but pls learn from it.

That is sort of exactly what was quoted in the OP… making conditions less redundant.

I for one would just love to see the QQing going on in the warrior forums if they ever implemented a 25 direct damage stack for warriors. Something along the lines of “you just did X damage but because it went over what the boss is programmed to accept this round it will just be dropped sorry”.

Actually this might actually be a good idea; well at very least it would level the playing field.

Elvahaduken.3609:

this has nothing to do with the trinity rofl, why can’t each class have a cond for example necro has poisons which can stack to 25, thieves also use poisons or w/e and that poison debuffs healing and increases other classes cond duration on that target. so ya know, classes like thieves and necro are actually wanted in dungeon/fractal groups instead of faceroll warrs/guards.

Its everything to do with why the trinity was purposefully avoided. The reason was that every class could have a build viable to play in a party so no one was calling out or sitting waiting for any particular class. To this end if warriors and guards are chosen over other classes it is either a failure in Anets intentions of the game or just as usual a failure in the player base for being so close minded.

Elvahaduken.3609:

The reason its not a pvp issue is because everyone and their mum has a million cond removal. Anet preach play your way but when your forced to spec different otherwise your dead weight surely there should be a huge fking uproar.

I don’t have endless condition removal, I have only a few things that actively remove it as a ranger. Signet of Renewal will dump it on my pet or shorten the duration to 10s. Using it gives it a 60s base cooldown. Prayer to Kormir removes 3 conditions with a 40s base cooldown.

So, no, I don’t have "a million’ ways of removal on myself I can benefit from another ranger’s Healing Spring though.

joneb.5679:

Elvahaduken.3609:

I don’t understand why certain classes can’t bring 1 type of condition that can stack to 25 and each condition has their own debuff, that way if you needed certain debuffs you would NEED those classes in your groups. its called class diversity anet …pls, I know everyone “hates” wow but pls learn from it.

Requiring any class in a party is against the whole ethos of Guild Wars 2 hence no holy trinity.

But if that ain’t workin’ (and it ain’t) then it’s time to put all options onto the table.

think about it this way, do you want a select few of the population to be wanted for pve/pvp/wvw or do you want everyone to be wanted.

Yes i know some don’t have that many cond removals, i was just emphasising my point. more often than not stacking high bleeds wont happen because they will get cleansed before you can make much of an impact. I know thats not the case in tpvp/spvp but in wvw zergs cond removal .. need i say more.

Zeldain.5710:

joneb.5679:

Elvahaduken.3609:

I don’t understand why certain classes can’t bring 1 type of condition that can stack to 25 and each condition has their own debuff, that way if you needed certain debuffs you would NEED those classes in your groups. its called class diversity anet …pls, I know everyone “hates” wow but pls learn from it.

Requiring any class in a party is against the whole ethos of Guild Wars 2 hence no holy trinity.

But if that ain’t workin’ (and it ain’t) then it’s time to put all options onto the table.

I can see your argument and if certain classes have become less than desirable and others a requirement then it will only get worse to make classes more individual and necessary and make this problem spread further to dungeons if it hasn’t done so already. There needs to be either a nerf to required classes or a buff to the others but that doesn’t mean making them more individual but instead making them more balanced and equally desirable.

I agree that something needs to be done about condition damage. I think direct damage needs to be brought into line… and burst damage needs to have a hard serious look, because it is way out of line.

Since there ARE technical limitations in different forms of damage, then thats the bar that other sorts of damage need to be balanced around.

However now we are very much off topic from the hyperbole of the original post.

wintermute.4096:

kRiza krimos.1637:

Or we can act as spoiled silver spoon brats, demanding it and not careing for objective reasons to why there are such limits.
I stoped taking you seriously moment you said that lead designer doesn’t understand game he made. Luckly there you are to teach him since you understand it way better than people that created it.

This is not a god-given absolute limitation that we have to adhere to, it’s a system that it is inherently flawed and you won’t change that by just turning a blind eye to it.

Yea, it’s basically saying “it’s difficult for us to do and we don’t really give a kitten.” I don’t really get what he’s trying to say in the second paragraph, but he probably has no idea either.
Also, if they feel the system would be too taxing on their hardware if they just lifted the cap, they should certainly try to change the system to match that instead of just leaving it at that. I get the feeling the current bleed mechanic is just awfully coded if it takes that much bandwith and could be adjusted with a few minor tweaks. We all are attacking at a rate of over 1/s second anyway, so there really shouldn’t be that much more server load for conditions.

You and the OP both missed something they could do quite easily that would instantly help, they could restore the damage that conditions USED to do back before they implemented Nov patch. You see, the first month before they made the code between the pve and pvp skills a separate thing, they globally nerfed the conditions on multiple classes at once thus globally nerfing condition initial damage on all characters. Even with leaving in the stacking design flaw (which no game has ever done with HoTs to my knowledge and then made an excuse not to fix them) this removal of the global nerf would fix a bit of the trouble right off the bat.

BTW I completely agree with you. It’s lazy not to fix it. They sure can spend the resources to keep DR in the game and they sure can make sure that the nerfs to the loot tables for the dragon events stay in there to keep people from getting rares and exotics on a regular basis but they can’t take the time to fix this? Sounds fishy to me too.

I don’t remember this conditions damage Nerf, mind elaborating.

Make condition damage scale better then.

If there is 25 stacks of bleed on a target and you add a 26th it should add more damage to existing ticks.

and again make condition damage scale better for builds that are built specifically to do condition damage.

Medazolam.3058:

Is the condition cap something that is common in other games?

In other games I’ve played they have often had caps, however they were normally individual caps rather than a global cap on the target, in the rare instances it was a global cap on the target it was things like % damage debuffs, stuff like DOTs or HOTs were per player.

Thank god they didnt make condition dmg big part of the game….ohhh right.

Wonder how many times they must have brought up this issue i mean even 1 condition specced that get quickness rams into the cap instantly, surely they must have thought “hey you know what this here is kinda bad and wont work” lets fix it before release.

Wonder if anyone can actually defend em in this.

Well that s a sorry excuse if i ever heard one. Well we did hear plenty in the past months from ANET though so i guess most of us are used to it.
If these stacks are such a bandwidth issue then i dont see why they havent already resorted to adding them up as a per second(half, quarter) tick of x damage. It would require some more server CPU cycles to add those up though.

I still think the best compromise for the moment would be letting bleeds instantly deal a portion of their overall damage if the target is at the bleed cap. No idea what could be done for poison and burning, but that seems like a fair thing to do for bleeds if the capping issue can’t/won’t be changed.

joneb.5679:

Elvahaduken.3609:

I don’t understand why certain classes can’t bring 1 type of condition that can stack to 25 and each condition has their own debuff, that way if you needed certain debuffs you would NEED those classes in your groups. its called class diversity anet …pls, I know everyone “hates” wow but pls learn from it.

Requiring any class in a party is against the whole ethos of Guild Wars 2 hence no holy trinity.

By the way I still think the answer to stacking is keep the max stack at 25 but only allow each player to achieve a much more limited amount of stacks for more damage to balance it out.

For example make each stack do 5 times more damage but make the max amount of stacks any single character can manage at once to 5. Therefore the calculation would be instead of currently one player or five players able to only manage 25 stacks max of damage for 250 damage per tick (as an example), one player can still manage 250 damage per tick over 5 stacks or five players 1250 damage per tick over 25 stacks.

So one single player is balanced out to give the max damage he can at the moment but 5 players can do so much more. (The above calculation is just for an example only)

I like this idea. It solves it nicely.

Having bigger damage conditions , namely bleeds and burns (poison is used for the anti heal), per a stack would totally work.

And for those " On crit 33% chance for a bleed stack" can change to a “On crit 10% chance for a X3-damage bleed stack”.

*There’s a cap on condition stacks of 25…..Is anything being done to address that to make them less redundant?

—>Colin: Currently no. …

*One of the things people have been talking about is having their own individual stack limit that they can apply, rather than an infinite amount on one boss.

—>Colin: Yes, it’s tough. It’s certainly something we can look at, it does drastically change the way that the professions play, right? It does say “you can no longer stack all of one type of condition”. It might change the skills on each profession if we were to do that. It would encourage a little more group play to some extent. It’s not something we’re really talking about, but it’s an interesting idea. I’d have to think a lot about what the effects of that would be overall, but it’s an interesting… interesting idea.

Is anyone else alarmed that 6 months after launch they haven’t even considered addressing the obvious flaws with conditions? It boggles the mind to think of what they prioritize over severely flawed basic game mechanics. But hey, I’m so glad we got that wintersday event. Those ugly sweaters made it ALL worth it.

I know the devs are busy folks, and it’s obvious they’re still playing catch-up fixing bugs and broken content, but how does this go 6 months without even serious consideration, much less actions to resolve it? Can it really be incompetence? Or are we just not getting the whole story? You would think at least ONE of them would be in touch with the current state of the game.

I’m going to do something I hate.

I’m going to compare this game to other games.

Back in the good old days that everyone wants to return to, there was a game called Everquest and a class called the (interestingly to this discussion) Necromancer. Necromancers were the masters of debuffing and Damage over Time abilities (sounds kind of familiar). Guess how many Necromancers you wanted in a 72-man raid group?

One. (Maybe two since they could turn their life into mana for the healers).

One Necromancer could, by themselves, easily slap down 9-10 DoTs and debuffs. Add in the other classes wanting their DoTs to work and you might as well forget an extra damage Necro. Why? Because there was a debuff/DoT cap of 32. “Engine limitations!” the developers cried! In a game where you needed 72 people to beat on things, only 32 of their debuffs and DoTs could count.

Eventually, the developers figured out how to get more debuffs in there, though. It took several years….

On to the more modern age. World of Warcraft. How many Affliction Warlocks did it take to fight a boss? Hopefully not many, because until the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, you could only have 40 debuffs/DoT effects on a target. But the developers figured it out.

And now, Guild Wars. How many debuffs can you stack?

Answer: 25 bleeds (all tracked seperately)
That one sword bleed from Warrior’s sword offhand that isn’t a bleed but works like one (Impale?)
25 confusion
Poison
Burning
25 Vulnerability
Weakness
Blind
Chill
Cripple
Fear
Immobilize

For a grand total of 84. And that’s only the ones that have visible icons (that I remember). So, at launch, we have DOUBLE the number of things being tracked to WoW being launched. This is PROGRESS.

Will the developers make it better? They have in other games, why believe they can’t (or won’t) do it here? Keep up the complaints, but don’t be sassy about it.

I too hope that something is done to address the issues with condition stacking. I played an affliction warlock in WOW for several years and enjoyed it thoroughly. Still, I wanted to chime in regarding some of the more critical comments made by some forum goers. I just finished reading the transcript from the interview Colin did with GW2guru. I felt they were being very honest about areas where they felt the game was lacking and, despite characterizations made by previous posters, quite bluntly identified where they were really lacking. Just as an example:

“Question on if it’s possible in the future to be able to craft skins rather than the armor and weapons themselves.
Colin: Yeah, we just need more artists.”

“Question about ranger utility skills that aren’t being used and how it hasn’t been addressed yet.
Colin: I actually have no idea right now what stuff that group is working on…one of the big things that we’ve kicked up recently is basically and analytics team that records all the data in the game. It allows us to look at that and help make decisions about the things we’re doing. They’re actually the group that helped us find a lot of the loot issues recently.”

This paints a picture of a small team that seems to be stretched a little thin in some areas. My interpretation is that they are still, even after several months of operation, getting the necessary infrastructure in place. This does vindicate previous posters stating that the devs don’t have all the answers right away and can miss certain important things. Things like the bleed cap, I’m sure, are on a long list of items to be addressed. You’re welcome to argue that it should be addressed sooner rather than later but I’m not sure if that’s gonna happen right away. I would certainly like to bleed my enemies dry but for the moment, it seems like that’s just not a serious option in group play.

For a grand total of 84. And that’s only the ones that have visible icons (that I remember). So, at launch, we have DOUBLE the number of things being tracked to WoW being launched. This is PROGRESS.

Will the developers make it better? They have in other games, why believe they can’t (or won’t) do it here? Keep up the complaints, but don’t be sassy about it.

We have to remember, “MORE” does not necessarily equate with “BETTER”.

The difference between other games and GW2 was the emphasis on the lack of a trinity or dedicated roles. This in turn means that anyone and everyone can roll a DoT build no-matter the profession and they are constantly encouraged to use conditions.

Herein lies the problem – we’re being constantly pushed to use conditions (one of the things they touted a lot when talking about their combat system) on a method/tech that is “too expensive” to elaborate and expand on.

I think that if they say they’re not going to do anything about it, what else are players expected to think?

Conditions work wonders in PvP and for PvE well… we’ll stick with 4 direct damage team members and one conditioner.
If it can’t be fixed without blowing up the servers I don’t think there is much we can do.