Guild Wars 2

Greetings!

I have a fairly direct concern about the new daily dodge mechanic requirement and ArenaNet’s recent response to the “moa farming” that resulted from its implementation. As we’re all aware, the daily was annoyingly quasi-trivialized by hunting down and “bear-wrestling” local mobs known to do long channels, allowing you to get multiple evade credits per dodge.

I believe the rationale behind this daily’s implementation was to “encourage/teach players to dodge more” likely as a high-level decision to try to “advance” player skill. Or someone just thought it would be cool without considering the ramifications.

The problem is this: tallying “evade” responses to a mob hit is a very poor indicator of good play when it comes to dodging. My guildmates and I have played together for well over a decade through multiple FPS and MMOs, and are generally very big fans of ArenaNet, GW2, and the entire design philosophy that’s gone into the game (kudos)! Particularly relevant is the fact that GW2 moves the genre closer to being skill-based rather than relying on soulless mechanistic play, gear, and frustratingly micromanaged and optimized group/raid composition. We play at a very high level, and have been four-manning explorables for some time now.

Many of the folks in my guild play on characters and in ways (particularly on mesmers, necros, thieves) that result in lots of dodging and maneuvering but a very low count of actual countable “evades.” Many of us are now both extremely irritated and not particularly amused that we need to play recklessly and foolishly in order to farm “evades.”

Yes, if you’re on a defensive guardian/warrior, you can walk into a pack and get it quickly. Yes, if you’re on a GS or s/d ranger, the requirement is utterly trivial. When you play classes (i.e., ele, mesmer) that revolve around well thought out precision positioning, having to clumsily walk into combat and roll around is really, really frustrating.

Not all maneuvering and dodging that actually results in mobs whiffing and no damage taken properly registers an “evade.” No, it will never be measurable. This daily requirement needs to be reevaluated for consistency and equity across professions, specs, and playstyles, and may never be fully workable. It is encouraging suicidal and reckless behavior in many characters, and utterly trivial in others.

No problem if most of the posts that follow here are flames, this is just presenting our guild’s experience and frustration, and that may or may not be reflective. However, the structural flaws in the mechanic remain, which are:

(1) “Evading” an incoming attack captures from our experience less than roughly 30% of all attacks actually avoided from a combination dodging and maneuvering, including from professions/specs that predominantly play and stay at range, and

(2) The “evade” credit can be easily racked up by some classes that have built-in evasions (i.e., ranger with a greatsword, thief underwater) whereas others (i.e., staff or scepter elementalist) must recklessly endanger themselves through mandatory poor play to complete the daily.

Respectfully concerned,
Matipzieu / Blackgate
GM of <KyA> established 2002

1. go to wvw
2. find a tower that is being sieged
3. spam dodge at the gate

dodge daily done within 10 sec.

Some good points here. The dodge daily forces me to dodge, artificially, not to fight in the most effective manner possible. It’s the same with the healer daily, if you are assigned to protect an NPC, it is more efficient in terms of the daily to let him die numerous times so you can revive him. These are examples of brainstorming without a step to evaluate before implementation. The lack of reality-testing is a major missing element in the dev cycle since 11/15.

Dodging through any ground aoe will produce multiple evades. Pretty sure every class can dodge, right?

I’m redirecting all these topics to the player made guides in the “Dailies the easy way” post:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dailies-the-easy-way/first#post1375278

Step one: Run CoE paths 2 and/or 3
Step two: Fight subject alpha
Step three: dodge 3-4 times

Daily dodge completed.

Honestly, it’s not difficult to get that “evade” to pop up. If you truly play at the level you claim, you should be skilled enough to “play recklessly” without hindering yourself. Go find a boss with a large telegraphed attack that you can dodge easily, then dodge it.

Takes 60 seconds to find a wurm mob and dodge it’s rocks. Why does this ‘achievement’ need a dissertation associated with it?

if you don’t mind Southsun, I tagged 2 karkas and dodged 6 times for completion. having runes of energy was a bonus =]

I agree with the post about the behavior as I sometimes do this (and I’m a thief, and I don’t like using spear 5 underwater just to get it ^^).

However, an alternative is posted by Churros. You can also go to south part of CS and dodge red circle. Or, go to Fireheart rise, and otw to CoF, there are flame throwers that with just 1 dodge, you’ll get abour 4-7 evades.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not particularly a fan of that category, but hey, sometimes we have to adapt since it’s not really game breaking and there are ways around being reckless (as I posted above).

And oh, if you go dungeon or FotM, you’ll rack up evade (and Healer) before the dungeon is finished ^^

Raine.1394:

Some good points here. The dodge daily forces me to dodge, artificially, not to fight in the most effective manner possible. It’s the same with the healer daily, if you are assigned to protect an NPC, it is more efficient in terms of the daily to let him die numerous times so you can revive him. These are examples of brainstorming without a step to evaluate before implementation. The lack of reality-testing is a major missing element in the dev cycle since 11/15.

I agree with you on this. The dev’s intent is there. Their vision or goal or whatever in implementing certain things in the game are good in theory and in paper but there seems to lack execution. One cannot just say that it’s not the devs fault but the players ’ faults because for the system to work in accordance with the intention the devs had in mind and for it to be definitely effective or successful, they should have considered players’ way of thinking and/or behavior to reduce if not eliminate the drawbacks and faults within the system itself. It’s just poorly implemented. Other prominent examples of poorly implemented systems are the Legendary Weapons. Players will ALWAYS go for the most efficient and faster route with the least resistance, be it farming or grinding for hours, exploiting or going around the system itself. They should always consider this and do something about it. I myself have no suggestions so sorry.

And guys, please take some time to read the OP before replying. Most of you don’t actually know what the OP was talking about. He was talking about certain drawbacks or poor implementation of this particular daily achievement and advantages of certain professions with regards to evading. OP was not crying about how to do Daily Dodge as fast as you can. Please, read. -_-

Quarktastic.1027:

Step one: Run CoE paths 2 and/or 3
Step two: Fight subject alpha
Step three: dodge 3-4 times

Daily dodge completed.

Honestly, it’s not difficult to get that “evade” to pop up. If you truly play at the level you claim, you should be skilled enough to “play recklessly” without hindering yourself. Go find a boss with a large telegraphed attack that you can dodge easily, then dodge it.

Dear reasonable developers at ANet:

When implementing new content:

Step one: do not assume everyone who plays can do a dungeon on a daily basis. (or WvW for that matter.)
Step two: account for lost “measurements” due to a “race condition” (e.g. a differing interpretation in the perception between client and server.)
Step three: gather “red teams” and focus groups and pretest content in the conception stage before it hits the customer.

Honestly, it’s not that difficult to understand that customers WILL react differently than your internal filter expects.

Southsun just dodge a couple karkas and its done. Simple easy 2 minutes done

Several posters do not understand what the OP is saying.

It’s not about the requirement being too hard.

It’s the fact that this requirement, which was clearly meant to help teach players how to play better, is actually teaching them to play worse because not all forms of “dodging” are considered a “dodge” by the game. Only evasion counts as “dodging” in this requirement, so if you are like me (with decent reflexes), you will dart out of the way of an incoming attack the moment you see it, rather than waiting until the final second to invoke your dodge….and you’re being punished for that. That isn’t a good model for encouraging players to learn the game’s mechanics.

A similar problem exists with Daily Healer. When it is more efficient to let players go down than to heal them, or to let NPCs die rather than aid them, because you’re seeking your daily requirements? That’s not encouraging better game play, that’s encouraging poor game play.

Raine.1394:

Some good points here. The dodge daily forces me to dodge, artificially, not to fight in the most effective manner possible. It’s the same with the healer daily, if you are assigned to protect an NPC, it is more efficient in terms of the daily to let him die numerous times so you can revive him. These are examples of brainstorming without a step to evaluate before implementation. The lack of reality-testing is a major missing element in the dev cycle since 11/15.

Yes. Several of us have pointed this out in multiple threads. Both the artificial behavior (and often negative impact on the community) and lack of focus group qualification in the early IP (investigative process) stage.

A red team would save a lot of grief and lost time and effort and even more effort required after the fact.

then perhaps if anet changed the wording to ’ daily evader.’ would that satisfy you? I do see a tangible difference between avoidance and evasion

Agree with OP.

This is requiring/encouraging/demanding perverse play from players. The result is damage to game play and damage to the community and damage to the experience of new players in the lowbie zones where more experienced players are going to farm dailies “efficiently”.

ArenaNet: Disabling the breath so players had a harder time dodging the moas in queensdale today didn’t fix the problem.

ArenaNet: Your engine isn’t detecting most of the time when people dodge out of harm’s way. Your engine also doesn’t see the dodge relative to the blow remotely at the same time the player’s client does. It is extremely important that you develop this feature on a client which is accessing the game from the open internet (ie from a developer’s home), not on a client which is running the server on a VM in the background. This mode of development will not show you how client and server will sync up in the reality.

ArenaNet: teaching players to game the client / server interaction is a really, really bad idea that leads to all sorts of game play exploits you won’t expect. Blizzard taught WoW arena players to do LoS exploits this way. Damaged the community.

Great game, hope this mistake doesn’t drive off too many customers.

kiba.2768:

then perhaps if anet changed the wording to ’ daily evader.’ would that satisfy you? I do see a tangible difference between avoidance and evasion

It fixes at least one complaint, yeah.

However, even renamed, it still encourages bad game play by telling players to wait until the last second to dodge rather than focusing on proper movement, kiting, and regular avoidance tactics. So it doesn’t fix that problem.

kiba.2768:

then perhaps if anet changed the wording to ’ daily evader.’ would that satisfy you? I do see a tangible difference between avoidance and evasion

If i was a good player and I avoided an incoming attack WAAAAY before it lands on me and see the “Evaded!” text pop out, you will see the difference.

The daily achievement counts only on a successful dodge that TRIGGERED an evade, which is good in some cases but this type of scenario will not always work out with all professions and all types of playstyles like what the OP is trying to say. It requires you to do a certain task during trivializing moments which lead to players looking for a specific mob that does a specific attack in order to RAKE IN or FARM evades for their dailies in the fastest way possible.

It’s not quite gamebreaking since they play the game the way they want to, so what do I care? But is it good in the long run? Does it promote better gameplay? Does it satisfy the actual purpose of the Daily Achievement being discussed? My answers are: NO.

kiba.2768:

then perhaps if anet changed the wording to ’ daily evader.’ would that satisfy you? I do see a tangible difference between avoidance and evasion

Mmmh, not quite, but thanks for your post. As a few folks on the thread have pointed out, my concern isn’t about quickly doing the daily (though that is still annoying and artificial) but the fact that the daily is mandating and therefore teaching very poor play in some cases while requiring trivial play in others.

A few functional definitions:
(1) Actually avoiding a hit: taking some action, whether dodging or moving, that causes a mob to not do damage to you when it’s trying to, which includes but is not limited to a dodge that registers an “evade.”

(2) Dodging: pressing your dodge key or double tapping to do a dodge roll, consuming endurance.

(3) Evading: the only thing that is measured and counts for this daily’s completion, which I am concerned about. An “evade” occurs when you are by some means in a dodge rolling or in an evasion state and an attack is attempted on you. As several folks have pointed out, this can occur through dodge rolling across a ground AE or by being attacked while an “evade” skill, such as ranger GS 1 (third attack in chain) is channeling.

My concern is not over nomenclature <chuckle> but rather the fact that evading is only a small component of avoidance. The daily is teaching that the only thing that counts is evading.

Hope that cleared up my position — sorry to be unclear, long day and low on sleep.

Awesome.6120:

Dodging through any ground aoe will produce multiple evades. Pretty sure every class can dodge, right?

Not sure if warriors can.

so if any type of avoidance including the use of LOS, terrain, player movement(dodge included) and player skills/utilities counted toward the daily, you’d be satisfied?

I will say this: I don’t believe the daily dodge was anet’s way to increase player skill. that may be over interpretation(though to each his own). if you are a competent dodger, then what bearing does this have on you other than when partying in dungeons or highly difficult events? if someone is a poor dodger, I doubt this daily was designed to better their skills. am I to believe that daily harvesting is to increase my harvesting skill? or how about any of the other dailies? I’m playing Devil’s advocate here in the hopes that I understand what you want out of this daily. if you can complete it, what does it matter to you how others do it?

kiba.2768:

so if any type of avoidance including the use of LOS, terrain, player movement(dodge included) and player skills/utilities counted toward the daily, you’d be satisfied?

I will say this: I don’t believe the daily dodge was anet’s way to increase player skill. that may be over interpretation(though to each his own). if you are a competent dodger, then what bearing does this have on you other than when partying in dungeons or highly difficult events? if someone is a poor dodger, I doubt this daily was designed to better their skills. am I to believe that daily harvesting is to increase my harvesting skill? or how about any of the other dailies? I’m playing Devil’s advocate here in the hopes that I understand what you want out of this daily. if you can complete it, what does it matter to you how others do it?

What I’d like to see is the entire flaw-ridden mechanic either grossly overhauled or removed. The daily dodge requirement is plagued with a number of issues that, while not rendering it impossible, certainly render it a very poor quality gameplay experience far below ANet’s standards. While every problem element is by its own solvable, the totality should not have gotten past beta, and certainly not red team testing, as many others with solid dev experience on the thread mentioned.

(1) Artificial: players to complete it quickly are often encouraged to go run out and farm evades.

(2) Fails to capture full evasion and, obviously, will never structurally be able to do so as you’ve pointed out.

(3) Gross disparities across multiple professions/specs: particularly when it comes to examining elementalist and mesmer specs that rely on strong positioning and never being somewhere where it is necessary to trigger an evade to begin with, as compared to thieves/rangers/etc.

(4) Not all players have been doing this or are really good at this, and the daily will be teaching many who aren’t there yet poor play: Yes, I know how to do the daily, quickly, efficiently. Yes, I have the playskill to dodge a kleenex box across an inner gate and come out unscathed. This isn’t about me, this is about the other players out there I will be grouping with, playing with, WvWing with, and not for my own sake because I want the advantage of them being better players around me, but for their own sake, intrinsically.

Something about actually caring about the community. Call me old-fashioned. Thanks for the posts.

Seriously? hahahahaha ppl in this game find every they can to complain about. Complainin about dodge? really? You get it without even having to purposely do it in 30 min of play lulz

I play Ranged almost exclusively, so the dodge is a bit of a pain, but its doable fairly quickly. Most of the Daily can be done in 20 – 40 minutes depending on the mix.

I don’t see a problem with counting evades if it triggered on any of the methods I mentioned. some players lack the skill(and I will posit for argument’s sake) and will NEVER develop the skill to dodge. then there are those with hardware issues that prevent accurate dodging. then further are those that just don’t care to dodge at all but use other mechanics to ‘evade’ an attack.

if anet allowed other legitimate means for evasion, then player skill when it comes to pressing v or double tapping wouldn’t matter anymore, would it?

for me, sometimes I am just too lazy to dodge. other times what I choose to do instead benefits my entire party regardless of their dodging skill. stand your ground, retreat and f3 when properly timed in kholer fights trivializes the need for dodge skill and it increases party dps by a huge margin over the entirety of the encounter. no need for dodging if anyone is partied with me though it’s nice to know that people can and will.

still, I don’t see how this affects you other than your altruistic prerogative in regards to the community, which I see to be an unrelated topic of discussion for this daily dodging. I love helping others as well. I just don’t see how this daily is going to help someone improve their dodging or worse, teach them to be worse at it.

anecdotal insert: I dodge just fine on my elementalist. and my Mesmer guildie is better than I am at dodging. your mileage may vary

Huh?

Step 1) Play the game as you normally would

Step 2) Collect daily reward because you dodge while playing

Its really not that hard guys, there are hundreds of ways to do it within 10 seconds.

I prefer to find a undead mage and evade the AoE ice spike attack they do, i get 5-7 dodges per time i evade through it, so can hit daily after second time its cast on me.

EDIT: Not all classes will get the dodge by playing normally guys. I for one almost never dodge with my warrior, i mean really whats the point i do damage faster if im right beside the enemy and its not like 99% of them can do enough damage to kill me anyways.

I believe that if you don’t dodge at least a couple dozen hits a day then you’re playing this game very very wrong.

Red Falcon.8257:

I believe that if you don’t dodge at least a couple dozen hits a day then you’re playing this game very very wrong.

I believe you should read the original post instead of skimming it and trying to summarize (incorrectly) what it’s about.

Again, it’s not a matter of difficulty, it’s a matter of proper education. If you’re trying to teach players how to dodge using this daily (which is fair enough), then the game needs to properly recognize all forms of dodging and avoidance. Not just evasion.

No it isn’t… there are plenty of instances where good reflexes will still result in getting ‘evades’… one such source is dodging out of stacked AOE’s like you find in many dungeons… the bosses AOE’s are so large that even if you dodge early by the time you near the end of your dodge it is already ticking at least once.

There are a lot of situations where you can rack up plenty of evades without ‘playing poorly’.

How about when you are fighting a large group of mobs pretty much anywhere? No amount of ‘skillful’ play is going to have you always reacting BEFORE an attack happens when you are dealing with 5 or 6 enemies. You will get your evades there as well.

There is no way for the game to register that you “skillfully” avoided damage by moving ere a skill pops. Otherwise people would be getting their daily “dodge” by simply running through Orr on their way to an ori node, and never once needing to actually “dodge” to accomplish the task. Why? Because a miss is not the same thing as a dodge.

Find Hylek
Aggro Hylek, but stay ranged
Hylek uses Poison Dart gun
3-4 dodges/evades given each time

it is such a low level, my guardian can outheal the poison, so i can stand and wait for stamina to recharge and keep going. Took less than 5 minutes.

Also, finished February Monthlies. Thanks to the Hylek Dart Guns

Ive found Jormag the best place to get this . you can easily get 3 dodges off his wall attack if not more and at least 2 when he drops stuff from the air . . you can go from 0 to max on the dodge achievement in one go . I get what the OP is saying but i dont see a need for any changes .

I can actually agree with the OP.

First off, people, please READ the OP’s statement. He’s not complaining about how to do it quickly. We all know how to spot a mob to farm something.

Secondly and more importantly, as a grenadier I can completely agree. I’m a VERY mobile Engineer and running through a Fractal 28 today, I actually just got tired of not having the daily so I farmed it on the Maw’s tentacles mid-fight while waiting. Which is NOT my point. My point of agreement is there are many playstyles that completely disregard this daily and it’s design. As a grenadier, I have a very mobile playstyle and am often out of harms way unless I’m playing careless in medium to close range. Even then, I’m kiting and keeping distances and my dodges are putting me into safety PRIOR to when the Evade would occur or being used to create distance. I’m not sure I ever actually have gotten Dodger naturally without farming it in some way, and it’s not because I’m not dodging. I think it could just use a little bit of refinement is all. But then again, it’s a game continually being refined so this a surprise after just being launched.

i dont know..its pretty easy all i have to do is just park next a minion and let him attack me and when is about to hit me i just double tab or click ’’v’’ easiest thing ever, is mroe troublesome to wait for the endurance to refill.

I find the dodging daily hard to pull off because I always just walk out of attacks or dodge early in overworld PvE. There’s really no need for me to dodge at the very last second. It’s rewarding me for worse gameplay while I can do much better. And it’s just immersion breaking and punishing for players who like playing ranged and those who are experienced to evade attacks early.

Did all of thie daily dodge on my thief on an underwater veteran in timberline falls just using the 5 skill on the.. spear(?) and hitting several salmon while doing it. No problems doing the daily dodge on my necro in wvw either without going out of my way to do it.

critickitten.1498:

Red Falcon.8257:

I believe that if you don’t dodge at least a couple dozen hits a day then you’re playing this game very very wrong.

I believe you should read the original post instead of skimming it and trying to summarize (incorrectly) what it’s about.

Again, it’s not a matter of difficulty, it’s a matter of proper education. If you’re trying to teach players how to dodge using this daily (which is fair enough), then the game needs to properly recognize all forms of dodging and avoidance. Not just evasion.

I agree with you and the OP. That said, the “evade” proc is something that the game can recognize and count. More importantly, the evade proc was already in the game, so relatively little programming would have been required to incorporate it into a daily. They couldn’t just have the dodge daily update any time you dodge roll, as this would be easily exploitable. I suspect that in order to accommodate your suggestion, they would have to reprogram the evade proc itself to be more broadly applicable. I have no idea whether that would be easily doable.

I was also seeing the same thing while trying to do these dodging dailies OP. Yeah it’s easy and I have no problem doing it, but to do it I actually have to dodge WORSE than my skill at dodging. It just sort of feels weird that I have to take a few “skill steps” back to do it the way they want.

I agree that this needs to go.
I’m a Staff ele and a whole lot of my skills are about enemy management and keeping my foes AWAY from me. I generally don’t need to dodge and I don’t appreciate being forced to find an enemy that I can close range dodge like an Ettin JUST for the achievement. Daily Achievements should be something that are earned through simply day to day playing, not something you should be going out of your way to achieve because it doesn’t align at all with your class.

I farm it. OP—I agree with you. It’s easy to farm, and farming it makes me practice bad habits with my staff elementalist.

I would never get this one through “normal” gameplay, nor do I consider it normal for my ele to “evade” in the way that this daily is counted.

Not fun at all, nope.

to be honest I think it is working, people have gone from not dodging AT ALL to at least thinking about it, and you’re at least looking at the different animations the mobs use before attacking.

I think it might be wishful thinking to have people dodging masterfully, but I think it’s an improvement.

Hello,

There is already a thread about this concerns here : Daily: Dodger.

Therefore, this one is now closed to avoid duplicates.

Thank you