Guild Wars 2

Gehenna.3625:

My view has always been that the downed state and dodge mechanic are too powerful in combat in comparison to the skills you have.

Hello Gehenna and thanks for your feedback
You are right in that the power of abilities is relative to the ease at which they can be countered (basically balance in a nutshell).

Dodging for example has a degree of difficulty in proper execution.
Its quality is that of proactive defense, which is the most skill affording (and therefore should be the most rewarding) defensive type.

When analyzing the contrast of effectiveness you also have to consider the cost/risk of execution, and so the question arises whether the cost of dodging is comparative to the cost of the attacks it counters.

tl;dr: Risk : Reward

I could write a large essay on the merit of GW2 abilities, but my focus for this thread is only directed at mechanics which encompass down-state; some other time maybe

Gehenna.3625:

When it comes to the downed state, I at some point realised it was an integral part of combat and it was an expected part of it. To me, however, getting downed doesn’t feel heroic if it happens a lot. It should not be an expectation but an exception in my view. And this is were I felt it was not a good mechanic.

To me, being downed should be a warning that you are not playing your class right or are undergeared for your level, not a part of your tactics. And as it’s expected people often will just assume the problem is not themselves. I am really not against people having to learn something and the way downed works, gives me the feeling it gives people an excuse not to learn.

Cause of course if you are completely down, it’s the other players’ fault for not ressing you on time…

Counter-objective to combat, down-state rewards the failing side with resurrection capabilities – poor design.

I think when im telling my own server players to kitten off and not hang around our small man because of a mechanic theres a problem with it.

The problem stems from multiple rallies off 1 stomp and the difficulty for smaller groups to get stomps off, you have your group all in vent, co-ordinating combos and targets, keeping heals and buffs up. Some newby tags along, hes not in vent he cant hear our push, withdraw, collapse this target, hes not in my group i cant see his life/buffs/conditions. It’s probably not such an issue in sPvP(i dont sPvP so cant comment) tbh and in PvE it works well, it’s just WvW where its truly woeful.

We are doing well have 3-4 people down and bam they rally as noobcake has got himself killed. How about i save the hassle and just tell him to kitten off to begin with, and really the only reason is the rally mechanic.

And thats just the beginning of the problems with it, run into mobs and get free rezzes, it’s like thief strategy 101.

Sure it adds another dimension to the combat, one that favours numbers.

The downed state i dont overly have a problem with if they addressed how rallying worked. Although some classes get shafted on downed abilities Guardian and Engi are laughable, Mesmer and Thief are pretty good but thats for another discussion.

It’s the rally mechanic thats the big issue here for me, if its too hard to fix apply some serious penalties after you rally(clearly thats do-able as you get a debuff from the revive orb), not hey im up with 100% of my DPS full movement capacity and all my kitten off cooldown …. some serious debuffs for 20 seconds to take them out of the combat(50% health, 75%dmg reduction, 25%snare, 75% rez reduction) or all their slot skills and weapon abilities are on cooldown for 20 seconds, so it gives the player a chance to retreat to safety and recuperate, or linger at the rear of the fight. They can return to the battle once the debuff drops.

Chorazin [+1] – (Would plus again )

Excellent example!
I understand why you exclusively hate the rally mechanic; because it punishes good play outside of your control.

Maintaining control is definitely a virtue of competency, but even though your team is able to subside the biased nature of reviving, the comparative ease can still counterbalance the reward of effort it takes to down players.

I also see how your team may take advantage of reviving to help overcome stacked odds; promoting the weight of skillful players to overcome disadvantage, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that reviving doesn’t always trade equal risk to warrant the reward.

Note that I’m not suggesting to remove anything, but when you expense players you put their enjoyment on the line.

Do you agree reviving is poorly designed in this regard?

Erebos.6741:

Chorazin [+1] – (Would plus again )

Excellent example!
I understand why you exclusively hate the rally mechanic; because it punishes good play outside of your control.

Maintaining control is definitely a virtue of competency, but even though your team is able to subside the biased nature of reviving, the comparative ease can still counterbalance the reward of effort it takes to down players.

I also see how your team may take advantage of reviving to help overcome stacked odds; promoting the weight of skillful players to overcome disadvantage, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that reviving doesn’t always trade equal risk to warrant the reward.

Note that I’m not suggesting to remove anything, but when you expense players you put their enjoyment on the line.

Do you agree reviving is poorly designed in this regard?

I think conceptually its a pretty good idea, look at other MMO’s and the healing class is usually the class expected(and given the ability) to rez. So now you have the problem that if you dont have a healer and someone dies you cant get him back up so every group demands a healer, or 2.

GW2 dev team have admirably tried to move away from this ubiquitous role in MMO’s and implement something a little different for the reviving of fallen comrades. Now you dont specifically need a healing class as anyone can revive.

The trouble is it’s far too easy and leans heavily towards greater numbers. A larger group can easily rush 3 people in to revive, have another 3 or 4 dropping AoE on that area and the rest of them putting pressure on players currently still up.

We have made the effort to try and drop a player through prot, retal, CC and heals just for 3 people to rush in and revive him with almost 0 we can do about it. Our Ele has some ranged AoE, but apart from that you would have to stand in the AoE trying to get a stomp off. And even a bunker is not going to survive long enough with the AoE raining down plus any collateral DPS from the other players not involved in the reviving/AoE barrage. And with 3 people reviving he will get back up before your stomp goes off.

Then on top of this he comes back into the game with access to all his skills, 100% dps capacity. Gets back up and starts wading into the combat, us as a group have most likely been chewing through timers to drop targets and they are just coming straight back at us, with little to no drawback from going down.

Flip that around and say 1 of our playes goes down(small man) we dont have the numbers to rush in and revive, we are still under a lot of AoE and dps pressure, and the enemy have enough players with AoE just to rain down enough dps that even an attempt would prove death.

So then the question for me, is the downed state the problem or more the rally/revive mechanics? Im tending to think the latter.

Imagine if for a rally or revive they came back up with some heavy debuff like i mentioned in the previous post, sure we didnt get badges for his death due to good play by others in the area whilst the player was in the downed state. But for our efforts we have taken a player out of the combat for 20 seconds or so as he recuperates and waits for his debuff to drop. Say this happens to 2 or 3 people as we are slowly retreating, this at least gives us a chance for some badges or an escape for our efforts.

Heya,
to answer your quesitions:

Erebos.6741:

Bil.6354:

- it massively favors the bigger group (this is mainly a wvw concern)

While true, are you implying it’s not a prioritizing issue in SPvP?
Because I believe it also plays a forcible influence in this setting.

For me it’s less of a concern in tpvp (i rarely play spvp…) because:
- there are smaller fights and when i manage to down someone in a 1vs2 or 2vs3 i have more options to control the fight and fokus on killing the downed before going to the other target(s)
- if the enemies blob together with many players on one point, it gives my team the upper hand on the rest of the map, thus netting our team a nice advantage.
- in wvw though (having outmanned most of the time) it really furstrates me very often

i still would not mind to see it go in s/tpvp as well

Erebos.6741:

Bil.6354:

- being in downed state is outright boring for some classes, without the ability to show any skill

Just “some” classes [/lol]?
I get that you don’t literally mean “any skill”, but down-state capability is trifling in comparison to any professions before-state ;P

very true, but at least mesmer and thief can play some mindgames…

@Chorazin: you bring in another point that was not mentioned before:
The issue of (unintended) “griefing” due to an unexperienced/bad equiped or skilled player ruining the stategies and skills of a well coordinated group. Imo this is a really big point, because one of the things i love about gw2 is the fact that there are very few issues with players interfering with each other in harmful ways (ok there’s some others too, e.g. pushing enemies out of my aoes). Anet did a great job making this game really antigriefing in most parts and i am sure your example is something they don’t intend.
You really gave a good and well explained example how it is harmful, not only for combat, but for the wvw community as well.

It’s the rally mechanic thats the big issue here for me, if its too hard to fix apply some serious penalties after you rally(clearly thats do-able as you get a debuff from the revive orb), not hey im up with 100% of my DPS full movement capacity and all my kitten off cooldown …. some serious debuffs for 20 seconds to take them out of the combat(50% health, 75%dmg reduction, 25%snare, 75% rez reduction) or all their slot skills and weapon abilities are on cooldown for 20 seconds, so it gives the player a chance to retreat to safety and recuperate, or linger at the rear of the fight. They can return to the battle once the debuff drops.

Again i have to agree, imho this would be at least a hotfix to the downed problem, as at the moment the lack of punishment for being downed only covers bad play.

For all contributing: thumbs up for keeping this thread going (in a productive way)

I beginning to think that death is such an inconvenience for most people that once they die it’s like the whole world stopped spinning. They just give up. Drop the controller and go home.

We have all forgotten what makes experiences memorable loaded with the adrenaline rush of success. Risk.

The downed state and rally systems reduces risk by reducing inconveniences. I’m not advocating that your character be deleted if you died as that would be a ridiculous extreme but; at the very least make death a serious consequence and major inconvenience.

The downed state is very likely a permanent fixture in GW2 due to it’s function in PvP. It is not there to provide you with an escape, it’s not there for your friends to rez you, it is there to provide the enemy player with the ability to stomp, which is nothing more than a power trip that most of the player-base gets off on. The act of murdering a helpless individual makes them giddy, and the downed state provides the closest thing they can get to non-consensual PvP. This is exacerbated by the fact that you can stomp anyone in a downed state, even if you did no damage to them at all, so even people who don’t PvP very well at all can “feel the power” and get the thrill of taking someones life without having to fire off a single shot.

Neural.1824:

The downed state is very likely a permanent fixture in GW2 due to it’s function in PvP. It is not there to provide you with an escape, it’s not there for your friends to rez you, it is there to provide the enemy player with the ability to stomp, which is nothing more than a power trip that most of the player-base gets off on. The act of murdering a helpless individual makes them giddy, and the downed state provides the closest thing they can get to non-consensual PvP. This is exacerbated by the fact that you can stomp anyone in a downed state, even if you did no damage to them at all, so even people who don’t PvP very well at all can “feel the power” and get the thrill of taking someones life without having to fire off a single shot.

I doubt that very heavily. These are ideas borrowed straight out of Gears of War and Borderlands. They’re designed to create a certain pace of gameplay. How many inconveniences can they remove to “enhance” the experience?

Unfortunately the only experience these developers are enhancing is boredom.

Bil.6354:

@Chorazin: you bring in another point that was not mentioned before:
The issue of (unintended) “griefing” due to an unexperienced/bad equiped or skilled player ruining the stategies and skills of a well coordinated group. Imo this is a really big point, because one of the things i love about gw2 is the fact that there are very few issues with players interfering with each other in harmful ways (ok there’s some others too, e.g. pushing enemies out of my aoes). Anet did a great job making this game really antigriefing in most parts and i am sure your example is something they don’t intend.
You really gave a good and well explained example how it is harmful, not only for combat, but for the wvw community as well.

There should be incentives to have these low level players around, the format should be doing everything to encourage players to dive in, at any level. But really as it stands, i dont see it, a level 3 is just a liability, hes a rally bot waiting to give the enemy free rallies.

Id like to hear a larger contingent from the sPvP crowds side of things. I think from that system where you have 2 groups of equal sizes it wouldnt be so much of an issue. Sure if you examine fights in a microcosm there will be mismatches, 2v1, 3v2, 4v2 etc. But then they are sacrificing numbers in other areas of the matchup to get that overload, thus balancing it out.

Heya,

Neural.1824:

The downed state (…) is there to provide the enemy player with the ability to stomp, which is nothing more than a power trip that most of the player-base gets off on. The act of murdering a helpless individual makes them giddy, and the downed state provides the closest thing they can get to non-consensual PvP. This is exacerbated by the fact that you can stomp anyone in a downed state, even if you did no damage to them at all, so even people who don’t PvP very well at all can “feel the power” and get the thrill of taking someones life without having to fire off a single shot.

That really made me giggle, i have never looked at it from that perspective – thanks for sharing

Chorazin.4107:

There should be incentives to have these low level players around, the format should be doing everything to encourage players to dive in, at any level. But really as it stands, i dont see it, a level 3 is just a liability, hes a rally bot waiting to give the enemy free rallies.

For me this is one of the biggest issues (besides balance) about the downed/rally issue at the moment. It is toxic for the teamspirit in wvw and can harm the community in many ways.

I agree with your pvp assumtion (as i stated above) and would like to hear more opinions as well (manybe this thread is in the wrong section).

Edit1+2: Neural’s name did not show up for the quote – fixed now thanks to Erebos!

Bil.6354:

Edit: Neural’s name did not show up for the quote.

I’m not sure if this was the problem, but you have to enter a new line before the quote for it to register their name.

That goes for most things too. If it didn’t work, enter an empty line above

Rerroll.9083:

Downed state balances glass canon builds. If it didnt exist, glass thiefs, for example, would be insanely overpowered.

No, you’ve got it backwards. Downed state is what makes it possible to have glass cannon builds. If there were no downed state, then base health would be raised to compensate or peak damage would be lowered.

Valkyriez.6578:

I can’t really be bothered argueing the point, but downstate threads have been done to death in this forum since beta.

Some like it, some hate it and some don’t care either way.

The important thing to remember, is that Arena net loves it and I highly doubt it or any part of downstate and how it works will change besides very minute adjustments.

Best get used to it and roll with it, they won’t change it regardless IMO.

Yes they are stubborn and arrogant and unlikely to remove it completely, but they could however make it optional in the form of a custom arena option. At least then they (and we) would be able to get objective numbers on it.

For me personally, I won’t touch spvp while downed state remains in its current form. Given how badly spvp has bombed in terms of player reception, it’s very likely that downed state has contributed to that failure, the real question is how much.

Clearly, sPVP’s failure was not due to missing mechanics only as they have thrown tons of stuff at sPVP and it’s still only player by a tiny fraction of the player-base.

I like the down state itself and that it allows allies to rescue you, but I HATE, HATE, HATE the ability to rally off of kills in PvP. There are SO MANY problems with that mechanic that I won’t even try listing them.

Heya,

giving this nice thread a bump, as it is still an issue.

Maybe with the “collaboration initative” there is a chance for someone from Anet to give us some inside thoughts about it? (Imho this thread is pretty much on point and constructive elaborating the issues that come along with the rally problem, it would be really appreciated to get some feedback ^^)

Erebos.6741:

Perspective Insight:

1. What in your opinion is conceptually more difficult:
   a) Soloing two players with the downed state mechanic?
   b)Three without?
   - Which accomplishment would be more satisfying to you?
2. What would you deem more fun - considering all mindsets:
   a)Downing two players solo but dying to a third; rallying the aforementioned downed players?
   b)The same scenario minus the downed mechanic?
3. One or more players overwhelm you and defeat is inescapable. Would you:
   a) Rather delay death by entering the downed state?
   b) Die and sooner re-spawn?
4. Two contingencies square-off and you are soon plummeted into downed state. Would you:
   a) Prefer an ally immediately rehabilitate you?
   b) Linger there for awhile until someone is able to rejuvenate you?
   c) Just die?
   - I could tell you what the enemy most desires.[/spoiler]

1. Soloing two players with down state mechanic
1b. Soloing two players with down state mechanic. If this was two months ago before Anet put in the permanent Finisher, I would say that “Three without” is more satisfying. I find that Cow finisher more satisfying than soloing 10 players in WoW.
2. Don’t care, I’m dead.
3. Delay death. The longer I delay death, the more chances that my team will come to me and rescue me.
4. A or B. I am no defeatist.

Appreciate the bump Bil!

I would be incredibly humbled to hear Anet’s thoughts on the subject!
Coincidentally that would make an unbelievable birthday present!

24 tomorrow!

Hello and thank you for your reply Runeblade!
Because I’m lazy here’s a past quote explaining the purpose of my quiz:

Erebos.6741:

So about my quiz. I focused on the restricted ability to defeating enemy players as the key motive for my hatred towards the state – a disability it attributes, and how the effectual satisfaction of the amount of players is relative to the difficultly.

The point I was trying to make is that I feel combat potency is lacking in regard to PvP – undoubtedly hindered by down-state.

I think this is because the difficulty in finishing combat is set too high to help distinguish and accredit the weight of players, a trait which would be further appreciated by the viewers.

p.s. Gotta love those Cow finishers!

If Anet really wants to keep down-state then decrease the amount of health when downed and look at rallying(why does 1 person dying = 4 people ressing?). As it stands, a 2v1 is pitiful. No matter how well you do and down 1 foe, the 2nd just goes over and resses the first. And not many classes can just stop them. It’s actually bad for the game in some instances since it teaches zerg = win. “Oh I rallied, yay” instead of “Oh I’m dead, why did I die?”. Some can win the 2v1s(warrior ftw) but I just don’t see how it’s good for the pvp game as a whole.