Guild Wars 2

Spoilers about CoE boss skills ahead.

I’ve been reading the forums lately and read a lot about the current issues with the dungeons as well as the argument of GW2 needing a holy trinity vs remaining as is. I feel like the issue might not lie with a lack of a trinity system, but instead having boss fights that don’t seem to be designed around GW2’s combat and grouping system.

I think this is best illustrated by Kuda in CoE, but more specifically his golems that he summons with the persistent AoE poison aura that is extremely hazardous to anyone that wants to melee. If the philosophy of “bring the player, not the class” is to be followed, something like this can’t really exist without a really tanky melee player or some dedicated healing. You COULD weave in and out of melee, but doing so would be much more dangerous than just staying away from the boss. The obvious solution is to fight at ranged, but what if you want to play melee? Many people roll warriors, guardians and thieves because they want to play at melee. Why should they be denied their play style choices for a certain boss? A player should be able to play how they want, and the dungeons and bosses should still be accessible to them if they can play well. Glass cannon specs should be perfectly viable, assuming the player can properly dodge and avoid damage.

A lot of the mechanics for this are in place already, such as projectiles that are not homing, so can be sidestepped instead of having to waste a dodge. Stuff like this is great when it is properly telegraphed so the player can react accordingly. What if the golems would create a targeting reticule over the player that they are about to shoot at? This way the player would be able to easily determine where the boss is attacking even through the mass amount of particle effects that are common in group fights. The small red circle on the ground is constantly getting lost, especially in melee range. There needs to be better visual communication between the enemies and the players, so they know when they are being targeted and can act accordingly.

A great example of a boss that seems to be designed largely around the GW2 style of combat is the giant colossus boss found in Orr. He is large and easy to see, even during a huge zurg of players. His attacks, mainly the stomp, is telegraphed extremely well, so that good players can dodge and avoid his damage. He also makes a loud and consistent noise before doing so. This is a another great way for a boss to telegraph his attacks through the visual noise. Now, not all bosses need to be quite this slow and lumbering, but its just an example of a boss that I feel was done right.

Uh…so I guess I ranted on for a while. Forgive me if I jumped around from topic to topic too much.

TLDR: It might not be the combat design that is bad, but the bosses and dungeons. Also, more visual clarity is needed for players to feel like they can respond correctly.

That is a well written, thoughtful post, but still I see a major problem with it. “Why should they be denied their play style choices for a certain boss? A player should be able to play how they want, and the dungeons and bosses should still be accessible to them if they can play well”. Because it is part of the challenges for players in GW2, you really have to adapt to all kinds of situations and the game gives you all the tools for it. Why shouldn´t a warrior be forced to go ranged when the situation dictates it? Games deny play style choices all the time, a warrior does not cast fire balls even if his player thinks it would be cool if he did, you cannot oneshoot bosses even if a player would like to, a character cannot fly to a vista and bypass the whole mad jumping part. I know these are very simplified examples, but I hope you get what I am trying to say. I can see how people have been made to stick with a single narrow playstyle by years of MMORPG development – or lack thereof – but personally I like this fresh “he brings a knife, you bring a gun” approach in GW2.

PS: But I agree with you that the dungeon encounters need some tuning.

Appreciate the thoughtful and well constructed post. +1 for that.

I don’t necessarily agree. (I play a guardian) I don’t really mind having to adapt to the boss and switch to range when needed. I think its a fundamental design choice that they want people to have to switch to ranged weaponry for some encounters.

Having said that playing melee I have found a few situations where the encounters could have been more carefully tied to the classes rather than the mechanics of the fight coming first.

Bosses that occasionally get funneled into small spaces and drop AoE rendering any kind of melee useless for example can be quiet frustrating. (Mobs that teleport are very guilty of this).

Algreg.3629:

That is a well written, thoughtful post, but still I see a major problem with it. “Why should they be denied their play style choices for a certain boss? A player should be able to play how they want, and the dungeons and bosses should still be accessible to them if they can play well”. Because it is part of the challenges for players in GW2, you really have to adapt to all kinds of situations and the game gives you all the tools for it. Why shouldn´t a warrior be forced to go ranged when the situation dictates it? Games deny play style choices all the time, a warrior does not cast fire balls even if his player thinks it would be cool if he did, you cannot oneshoot bosses even if a player would like to, a character cannot fly to a vista and bypass the whole mad jumping part. I know these are very simplified examples, but I hope you get what I am trying to say. I can see how people have been made to stick with a single narrow playstyle by years of MMORPG development – or lack thereof – but personally I like this fresh “he brings a knife, you bring a gun” approach in GW2.

PS: But I agree with you that the dungeon encounters need some tuning.

Because when you do this, it leads to fixes like the current one, where in they just make monsters harder by giving them harder hits and more hp, making it take much longer for you to kill them.

you obvioulsy do not understand the reason of those fixes (though I agree they weren´t thought out well).

I’m sorry but I can’t see Anet not being able to create achievable dungeons. These things were tested to the bone.

If you read some posts about it, this is completely similar to any content update that new players cannot figure out mechanics or rotation to get used to the environment. Much like when DoA became available in GW1. When players become more accustomed to survivability, your skill and knowledge of your profession will pull through.

I’ve been doing Twilight Arbor because I absolutely love the heavy armour and I found every path very very hard to do and I felt like things were overpowered. After a week or so I have changed my approach and now have no trouble going through any path.

As a Guardian, I have no trouble being defensive and I initially started by trying to chain block skills in order to “sort of” tank. However I realized there were much better ways to play a Guardian. My only issue is that with my seriously low health pool I must be very careful with what I run into. I’m not going to explain my build now but i’m much happier and my team is also very much happier (and full of boons).

I’m also in the process of teaching my friends who have warriors their capacity for supportive utility as well. Warriors have amazing condition removal as well as healing for the team. Speccing into some defensive traits also means a lot of durability and 25k health, which means he can stand there are look pretty with Hundred Blades for much longer.

tl;dr I think players need to assess their “glass cannon” approach to absolutely everything and stop blaming Anet for making things impossible if they don’t bother to try.

Algreg.3629:

That is a well written, thoughtful post, but still I see a major problem with it. “Why should they be denied their play style choices for a certain boss? A player should be able to play how they want, and the dungeons and bosses should still be accessible to them if they can play well”. Because it is part of the challenges for players in GW2, you really have to adapt to all kinds of situations and the game gives you all the tools for it. Why shouldn´t a warrior be forced to go ranged when the situation dictates it? Games deny play style choices all the time, a warrior does not cast fire balls even if his player thinks it would be cool if he did, you cannot oneshoot bosses even if a player would like to, a character cannot fly to a vista and bypass the whole mad jumping part. I know these are very simplified examples, but I hope you get what I am trying to say. I can see how people have been made to stick with a single narrow playstyle by years of MMORPG development – or lack thereof – but personally I like this fresh “he brings a knife, you bring a gun” approach in GW2.

PS: But I agree with you that the dungeon encounters need some tuning.

I do agree that players should have to adapt and make choices, however I also feel like having options should be there as well. Currently with a lot of dungeon encounters its either go ranged, or die very quickly. Ranged doesn’t really have that problem, they are always in a safer place, and generally less likely to be turned on and instantly dropped by something that isn’t properly communicated to them. Especially in large scale Dynamic Events where a champion boss can suddenly turn on you and down you without any kind of warning at all. I didn’t mean to mislead in my original post. Players should have to make choices depending on the encounter, but currently there isn’t enough information for them to make educated decisions to properly respond. Majorly in part to the visual clutter and lack of feedback. A slider to turn down the visual effects could help a lot.

Also, good to see the GW2 community can have a good discussion.

To add to the OP’s commentary on signposting attacks, I feel ArenaNet could do worse than take a leaf from Valve’s handbook and consider adding visual and audio cues to the environment, prior to and during boss encounters that nudge players in the right direction regarding what strategies to use during the fight. At the moment, if you’re trying to do things without looking at a how-to guide, there is very little to let you know how you should be approaching a boss battle or even normal dungeon mobs, and this results in death-run after death-run as players try to understand what they should be doing. With the cost of repairs at level 80, this becomes incredibly discouraging very quickly. I for one can vouch that it has driven me away from even considering playing dungeons any more.

Exactly. A great example of this is the final boss of CoE, the giant golem has attacks that are broadcasted clearly and visual clues in the environment that are easily picked up. Namely the walls that block his heat vision, my group was able to pick up the mechanics to him and down him in one try without any deaths. He is difficult until you know the trick, but still provides enough challenge for a story mode dungeon and it really feels rewarding once you figure it out and have room to experiment with more efficient ways to fight him. Such as picking up the rocks on the floor dropped by the slugs.

Problem is the community. They are selfish, impatient, they don’t tend to learn strategy, don’t want to follow a certain path because demanding for a nerf is easier.

A melee class should go ranged if the situation requires it (that’s why there are ranged weapons for each class), otherwise die and pay for your repair bills

Valkyrie.2678:

Problem is the community. They are selfish, impatient, they don’t tend to learn strategy, don’t want to follow a certain path because demanding for a nerf is easier.

But this community is the paying customer. Does it make sense to create a game with dungeons that are too tough for the majority of players?

Sure it may be that the players don’t want to learn those tactics, but in the end it still means they will not do these dungeons. Anet is planning to bring out more of them. This means they might bring out content updates that cater to a minority of players.

Hate the people all you want, but it’s not the wisest business strategy. Luckily there’s a lot to do and discover in this game, but what people call endgame may end up being interesting to only a limited amount of players.

Gehenna.3625:

But this community is the paying customer. Does it make sense to create a game with dungeons that are too tough for the majority of players?

Sure it may be that the players don’t want to learn those tactics, but in the end it still means they will not do these dungeons. Anet is planning to bring out more of them. This means they might bring out content updates that cater to a minority of players.

Hate the people all you want, but it’s not the wisest business strategy. Luckily there’s a lot to do and discover in this game, but what people call endgame may end up being interesting to only a limited amount of players.

But on the other hand there are those of us that rather enjoy the strategy involved in it. So why would you want to drive us away? See looking at things the way you are in that post never works because the fact is we all have different things we enjoy doing, and Anet is trying to have a place for us all. There are things for every type of gamer to do in GW2 as it should be, and telling them that making a piece of it that caters to one certain type is wrong, well its wrong. We don’t whine that the rest of the game really takes no strategy to accomplish. The leveling is casual, the WvWvW is for the zergers, sPvP is for the well organized, and the dungeons are for the strategy nerds. Every one has a place, just because you dont like our way does not mean it is the wrong way.

Problem isn’t that the dungeons are too hard- it’s that they pigeon hole you into a specific role.

Which is kind of ironic after months of ‘we do not want to pigeon hole you’ and the motto ‘play how you want’.

The dungeons aren’t that strategic or difficult to understand- they’re just boring, simple and as has been said a hundred times- 95% of the time being a ranged is insanely easier than being a melee.

Melee could handle constant aoes and heavy melee damage in other games because of healing- if that isn’t going to happen, either some of the heat has to be taken off the melee OR additional heat needs to be put on ranged characters or you are going to see what is already becoming common place “lfm, melee need not apply”.

“Play as you want… as long as it is exactly how we want you to.” Probably too long for a slogan.

This does give me a thought; how about “Ring-Doughnut AoE” for some bosses?
What do I mean?
Well, an AoE attack where there’s a safe zone near the boss, then the danger zone displayed by a ring-doughnut shaped AoE indicator far out and affecting those standing at range.
That would be a nice change
As it stands, all PBAoE for bosses punishes those who are in close, ie, melee classes.

Gehenna.3625:

Valkyrie.2678:

Problem is the community. They are selfish, impatient, they don’t tend to learn strategy, don’t want to follow a certain path because demanding for a nerf is easier.

But this community is the paying customer. Does it make sense to create a game with dungeons that are too tough for the majority of players?

Sure it may be that the players don’t want to learn those tactics, but in the end it still means they will not do these dungeons. Anet is planning to bring out more of them. This means they might bring out content updates that cater to a minority of players.

Hate the people all you want, but it’s not the wisest business strategy. Luckily there’s a lot to do and discover in this game, but what people call endgame may end up being interesting to only a limited amount of players.

You’re defending being too stupid to dodge and adapt by “hey everyones dumb so they should cater to it.”

I don’t understand.

Sometimes you should learn to duck and watch and dungeons should cater to the nice skill based mechanics this game has that others MMOs don’t have. Players can learn to play and stop WOWing it up in a stand and click way or whine on a forum. The fact is the stand and attack only people will one day just go back to wow so you need to make a game that isn’t WoW to hold the players because it’s proven time and time again you aren’t going to stick around by being a wow clone and actually needing skill to fight is one of the many unique points to GW2 that should be used more in the combat in GW2.

I think it would be ok for combat to force you into a play style now and then if different fights constantly pushed you into different styles about evenly so nothing got a preference and the fights themselves have you a good change to adapt.

An organized guild wars 1 group felt more tactical and lesss MMOish then it does in this game. Hopefully we get to that point.

there is a huge number of players not only doing dungeons, but also farming them non-stop. I am not one of the powergamer crowd anymore today with a job and all, but I have not the slightest problem playing in dungeons, with the occasional faceplant and what not. People (not directed at OP) are complaining like noone on earth is able to finish those dungeons while in reality a lot if not most players are doing just fine.

Gehenna.3625:

Valkyrie.2678:

Problem is the community. They are selfish, impatient, they don’t tend to learn strategy, don’t want to follow a certain path because demanding for a nerf is easier.

But this community is the paying customer. Does it make sense to create a game with dungeons that are too tough for the majority of players?

Sure it may be that the players don’t want to learn those tactics, but in the end it still means they will not do these dungeons. Anet is planning to bring out more of them. This means they might bring out content updates that cater to a minority of players.

Hate the people all you want, but it’s not the wisest business strategy. Luckily there’s a lot to do and discover in this game, but what people call endgame may end up being interesting to only a limited amount of players.

So you say things should be nerfed because so-called majority is having problems with them. I say this is funny.

From the perspective of same logic, do you think battlefield 3 should come up with a system that automatically detects players who are not doing well in the game and aims targets for them?

I said impatient. Being good at something takes time.

Yawns.5849:

The obvious solution is to fight at ranged, but what if you want to play melee? Many people roll warriors, guardians and thieves because they want to play at melee. Why should they be denied their play style choices for a certain boss? A player should be able to play how they want, and the dungeons and bosses should still be accessible to them if they can play well.

I think most people get what you are saying, but what ArenaNet is doing here is nothing new. I have never played an MMO that allowed every player to employ the same tactics for every fight.

Ranged classes can make the same argument — there are certain bosses/encounters where they just can’t stand back and blast away from ranged without getting attacked or fend off a bunch of adds without using point-blank attacks.

I say this with the utmost respect … you’re complaining about the fact that every profession has DIVERSITY — every class has ranged attacks. ArenaNet is teaching you to use them — you SHOULD use them because they are part of what makes your profession what it is. If you only want to use melee, then only use melee … but don’t complain about the fact that you can’t just stand close and swing when you have the tools to adapt to the situation.

I saw “aoe poison” and immediately identified your problem.

Poison is a brutal mechanic for NPCs to use against players, even moreso because of how it functions (I swear two seconds standing in aoe poison netted me 30s of poison debuff in WvWvW earlier).

The poison mechanic is required for PvP balance, IMO, but they really spread it too liberally amongst the NPCs.

Not that this is why two of my three dungeons runs were disasters. The dungeons just seem tightly tuned for geared 80s coming back down to farm them.

I think the lack of any sort of dedicated healing mechanic hampers a lot of potential strategy in boss fights. That and no way to truly control aggro. Besides, dying VERY fast to 1 or 2 hits is the cheap way out in any boss fight since boss fights were created. Any BADLY designed boss in any game you can imagine invariably comes down to those “cheap” deaths. The fun bosses are those you remember “outplaying”. There is little strategy when you know you’re going to get killed regardless of what you do. That’s what makes it frustrating and not fun.

Valkyrie.2678:

Gehenna.3625:

Valkyrie.2678:

Problem is the community. They are selfish, impatient, they don’t tend to learn strategy, don’t want to follow a certain path because demanding for a nerf is easier.

But this community is the paying customer. Does it make sense to create a game with dungeons that are too tough for the majority of players?

Sure it may be that the players don’t want to learn those tactics, but in the end it still means they will not do these dungeons. Anet is planning to bring out more of them. This means they might bring out content updates that cater to a minority of players.

Hate the people all you want, but it’s not the wisest business strategy. Luckily there’s a lot to do and discover in this game, but what people call endgame may end up being interesting to only a limited amount of players.

So you say things should be nerfed because so-called majority is having problems with them. I say this is funny.

From the perspective of same logic, do you think battlefield 3 should come up with a system that automatically detects players who are not doing well in the game and aims targets for them?

I said impatient. Being good at something takes time.

Being good at something takes time, ability and interest.

If people lack any of those, they will quit and leave or at least avoid this specific activity. From a business point of view, it’s suicide to not cater to you biggest fanbase.

I don’t know of course if it is indeed the majority that has trouble with these dungeons but usually games are dumbed down or nerfed because it is a majority of players. So it is likely that here as well this will be a majority of players.

I was in TA last night (explorable) with a group of players and they quit cause halfway they had 30s of repairs and they didn’t enjoy it cause it was “too hard”. I only had about 9s in repairs so far and I could see their tactics fail over and over again. With better players it would’ve been a lot less painful.
The interesting thing there was also that they considered themselves decent players using TS etc.

The thing is though, that it is likely that groups like this are more representative of the average player than the full exotic level 80 speed clear teams. Again I do not know this but I feel that can safely state that it is more likely.

So, what’s game to do? Of course, you don’t want to chase out the hardcore players, but most of them leave after 3-6 months anyways cause there’s a big percentage amongst these players who just burn themselves out on any game because they rush through too fast. Just the way it is.

I think that things will become at least more balanced and perhaps a little easier but not in the first 3-6 months. And it generally is a logical conclusion when the core of hardcore players jump ship (as they always do in any game I’ve played), the casual player or the ones who put in lots of hours but aren’t hardcore as in dungeon running and gearing up asap, are the majority that is the main fanbase.

The point you are missing is that a game like WoW dumbed down because it made sense for their main fanbase and they were highly successful at it, in spite of everything. You simply can’t expect a company to hold on to something doggedly if they would lose too many players over it. Once the more casual players start hitting level 80 we’ll probably here more about this. Give it a month or two tops.

Josher.9612:

I think the lack of any sort of dedicated healing mechanic hampers a lot of potential strategy in boss fights. That and no way to truly control aggro. Besides, dying VERY fast to 1 or 2 hits is the cheap way out in any boss fight since boss fights were created. Any BADLY designed boss in any game you can imagine invariably comes down to those “cheap” deaths. The fun bosses are those you remember “outplaying”. There is little strategy when you know you’re going to get killed regardless of what you do. That’s what makes it frustrating and not fun.

I don’t think its a lack of tanking or healing, but rather a lack of knowing how the aggro works because it hasn’t been explained to us. In WoW, it was really easy to understand why you would die as a DPS in an instance, it was either because you DPS’d too hard and pulled aggro or the tank wasn’t holding threat properly. We aren’t given any feedback yet about aggro and how it works, as well as what causes a boss to suddenly switch to a ranged DPS across the room and obliterate them for seemingly no reason. This can quickly get frustrating because there is simply no counter play. I’ve had boss encounters where a certain player was picked out and chased around the entire fight for seemingly no reason, the other player’s on the team were going balls to the wall DPS and CC, but no one could pull off. Not to mention, without a dedicated healer or tank its pretty hard to protect a teammate that pull aggro on a boss. They only have the option of kiting or most likely getting killed.

The strategy for dungeons that I’ve seen work well so far is one of everyone does a little bit of everything. Every builds some toughness and vitality, everyone builds some kind of support, and everyone does damage. It seems to be the safest way to go so that you can juggle aggro at any given time and anyone can take it without getting destroyed, but I think this is kind of boring, and doesn’t really require a lot of strategy.

Why do I find myself both questioning the legitimacy of the posters that both agree with this design ethos in terms of even trash output, and/or stopping reading their posts after a few sentences?

It’s like:
“yeah but in gw1”
“yeah but I often go ranged and see no issue”
“yeah but if you use the environment”
“yeah but if you’re on vent etc”
“yeah but everyone has to be their own tank”

It’s like they’re playing a DIFFERENT game to everyone else :S
there is little to NO advantage of going melee, not with this kind of damage incoming from the stupid amounts of champion level mobs in their STORY mode dungeons. which are literally heavy hitting “kite it or fail” encounters. Nothing more

I’ve said it before, that it’s noted even by amateur developers of indie rpg games that the one thing you shouldn’t do is just slap huge hp pools and insane damage on to an enemy in an rpg of any type be it single or multiplayer and then assume you’ve created what works as “challenging encounters” they’ve gone and done this as well as adding in cheese one shot down skills and horribly underscaling defensive stats outside of “moar vitality”

where’s the professional elegance that was shown in handling the outside world events, and the player market?

It may not be the case, I’m not accusing them, but it is STARTING to feel like they’re making changes post sales to annoy us into using buying boosters by buffing the content.
I know you might think “they just don’t want dungeons to be the be all and end all of content” and I agree, but to a new player it could EASILY be misinterpreted as

“hey I see you’re having fun running cm with your buddies! but you’re doing it a little too easily so here’s a ton of buffs to the difficulty and a much more irritating instance”

will they do this with other instances if they become popular? if so that’s NOT a very solid design ethos that’s in fact more

“glad you like the game, now our goals are to keep you from experiencing it fully”

what’s up with this?