I can't reconstruct boss mechanics, help?
Getting rid of the condition cap so damage-spec’d players can’t overwrite condition-spec’d players’ stacks needs to happen, at least for instanced content. That will go a long, long way towards making condition dealers useful.
With the addition of Sinister Gear and new condition vulnerable mobs, I hope that they at least have a fix to the condition cap on the way. Otherwise, I can’t help but wonder “What’s the point?”
For CC, I don’t really know. There were some interesting proposals coming up in the Raiding CDI, but they killed it right after the discussion started on CCs.
WEll for CC there are two interesting Mobs in Dry Top. Number one is the Roadrunne… I mean Three Toed Tootsie who wants run run circles and gets out of the fight. Unless there is someone using a CC skill he’ll suceed.
Second one are the Giant Beetles who can only be harmed if they are attacked from the front but there is an exeption. If a CC skill hits successfully this mob can be harmed from every direction. These are interesting things that Anet should expand on.
As for conditions, just getting rid of the condi cap is too easy, ask the PVP guys. Well if they remove the cap just in PVE it would be better^^
I think that mobs should get condi weaknesses, where certain mobs are extra vurnerable to certain conditions, like Plant Mobs being really weak against burning while being physically resistant. The Husks are a step in the right direction but Anet shouldn’t stop there.
WEll for CC there are two interesting Mobs in Dry Top. Number one is the Roadrunne… I mean Three Toed Tootsie who wants run run circles and gets out of the fight. Unless there is someone using a CC skill he’ll suceed.
Second one are the Giant Beetles who can only be harmed if they are attacked from the front but there is an exeption. If a CC skill hits successfully this mob can be harmed from every direction. These are interesting things that Anet should expand on.As for conditions, just getting rid of the condi cap is too easy, ask the PVP guys. Well if they remove the cap just in PVE it would be better^^
I think that mobs should get condi weaknesses, where certain mobs are extra vurnerable to certain conditions, like Plant Mobs being really weak against burning while being physically resistant. The Husks are a step in the right direction but Anet shouldn’t stop there.
I was thinking along the lines of Champion and higher enemies has a much higher physical resistance that can only be whittled down by CC (like a defense debuff, allowing for several seconds for everyone to high slightly harder).
As for conditions, just have it so conditions behave differently towards bosses.
For example, have it so bleeding has a set raw extra damage. Think of it as passing through armor resist. The same goes for torment, confusion and burning. The higher your condition damage and condition duration is, the more raw damage that can be inflicted.
I also think it would be a good idea that bosses are completely immune to blind, weakness, chill, cripple and immobilize.
However, when affected by those, the boss gets a damage debuff. Not as powerful as -50% from weakness but like the armor debuff it stacks.
The idea behind this setup is that in boss CC allows people using power to deal slightly more damage.
While condition users ignore the bosses naturally increased toughness with extra raw damage or possibly reducing the amount the boss can inflict.
Buuuuuuuut I have no idea how well that would work.
The problems with combat in GW2 lay mostly with the design of the encounters more than they do with the actual mechanics of the game. Sure, there are some things that can be tweaked or changed, such as the condition cap and defiant, but ultimately the answer lays in how the encounter is designed.
For instance, GW2’s combat system is heavily dependent on active combat and proactive defense, emphasizing movement, positioning, and timing. With a combat system like this, it would make sense then to design encounters where movement and positioning are key factors to success. However, what we see instead are giant Damage Sponges who have large telegraphed attacks you just need to move out of while pressing 1 a lot. Or, worse, just stack on top of the boss and negate any form of challenge or thought entirely.
There is no inherent trinity in this game such that there is a required formula for success; every profession can do a little bit of everything and can provide the needed role in the group at any time. And while this is an interesting approach, it is ultimately the reason why the encounters are designed so poorly.
GW2 is a game that promotes flexibility over structure. Meaning, the game is designed in such a way that you can play what you want with whoever you want and be able to succeed. This means the encounters can not contain variables that any group can not overcome. This is what gives GW2 its casual feel.
To make content more challenging, it needs to sacrifice flexibility for structure. For instance, the new Husk enemies are a good idea to promote condition damage in groups. If you have enemies that have low armor but high hp, you need physical damage to best them. If you have enemies with low hp but high armor, you need condition damage to best them. With these 2 enemies thrown into the encounters, suddenly groups need both high physical damage and high condition damage. If you have enemies that are otherwise immune to damage until they are CCd, suddenly CC becomes needed as well. With just these 3 types of enemies added to normal encounters, a lot more builds gain viability. However, flexibility is now lost, and to complete this content, specific team compositions will be needed, the same way traditional trinity models need specific team compositions.
However, despite either approach, there is one glaring flaw with GW2’s combat system that I simply can not see an answer to. Defensive stats and builds simply have no place in this game (PvE). There is no aggro mechanic, so there can’t be dedicated tanks. If there was, then you would also need a healer, and you have the trinity model. However, there is no reliable way to draw aggro. Additionally, because of the heavy emphasis on movement, positioning, and timing in the combat, good players can and will nullify nearly all the damage thrown out at them, thus rendering their defensive stats useless. What this means is in this game, defensive stats are nothing more than a padding so you can make more mistakes. There’s no inherent game play mechanics that require defensive stats, such as tanking, and so they are useless in high level play. This is the very reason why PvE has been in a zerker meta from the very start, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
(edited by Loki.8793)
I personally think the biggest mistake was making Power a gear stat. If everyone had Zerk levels of power as a base, you would have a lot less fluctuation you need to counter when designing mobs. Then everyone has the ability to do at least decent damage and isn’t a choice between being glass cannon or titanium pistol. It’d be a be a choiceof what you want to do in addition to power damage….. supplement it with condi/ferocity/prec or add some sustain via defensive stats.
I honestly don’t know how to improve on world bosses….. in general I’d like to more active defense/offense on the part of the mob instead "bullet sponge that gives out long duration X condition while farting out AoE Y condition stacks.
How about bosses that (GASP!) actually evade instead of randomly becoming invulnerable so weakness has more use. how about bosses that blind/inflict weakness themselves?
Add more mobs that give boons so boonstripping has a place in pve. even Just giving a mon the ability to slf buff regen opens up the possible counters of boon stripping/sealing/corruption or mitigation through poison/other condis.
If you make mobs that attack less hard but more frequently, it opens up usefulness of both defensive traits and CC to keep them off you.
Put all of those in certain situations coughdungeonscoughcough and you will have a much more tactical experience because you would need to prioritize in a fluid way. Don’t have good stability? Might wanna kill the CC mob first. Not having an issue with CC mobs, maybe you want to take out the heavy hitters or the guy that keeps buffing all the trash mobs. that sort of thing.
(edited by archdemonXIII.7063)
However, despite either approach, there is one glaring flaw with GW2’s combat system that I simply can not see an answer to. Defensive stats and builds simply have no place in this game (PvE).
Defensive stats allow people to make mistakes, as you said later in this same paragraph, essentially refuting your own point. Earlier, you stated that GW2’s combat system provided a casual feel — by which I presume you to mean laid back, not concerned with maximum optimization. You then proceed to judge defensive stats from the standpoint of optimization. There’s plenty of use for defensive stats in all three game modes, whereas there is no need for them in optimized dungeon speed runs and maybe not in the pseudo speed run PuG.
Even if there were zero uses for defensive stats in PvE — which I dispute — there would be uses for them in WvW, which uses PvE gear and builds.
However, despite either approach, there is one glaring flaw with GW2’s combat system that I simply can not see an answer to. Defensive stats and builds simply have no place in this game (PvE).
Defensive stats allow people to make mistakes, as you said later in this same paragraph, essentially refuting your own point. Earlier, you stated that GW2’s combat system provided a casual feel — by which I presume you to mean laid back, not concerned with maximum optimization. You then proceed to judge defensive stats from the standpoint of optimization. There’s plenty of use for defensive stats in all three game modes, whereas there is no need for them in optimized dungeon speed runs and maybe not in the pseudo speed run PuG.
Even if there were zero uses for defensive stats in PvE — which I dispute — there would be uses for them in WvW, which uses PvE gear and builds.
To address your last remark first, I specifically stated that defensive stats and builds are useless in this game’s PvE. I am aware WvWvW and sPvP finds use for them.
And as for the rest of your comment, I find your disagreement to be a mere nitpick. In PvE, there is no situation where a defensive build is superior to an offensive build, especially in team scenarios. They hinder groups because they are entirely selfish and force the other 4 members to carry. This is why PvE has been in a zerker meta from the very beginning. This isn’t because it was an oversight from the devs or because of bad balancing, it’s because it is the inevitable result of an action oriented combat system with no reliable aggro mechanics.
You can argue that there is use in defensive builds because they allow players to make more mistakes, but the cost of that is making the fight last significantly longer, thus leaving more room for further mistakes to be made.
You say I contradicted myself because I spoke in terms of optimization after saying the game felt casual, but I didn’t say anything about a casual feel lacking optimization. You did. I don’t necessarily agree with that assessment either. I feel optimization is a consequence of playing the game. You’re trying too hard to disagree.
However, despite either approach, there is one glaring flaw with GW2’s combat system that I simply can not see an answer to. Defensive stats and builds simply have no place in this game (PvE).
Defensive stats allow people to make mistakes, as you said later in this same paragraph, essentially refuting your own point. Earlier, you stated that GW2’s combat system provided a casual feel — by which I presume you to mean laid back, not concerned with maximum optimization. You then proceed to judge defensive stats from the standpoint of optimization. There’s plenty of use for defensive stats in all three game modes, whereas there is no need for them in optimized dungeon speed runs and maybe not in the pseudo speed run PuG.
Even if there were zero uses for defensive stats in PvE — which I dispute — there would be uses for them in WvW, which uses PvE gear and builds.
To address your last remark first, I specifically stated that defensive stats and builds are useless in this game’s PvE. I am aware WvWvW and sPvP finds use for them.
And as for the rest of your comment, I find your disagreement to be a mere nitpick. In PvE, there is no situation where a defensive build is superior to an offensive build, especially in team scenarios. They hinder groups because they are entirely selfish and force the other 4 members to carry. This is why PvE has been in a zerker meta from the very beginning. This isn’t because it was an oversight from the devs or because of bad balancing, it’s because it is the inevitable result of an action oriented combat system with no reliable aggro mechanics.
You can argue that there is use in defensive builds because they allow players to make more mistakes, but the cost of that is making the fight last significantly longer, thus leaving more room for further mistakes to be made.
You say I contradicted myself because I spoke in terms of optimization after saying the game felt casual, but I didn’t say anything about a casual feel lacking optimization. You did. I don’t necessarily agree with that assessment either. I feel optimization is a consequence of playing the game. You’re trying too hard to disagree.
I’ll withdraw the statement about casual v. optimization then, but I’ll still contest the basic premise that there is no place in PvE for defensive stats. Optimization is not a consequence of playing the game, it is a consequence of choosing to optimize. If it were a consequence of playing, then everyone playing the game would be optimizing and there would be no non-berserkers sneaking into berserker-only dungeon groups. Do you want to make the argument that that is in fact what’s happening?
If any PvE players are choosing to use defensive stats for any reason, despite the PvE meta’s embracing of glass stats, then there is a use for defensive stats in PvE. The developer built the game for the entire player base, not just for those who are concerned with efficiency. However, I’ll agree that players who prefer to use defensive stats should stay away from dungeon groups that advertise a preference for efficiency.
However, despite either approach, there is one glaring flaw with GW2’s combat system that I simply can not see an answer to. Defensive stats and builds simply have no place in this game (PvE). There is no aggro mechanic, so there can’t be dedicated tanks. If there was, then you would also need a healer, and you have the trinity model. However, there is no reliable way to draw aggro. Additionally, because of the heavy emphasis on movement, positioning, and timing in the combat, good players can and will nullify nearly all the damage thrown out at them, thus rendering their defensive stats useless. What this means is in this game, defensive stats are nothing more than a padding so you can make more mistakes. There’s no inherent game play mechanics that require defensive stats, such as tanking, and so they are useless in high level play. This is the very reason why PvE has been in a zerker meta from the very start, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
The easy fix to this is have enemies attack faster and have more attacks BUT do less damage.
In fact, lets not call it enemies, lets call it old foes. As ArenaNet has clearly shown good enemy design in the latest living story.
The old foes allow players to avoid incoming damage way to easily. Look at the guards in WvW, specifically the thieves, can you imagine what they would be like if they had REAL pistol skills from the thief, skills 1-5, a steal and the healing skill Hide in Shadows? Or the Charr Warrior guards ability to do more than just stun, throw balas and basic combo?
Do they need to hit hard? No. Do they need more variety to punish those that ball and spank? Oh they sure can.
The old foes really needs an upgrade from the days in beta.
But the issue is both structure and mechanics. How can you have world bosses when the ONLY offensive trait that is useful is Power. When you have Precision, Ferocity, condition damage, condition duration and various control effects. All useless.
Only
one
viable
option.
The mechanics aren’t just shooting themselves in the foot, they are blasting their foot off and rubbing salt in the gaping would. Reducing what you have into a painful mess for the sake of challenge. Healthy mechanics are mechanics that work with everything you set, you want players to feel like their offensive choice will not hurt their performance.
The old foes and mechanics definitely need an update, Plus toss all the current dungeon paths into Fractals, and actually reward players for exploring dungeons, fixed.
snip
What you are suggesting is easier said than done. There actually isn’t much difference between the old enemies and the new ones. The new enemies just have slightly different mechanics attached to them and have better design scenarios. But they still act the same way as every other NPC in the game. Adding more skills won’t necessarily make enemies more challenging either. Skills that are used under certain conditions can be easily manipulated and controlled. Skill that are used at random are unreliable and will almost nearly never be used optimally.
And I’m fairly certain there is a reason why all the NPCs in the game attack at the rate they do. I’m sure its because they can’t attack any faster because they have to go through so many algorithms already. Between each attack, they have to
- Locate all the players and enemies.
- Calculate who to attack based on certain criteria.
- Create a path to the target and follow it.
- Review all the available actions.
- Use the action that best fits the present conditions
- Repeat.
And even with your scenario, defensive stats don’t get any better. The reason why defensive stats are so bad in PvE isn’t because of how encounters are designed or imbalance, it’s because there is no reliable aggro mechanic. What’s the use of being tanky when the enemy is targeting your squishy teammate or throwing AoEs everywhere? What’s the point of being tanky when you can just avoid, evade, block, dodge, or blind the attack?
The only time defensive stats are useful is when damage is unavoidable. And unavoidable damage is just poor design in an action-oriented combat system.
I’ll toss this out there – Perhaps a counterpart to Defiant – call it something like Staggered maybe. Say each boss has a big “key attack”, it you time it to burn the defiant stacks and interrupt the key attack with CC, then the boss gets the Staggered debuff and takes 10% more damage for 5 – 10 seconds. Numbers are examples, not thought out values.
This mechanism rewards coordination and timing instead of mindless rupt spam AND can increase damage output/kill speed, thereby opening the potential for something other than MOAR DPS to be wanted in a party.
I’ll withdraw the statement about casual v. optimization then, but I’ll still contest the basic premise that there is no place in PvE for defensive stats. Optimization is not a consequence of playing the game, it is a consequence of choosing to optimize. If it were a consequence of playing, then everyone playing the game would be optimizing and there would be no non-berserkers sneaking into berserker-only dungeon groups. Do you want to make the argument that that is in fact what’s happening?
If any PvE players are choosing to use defensive stats for any reason, despite the PvE meta’s embracing of glass stats, then there is a use for defensive stats in PvE. The developer built the game for the entire player base, not just for those who are concerned with efficiency. However, I’ll agree that players who prefer to use defensive stats should stay away from dungeon groups that advertise a preference for efficiency.
I apologize for not answering earlier, I missed your reply last night.
You say you are going to withdraw your statement about casual meaning a lack of optimization, and then spend the rest of your comment talking about optimization. Cute.
“Optimization is not a consequence of playing the game, it is a consequence of choosing to optimize.”
That right there is a tautology. People don’t learn how to optimize by choosing they want to be optimal, they learn how to optimize by playing the game and learning the mechanics. This is why I say optimization is a product of playing the game, learning is something we do automatically.
Any first run of any content will not be optimal. You will have no knowledge of the mechanics will not know what to look out for and how to react to it. However, after your initial experience, you then do learn the mechanics and what to look out for, and you do better the in the following runs. Thus, the later runs are more optimal than the first simply because you played the game and learned. There was no inherent choice in the matter to get better, it just happened. I would argue the only instance of someone who doesn’t optimize their play is someone who chooses to not get better and to not learn at all.
Zerker gear is a result of wanting to play better. It’s a gear set that forces you to react to attacks rather than just sit there, and it rewards you accordingly. Everyone I’ve talked to who has switched from a defensive stat to zerker stat has said it was a positive experience and would never go back. Zerker is the meta in PvE for a reason. It’s not elitism, it’s just the result of getting better at the game, and wanting to do so (Which I would argue is most people).
Yes, people do use defensive stats in PvE, but they don’t use it because it provides any inherent advantage or benefit for doing so. They use it because it is a choice. There are also some people who run around without any armor or weapons. That doesn’t make that useful either.
When the only purpose of defensive stats is to be training wheels for players outside of the main game, they are useless in the main game. If your disagreement comes solely from the word useless, then I can use a different term instead to satisfy you.
Instead of saying they are useless, it would probably be better to say they are fruitless, or they provide no advantage. Happy now?
So how do you make conditions and skills with CC be effective against bosses to reward group play without ruining bosses with a flood?
Here is my answer: I don’t know a good way.
…
What would you guys do if you added new boss mechanics?
I’ve an idea: stop focusing on boss encounters.
Instead of that, challenge the players with several not-so-powerful beings. If the big guy is needed for epicness or lore reasons, just make sure it’s aided by an adequate number of these lesser champions.
As long as they can use some decent AI, fighting against several enemies will always be more challenging and provide more room for control and support than facing a single foe.
They could use a slightly higher amount of moves (well, current bosses could also make use of this to be honest) and, instead of spaming skills on recharge, they could hold them for a few seconds so they can be used instantly if some special situation is met (for example, a big hit like eviscerate could be hold for 3-4 seconds to be used against an stunned or immobilized player).
Another important, and probably quite hard to achieve, part of a decent AI would be positioning (unless the enemy group is designed to work a lot with fields and boons, it doesn’t make any sense for, lets say two fire staff elementalists, to stay stacked and being cleaved).
At least, the AI should try to avoid being tricked by LoS. It might be an acceptable tactic for trash mobs but, if the designer, trying to achieve a better encounter, introduces adds or directly replaces a boss with 3-4 pseudochampions, and then allows them to directly run into a corner, over a blind field, against a reflect wall, … and explode … well, if that’s the case it might be better to not change anything :P
About the current champion/legendary mechanics:
Defiance is a tricky mechanic.
A small group of organized people can get rid of the charges and then land a long hard CC like Deep Freeze for extremely good results. For large amounts of people (where there are too many stacks for a single player to disable) or in unorganzied small groups, the mechanic pretty much make bosses immune to CC.
As a rework, I would make defiant stacks to naturally go away over time. If enemies would lose 1 stack every 4-5 seconds without being hit by a CC skill (this is important to prevent timing issues between active removal and natural decay), it would be way easier for large or uncoordinated groups to deal with those last stacks.
In exchange, since effectively landing a CC becomes far easier, I would introduce a 50% natural resistance to hard CC (stun, knockdown, …). This would negatively affect coordinated dungeon groups, but If Ì’ve to be honest, I don’t think it’s ok to achieve those permastuns on single bosses.
For the “lesser beings” I suggest, natural decay could be faster (lets say 3 seconds) and CC could work at full potential.
Natural blind resistance is another thing that, as a main Guardian player, annoys me A LOT.
It’s obvious that champions and legendaries shouldn’t be affected by blinds like regular mobs. Having to deal with several players (so probably a lot of blind sources) and having a usually quite slow attack rate, they could be permablinded to death otherwise.
In the current state, however, blinding some of these enemies is pretty much useless. I’m just not going to save a dodge or a block because the enemy has a 10% chance of missing the hit (so a 90% chance of losing maybe more than half of my HP, or even being oneshoted).
As a possible change, I would reduce blind duration by a quite high percent (so better timing is required) but I would let it work as normal (next attack misses). Once the attack misses, the boss would receive a buff protecting him from being blinded again for a fixed amount of seconds (15-20 could do the work I guess).
“Small beings” could have lesser duration reductions and immunity upkeep times.
I would add a similar timer working with Immobilize (which works at full effect atm if I’m not mistaken). Even if most dungeon speedrun groups go full melee, being able to permaimmobilize a boss sounds quite ridiculous to me.
It’s either this or make immob count as a CC towards the defiance mechanic.
I don’t think any duration reduction should be needed here.
The rest of resistances provided by Unshakable (50% reduction to Weakness and Vulnerability) should be tweaked and made dependant on the amount of players (like current defiant stacks).
25 stacks of vulnerablity (over a somewhat long time) can require some build adjustment for 5 man groups. For a 20+ player group, onthe other hand, they are pretty much guaranteed.
For the same reason as Immob, I would also introduce Cripple and Chill (this one on a smaller degree of resistance) on the list of natural resistances. The fact that optimized groups fight at melee range doesn’t mean bosses should be so easy to kite if desired.
Ths natural resistances would be, again, reduced for the “small beings”.
I’ll withdraw the statement about casual v. optimization then, but I’ll still contest the basic premise that there is no place in PvE for defensive stats. Optimization is not a consequence of playing the game, it is a consequence of choosing to optimize. If it were a consequence of playing, then everyone playing the game would be optimizing and there would be no non-berserkers sneaking into berserker-only dungeon groups. Do you want to make the argument that that is in fact what’s happening?
If any PvE players are choosing to use defensive stats for any reason, despite the PvE meta’s embracing of glass stats, then there is a use for defensive stats in PvE. The developer built the game for the entire player base, not just for those who are concerned with efficiency. However, I’ll agree that players who prefer to use defensive stats should stay away from dungeon groups that advertise a preference for efficiency.
I apologize for not answering earlier, I missed your reply last night.
You say you are going to withdraw your statement about casual meaning a lack of optimization, and then spend the rest of your comment talking about optimization. Cute.
“Optimization is not a consequence of playing the game, it is a consequence of choosing to optimize.”
That right there is a tautology. People don’t learn how to optimize by choosing they want to be optimal, they learn how to optimize by playing the game and learning the mechanics. This is why I say optimization is a product of playing the game, learning is something we do automatically.
Any first run of any content will not be optimal. You will have no knowledge of the mechanics will not know what to look out for and how to react to it. However, after your initial experience, you then do learn the mechanics and what to look out for, and you do better the in the following runs. Thus, the later runs are more optimal than the first simply because you played the game and learned. There was no inherent choice in the matter to get better, it just happened. I would argue the only instance of someone who doesn’t optimize their play is someone who chooses to not get better and to not learn at all.
Zerker gear is a result of wanting to play better. It’s a gear set that forces you to react to attacks rather than just sit there, and it rewards you accordingly. Everyone I’ve talked to who has switched from a defensive stat to zerker stat has said it was a positive experience and would never go back. Zerker is the meta in PvE for a reason. It’s not elitism, it’s just the result of getting better at the game, and wanting to do so (Which I would argue is most people).
Yes, people do use defensive stats in PvE, but they don’t use it because it provides any inherent advantage or benefit for doing so. They use it because it is a choice. There are also some people who run around without any armor or weapons. That doesn’t make that useful either.
When the only purpose of defensive stats is to be training wheels for players outside of the main game, they are useless in the main game. If your disagreement comes solely from the word useless, then I can use a different term instead to satisfy you.
Instead of saying they are useless, it would probably be better to say they are fruitless, or they provide no advantage. Happy now?
I concur that in high-end play (such as it is in GW2), defensive stats are useless and fruitless. If that’s your definition of the main game, then that’s the source of our disagreement. Rereading our conversation, I probably should have picked that out sooner.
I have to question what the “main game” is in ANet’s mind. It seems to me that the emphasis is more on large, persistent world content. A lot of that content is hardly high-end play by any definition I’d accept.
When I go to such events, I see an awful lot of downed players. Of course, there’s always the possibility that the downed I see are at those events for the first time and thus in the learning curve. When I say that defensive stats are useful in PvE, it’s with those players in mind, whether it’s as training wheels, because they’ve capped their skill, have lousy FPS, don’t want to get better or just prefer to be more resilient for any other reason.
I concur that in high-end play (such as it is in GW2), defensive stats are useless and fruitless. If that’s your definition of the main game, then that’s the source of our disagreement. Rereading our conversation, I probably should have picked that out sooner.
I have to question what the “main game” is in ANet’s mind. It seems to me that the emphasis is more on large, persistent world content. A lot of that content is hardly high-end play by any definition I’d accept.
When I go to such events, I see an awful lot of downed players. Of course, there’s always the possibility that the downed I see are at those events for the first time and thus in the learning curve. When I say that defensive stats are useful in PvE, it’s with those players in mind, whether it’s as training wheels, because they’ve capped their skill, have lousy FPS, don’t want to get better or just prefer to be more resilient for any other reason.
I apologize for continuing this discussion, as I realize we mostly agree. But, there are a few things I wish to add.
At this point in time, I simply cannot consider the open-world content the main game of GW2 PvE. I see it as the transition to the main game, which I would consider team-oriented content largely involving instances and/or raid formats.
It seems to me open-world content is popular only when it is first released, and then very quickly dwindles down in population after its release. The reason for this is because the content offers a very specific reward, and once people obtain that reward they have no further reason to continue the content. I feel the newest map is a prime example of this.
One the first few days of the patch, the new map was constantly swarmed with people completing the events for their achievements. Nearly every meta event would be completed or almost completed. Then, after a while, people realized you could get better rewards by just farming the chests at amber, and nearly EVERYONE did that until it was nerfed. After the nerf, barely anyone plays on the map anymore, and the meta events always fail, with the best I’ve seen is only 2/5 of the bosses getting killed.
With the rest of the map, nearly every zone is a ghost town. The only maps that have populations in them are the maps people can grind/farm for rewards, and its typically for cosmetics or stats for team-oriented play.
On the other hand, people are still constantly doing dungeons, fractals, world bosses/raids, and the story instances (for the achievements and rewards from them) and often require parties to complete. Even 2 years after launch, thousands of players do the same dungeon each and every day. Where in the open-world, you’re lucky to see 10 people after the hype has ended.
With this in mind, I can’t see defensive stats be useful. And just to clarify, just because something sees use does not make it useful. I feel my comparison to people running around naked or without weapons to be an apt example of this.
I would also argue that having defensive stats makes you a worse player, as you can often ignore the mechanics longer and learn slower, thus causing you to be downed more than if you were playing with a zerker set. Additionally, a lot of the really hard content in PvE, such as high-level fractals and even the queen’s gauntlet, have mechanics that will one-shot you or deal significant damage despite how much armor you have. There really isn’t any benefit to be defensive in PvE.
Defensive stats are useful only when damage can’t be avoided. That’s why they find use in PvP scenarios. But in PvE, where everything has a tell, they just don’t cut it.
@Loki: Let’s hope that ANet’s current interest in Guild Raids will provide varied, interesting content that makes good use of the game’s combat mechanics.
Other than that, the only observation I have is that GW2 also has a bunch of skills and traits that are only useful situationally, if at all. In fact, most MMO’s seem to have options for players that are not desired in high end PvE content. Stats are not usually part of those undesired options only because stats feed directly into certain roles. However, those games all seem to have either inferior/useless traits and/or weapon options.
Cheers.
snip
What you are suggesting is easier said than done.
More like hard said, even harder done.
In my spare time (AKA bored at work) I’ve been typing out a deeper and improved combo system. I’m not even a half done and I’ve already spent 12 hours, 9,000 words and numerous pages of pure theory craft. I haven’t even gone back to revise and rethink yet.
It might take me 40 hours to just get a theory craft a revised combo system on paper.
That is just a revised combo system, a new boss mechanic could take a design team a couple weeks before they can get a test ready. Even when it goes through a successful test, with mechanics meeting that quality you’ll have to battle bugs or exploits after that.
Will it be worth it? Hell yes.
Will it be easy? kitten no.