Guild Wars 2

dcypher.2590:

I don’t see why anyone has to refute anything about any other games. Just because some games made systems that work well without dedicated roles doesn’t mean that’s the case in gw2. You’ll never get 100% support on either side of the argument. Your statement about the advent of esports emphasizing individual player skill is pretty far fetched considering there is a wide range of game types that are used in esports and the most notable ones certainly are not focused on individual player skill (LoL? Dota? Quake? COD and Battlefield?) All team oriented gameplay, but that isn’t to say one on one championships aren’t popular (Starcraft). Discounting one’s impact over the other is a stretch.

True freedom in a game would to be able to be what you want to be..if someone wants to be a healer then they should be able to be a healer. They don’t need to require people to have a healer, that doesn’t mean the opportunity shouldn’t be there. Same with Tanks. GW2, in my opinion, went for a more first person shooter type of gameplay with their action combat. Spamming aoe’s and whatnot is essentially the same as spray-n-pray.

One could also say that just because GW2 is an MMORPG doesn’t mean it has to follow existing conventions in order to work. As I have mentioned and others have agreed that it isn’t the system that is the problem but rather the content that is designed around the system. It just hasn’t been able to fully exploit what’s in place.

I was saying that eSports emphasizes individual player skill which is entirely accurate. I didn’t say that it de-emphasizes teamwork and coordination, which is still a requirement if you want your team to succeed. Even in a team setting your skill makes a difference and especially at the high level where getting you’re less likely to get carried. Granted, there are a lot of games that are one on one.

While I’m not a big fan of it the game does in fact let you specialize in certain roles. You’re never going to be as effective as in a game with trinity but you’ll still be viable. I’ve got a full cleric set on my elementalist so I would know. Just because people argue that the optimal group make up is 4 berserker warriors and 1 mesmer doesn’t mean the game doesn’t allow other options. I think there’s a risk to going on full on damage and you can choose to take that risk or you can play it safe by having survivability. So no, you do in fact have true freedom in the game.

dcypher.2590:

True freedom in a game would to be able to be what you want to be..if someone wants to be a healer then they should be able to be a healer. They don’t need to require people to have a healer, that doesn’t mean the opportunity shouldn’t be there. Same with Tanks. GW2, in my opinion, went for a more first person shooter type of gameplay with their action combat. Spamming aoe’s and whatnot is essentially the same as spray-n-pray.

The presence of a healer in a party is completely gamestyle defining. You cannot make content balanced for both teams with and without a healer.

A tank is different. A tank puts order in a fight but there are other ways. Kitting, shared tanking etc…

Primernova.5791:

1. The roles don’t need to be dedicated but the roles do need to exist, just in a more fluid way, with specs and weapon swaps. A 1.2 second knockdown is not CC. A 3000+- heal over 7 seconds, for characters that have 15K+ health is not a heal. Having decent armor/toughness and vitality, but no threat/agro is not mob/boss control in PvE.

2. If we could just cast our heals on others and gave tanky classes some real threat, I think that would provide some real depth without breaking the current model too much and provide some really good development options.

1. A 2 second knockdown (which seems to be the standard time for KD) that interrupts a massive attack, or buys that little amount of time needed to get someone up is CC; you’ve controlled the mob in order to achieve a goal. And support (since that is the actual term) doesn’t just mean healing. If you view Regen as a damage mitigation boon, then you are supporting an ally. As above with the CC, just because you can’t shout and keep the attention of a mob indefinitely, doesn’t mean you can’t control them and their damage (Weakness) and movement (Cripple, Chilled, Immobilize).

2. If you gave tanky classes tools for aggro management, and allowed heals to be cast on them, they’d have to balance content not just around the current set-up, but also around the setup of having a Tanky class with the aggro management that can have 5 heals coming in on a cycle, potentially one after another depending on cooldown.

All in all, as I’ve said through this thread, I don’t think roles should be pre-established; I think roles should be dictated in the encounter mechanics.

The combat system is fine even if it is simplistic, because from my point of view it can really for whatever reason show the difference between a skilled player and a not so skilled player. Sure, you can just say “You just need to know when to dodge” but in practice, plenty of people fail more than they’d like to admit. People can have widely varying results even with equivalent builds and gear. And of course the huge group of terrible Guardians that claim it’s impossible to survive without Altruistic Healing proves that skill is definitely capable of making quite the difference.

What does need to happen is have more options though, as having weapons with all preset skills of which 1111112 usually beats them all is not desirable. It’s also a bit slow paced, which I think it could go faster.

The final issue is of course, the game’s obsession with spike damage of which the dodge determines mitigation. I don’t know what to do with that.

stof.9341:

dcypher.2590:

True freedom in a game would to be able to be what you want to be..if someone wants to be a healer then they should be able to be a healer. They don’t need to require people to have a healer, that doesn’t mean the opportunity shouldn’t be there. Same with Tanks. GW2, in my opinion, went for a more first person shooter type of gameplay with their action combat. Spamming aoe’s and whatnot is essentially the same as spray-n-pray.

The presence of a healer in a party is completely gamestyle defining. You cannot make content balanced for both teams with and without a healer.

A tank is different. A tank puts order in a fight but there are other ways. Kitting, shared tanking etc…

Why not tho? In an entire thread where the argument is GW2 has been breaking the mmorpg stigmas left and right….why would it be hard for them to have dungeons that scale to what your group is compiled of? Truthfully, wow (which by all emans is the go to game to bash when it comes to everyones examples) is already doing it with their flex raiding.

ArchonWing.9480:

The final issue is of course, the game’s obsession with spike damage of which the dodge determines mitigation. I don’t know what to do with that.

Mechanics that can’t be brute-forced through dodge and spike damage.

Dodge

• Players get hexed and have to run to a corresponding combo field / to melee range / out of melee range / to another player who has a corresponding hex in order to clear it.
• Phases where terrain damages you if you dodge regularly, thus you need to use jump as a dodge mechanic

Spike Damage

Control

• Think the Lovers mechanic, but without the boulders.
• Grawl Shaman fractal, with the shield adjusted to be a countdown timer as opposed to charges (or maybe a mix of both?)
• A boss that continuously moves. For every x seconds they’re moving at normal speed, they build up a charge that increases the damage he does. This charge doesn’t get removed when he’s impaired. In addition, he’s only susceptible to one type of movement impairing effect at any one time (i.e., immune to immobilized and chilled, susceptible to cripple).

Support

• Certain combo fields prevent certain attacks (i.e. water prevents fire, dark prevents light ect)
• Mechanics that require Condition Removal, Damage Mitigation ect

Adding a bit of depth to spike damage

• Spike damage roles that require people to swap the role (think Cliffside hammer fractal with the hammer, but applied to two mechanics that require spike damage)
• Resistant to types of spike damage (alternates between reflective bubbles and stunning auras)

Eh, I dunno.

What? You want the dungeon to become much harder once there’s a healer in the group or something?

It’s kind of like making two games at once. Each dungeon has to be tuned for two different gameplays. It’s basically twice the work.

zeromius.1604:

dcypher.2590:

I don’t see why anyone has to refute anything about any other games. Just because some games made systems that work well without dedicated roles doesn’t mean that’s the case in gw2. You’ll never get 100% support on either side of the argument. Your statement about the advent of esports emphasizing individual player skill is pretty far fetched considering there is a wide range of game types that are used in esports and the most notable ones certainly are not focused on individual player skill (LoL? Dota? Quake? COD and Battlefield?) All team oriented gameplay, but that isn’t to say one on one championships aren’t popular (Starcraft). Discounting one’s impact over the other is a stretch.

True freedom in a game would to be able to be what you want to be..if someone wants to be a healer then they should be able to be a healer. They don’t need to require people to have a healer, that doesn’t mean the opportunity shouldn’t be there. Same with Tanks. GW2, in my opinion, went for a more first person shooter type of gameplay with their action combat. Spamming aoe’s and whatnot is essentially the same as spray-n-pray.

One could also say that just because GW2 is an MMORPG doesn’t mean it has to follow existing conventions in order to work. As I have mentioned and others have agreed that it isn’t the system that is the problem but rather the content that is designed around the system. It just hasn’t been able to fully exploit what’s in place.

I was saying that eSports emphasizes individual player skill which is entirely accurate. I didn’t say that it de-emphasizes teamwork and coordination, which is still a requirement if you want your team to succeed. Even in a team setting your skill makes a difference and especially at the high level where getting you’re less likely to get carried. Granted, there are a lot of games that are one on one.

While I’m not a big fan of it the game does in fact let you specialize in certain roles. You’re never going to be as effective as in a game with trinity but you’ll still be viable. I’ve got a full cleric set on my elementalist so I would know. Just because people argue that the optimal group make up is 4 berserker warriors and 1 mesmer doesn’t mean the game doesn’t allow other options. I think there’s a risk to going on full on damage and you can choose to take that risk or you can play it safe by having survivability. So no, you do in fact have true freedom in the game.

I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t use e-sports as an example of emphasizing anything because it doesn’t hold any weight. Ever since the creation of video games, player skill has been important…the advent of esports has nothing to do with that. If you sucked at mario kart, you didn’t win often…simple. What you are saying is almost as pointless as saying player skill in football didn’t matter until the super bowl was introduced.

Great but with no depth and when your combat has none it gets old in a month.

stof.9341:

What? You want the dungeon to become much harder once there’s a healer in the group or something?

It’s kind of like making two games at once. Each dungeon has to be tuned for two different gameplays. It’s basically twice the work.

twice the work? essentially they do the same thing with fractals. I don’t think you understand much about scale of difficulty if you think it’s some crazy mad scientist idea. Plenty of games do it.

dcypher.2590:

stof.9341:

What? You want the dungeon to become much harder once there’s a healer in the group or something?

It’s kind of like making two games at once. Each dungeon has to be tuned for two different gameplays. It’s basically twice the work.

twice the work? essentially they do the same thing with fractals. I don’t think you understand much about scale of difficulty if you think it’s some crazy mad scientist idea. Plenty of games do it.

It’s not just a case of difficulty. You’d also need to rework mechanics to cater to that group composition.

I think the combat is good. It comes down to how you’re playing the game. I’ve noticed the people that use a joystick or a gaming mouse really enjoy the combat. People who only use the keyboard seem to not like the combat as much.

dcypher.2590:

zeromius.1604:

One could also say that just because GW2 is an MMORPG doesn’t mean it has to follow existing conventions in order to work. As I have mentioned and others have agreed that it isn’t the system that is the problem but rather the content that is designed around the system. It just hasn’t been able to fully exploit what’s in place.

I was saying that eSports emphasizes individual player skill which is entirely accurate. I didn’t say that it de-emphasizes teamwork and coordination, which is still a requirement if you want your team to succeed. Even in a team setting your skill makes a difference and especially at the high level where getting you’re less likely to get carried. Granted, there are a lot of games that are one on one.

While I’m not a big fan of it the game does in fact let you specialize in certain roles. You’re never going to be as effective as in a game with trinity but you’ll still be viable. I’ve got a full cleric set on my elementalist so I would know. Just because people argue that the optimal group make up is 4 berserker warriors and 1 mesmer doesn’t mean the game doesn’t allow other options. I think there’s a risk to going on full on damage and you can choose to take that risk or you can play it safe by having survivability. So no, you do in fact have true freedom in the game.

I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t use e-sports as an example of emphasizing anything because it doesn’t hold any weight. Ever since the creation of video games, player skill has been important…the advent of esports has nothing to do with that. If you sucked at mario kart, you didn’t win often…simple. What you are saying is almost as pointless as saying player skill in football didn’t matter until the super bowl was introduced.

If I failed to make it clear, eSports showed developers that individual skill mattered more than artificial systems like gear, builds, and group makeup. While this in no way invalidated gear, builds, and group makeup it allowed players more flexibility. Believe it or not, you’ve actually argued in favor of not having dedicated tanks and healers.

If you wipe in a dungeon run in GW2, it isn’t because your tank or healer was under-geared and couldn’t handle the damage output that enemies were dishing out. It’s because as a group you all played poorly or as you so eloquently put it, sucked. Skill has always mattered in games but RPGs in general have made it so that stats mattered more. Traditional MMORPGs are the most guilty of this where unless you had sufficient gear you could never take down a boss no matter how skilled you were. As a corollary, with gear that was too good the same boss becomes too easy.

I originally didn’t want to bring this up because it’s sort of a different topic and that the thread could get derailed. In games with trinity you also have what we know as gear progression or what others refer to as power creep. It’s difficult to divorce trinity from gear progression because they happen to go hand in hand. The tank gets progressively better gear to take on more damage from progressively stronger enemies and likewise with the healer who gets better gear to perform stronger heals. I’m not saying they don’t require skill; they most certainly do. I’m saying that it’s all just numbers and skill doesn’t really factor in here.

I’m not intentionally being biased in either direction. Guild Wars 2 is also guilty of artificially increasing difficulty by ramping up enemy hit points and damage without really adding anything interesting.

To further my point, all non-tanks would likely get 1 shotted by completely unavoidable attacks. There’s no dodge system after all. If an attack 1 shots you but you have the ability to avoid it then by all means. Otherwise you have to rely on someone else to make sure you don’t get hit at all. I know it encourages cooperation, at least on the tank’s part but suddenly you as that non-tank feel powerless.

My argument is that trinity, while it doesn’t have to be the case, will ultimately fuel power creep and create a large disparity in stats between classes/professions. I think when you look at every single aspect of combat as a whole you’ll begin to appreciate what ANet has done.

zeromius.1604:

I originally didn’t want to bring this up because it’s sort of a different topic and that the thread could get derailed. In games with trinity you also have what we know as gear progression or what others refer to as power creep. It’s difficult to divorce trinity from gear progression because they happen to go hand in hand. The tank gets progressively better gear to take on more damage from progressively stronger enemies and likewise with the healer who gets better gear to perform stronger heals. I’m not saying they don’t require skill; they most certainly do. I’m saying that it’s all just numbers and skill doesn’t really factor in here.

While many of the games that support a trinity also feature gear progression, that does not mean that the two concepts cannot be divorced from each other. After all, GW2 has power creep. It’s only a small amount, but the gap is about to get bigger.

It would certainly be possible for a game with little to no gear progression to have tanks and healers. Guild Wars is a decent example. Tanks were not required, but were used in some situations, like an Oby tank in an Underworld run. They just did not have taunts. I did a lot of my hard mode vanquishing in GW with a player who figured out how the aggro system worked and was able to get mobs to consistently go after his character, leaving the rest of us to kill them.

Also, you might want to look at the last two sentences that I quoted from your recent post.

Just read this thread through and found it very interesting! Surprising to see some well reasoned arguments on both sides for a change There are two things I think are interesting:

1.Regarding the more skills = harder/ more interesting games argument there is a difference between depth and complexity. Watch a middle distance running final at the Olympics. It has almost no complexity at all, a number of people have to run in a oval a set number of times the fastest to do so wins. However this event has almost infinite depth. Is it best to lead from the front and set a gruelling pace or hang at the back of the pack and try for a sprint finish or go somewhere in between the two? Who are you racing that day? Do they have strong starts, finishes, a powerful sprint? There are so many situations and strategies that can evolve from such a simple concept and they can be different every race.

Depth is what we want from a game as it leads to endless re playability. A high level of complexity but low depth might mean it takes players a while to figure out the optimum solution to any encounter but eventually they will and at that point the game becomes trivial.

I’m not suggesting that all games with limited skill sets have depth and all with extended skill sets are masking a lack of depth with complexity but just pointing out that loads of buttons does not necessarily mean a more involved game.

2. Encounters vs combat system.

I agree a lot of the PvE encounters in the game do not require a brain or synergy between a team, frustratingly this applies most to the encounters which give the best rewards. However I think this is due more to encounter design than combat design. Encounters that are impossible to win by pure DPS need to be designed.

Imagine an encounter where your party had to control a certain area(by making sure < say 10 mobs were in that area at all times) to lower a shield that was protecting a boss in another part of the dungeon/ open world. The area you had to control would be under constant assault by low damage but high toughness and hp mobs and it would be more optimal to CC them out of the area than to try and kill them. I’m not suggesting this exact encounter should be in the game but just trying to illustrate how roles for different players/ builds with strict success/fail criteria(which I think is the appeal of the trinity) could be attempted with the current combat system.

IndigoSundown.5419:

zeromius.1604:

I originally didn’t want to bring this up because it’s sort of a different topic and that the thread could get derailed. In games with trinity you also have what we know as gear progression or what others refer to as power creep. It’s difficult to divorce trinity from gear progression because they happen to go hand in hand. The tank gets progressively better gear to take on more damage from progressively stronger enemies and likewise with the healer who gets better gear to perform stronger heals. I’m not saying they don’t require skill; they most certainly do. I’m saying that it’s all just numbers and skill doesn’t really factor in here.

While many of the games that support a trinity also feature gear progression, that does not mean that the two concepts cannot be divorced from each other. After all, GW2 has power creep. It’s only a small amount, but the gap is about to get bigger.

It would certainly be possible for a game with little to no gear progression to have tanks and healers. Guild Wars is a decent example. Tanks were not required, but were used in some situations, like an Oby tank in an Underworld run. They just did not have taunts. I did a lot of my hard mode vanquishing in GW with a player who figured out how the aggro system worked and was able to get mobs to consistently go after his character, leaving the rest of us to kill them.

Also, you might want to look at the last two sentences that I quoted from your recent post.

I did say it was difficult rather than impossible to divorce gear progression from the trinity. Guild Wars 1 is a bit of an anomaly. I think you can say the same about Guild Wars 2. I played Prophecies and found that the while you certainly had options, they just became limited by the content. I didn’t touch Factions, Nightfall, or Eye of the North so I can’t really say how things progressed from there. I think balance would have been a nightmare. I’m not saying you always had your standard cookie cutter builds in a sea of possibilities but human tends to kick in assume it was so.

I’m neither refuting or agreeing with your point. I just thought I’d take a nostalgia trip and go off on a tangent about something a little unrelated.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’m not saying they don’t require skill; they most certainly do. I’m saying that it’s all just numbers and skill doesn’t really factor in here.

Also, you might want to look at the last two sentences that I quoted from your recent post.[/quote]

Written language is quite clumsy so it’s easy for something to be misconstrued. I wasn’t trying to contradict myself as I was stating that where gear and builds are concerned skill goes by the wayside. Before that, I wanted to make it clear I didn’t think that having a trinity system takes no skill. My position is that it’s just de-emphasized, at least as an individual.

So far I’ve mentioned problems with the combat, mainly in terms of the content. I haven’t really offered up any solutions though. Some people also expressed their opinions on the concept of trinity and we sort of went into a long discussion on that. Let’s just assume that right now ANet has to work within the confines of the current system. They’re certainly not lacking for innovation. There are however a few odd design choices when it comes down to enemy encounters and this may be due to lack of experience. No one, not even ArenaNet, has created a combat system like GW2’s before. TERA, as I mentioned falls back on older conventions although it does push the envelope with its aiming system.

First of all, the underwater combat in GW2 feels unexciting. It’s a really nice concept where you have to be aware of a 360 degree environment both in the horizontal and vertical directions. The main problem is either enemies taking too long to die or that the character’s attacks feel too underwhelming compared to their land-based attacks. One of the things that ANet can do is lower the health pools of underwater enemies or they can give underwater skills extra kick. Maybe they’ll eventually revamp the existing skills so that they become more useful.

Second, is this boon that bosses and champions have called Defiant. I’m not a fan of crowd control nor am do I think bosses should be crowd controllable. I just think that having crowd control skills on your skillbar would be meaningless in a boss fight. You certainly could switch them out prior to the start of a fight but I actually have a better idea. ANet should make it so that each time an enemy resists crowd control it receives a stack of vulnerability and weakness. The number could vary. It would encourage using CC abilities during boss and champion fights instead of just letting them collect dust. The 25 condition limit could be a problem so it might be better to have a separate and permanent condition like how defiant is permanent.

Third, some of the existing boss fights don’t feel that interesting as many people have mentioned. There are exceptions like Giganticus Lupicus, Iron Forgman from Sorrow’s Embrace story mode, and Kudu’s monster from COE story. There are many others too. The solution of course lies in their Living Story updates and their continuous introduction of new content. ANet has the potential to really push the envelope in terms of fun. They’re definitely going in the right direction with the Molten Weapons Facility and Aetherblade Retreat but I know they can go further.

I thought I would share some ideas on what they could potentially do in the future.

• A boss that by itself is a mini jumping puzzle. This would be similar to those big colossus fights found in Shadow of the Colossus. I’m not sure whether the game engine would support it or not but it would be an extremely effective marketing tool for the game.
• A boss that you have to chase through an obstacle course. There should be shortcuts you can take to cut the boss off and bundles that you can pick up which would do more damage than your regular attacks. I think it’s better if the party doesn’t end up failing if the boss reaches the end of the obstacle course because it could end up being frustrating. Rather, there should be an achievement and bonus reward for killing the boss while it is still in the course. If it is still alive then a regular fight ensues or better yet it just gets away to be rub it in but players can still progress through the dungeon.
• A boss that you need to lure into a trap. Maybe you have to capture someone alive for a bonus reward. Now imagine you had this cage waiting at the beginning of the dungeon and you had to drag the last boss all the way through the dungeon to get to it. By drag I mean kite. The boss should have some nasty abilities that make not killing it really difficult. Of course, the boss’ aggro can’t reset and any trash you decided to skip would also get in the way.
• A boss that will regularly possess the body of one of its minions. Let’s say you come across a trash pack. One of the enemies gets possessed, making it much stronger than the rest. Think Collectors from Mass Effect 2. Now, killing this possessed minion will also do damage to the boss so when you get to it, it will already have lost a chunk of its health. This could, like my previous suggestion, encourage people not to skip trash.

I can think of others but I think I might be getting off topic so I’ll leave it at that for now.

zeromius.1604:

Ashen.2907:

zeromius.1604:

Ashen.2907:

Interesting points. Not all of them are accurate (at least one completely contradicts existing facts), but good presentation and well thought out regardless of inaccuracy.

Thank you. I’m just curious as to which one that is simply because I want to look into it. I don’t think of myself as being right all the time because if I did I probably wouldn’t improve at anything and that includes this game.

zeromius.1604:

skills that outright mitigate damage could not be included in a game with trinity

This one in particular jumped out at me because the claim is not correct. A game can have trinity while also allowing individual characters to have damage mitigation skills.

You’re right about this one. There are skills that can completely mitigate damage but they would be clutch skills. It means that you would save them for emergencies rather than use them on a regular basis kind of like how you only pull your car’s hand brake when you have no other choice. This design is intentional. The ones I’ve seen so far either prevent you from doing anything or lower your damage so much that it wouldn’t matter either way. The point being you can only manage your own survival up to a certain extent before you have to rely on the healers which is probably the majority of the fight.

This may be true in the games you have seen so far but it is not true in all games (I am referring specifically to MMOs here) as you seemed to have been claiming in your original post.

Yes, MMORPGs specifically make it difficult or next to impossible to avoid damage. Granted there are a lot of moments where you need to avoid damage either by staying out of range of an AOE, staying out of a ground AOE, or killing something really quick before it enrages. You can see though that these elements that make fights interesting have little to do with dedicated tanks and healers.