Right now, breakbars have three states. They are either locked off (gray “drill” pattern), they are open to be broken (an emptying blue bar), or they are recovering form being broken (a filling brown bar). This is good, but could be better.
The problem is, some enemies have “infinite breakbars,” that will stick around until you beat them, others have “long breakbars,” which last a good 10-15 seconds, and others have much shorter ones, 5 seconds or less. And there’s no way of telling how much time you have left, how “close” you were to breaking it, except through practice against that specific enemy. This is annoying when fighting new enemies, and requires too much to remember when many enemies have these bars.
My suggestion is to split up the breakbar somehow.
Have one blue bar that empties exactly as it does now, and then a second bar that moves at a steady rate relative to time, emptying when the time is up. If you can stay ahead of that bar, you’re on pace to beat it.
Now there are a lot of ways to do this, it could be a translucent red bar over the blue, so that it’s purple where they mix, and if you can see blue you’re lagging behind, while if you can see red then you’re doing well. Or it could be a very thin bar, a few pixels high, that runs along the bottom of the existing bar. Since it’s less vital it should be less distracting. I don’t know which method would be easiest to implement or look best in game, but I do think that attempting some method would be a good idea.
A lot of views, but no comments. Does everyone totally agree with this? Or totally Disagree? Or just vehemently have no opinion?
Ok. I’ll comment. I read it earlier and did not comment because I saw no use for it. Is this a specialized raid thing? Because in the open world the bar is either there (I should use cc), not there or filling (be ready to use cc). I didn’t see how the extra bar would tell me anything of real use against open world bosses.
You forgot the enemies with troll breakbars. No matter what CC you use on them the bar doesn’t move.
I think this could be very useful, especially in high level fractals where many of the breakbars have very short durations. However the only time that I find this useful is when you are trying to break the breakbar to prevent an attack. There are many other situations where this doesn’t make much sense.
There are some enemies that have a breakbar up permanently. An additional bar wouldn’t provide any useful information and would just distract from what is relevant. Lots of mordrem have this type of breakbar.
Another situation is where the breakbar has a set duration, but you want to break it as soon as possible. An example is when VG gets his breakbar. You want to break him as soon as possible so he moves to the next section, but if you don’t break him he will stop eventually. Having a bar showing how much time is left would be very misleading to people learning the fight, especially if they had gotten used to it being a good indicator of how breaks are doing in other content. If they take 5 seconds to break, they would be inclined to think they did a good job because of that extra bit of information, when really it should take a fraction of a second.
A good example of where this is needed is the wyvryn fights in VB. It should be added with a training spot in core Tyria that teaches what cc is.
My take on this. A quick mock-up.
What about this:
Give the BreakBar a distinctive blinking, the faster the sooner it will disappear again, if it doesn’t blink, it stays until broken.
Solved.
Especially Cliffside boss has some fast BreakBars.
Ok. I’ll comment. I read it earlier and did not comment because I saw no use for it. Is this a specialized raid thing? Because in the open world the bar is either there (I should use cc), not there or filling (be ready to use cc). I didn’t see how the extra bar would tell me anything of real use against open world bosses.
It would provide feedback. I mean, what’s the point of a health bar? If the enemy’s there, you throw damage at it, it’ll eventually die, or not. The point of the health bar is to gauge how well you’re doing that. A lot of times it’s unclear whether or not a breakbar was successfully defeated, since the enemy doesn’t do anything that can be visible through the effect spam. A timer bar would let you know that if it’s very low while the breakbar is quite a bit higher, then it’ll likely time out before the bar is broken.
It’s not essential, granted, but I do think it would be a quality of life change.
There are some enemies that have a breakbar up permanently. An additional bar wouldn’t provide any useful information and would just distract from what is relevant. Lots of mordrem have this type of breakbar.
True, but in this case they could either not display the “timer” bar, or it would just sit there not moving, in which case it would not be causing problems. I’m not thinking of this as taking up additional space on the bar, I’m thinking of it perhaps as a small second line that runs along the bottom of the existing trough.
An example is when VG gets his breakbar. You want to break him as soon as possible so he moves to the next section, but if you don’t break him he will stop eventually. Having a bar showing how much time is left would be very misleading to people learning the fight, especially if they had gotten used to it being a good indicator of how breaks are doing in other content.
Well, I don’t think anyone’s going to look at these bars and say "well, it looks like we’ll have ten seconds to break this bar, I guess we can take it easy and break it at the 9 second mark). If you can break it fast, you’ll want to break it fast, always, but this would at least give feedback as to how well you’re doing.
My take on this. A quick mock-up.
I like this. I think that so long as it doesn’t add too much visual clutter, more information is better than less. You may not pay attention to it every time, but it’s helpful the first few times, and after a while you learn to pick it up as second nature.
Not a criticism of your idea but there’s a problem with making things too complex in a game that doesn’t even have a basic cc tutorial, much less a breakbar and what it is tutorial. There’s appears to be a lot of people out there who don’t know what cc is, don’t know what the breakbar is, how you break it or why you would want to. Making the breakbar more complex will make the crowd who don’t know what it is even larger.
If arenanet were to have proper tutorials then complexity can be layered on. At this point, adding more layers to the mob encounter without a proper tutorial wont benefit those players who spam skill 111111111111111111 and use all other skills off cooldown.
Not a criticism of your idea but there’s a problem with making things too complex in a game that doesn’t even have a basic cc tutorial, much less a breakbar and what it is tutorial. There’s appears to be a lot of people out there who don’t know what cc is, don’t know what the breakbar is, how you break it or why you would want to. Making the breakbar more complex will make the crowd who don’t know what it is even larger.
I think that if it’s relatively subtle, then people who have no idea how breakbars work might not get much out of it, but wouldn’t be hurt by it either.
I think this is a pretty spiffy idea. I’m surprised it hasn’t gotten more of a response . . .
Can’t say it’d be an overly useful idea, but if it helps with conveyance, I’d still support it. As it is, it’s the breakbar duration and defiance-HP that occasionally bothers me. For something like mushroom kings, it’s fairly worthless to try, because you may get one CC ability off before the bar closes, and it has way too much dHP.
Beyond that, if we’re talking having different breakbar effects, I still find it pretty shoddy that breakbars are all-or-nothing against CC. There’s no subtlety. Sometimes, it’d be useful to have Cripple up on a boss or there wouldn’t be much harm in allowing Weakness to mitigate damage; it’s a smart thing for players to do. So what I’m hoping for is that bosses start taking some conditions, and the defiance bar decays based on anything else. Of course, this would require a smidgen of extra design thought going forward.
It’s something I find is necessary to consider, since some champs/bosses have closed defiance bars with no openings, like the Crazed Whispers agent that roams Bloodstone. A very high damage, non-CC’able target is pretty bad design. There’s very little counter play. Changing the defiance bar to block only some conditions would give players more to do with their skills.
(edited by Rauderi.8706)
I’d even be down with a simple countdown on the bar.
5…4…3…2…1…closed again
Something that lets the players know how large their CC window is.
Rather than another bar or a blinking bar, let the ‘timed’ bars change color maybe towards red and once it hits red you missed your chance to break it.
i think thats a nice idea
having a 2nd breakbar that goes down and works as an indicator for how much time you have and you have to get the real breakbar down faster than that 2nd indicator breakbar
i think especially for newer players it would be a great way to tell how much more cc you have to invest and how close you are at each point
Can’t say it’d be an overly useful idea, but if it helps with conveyance, I’d still support it. As it is, it’s the breakbar duration and defiance-HP that occasionally bothers me. For something like mushroom kings, it’s fairly worthless to try, because you may get one CC ability off before the bar closes, and it has way too much dHP.
I’m going to go a little off topic in my own thread, but I consulted with the OP and he approves; but it would be a nice thing if “fast breakbars” gave more advanced warning that they were coming. There’s a simple fix for that, use the cooldown visual, the brown bar. When you have a breakbar that only lasts a few seconds, instead of having it jump instantly from “drill bar” to “blue bar,” change it from “drill bar” to an empty “brown bar,” which would then refill over ten seconds or so, giving people time to prep their best CCs and for commanders to shout in chat that people need to get ready.
And while we’re on the subject, what about those enemies that have their bar broken and that leaves them vulnerable to damage for a few seconds, but usually not for the amount of time it takes for the brown bar to refill, meaning the player isn’t given a clear indication of how long he’s in that vulnerable phase. It might be nice if the brown bar turned red or something while the enemy was actually vulnerable, then flashed back to brown when they became normal again.
And as a third aside, it might be nice if during breakbar phases they could pop-up “damage” numbers based on your own CC contributions, just so players would know without having to look it up how much CC impact each of their attacks was having.
Eh, I just want debuffs to be meaningful again against foes with defiance bars. A compromise even, such as when the (blue) defiance bar is broken, cripple, chill, immobilize, and weakness affect the target only during the period it regenerates its break bar (orange).
At least then the debuffs would have impact again and it rewards those that successfully break a defiance bar since the regeneration period happens only after it is broken. As of now, those debuffs are reduced to minor defiance bar deterioration that overly simplifies them.
As long as there is an option to turn it off. I prefer to minimize screen clutter as much as possible.
And while we’re on the subject, what about those enemies that have their bar broken and that leaves them vulnerable to damage for a few seconds, but usually not for the amount of time it takes for the brown bar to refill, meaning the player isn’t given a clear indication of how long he’s in that vulnerable phase. It might be nice if the brown bar turned red or something while the enemy was actually vulnerable, then flashed back to brown when they became normal again.
A broken enemy will show an extra icon, but it only lasts for a few seconds, so it’s hardly enough time to mouseover and know what it’s for. While I like the idea of a changing color bar to indicate vulnerability, not all bosses might react the same way to having defiance broken. Can’t recall any right off the top of my head, so it might be all theoretical.
And as a third aside, it might be nice if during breakbar phases they could pop-up “damage” numbers based on your own CC contributions, just so players would know without having to look it up how much CC impact each of their attacks was having.
Yes, please. Yes. Bonus points if it’s in percentage instead of generic blue numbers. I’ll get much more knowledge out of a blue [-8.4%] than a blue [-100]. And if I know my personal contribution, I have a stronger case to suggest more CC to squads/map chat.
Apologies if I semi-hijacked the thread, but I’ve had Defiance Bar improvements on my mind recently, and any good ideas we can get to bubble up to the dev team would help the game as a whole.
I’ll get much more knowledge out of a blue [-8.4%] than a blue [-100]. And if I know my personal
Maybe, although percentage contribution scales with group size, so while it may be nice to know how much you contributed, it would be kind of worthless for strategy, since the same attack would do random amounts of apparent damage each time. A hard number, on the other hand, would make clear to you that this attack does “100,” while this other attack does “75,” and this other “25.” Well informed players can look up all their CC and figure out the tables how much impact it has, but for the casual player, just seeing this hard number for each of your moves would give you an idea of how much, or how little impact you’re having relative to your own potential.
Apologies if I semi-hijacked the thread, but I’ve had Defiance Bar improvements on my mind recently, and any good ideas we can get to bubble up to the dev team would help the game as a whole.
Hey, any good idea is a good idea.
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