Guild Wars 2

This spins out of discussions about the new patch, but it is basically a proposal to change the way the tutorial bosses function to make the downed state more approachable to new players.

When I first played the game, almost every character I made would get downed while fighting the Tutorial boss. I would find this slightly confusing at first, but plenty of games have downed states now, and it’s not a big deal. They recently moved the downed state back to level 5, and moved half the abilities back even further, but this does nothing to train the ability, it’s just as confusing at level 5 as it would be at level 1, just a few minutes later. What they need to do is actually train the ability.

What they should do is adjust the behaviors of the tutorial bosses. Instead of moving DS to 5 and half the abilities to later, unlock them all at level 2, and level the character to 2 at the beginning of the boss fight, rather than after. What happens is, as soon as the boss fight begins, he launches a massive AoE that cannot be avoided and insta-downs every player.

He then stops doing anything for about thirty seconds (maybe [Logan]* holds his attention to “keep him off of you”). This gives you time for each of your DS abilities to come off cooldown. A tutorial would pop up that would say “You have been Downed. If the bar reaches zero then you will be defeated, but you can survive! Another player can help you to revive, or if you kill an enemy you can revive, or you can use skill 4 to revive yourself.” It would then also pop up the tooltips for each additional DS ability, giving you time to read them.

After about thirty seconds (perhaps longer if it’s deemed necessary), every player is hit with a rallying effect (like with a rez utility) and pops back up, with [Logan] leading them in a charge to finish off the boss, and the battle would play out normally from there.

I think that this would get everyone on board with the DS system, without pushing it back to a later point. Similar tutorial elements could be added for every “confusing” system in the game, rather than pushing them back in the leveling process.

*or whomever is in your tutorial

Great idea, and I’ll add the one thing I found confusing about downed state, when it first happened. The skills are only visible whilst you’re downed and on a timer.

Put the class’s downed skills on the weapon skills tab so I can see what they do before I need them.

When a mob or six are bashing on your head is not the time to be reading tooltips and figuring out which is most likely to help, especially as they vary by profession.

Moving it out to level 5 doesn’t help in the slightest. A completely new player is still going to wonder what the heck just happened, but given no opportunity to adjust, or even explanation, so is probably just going to start spamming numbers. They are on a timer after all…

They get another surprise first time downed under water. Again on their first alt.

Anet have removed bundles and massively oversimplified transformations (like the wolf heart for Norns), presumably because players weren’t adapting to the sudden change in all their skills. (I think they’re drawing the wrong conclusion and solving the wrong problem, but that’s for another thread). At least in the context of those quests you can spend 20 seconds, or 5 minutes as necessary looking at tooltips without risk.

Level gating 3 and 4 gives them less to read, but they’re still on a surprise, on a timer.

New players rarely read wikis. They might look at their skills tab whilst out of combat.

Your idea would give them a moment to look. The help could point out that skill 1 is always damage, and 4 heal, and that the skills vary by profession and when drowning.

Having them on their skills panel would let people look at why they got dead. Most likely just afterwards.

Or why their warrior apparently rallied yet dropped dead without reason (they hit 3) moments later.

Right, and that’s another reason this tutorial would work well, because you wouldn’t be stressed out during the 30+ seconds it gives you to get acclimated. It’s much better than being level 6 and falling for the first time to a half-dozen enemies kicking your head in.

Short of that though, putting the descriptions in the weapons skill section at all times would certainly be a good idea.