(Yes, this is another one of my “no tl;dr, get a chair and deal with it” topics. Apologies if you hate reading. Hopefully it’ll be worth it)
I think I don’t need citations and sources if I say that PvE in Guild Wars 2 has issues. Particularly late game, it is well known that PvE in GW2 is quite flawed by design right now. As is, PvE is the land of the “Berserker of the berserker”, full DPS specs and any build (or char) that isn’t built for max DPS is just dragging everyone else down. Conversely most encounters are relatively repetitive and uninteresting instances of “tank and spank”, despite the fact that GW2 has among the most interesting, action based, and dynamic fighting systems of MMOs out today.
The Diagnostic
GW2 is not a typical MMO in many aspects. One of the most fundamental changes is the elimination of the “holy trinity” (that’s “Healer, Tank, DPS” for the uninitiated). In this game everyone can heal themselves and there is no traditional “healer”, everyone can tank, and everyone can DPS. Whether this is a good or bad thing on its own, is a matter of taste and irrelevant to the issue at hand. Personally I find it fantastic, but even if I hated it, it’s a core element of the game that can (or even should) not be changed at this point.
However, the lack of a trinity, for all its advantages, also brought along some disadvantages. These have been explored in depth in many other places, so to save text and avoid redundancy let’s simply say that the traditional model of “teamwork”, as understood by MMO players and game designers, was destroyed.
It’s also no secret, I think, that GW2, for all its polish in certain core areas, particularly when it comes to visual design and fighting mechanics (which does not include balance – before half of you jump on my throat), the ending stages of development were evidently rush out the door. Orr was barely functional on release and most of the late game content was heavily copy-pasted to say the least. Almost every PvE encounter in the game comes down to either enemies that run up to a certain distance then stay at range and shoot at you, or enemies that bee line straight at your face. Just rev up your choice of meat grinder and go to work. Arena Net is obviously aware of this and has been working towards fixing this area – redesigning Orr, boss battles, etc – with mixed results.
However, I am convinced that certain core elements which, born out of rushed and stressed design or lack of foresight, are not only counter productive but impeditive to a more interesting game design.
The end result is that old sing song, that anthem, every serious PvEr knows off the top of their heads by now: “Go full berserker, full DPS – Things you want to tank you can’t, things you can tank you don’t want to”.
The Fix(es)
That said, I’m not entirely convinced that “that’s that” and the current situation can’t be changed. Given a few core changes, that seem quite feasible to my, admittedly very amateur, coder’s eye, I believe PvE could easily become a much more interesting experience.
#1: Rework Defiant
For the unaware Defiant is an effect present in almost every champion mob or above . It is a mechanic whereas a monster creates “layers” of resistance to control effects that must be stripped (by control effects) until the boss is vulnerable to them. Upon being hit by one form of control once vulnerable, the “layers” are restored (based on the number of players in the event) and must be worn down again.
And to my eye this is the single greatest impediment to interesting boss design in the game right now. While the mechanic was seemingly created for the purpose of preventing bosses from being “stun locked” into oblivion (and one can see how that could easily become a thing given the crowds that generally gather up to these enemies), the end result is that it completely nullifies the role of control in the bigger and most important fights in the game. CC becomes too unreliable to be depended on – even in an organized party a single accidental click that restore 3, 4, 5, 20, etc “layers” of defiant that must be stripped all over again before a single interrupt can be used, let alone in a pug or, heavens forbid, open world. As such boss design can not exploit the mechanics of interruption by players. For all intents and purposes, Defiant removes CC from the PvE side of the game where it should be most relevant.
(1/3)
(edited by ProxyDamage.9826)
my favourite is if you write A F K then it re-writes it to akitten.