Guild Wars 2

Those the played dungeons and LF will notice that the mobs there have much superior stats when compared to the players. It is common for these mobs to have 20 times the health and 4 times the damage of a regular player.

Let’s call these “Strong Mobs”.

Back in the normal world, when we were leveling up our character, the world was filled with mobs that had similar stats as the player. They are only difficult when they outnumber the player.

Let’s call these “Numerous Mobs”.

I feel that right now the game is focus way too much on Strong Mobs, and not enough on Numerous Mobs.

Now there is good reason for that. Strong Mobs produces less lag (less mobs on the screen).

However when overused, every single fight becomes a DPS test. The test is just to see how fast the players can burn that hugh hp pool of the mob to zero. And there is a lack of epicness, since at the end of the day only ONE mob went down.

And worst of all, the stats of the mob are no longer relevant to the players’ stats. When overused, the players would feel that their character is inferior because the mobs are so strong. Think about it. When a “regular” mob have 20 times the health and 4 times the damage, the player can only win by being smarter than the dumb AI. Yes of course the player would still win. But the fight is not really a “fair” fight. The player starts questioning what kind of training and drugs those mobs got, since even their no name minions have better stats than our hero. Hope this make sense.

Now don’t get me wrong. It is perfectly fine to have mobs that have better stats than the players. But not the no name minions!

I think the game should find a balance in the fights, between Strong Mobs and Numerous Mobs. I played this game called Super Robot Wars. What they did was to have many Numerous Mobs as cannon folders. Those mobs have similar stats as the players, and are just there to be easily killed. The Strong Mobs at the back is the real challenge.

For example, let’s say a Scarlet Invasion fight usually have 20 Strong Mobs. Why not replace that with 15 Strong Mobs and 60 Numerous Mobs? This will be a good balance between challenge and an epic fight. The players would be killing 75 mobs instead of only 20.

i agree, everytime i hit a strong mob i will go

“time to auto1 sleep”

CHIPS.6018:

For example, let’s say a Scarlet Invasion fight usually have 20 Strong Mobs. Why not replace that with 15 Strong Mobs and 60 Numerous Mobs? This will be a good balance between challenge and an epic fight. The players would be killing 75 mobs instead of only 20.

Because those 60 numerous mobs would be incinerated in literally 5 seconds. Go play Melandru event chain and see how trivial the “numerous” mobs are when there are 10+ players around.

Tom Gore.4035:

CHIPS.6018:

For example, let’s say a Scarlet Invasion fight usually have 20 Strong Mobs. Why not replace that with 15 Strong Mobs and 60 Numerous Mobs? This will be a good balance between challenge and an epic fight. The players would be killing 75 mobs instead of only 20.

Because those 60 numerous mobs would be incinerated in literally 5 seconds. Go play Melandru event chain and see how trivial the “numerous” mobs are when there are 10+ players around.

That’s fine though. Those Numerous Mobs are cannon folders for the players. It gives them a reference point.

“Hey my character is still a hero. He is strong. He can melt no name minion mobs. The Aetherblade are not all on drugs. Only their elite troops are on drugs. "

It is those Strong Mobs at the back the provide the real challenge to the fight. The cannon folders are just there for show. Winning against 75 mobs feel better than winning against 20 mobs, even with the same difficulty. Hope this make sense.

CHIPS.6018:

Tom Gore.4035:

CHIPS.6018:

For example, let’s say a Scarlet Invasion fight usually have 20 Strong Mobs. Why not replace that with 15 Strong Mobs and 60 Numerous Mobs? This will be a good balance between challenge and an epic fight. The players would be killing 75 mobs instead of only 20.

Because those 60 numerous mobs would be incinerated in literally 5 seconds. Go play Melandru event chain and see how trivial the “numerous” mobs are when there are 10+ players around.

That’s fine though. Those Numerous Mobs are cannon folders for the players. It gives them a reference point.

“Hey my character is still a hero. He is strong. He can melt no name minion mobs.”

It is those Strong Mobs at the back the provide the real challenge to the fight. The cannon folders are just there for show. Winning against 75 mobs feel better than winning against 20 mobs, even with the same difficulty. Hope this make sense.

Why does it feel better? For me it just emphazies the triviality of the encounter. Compared to the Veteran Aetherblades in Scarlet invasions, who actually would down you if you tried to sleep on your computer and just press 1.

Numerous mobs give too much emphasis on AoE skills. There is already a big imbalance in the game between single target and AoE skills/weapons, no need to make it worse.

I always wondered this myself and wished for it. I think it would work best in dungeons with the say “60 amount” of “fodder”. For open world bosses or an invasion you would need more than 60 depending of course on how many players it is scaling to.

Aoe would not be much of a problem since your attacks can only hit max 5 people. Lets say 10 people are at one invasion event. How does 60 enemy mobs sound then with say 2-5 stronger mobs and perhaps 1 champ? Of course the weak enemies would go down fast that’s the point because the main goal/threat is the champ who is still a major issue. The “fodder” there are more there as a small time barrier and to give you that sense of “one step at a time” and “I’m awesome I just took down 50 mobs now for the boss!”

I honestly like the Strong mobs more, IF AND ONLY IF they are not hp punching bags.
A perfect example of a good strong mob are karkas, they are strong but not numerous , they make u think since if u auto attack sleep on them u will die for sure and they have decent hp, although sometime a bit too much.

I would prefer a strong and CHALLENGING strong mob compared to an hp punch bag or a swarm of mobs i will 1 shot.

I want more mobs, easy to burn mobs. I LOVE p3 CoE because of the two points in wchi you get to kill around 10 easy to kill mobs which drop amazing things. We need more of these in dungeons and less of the veteran tbh. People would bother to kill them instead of running them or lose 20-30 mins clearing them (Arah) just for some porous bones….. I believe both have the same impact when ignored; they kill you. I cant count the amount of times i have been killed in that undead spot in CoE by running head first.

Loots are fun. 9999999hp for porous bones IF you get a drop are not.

Anyone here ever play the Dynasty Warrior games? Just imagine having a quest or invasion event on a map where there was a huge map with literally HUNDREDS perhaps even THOUSANDS of fodder that you have to cut your way through (no not spawns – spawns are evil!) to get to the boss. To me that is EPIC. A huge battlefield with battle lines drawn and you have to push your way in. Your army spread out taking on theirs. That is lost with our zergs here vs 1 boss or whatever clumped in one small area.

I loved this about exploring GW 1 maps even. I would take each and every map I went to newly and play this way. To fully explore it my team (all of npc’s and I) would literally kill everything on that map so I could explore every inch of it for map/world complete.

I did the same in the dungeons and I think it’s missing here and is 1 of the reasons I don’t like dungeons here as much. Since everyone just wants to rush through them, running through the mobs to get to the boss for their shinies. Whatever happened to “take it slow”, “watch your step”, “calculate your next move or enemy/enemies to fight”?

I guess this is also one of the reasons why I like WvW so much at times. Because zerg on zerg fights can be a bit of push/retreat/push strat and it can add a lot of excitement to it all even if the battle lines kind of don’t exist but still….

Tom Gore.4035:

CHIPS.6018:

Tom Gore.4035:

CHIPS.6018:

For example, let’s say a Scarlet Invasion fight usually have 20 Strong Mobs. Why not replace that with 15 Strong Mobs and 60 Numerous Mobs? This will be a good balance between challenge and an epic fight. The players would be killing 75 mobs instead of only 20.

Because those 60 numerous mobs would be incinerated in literally 5 seconds. Go play Melandru event chain and see how trivial the “numerous” mobs are when there are 10+ players around.

That’s fine though. Those Numerous Mobs are cannon folders for the players. It gives them a reference point.

“Hey my character is still a hero. He is strong. He can melt no name minion mobs.”

It is those Strong Mobs at the back the provide the real challenge to the fight. The cannon folders are just there for show. Winning against 75 mobs feel better than winning against 20 mobs, even with the same difficulty. Hope this make sense.

Why does it feel better? For me it just emphazies the triviality of the encounter. Compared to the Veteran Aetherblades in Scarlet invasions, who actually would down you if you tried to sleep on your computer and just press 1.

Because it is much better for the enemies to outnumber the heroes, than for the enemies to outpower the heroes.

Think of Lord of the Rings. Most orcs are super easy to kill (by their standard). They are just there to show how strong the main heroes are. It is when we get to the likes of Ring Wraths, Ogres and Mumakil that the fights became harder.

Now let’s change this around. Instead of 10,000+ orcs, there were 20 orcs there are almost gods. And each of them killed like 1,000 human soldiers, with our heroes running away from them because they cannot stop them. How would the story flow?

Now look at Devil May Cry. The main character fights many trash mobs before getting to the final boss. Now imagine all the trash mobs disappear, and are replaced with 2 bosses per stage. So each stage the player fights 2 medium boss, and then the final boss. How would the player feel about this?

In a game the players want to achieve something. And to me nothing beats killing 100s of cannon folders before getting to the final showdown.

Of course at the end it is about balance, so players of all types can enjoy GW2. Right now the balance is simply leaning way too much toward Strong Mobs, and not enough on Numerous Mobs.

I’d like more of a balance. The strong mob is good and often requires strategy to avoid getting beat down. But they can also be autoattacked if the damage avoidance is too gimmicky. Conversely, a swarm of enemies can become overwhelming if proper group strategy isn’t used. I like that. Needing a mixture of dps to not get overrun by numbers, but also group support to bolster defenses (reflects, protection, etc). We see groups of mobs as “trash” and the big guy as the boss, but a legion is stronger. I want my 5-man group to stand strong like Spartans and fend off a horde of baddies using superior tactics.

Personal opinion:

Numerous Mobs > Strong Mobs anytime

Strong mobs only for bosses or strong monsters but like it was said, I always got the feeling that my character will never be “the hero” he is supposed to be if any minion in any dungeon is x10 my character.

Besides, numerous mobs brings more epicness and create more random situations which in some way kills the routine. Of course for people that “LoS, stack n dps” it’s probably the same.

Numerous mobs can add an interesting mechanic in that they count towards the limitation of targets for AoE. They become something of an annoyance because you have to clear them out in order to have the highest effective dps against the primary targets.

We had numerous mobs during open world events at launch, more characters equalled more mobs. Just meant more loot for whoever was first at laying down the AOE.

The problem, imo, with numerous mobs in this game when soloing is that there is no alternative to AOE spam. the character side CC downright stink for anything beyond 1v1 duels. It may even nullify dodge if there is enough of them around. Never mind if they have a CC or more in their arsenal, as we do not have defiant available (stability is frankly a pale imitation).

Sadly so far strong in this game simply means a slightly bigger model, and a extra 0 or two on the stat lines.

More mobs = more loot, so I want numerous mobs.

Maybe a middle ground would be better, more mobs but with say half what strongs mobs have….

Still hit hard, still take alot of damage to kill, but more threats to worry about.

I agree, we need a mixture of both and more numerous mobs. I like the times I accidentally backed myself into a corner and im fending 6-7 enemies off by myself. It feels to have to think and maneuver properly.
For example, as my warrior I try to keep all mobs in my front quarter because I can easily see them all and hit them. This way I can time my blocks and dodges properly. Whereas a single touch enemy is much easier to deal with for me.

tl;dr I feel awesome-er when I fight 6 mobs as opposed to one with 6 times the toughness

My answer: Any number of mobs that don’t have 6 seconds of evade/block/invulnerability.

Fighting smart mobs is always more fun than strong and/or numerous mobs.

Unfortunately, the AI of enemies seems to be pretty stagnant in the MMO genre. Some of the ideas with Everquest Next mobs sound pretty promising though.

Dahkeus.8243:

Fighting smart mobs is always more fun than strong and/or numerous mobs.

Unfortunately, the AI of enemies seems to be pretty stagnant in the MMO genre. Some of the ideas with Everquest Next mobs sound pretty promising though.

The AI was pretty good in some fights, like Captain Mai Trin and the Molten Firestorm+Berserker. But that was for 5 players.

Imagine 50 players fighting against 150 Molten Alliance mobs, 3 Molten Firestorms, 3 Molten Berserkers, Captain Mai Trin, First Mate Horrik and Scarlet at the same time. That would be an epic fight.

This isn’t Diablo. The dungeons shouldn’t be about hordes.

fewer, more powerful mobs are better for AI and more strategic play.

More mobs is just more loot anyway, and the end goal should be what you want to get to, not the trash. It encourages bad play.

Hi Anthony. I just want to clarify what I envisioned as an epic world event for 50 players.

First Wave: 200 Aetherblades (AB) + Molten Alliance (MA) mobs attack the players from 6 directions. 30 seconds into the fight, a pair of Molten Firestorm+Berserker (MF+MB) appears. They are both in their final, upgraded form right away.

Second Wave: 2 minutes into the fight, 100 AB + MA additional mobs will arrive regardless of the progress of the players. Captain Mai Trin, First Mate Horrik joins in with this wave.

Third Wave: After another 5 minutes, 150 AB + MA mobs will be added, and with them comes 2 pairs of MF+MB (4 in total).

Fourth Wave: After another 5 minutes, 150 AB + MA mobs will be added, and with them comes Scarlet. After this wave, 150 AB + MA mobs will be added every 5 minutes. This continues until Scarlet is defeated, at which point all the mobs would retreat.

In total, the 50 players would have killed over 600 cannon folder mobs (10 times their number, at least). The main challenge in the fight is actually provided by the 9 bosses in during the fight. So the fight is epic because many mobs died, and this provides a good challenge to the players. (Numbers to be adjusted depending on the # of players actually involved.) This gives the players a feeling of Lord of the Rings. (The players are stronger than the mobs 1 on 1. The mobs just have more men.)

Imagine fighting alongside 50 player allies against these bosses with 100s of foes. These world events would be super epic.

I think that enemies spawning over a wider area might be a good idea when things scale higher, so players will spread out more. More directions/losing immunity sooner maybe…

I’m not a balance designer :P

The OP reminds me of why the Diablo series was fun.

This is fine for smaller scale content, like 5 man groups, throw them more fodder, for zerg content? No thank you, it was one of the biggest problem of zerging back in the day.

Perhaps you don’t remember Orr event farming?

Mob kill = Money.

Zerg = More Mobs.

More Mobs = AoE Tagging.

AoE Tagging = Mob Kills.

Mob Kills = Money.

It was incredibly flawed, if you want this to happen again, sure, but mob drops need to no longer be rewarding then, which is also something I’d like to see happen.

Aetherblade events were good because all the mobs were vets and didn’t die instantly, despite that, most of the time the vets died in 5 seconds, back during Zerg Event Farming, the 50 mobs that spawned died INSTANTLY, before they could even be seen via culling, it was a joke.

ArchonWing.9480:

The OP reminds me of why the Diablo series was fun.

Makes me think of how fun Dragon Nest was. Only for solo or small groups though, a massive zerg of 50 people and 5000 mobs that die instantly? With ridiculous particle effects? No thank you, the game is too focused on zerg content to begin with.

I think this is a really interesting question simply because it directly addresses both gameplay balance/experience and story/character development. In a strictly game based sense, you have to create a balance especially when you take things like technical limitations and event scaling into consideration. In a character/story sense, however, it really doesn’t make much sense at all to have too many really strong enemies. Given all that our characters have accomplished by the time we reach level 80 and potentially complete the personal story, there should be barely anyone in Tyria who can stand against us. Especially when it is just nameless Veteran/Champ Mob X, it really does quickly break any sense of how strong our characters should be.

Personally, I’m not sure what the answer is as it’s much easier to tackle this sort of challenge in a single player game. I suppose I agree overall that there is too much reliance on throwing strong enemies at the player as opposed to putting them in situations more designed to make them feel as strong as they should.

Knote.2904:

This is fine for smaller scale content, like 5 man groups, throw them more fodder, for zerg content? No thank you, it was one of the biggest problem of zerging back in the day.

Perhaps you don’t remember Orr event farming?

Mob kill = Money.

Zerg = More Mobs.

More Mobs = AoE Tagging.

AoE Tagging = Mob Kills.

Mob Kills = Money.

It was incredibly flawed, if you want this to happen again, sure, but mob drops need to no longer be rewarding then, which is also something I’d like to see happen.

Aetherblade events were good because all the mobs were vets and didn’t die instantly, despite that, most of the time the vets died in 5 seconds, back during Zerg Event Farming, the 50 mobs that spawned died INSTANTLY, before they could even be seen via culling, it was a joke.

ArchonWing.9480:

The OP reminds me of why the Diablo series was fun.

Makes me think of how fun Dragon Nest was. Only for solo or small groups though, a massive zerg of 50 people and 5000 mobs that die instantly? With ridiculous particle effects? No thank you, the game is too focused on zerg content to behind with.

Hi Knote. Since the 200 mobs will be attacking from 6 directions, what would happen is the players would used up too many AoE in some areas, and not enough in others. And since most players used up their most damaging attacks within the first 5 seconds, there would still be around 100 mobs for the players to deal with. That said they won’t post much of a threat until the 2 bosses arrives to reinforce them.

The job of killing lies with the boss. I doubt the cannon folder mobs can kill anyone. But that’s the point. Their job is to annoy the players, and the occasional snare from them might prove fatal.

“Oh fire wave! Let’s dodge.”
Trash mob immobilized you. You have no condition removal.
“Oh boy…”

CHIPS.6018:

Knote.2904:

This is fine for smaller scale content, like 5 man groups, throw them more fodder, for zerg content? No thank you, it was one of the biggest problem of zerging back in the day.

Perhaps you don’t remember Orr event farming?

Mob kill = Money.

Zerg = More Mobs.

More Mobs = AoE Tagging.

AoE Tagging = Mob Kills.

Mob Kills = Money.

It was incredibly flawed, if you want this to happen again, sure, but mob drops need to no longer be rewarding then, which is also something I’d like to see happen.

Aetherblade events were good because all the mobs were vets and didn’t die instantly, despite that, most of the time the vets died in 5 seconds, back during Zerg Event Farming, the 50 mobs that spawned died INSTANTLY, before they could even be seen via culling, it was a joke.

ArchonWing.9480:

The OP reminds me of why the Diablo series was fun.

Makes me think of how fun Dragon Nest was. Only for solo or small groups though, a massive zerg of 50 people and 5000 mobs that die instantly? With ridiculous particle effects? No thank you, the game is too focused on zerg content to behind with.

Hi Knote. Since the 200 mobs will be attacking from 6 directions, what would happen is the players would used up too many AoE in some areas, and not enough in others. And since most players used up their most damaging attacks within the first 5 seconds, there would still be around 100 mobs for the players to deal with. That said they won’t post much of a threat until the 2 bosses arrives to reinforce them.

The job of killing lies with the boss. I doubt the cannon folder mobs can kill anyone. But that’s the point. Their job is to annoy the players, and the occasional snare from them might prove fatal.

“Oh fire wave! Let’s dodge.”
Trash mob immobilized you. You have no condition removal.
“Oh boy…”

Again this is fine as long as rewards get moved away from mobs drops, right now that’s where 90%+ of the loot comes from, and you get situations were the fodder gets farmed for it’s loot.

And I never said the fodder mobs kill anyone, hell no one actually dies in a zerg, zergs trivialize content that way.

And no lol, people don’t run out of aoe’s. Axe warriors spam massive aoe dmg non stop, Staff Guardians do too, lots of aoe’s have small cooldowns.

Again I don’t have a problem with this as long as they remove loot from mobs and put all of it in victory of said event.

emikochan.8504:

I think that enemies spawning over a wider area might be a good idea when things scale higher, so players will spread out more. More directions/losing immunity sooner maybe…

I’m not a balance designer :P

This. Having the spawns space out more and more as the events scale up makes it harder without having to use as much overkill numbers or hp by simply making it not as easy to stack so many AE’s in one main spot to overwhelm the mobs, as well as taking players by surprise more often if they are just half consciously spamming 1.

You could interleave this with Champions summoning reinforcements in a wider ring around themselves to help insure that they are relevant without having to resort immediately to mass hordes or massive hp.

CHIPS.6018:

“Hey my character is still a hero. He is strong. He can melt no name minion mobs. The Aetherblade are not all on drugs. Only their elite troops are on drugs. "

It is those Strong Mobs at the back the provide the real challenge to the fight. The cannon folders are just there for show. Winning against 75 mobs feel better than winning against 20 mobs, even with the same difficulty. Hope this make sense.

That is already the case. Regular aetherblades and the veterans are fairly easy to take down. It is just the silvers and champions that take some time to take down.

Winning a challenging fight feels nice. Winning a fight where it basically against one opponent while you are swatting at mosquitoes just seems annoying. Why did the dev feel the need to annoy me with those pests.

On the other hand the game has traits/sigils/runes(?)/consumables which have on kill effect. Having only strong mobs basically render those completely useless. That part doesn’t make sense. “Here are some traits but don’t bother using them since they become irrelevant at the time when then would have been most useful.” However as it is right now those do not actually justify the numerous mobs since most of the time the additional spawns give no exp which mean they will not count for the on kill procs. That is the sort of thing that makes you wonder if the devs play their own game.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We initially launched the game with two types of scaling:

• monsters get stronger
• monsters get more numerous

Since then we have have adjust various events to utilize a scaling system that mixes the two. You’ve seen this in action when you start seeing champions and veterans popping up as more players show up. While I certainly feel that this approach is effective, I appreciate you sharing all of your comments and especially the examples. I agree that facing down an army one-shotting health bags doesn’t make one feel very powerful.

The intent of scaling isn’t necessarily to make content harder, it’s to keep it relatively the same difficulty no matter how many players appear.

I have to disagree about the effective part. Especially when it gets to the point where a Veteran Risen Acolyte summons an invisible plaguebearer which explodes dealing 62k damage before anyone can see it. The intent there is great but not when you scale the damage through the roof. There isn’t any player character in the game that can survive a 62k hit(besides a luckily timed evasion/invulnerability). Pre-launch I specifically remember being told that scaling will be more than just making things harder or increasing the number of mobs. Some mobs might actually “unlock” additional skills to use to deal with additional opponents. When the patch notes mentioned a new scaling system I was hoping that you guys finally got around to implement something like that. Sadly that was not the case. I am still hoping and waiting to see that added to the game.

Another example where this doesn’t work is Lyssa’s (champion)gorilla. “Fighting” that basically involves pressing your face against a meat grinder. It sets up the same situation as res rushing that you guys went out of your way to prevent in dungeons. You are basically using your friends and fellow players as meat shields while you slowly wear it down from range(maybe). Winning doesn’t really feel like winning in that situation. A single powerful opponent where you are basically forced to sacrifice your allies to win isn’t all that great either.

Why can’t we have “Varied Mobs”?

Let’s say we Champ A that does large damage, but has low health.

When more players arrive, spawn Mob Bs that have high health that buff the defences of their allies. Now the mobs have some synergy between them.

When even more players arrive, spawn Mob Cs that buff the damage of their allies even further. Now players have that rock-paper-scissors situation where they have to decide which group to focus fire on.

Or it could be Champ A has very damaging melee attacks, but no defiance stacks.

When more players arrive, he spawns Mob Bs which have powerful ranged attacks.

When even more players arrive, spawn Mob C which buffs Champ A with defiance.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We initially launched the game with two types of scaling:

• monsters get stronger
• monsters get more numerous

Since then we have have adjust various events to utilize a scaling system that mixes the two. You’ve seen this in action when you start seeing champions and veterans popping up as more players show up. While I certainly feel that this approach is effective, I appreciate you sharing all of your comments and especially the examples. I agree that facing down an army one-shotting health bags doesn’t make one feel very powerful.

The intent of scaling isn’t necessarily to make content harder, it’s to keep it relatively the same difficulty no matter how many players appear.

Works fine for the most part, except that now we have zergs trying to supersize events so that they get champs that they can farm for bags/chests.

also, while events scale up, they do not seem to scale back down. This resulting in champs roaming the field because the zerg evaporated the moment the medal pinged.

This has been an issue in ever mmo I’ve ever played and a few I’m playing still today.

There’s no easy solution to this problem and some games make numerous while others make harder mobs. They are doing the best they can with this one. I know I’ve been a critic about many of the other problems that they’ve let slide that have easy solutions found in multiple other titles but this isn’t one of them honestly. It’s just something every game has to balance over time and try to improve but no one’s really made a breakthru on it yet.

I remember a similar problem in Asheron’s Call 2. They had both normal and strong mobs, the problem was you were far too likely to pull the strong mob. Worse, in GW2 they have another common issue, some strong mob types will shred certain profs like no ones business while another prof merely sees a speed bump.

I would not mind strong mobs as much if they weren’t seemingly immune to many abilities. That and not having to deal with long lasting very nasty dots some of them possess. I mean, I clear the dot only to get it again immediately and it becomes a race between the dot and their health.

Personally I have always enjoyed numerous mobs over strong mobs. I liked how in LotR you were constantly fighting many weaker foes. (Also just loved their music system!) However, in open world combat there is no way to avoid the mass AoE spam that everyone lays down to tag as many mobs as possible before they die. There is no strategy or coordination.

What I liked about GW1 was that mobs had classes. It was important to kill the monk or monks. Mobs healed all the time. Interrupts were important. Warriors with Healing Signet? Ugh. You cannot have that same feel in an open world where you need to let people solo.

Why not in dungeons though? AC Ghost Eater is really the only dungeon I can think of that even attempts this but it is only done as a shadow of what used to be.

Imagine if mobs had more skills than an auto attack and one other ability. Imagine if your group of five heroes went up against eight to ten mobs that were linked and fought together. Where crowd control and interrupts were important. Maybe even where the mobs healer could out heal crazy amounts of damage unless they were stopped.

We no longer have a trinity but what if dungeon mobs did? Bosses do not always have to be that crazy challenging if the mobs along the way were more adventurous. Just a thought.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We initially launched the game with two types of scaling:

• monsters get stronger
• monsters get more numerous

Since then we have have adjust various events to utilize a scaling system that mixes the two. You’ve seen this in action when you start seeing champions and veterans popping up as more players show up. While I certainly feel that this approach is effective, I appreciate you sharing all of your comments and especially the examples. I agree that facing down an army one-shotting health bags doesn’t make one feel very powerful.

The intent of scaling isn’t necessarily to make content harder, it’s to keep it relatively the same difficulty no matter how many players appear.

Its not the scaling that its been discussed here but the concept used in the original designed (before scaling).

Not everyone likes that the guy that cleans the room, or the cooker is x10 stronger than the 5 guys fighting him who are supposed to be the super-heroes that freed the world from an Elder Dragon.

About a year or two ago I was playing Warhammer40K: Space Marine, and I found that the way they handled the mixing of trash Orks, and their more powerful brethren was quite good.
Sure, you could one-shot your way through the throng of trash, but when a more powerful mob or boss showed up, it forced the player to adjust from spray and pray, to more tactical thinking, and then back again. The player was always on guard, because you never knew how the momentum of the fight would shift.
Now that game was a single player (or co-op 4 player), so it allowed for the mass of Mobs to give pressure and excitement to the player. I’m not sure how (or if) that would work in an open world mmo. Game generated zerg vs. Player zerg is quite different.
Still, it’s a nice goal

NoxInfernus.2361:

About a year or two ago I was playing Warhammer40K: Space Marine, and I found that the way they handled the mixing of trash Orks, and their more powerful brethren was quite good.
Sure, you could one-shot your way through the throng of trash, but when a more powerful mob or boss showed up, it forced the player to adjust from spray and pray, to more tactical thinking, and then back again. The player was always on guard, because you never knew how the momentum of the fight would shift.
Now that game was a single player (or co-op 4 player), so it allowed for the mass of Mobs to give pressure and excitement to the player. I’m not sure how (or if) that would work in an open world mmo. Game generated zerg vs. Player zerg is quite different.
Still, it’s a nice goal

How it would work would have to come down imo to what I was talking about earlier. That being the spread of the enemy army and FORCING any human “zerg” to also split up along an ideally long(ish) battle front or circle if you will. Surround the enemy (army in this case) and force your way inwards, shrinking their army. With all fronts moving together to the centre to ultimately that boss (or bosses spread out in a few different circles to keep human zerg spread) stand off.

Of course have a few mid-tough-ish mini bosses amongst those zergs of npc enemies as a semi threat and goal for the players to also get to/out of the way.

Heck even FORCE player spawn points/or start off areas if you have to, to spread the player zerg out so they are all starting off along that battlefront/line. This way they would naturally make their way forward and not just think “there’s the zerg get to it!”.

A while ago I left some feedback regarding the Southsun Cove events. I talked a bit about the issue of event scaling. While I wasn’t entirely right about how the scaling work (I overlooked the part about monsters getting stronger, maybe because at that time it wasn’t working the way it does now), I would like to copy what I said back then, because it’s relevant to the subject :

Events scaling : This is another major downside, and it’s also true for all of Tyria. The way the events scale is too often : “more players = more monsters”. Sometimes one or two Veterans. And that’s it. (not entirely true anymore, now there are also champions)
So, if you happen to get there in mid event, and you make your way toward a camp coming from the wrong direction, you just get steamrolled by 30 mobs attacking the camp. No chance to survive, even though you could easily kill every last one of them by taking 4 or 5 at a time. I feel like it’s a really bad game mechanic, because mobs don’t get any stronger, they don’t have more HP, they’re just more numerous. Moreover, this tend to create a lot of lag or huge frame rate drops, and the fights become a huge mayhem where you just try to tag as many mobs as possible, without really doing anything that could help your teammates. And if you’re a melee class (such as warrior or thief), you will tag a lot less mobs than if you are an AoE class.

I think it would be way better to have less mobs, with a lot more HP. That way, the fights would be clearer, longer, and so it would give more time to players to tag the enemies, and you could have a chance to regroup with the players already doing the events, without getting rolled over by a sudden pop.

I highlighted the points that are still valid in my opinion. Which is that too many mobs make the fights less readable, and that it tends to get isolated players killed too easily because of culling/frame rate/wrong place at the wrong time.

I also think that having hundreds of enemies coming out of nowhere doesn’t make a fight epic at all. It just creates a lot more confusion, and turn the fights into a mindless AoE spam.

tl;dr : Maybe too numerous mobs, or too strong mob is not really a solution. One that would help would be just more HP for them. It would help to have fights that are more easy to understand, also giving a chance to non-AoE classes to participate during those fights. Fights can also get more strategic, and rely less on mindless skill spamming.

I did an invasion event in Gendarren Fields last night. I’m not sure how many players a zone will allow before the game starts sending people into an overflow. Whatever that number is, it seems like all of them were at one portal event. If you were not in range of a Champion Twisted Nightmare when it spawned, you had maybe 5-6 seconds to get in range and get hits in before it died. The lag was … well, I haven’t really had lag in GW2 since the Karka attack inside Lions Arch.

If I had to guess, I’d say that there were well over 100 there. It’s my hope that the number was not 80, for obvious, incoming reasons.

Knote.2904:

Again this is fine as long as rewards get moved away from mobs drops, right now that’s where 90%+ of the loot comes from, and you get situations were the fodder gets farmed for it’s loot.

And I never said the fodder mobs kill anyone, hell no one actually dies in a zerg, zergs trivialize content that way.

And no lol, people don’t run out of aoe’s. Axe warriors spam massive aoe dmg non stop, Staff Guardians do too, lots of aoe’s have small cooldowns.

Again I don’t have a problem with this as long as they remove loot from mobs and put all of it in victory of said event.

Player reward is always a hard subject to tackle. The solution that I thought up is a “Drop Rate Timer” (DRT). Its actually similar to the current kill experience system that GW2 have. Basically you get a bonus for killing mobs that you hasn’t killed for a while, and that bonus decreases as you kill more.

Let’s say you haven’t killed any mob for a while. The first mob you kill have a 200% drop rate (double the normal). Now you are in DRT level 1, which reduces the drop rate by 20%. Then a 5 second timer starts.

If you kill another mob within this 5 seconds, that mob would have 180% drop rate, and you reach DRT level 2. The next mob you kill in the next 5 seconds would have a 160% drop rate, and you reach DRT level 3, etc.

Let’s say after DRT level 3, you did not kill any mobs in the next 5 seconds. At the end of that 5 seconds, you go back to DRT level 2. etc.

The highest level of DRT is level 10, which means the drop rate on mobs will be only 10% normal (The final DRT level 10 only decrease the drop rate by 10%, instead of the 20%. This ensure that the player still have 10% drop rate at least.) At DRT level 10, it will take 10X5=50 seconds to fully recover back to DRT level 0 (200% drop rate on the next mob).

Boss drop rates is not affected by DRT at all. It is totally separated to ensure that the player get 100% chance at the loot.

This should fix the “mob AoE tagging” problem in terms of rewards. A possible side benefit would be that this counters bot farming.

Going of topic, sorry.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I did an invasion event in Gendarren Fields last night. I’m not sure how many players a zone will allow before the game starts sending people into an overflow. Whatever that number is, it seems like all of them were at one portal event. If you were not in range of a Champion Twisted Nightmare when it spawned, you had maybe 5-6 seconds to get in range and get hits in before it died. The lag was … well, I haven’t really had lag in GW2 since the Karka attack inside Lions Arch.

If I had to guess, I’d say that there were well over 100 there. It’s my hope that the number was not 80, for obvious, incoming reasons.

That’s because those Champion Twisted Nightmare is never much of a threat. It is almost impossible to get killed by it. Bosses like Molten Berserker is very different. The players would have to dodge that Fiery Shockwave or be killed.

Same thing with the likes of Gaheron Baelfire. Dodge out of those rolling rocks or be killed. Those walls that he builds would be very interesting in a open world event, specially when mixed with the Molten Berserker’s Fiery Shockwave.

100s of mobs, Molten Berserker, Gaheron Baelfire, and other bosses. I can see it now. Epic! Its gonna be a party.

Lore:
“But Gaheron Baelfire was killed!”
“He got resurrected by Scarlet. That’s the whole reason why the Flame Legion allied themselves with her. "

Mesket.5728:

Not everyone likes that the guy that cleans the room, or the cooker is x10 stronger than the 5 guys fighting him who are supposed to be the super-heroes that freed the world from an Elder Dragon.

One of many reasons why in never liked raiding. It always felt soo un-heroic .. oh Maintank death ? Give me a bullet so i can kill my self and don’t have to wait until the mob finally kills me.

CHIPS.6018:

Knote.2904:

Again this is fine as long as rewards get moved away from mobs drops, right now that’s where 90%+ of the loot comes from, and you get situations were the fodder gets farmed for it’s loot.

And I never said the fodder mobs kill anyone, hell no one actually dies in a zerg, zergs trivialize content that way.

And no lol, people don’t run out of aoe’s. Axe warriors spam massive aoe dmg non stop, Staff Guardians do too, lots of aoe’s have small cooldowns.

Again I don’t have a problem with this as long as they remove loot from mobs and put all of it in victory of said event.

Player reward is always a hard subject to tackle. The solution that I thought up is a “Drop Rate Timer” (DRT). Its actually similar to the current kill experience system that GW2 have. Basically you get a bonus for killing mobs that you hasn’t killed for a while, and that bonus decreases as you kill more.

Let’s say you haven’t killed any mob for a while. The first mob you kill have a 200% drop rate (double the normal). Now you are in DRT level 1, which reduces the drop rate by 20%. Then a 5 second timer starts.

If you kill another mob within this 5 seconds, that mob would have 180% drop rate, and you reach DRT level 2. The next mob you kill in the next 5 seconds would have a 160% drop rate, and you reach DRT level 3, etc.

Let’s say after DRT level 3, you did not kill any mobs in the next 5 seconds. At the end of that 5 seconds, you go back to DRT level 2. etc.

The highest level of DRT is level 10, which means the drop rate on mobs will be only 10% normal (The final DRT level 10 only decrease the drop rate by 10%, instead of the 20%. This ensure that the player still have 10% drop rate at least.) At DRT level 10, it will take 10X5=50 seconds to fully recover back to DRT level 0 (200% drop rate on the next mob).

Boss drop rates is not affected by DRT at all. It is totally separated to ensure that the player get 100% chance at the loot.

This should fix the “mob AoE tagging” problem in terms of rewards. A possible side benefit would be that this counters bot farming.

Going of topic, sorry.

So what is the motivation to keep fighting after the first couple of seconds? There is also not much reason to do anything besides autoattack since that will ensure a steady rate of killing for the best reward.

Beldin.5498:

Mesket.5728:

Not everyone likes that the guy that cleans the room, or the cooker is x10 stronger than the 5 guys fighting him who are supposed to be the super-heroes that freed the world from an Elder Dragon.

One of many reasons why in never liked raiding. It always felt soo un-heroic .. oh Maintank death ? Give me a bullet so i can kill my self and don’t have to wait until the mob finally kills me.

lol yeah that too. But we have a nice “arcade-like” combat system that is unfortunately wasted on “dodge-or-die” fights.

In my opinion, improvisation is key for fun. Even though it gives a warm feeling when something planned goes right, I always get more satisfaction if things are on the edge and we get to pull it up. Though, something like what I’m talking about will obviously require some work on ANet side, like setting up smart platoons with (just tossing numbers quick and bad) 10 regular lvl 83 mobs with 2 veterans lvl 84 with different skills and “fixing” mobs stupidly falling for LoS and Stack strategies… come on, its 2013, its not that hard to program an AI capable of moving around a pillar to get LoS and move backward once it has it instead of mindlessly running into you.

Mesket.5728:

Beldin.5498:

Mesket.5728:

Not everyone likes that the guy that cleans the room, or the cooker is x10 stronger than the 5 guys fighting him who are supposed to be the super-heroes that freed the world from an Elder Dragon.

One of many reasons why in never liked raiding. It always felt soo un-heroic .. oh Maintank death ? Give me a bullet so i can kill my self and don’t have to wait until the mob finally kills me.

lol yeah that too. But we have a nice “arcade-like” combat system that is unfortunately wasted on “dodge-or-die” fights.

In my opinion, improvisation is key for fun. Even though it gives a warm feeling when something planned goes right, I always get more satisfaction if things are on the edge and we get to pull it up. Though, something like what I’m talking about will obviously require some work on ANet side, like setting up smart platoons with (just tossing numbers quick and bad) 10 regular lvl 83 mobs with 2 veterans lvl 84 with different skills and “fixing” mobs stupidly falling for LoS and Stack strategies… come on, its 2013, its not that hard to program an AI capable of moving around a pillar to get LoS and move backward once it has it instead of mindlessly running into you.

The weird thing about the stacking is that there are mobs which does something like that so the code exists already. If you try to melee a centaur archer it will try to move away from you. Several other ranged mobs does this too.

Khisanth.2948:

Mesket.5728:

Beldin.5498:

Mesket.5728:

Not everyone likes that the guy that cleans the room, or the cooker is x10 stronger than the 5 guys fighting him who are supposed to be the super-heroes that freed the world from an Elder Dragon.

One of many reasons why in never liked raiding. It always felt soo un-heroic .. oh Maintank death ? Give me a bullet so i can kill my self and don’t have to wait until the mob finally kills me.

lol yeah that too. But we have a nice “arcade-like” combat system that is unfortunately wasted on “dodge-or-die” fights.

In my opinion, improvisation is key for fun. Even though it gives a warm feeling when something planned goes right, I always get more satisfaction if things are on the edge and we get to pull it up. Though, something like what I’m talking about will obviously require some work on ANet side, like setting up smart platoons with (just tossing numbers quick and bad) 10 regular lvl 83 mobs with 2 veterans lvl 84 with different skills and “fixing” mobs stupidly falling for LoS and Stack strategies… come on, its 2013, its not that hard to program an AI capable of moving around a pillar to get LoS and move backward once it has it instead of mindlessly running into you.

The weird thing about the stacking is that there are mobs which does something like that so the code exists already. If you try to melee a centaur archer it will try to move away from you. Several other ranged mobs does this too.

I’m developing a very simple 2D game with my bro as a hobby and my mobs have that… that’s why I’m saying its really simple and if I, a simple IT guy with no background on professional developing can create something like it, I expect more from a company that has many pro developers.

Stronger mobs with more health = 25 bleed/condition stack limit = No loot/reward for condition builds

They have to fix this problem first, otherwise “numerous mobs” is a better option.