Guild Wars 2

It’s because they don’t want to bother with unique or challenging content. They’d rather use lazy and cheap tactics such as agony and of course high health.

Yeah, I think it all just boils down to practice on the part of the developers. Trinity or no, it really does seem like they don’t have much experience yet making meaningful dungeon encounters. There are encounters that do have interesting fight mechanics, but they do seem to drag on.

With regards to “fun”, the only one I really remember as being particularly fun is the Final Boss of CoF Story (I think that’s what it is, the one with the bubble, and you had to bring bombs to it or something . . . it’s been a while).

I haven’t played WoW’s endgame (highest character was 53), so I can’t comment on that. But one other MMO’s fight that really stands out in my mind is LoTRO’s Ost Dunhoth – Wound Wing.

The entire wing is basically one big boss fight.

— You have a team of 12, and 3 paths before you that converge in one big room at the end. So you have to divide your team into 3 small teams of 4.
— Fight starts, and suddenly 3 Mumakils (Mammoths) bust out of the walls behind you. It then becomes a race, if the Mumakils reach you, you die.
— Speed and DPS plays a part, but teamwork and communication too. Switches on one path will open gates on another path. Also, paying attention. There are actually some buffs on the mobs that you don’t want to remove.
— The paths eventually converge in one big room, and now all 12 of you not only have to deal with 3 Rampaging Mumakils, but other enemies as well that all have to be handled a different way. Including, iirc, something that buffs every other mob if you don’t interrupt him in time.
— The Challenge/Hard Mode of the Wing is to complete the whole thing (from the moment the Mumakils bust out of the wall) in 15 minutes.

Overall, it’s a fun little fight. One that actually had me using my class in many different ways in one encounter. (ie, you need healers to heal in the big room, but for phase 1 you probably want them to DPS – or buffing DPS and run speed). How to divide your group also factors in to the strategy because the 3 paths are all different. It’s also fun in Vent/Mumble because you can just imagine people shouting “Hurry up over there, it’s almost here.”

critickitten.1498:

Kurakura.7281:

I totally agree.
GW1 had very distinct variations between the gameplay across the 10 professions. GW2 is more like…. most ranged is the same, most melee is the same.

Erm, wat?

No, they really didn’t. In fact, the dual profession system only blurred the lines between professions even more.

It was entirely possible for me to run a very effective necromancer leeching build on my ranger. Or a ritualist spirit build. Or a scythe build, or even a dagger build. All while still having the primary purpose of playing a Barrage ranger.

GW1’s profession lines are far more blurry than WoW, to be honest.

Whereas in GW2, I am never confused when I see another player. I can tell precisely what prof that player is, just by watching him in action. I see a pet, I know he’s a ranger. Turrets? Engineer. Clones pop up, it’s a mesmer. There’s never a question of which prof I’m looking at.

And what makes this game work for me is the fact that all of these distinct professions can perform a lot of the same roles, just in different ways. To those not paying attention, that just seems like “everyone’s the same”. To those who are, it’s the sign of a game which has done away with defined roles and is allowing everybody to play the game the way they want to play it, without being shoved forcibly into the situation of “you’re running this build because we need an X in our party”.

And that’s honestly not a bad thing. It’s just a lot different than you’re used to.

In reality though, it is a bad thing because it forces homogenization and lack of engagement from the skill system and encounter design. When you have to dumb down a game for a very liberal, casual-feeding structure, no one really wins.

lothefallen.7081:

In reality though, it is a bad thing because it forces homogenization and lack of engagement from the skill system and encounter design. When you have to dumb down a game for a very liberal, casual-feeding structure, no one really wins.

People keep saying that there is no variation to this game, that everyone is the same. The only way someone can claim this is by creating an alternate universe for themselves in which this is true. There is plenty of build variation, and plenty of class diversity. The fact that any class can build themselves as a glass cannon, or as a tank, or even a support or healer type, is honestly rather astonishing and allows players to enjoy the diversity of a game with multiple classes while still playing the classes in a variety of ways.

Second, “casual” is not a synonym for “easy” and I do wish that gamers would properly educate themselves on the meanings of these terms. “Casual” refers to a time commitment, not a difficulty setting.

critickitten.1498:

lothefallen.7081:

In reality though, it is a bad thing because it forces homogenization and lack of engagement from the skill system and encounter design. When you have to dumb down a game for a very liberal, casual-feeding structure, no one really wins.

People keep saying that there is no variation to this game, that everyone is the same. The only way someone can claim this is by creating an alternate universe for themselves in which this is true. There is plenty of build variation, and plenty of class diversity. The fact that any class can build themselves as a glass cannon, or as a tank, or even a support or healer type, is honestly rather astonishing and allows players to enjoy the diversity of a game with multiple classes while still playing the classes in a variety of ways.

Second, “casual” is not a synonym for “easy” and I do wish that gamers would properly educate themselves on the meanings of these terms. “Casual” refers to a time commitment, not a difficulty setting.

To your first claim: Variety in build does not equal variety in role. You can have a million different builds but it’s all pointless if the only available role is DPS.

To the second: Casual content is easy to reflect the casual player’s time allotment. It’s also a known fact that casual players devote less time to perfecting their play style and thus are lesser players than more hardcore gamers.

You might say, “But if you make the content difficult then they can’t see it.” I’m sorry, but the only thing preventing you from seeing the content is you. Just because you don’t want to experience hardcore content does not mean those who do are to be denied.

Vasham.2408:

To your first claim: Variety in build does not equal variety in role. You can have a million different builds but it’s all pointless if the only available role is DPS.

I guess GW1 got it wrong, then, because that’s basically what 6 of the game’s classes boil down to. A million different builds but it’s all about DPS. GW1 is all about DPS, too. Oh sure, having a healer is important, but really, healing doesn’t help you kill things, right? It doesn’t in GW2 so obviously it doesn’t in GW1 either. Game’s all about DPS, man.

As long as we continue to use your very narrow view of what constitutes “differentiation” in an MMO, I will continue to point out that your description can be applied to every other MMO out there. Until you’re willing to have an actual discussion and acknowledge that how you deliver the damage actually constitutes differentiation, then I’ll continue to insist that every MMO is exactly the same because they all boil down to DPS, and as you’ve said, the delivery method doesn’t matter.

Come up with an appropriate model of what constitutes “differentiation” and we’ll talk. Until then, you’re wasting my time.

To the second: Casual content is easy to reflect the casual player’s time allotment. It’s also a known fact that casual players devote less time to perfecting their play style and thus are lesser players than more hardcore gamers.

….congrats. You have now lost absolutely any credibility you or your argument might have had.

This discussion ends here. If you’re going to actually go so far as to try and pretend that gaming is some sort of elitist clique that you can only join if you play games 5 hours a day, and that anyone who doesn’t behave in this fashion is a lesser being who is not worthy of having a fun experience with video games….then we have nothing to discuss here. Goodbye.

critickitten.1498:

This discussion ends here. If you’re going to actually go so far as to try and pretend that gaming is some sort of elitist clique that you can only join if you play games 5 hours a day, and that anyone who doesn’t behave in this fashion is a lesser being who is not worthy of having a fun experience with video games….then we have nothing to discuss here.

When potentially good games are ruined by the developers need to cater to the lowest common denominator then yes it is something to complain about. This game has so much potential and we’re watching it fall apart before our eyes in order to make casuals happy while the true gamers are left out in the cold.

Goodbye.

No, I think I’ll stay.

I guess I must be one of the rare ones cause I can see where some pve bosses can be a spam 1 and done but I seem to have them focused only on me 80% of the time so I end up spending the entire time dodging and running in circles to avoid being hit. I also think some have way too much health. And as for casuals ruining content, what is easy for one is not easy for another and this game was not marketed for elite gamers only. I play with quite a few casuals and they can hold their own. They should make a hard mode for those who have the exceptional skill and time and crave the challenge. But don’t bash the rest of us as unworthy of anything just because we enjoy most of the game difficulty as is.

critickitten.1498:

lothefallen.7081:

In reality though, it is a bad thing because it forces homogenization and lack of engagement from the skill system and encounter design. When you have to dumb down a game for a very liberal, casual-feeding structure, no one really wins.

People keep saying that there is no variation to this game, that everyone is the same. The only way someone can claim this is by creating an alternate universe for themselves in which this is true. There is plenty of build variation, and plenty of class diversity. The fact that any class can build themselves as a glass cannon, or as a tank, or even a support or healer type, is honestly rather astonishing and allows players to enjoy the diversity of a game with multiple classes while still playing the classes in a variety of ways.

Second, “casual” is not a synonym for “easy” and I do wish that gamers would properly educate themselves on the meanings of these terms. “Casual” refers to a time commitment, not a difficulty setting.

Except being a glass cannon is the most efficient for any setting in this game, so being tanky or healy is completely pointless because they are not DEDICATED.

What is the point in being something that is going to be totally half-kitten’d? Honest question here, because the only dedicated roll you can be in this game is DPS.

Oh btw, you are wrong about GW1 being the same. It both had dedicated healing and tanking builds.

Raid bosses in Everquest 2 were awesome, like Malkonis D’Morte. Took us weeks to figure that guy out and was so satisfying once we finished it off.

Loads of HPs = boring.

Chain CC and knockdown = annoying as hell.

Challenges/Patterns/Puzzles/Strategy = awesome.

Gehenna.3625:

HiddenNick.7206:

Zeldain.5710:

c : having no particularly distinctive quality or application

Especially letter C represents the class structure and combat design in Guild Wars 2.

Can you be MORE specific?! Like give me an example of game where you have a good variety of classes and why do you think that all classes in Gw2 are the same?! I really have no idea why are you saying that. You are trying to be a wise guy. And that’s not a discussion in any way.

Just because you don’t get, doesn’t mean you should call him a wiseguy.

I called him a this way because he didn’t try to explain anything but tried to be wise guy instead. I KNOW the meaning of the word! So it wasn’t an answer to my question in ANY degree. You shouldn’t try to excuse him just because you agree with him.

Gehenna.3625:

The truth is simply that there is too little definition in GW2. The classes are distinct in name but not so much in purpose. So a ranger or warrior or elementalist are different names, technically with different names but their purpose is to dps and support. Both really is best.

I do agree with that to some degree.

Gehenna.3625:

Then the rest of it depends not so much on your skill choices or trait assignments (what could have been depth but isn’t in the end) but on your ability to dodge and ress team mates.

Skill choices and traits DO matter. They just do… Why do you try to argue with that?

Also… Let me describe to you in the exact same way what your abilities have to be in standard MMO:
Tank – you just need to use threat skills in the simple manner (you just spam it).
Healer – you just watch the single health bar and use your heal skills when it drops.
Dps – you don’t have to be good at anything really… Just choose the best build from the internet and use you skills in the correct order.
In Gw2 everyone needs to CC, dodge, heal themselves, support and DPS. So it doesn’t look that bad to me…

(I’ve just skipped specific boss mechanic intentionally. I’m aware of that some fights require much more from all roles)

Gehenna.3625:

This is what gives it all a generic and non-specific feel to it. Trinity games have clear roles.

Yes they do… But what exactly does it change? Trinity is just for grouping. So when you go into dungeon you need a tank healer and 3 x dps. And this specific feature doesn’t make the game any more interesting to me. I’ve tried it.

Gehenna.3625:

In SWTOR for example you can play a tank in heavy armour or light armour. Different types of damage mitigation. Also healers there have different styles.

Any of 8 classes have their own specific mechanics just as in SWTOR. The only difference is the lack of specific roles.

Also… You CAN heal in Gw2! The difference is in how it works here. You don’t have a single target that every mob attacks. Instead you need to heal yourself and CC monsters to the degree you can handle it.

Gehenna.3625:

…

And then you go in all directions… Most of it doesn’t have anything to do with trinity.

And about game class variations. When I play my guardian I use almost always highly defensive build. So for that purpose I’m using Mace and Shield. All my traits and equipment is build toward tank type build. And it works brilliantly to me. I can’t simply transition from that to Greatsword DPS build! Because I would need to change ALL my gear to do that.

Also when I use mace I’m becoming a hybrid healer/tank which is never possible in Trinity games.

Whole Gw2 character system is very deep to me. Just try playing something else then pure DPS in Gw2 and you will appreciate it. Why it does not matter to you is a problem for ArenaNet. But it doesn’t have anything to do with the false assumption that every class is the same.

Avigrus.2871:

Raid bosses in Everquest 2 were awesome, like Malkonis D’Morte. Took us weeks to figure that guy out and was so satisfying once we finished it off.

Loads of HPs = boring.

Chain CC and knockdown = annoying as hell.

Challenges/Patterns/Puzzles/Strategy = awesome.

Pretty much.

i like some of the bosses. a few.
the harpy in the volcano fractal is always a blast.
archdiviner at top of cliffside too.
alpha is sometime cool in the crucible of eternity.

i guess anet will soon (if not already) understand that whats cool about gw2 is not as much the “strategy” (omg that big fire boss in citadel of flame where you have to kill the acolyte at same time is boring) but its the rock&roll gameplay.
they need to keep you dodging/ moving/ jumping etc.
gw2 is like a jumping puzzle, not much strategy but a good dose of skill.

i would try to capitalise on that if i were these guys.

Some may find that fun, others will likely find it infuriating.

Vasham.2408:

This game has so much potential and we’re watching it fall apart before our eyes in order to make casuals happy while the true gamers are left out in the cold.

Vasham.2408:

we’re watching it fall apart before our eyes in order to make casuals happy while the true gamers are left out in the cold.

Vasham.2408:

while the true gamers are left out in the cold.

Vasham.2408:

true gamers

I vomit a little in my mouth whenever I see someone describe themselves as a ‘true gamer’.

Design decisions made with the intention to be inclusive of all sorts of players are not inherently wrong and there have been plenty of games cheapened for me by attempts to cater to the ‘hardcore’ that have seemed misguided and poorly implemented as a person-that-plays-games-but-also-sometimes-not. If I enjoy a game and wish to support the developers, I don’t particularly appreciate it if they demand that I can only complete the thing by fighting the last boss with my feet.

Hey, the upset goes both ways, now let’s just hug (and possibly make out).

I’m willing to give Anet the benefit of time to figure out their dungeon scenarios . Fractals are a step in the right direction, not in the way they’re implemented, but the fights inside them.

As people enjoy comparing games to WoW, I can say that back in Vanilla, when the game was first released fights weren’t terribly complicated either. After the update to allow leveling beyond 40, majority of the early raid content was a tank n spank fight with a few gimmicks to keep people on their toes. What made the game hard was poor gear optimization, and a lot of dead weight people who had no idea what they were doing due to information not being as accessible.

Another game I had a lot of hope in success was Wakfu. I gave them the benefit of a year to get their act together, then after a pretty long while after I quit, they’ve finally gotten their act together on class balance and boss mechanics. The Ultimate bosses actually require a good amount of teamwork and understanding of class mechanics to beat. Well, that and an hour of your time.

I’m willing to give them that. Though if I were to kitten about any immediate encounters. Please improve the drops in the dragon chest, and make all of them harder.

Tequatl could poison the area around himself, and summon a huge amount of Risen near the cannons. Hylek could have devices that clear a small bubble of poison, allowing people to attack him at close range. But they would only last a few seconds so people would have to ferry them over. Alternatively you could just kill the bone wall and stun him with the laser as was intended.

Shatterer. Have the Crystal prisons instant kill on failure to be freed. It can be dodged so if people pay attention it won’t be much of an issue. Anyone killed during the encounter would have a Branded champion version spring from their corpse to attack the group. Give the group a reason to protect the Cannons. I don’t have any ideas though, since you don’t stun the Shatterer.

The Dragons just need to be more difficult.

HiddenNick.7206:

Also… Let me describe to you in the exact same way what your abilities have to be in standard MMO:
Tank – you just need to use threat skills in the simple manner (you just spam it).
Healer – you just watch the single health bar and use your heal skills when it drops.
Dps – you don’t have to be good at anything really… Just choose the best build from the internet and use you skills in the correct order.

Wtf? Those are just… basics. It is like saying : hey playing piano isn’t hard, you just mash the keys in right order, nothing special. DPSers can do A LOT of mistakes, gearing, doing dps, failing at boss mechanics, it doesn’t matter if healer saved you, or your group killied the boss if you could perform 10 times better. Same with healer, you can heal with few spells, keep up the buffs, debuffs, cleanse debuffs from your group, help people with specific fight mechanic (for example some1 has to run through whole boss room for whatever reason, you give him a speed buff or something like that), and as a tank you also keep your eye for the buffs, debuffs, you have to manage your cooldowns because for those who don’t know tank survivability doesn’t come just from the guy playing as healer and spamming heal. If you fail at CD management your healer can run oom, or you will die.

The whole discussion about trinity on this forum is like a bunch of kids saying that everything is easy and they can do everything as good as someone who practiced doing something for years because “hey, it’s just about doing this that and not doing this and that, easy I can do it too np”. Ignorance.

I would have to agree with this a lot of the bosses in this game are just boringly simple. I mean the boss in Arah is like the only one that takes some “Focus”

IHatePugs.3671:

I would have to agree with this a lot of the bosses in this game are just boringly simple. I mean the boss in Arah is like the only one that takes some “Focus”

I’m going to pray you mean Simmin or Lupi and not Zhaitan. Even then the former is only “difficult” since she’s broken. Lupi is the only decent boss in this game.

Zoralink.9836:

…“high health” rather than “boss”?

Why did they choose this as a design philosophy? It makes the PvE side of the game incredibly frustrating.

100% Agreed. For all their flash, GW2 bosses suck.

Ursan.7846:

I’m gonna list some dungeons, and bosses contained in them where I’d love to see you go AFK for 5 minutes and expect to survive. (Ignoring any exploits which allows you to afk and kill the boss, because they do exist but it’s not due to the boss mechanics.)

AC:
Kholer
Howling King
Colossus Rumblus

CM:
Sure Shot Sheamus
Wahlen

TA:
Malrona

SE:
Volkov

I’m gonna stop cuz I’m sure you get my point. And we’re missing some obvious ones like Alpha and Lupi.

Best post in the thread. Let’s add to them -

- Graveling mound fights in AC
- Victoria/Turmaine/Frost in CM
- Champion Vine/Laurent/Defiler in TA
- Nokk/Tazza/Taskmaster/Warmaster’s Golems in SE
- Balefire’s Ritual/Burntclaw in CoF
- Icefist/Creedbreaker/Andal/Wollam in HotW
- Alpha/Bjarl/Evolved Husk/Experimental Destroyer in CoE
- Lupicus/Alphard/Brie in Arah

Admittedly, a couple of fights still feel a little rough around the edges, but they are only getting better (Fractals show that pretty clearly). ArenaNet said they plan to make improvements to dungeon encounters – and there is still a long future of new encounters to look forward to.

I think most people dont give the fights a chance. They go in expecting the same experience they had in older MMOs – or even worse, graveyard zerg, and dont accept that the rules of engagement are different here.

Not sure how the rules of engagement are different here. Boss has 90000000000 hit points, hit it 90000000000 times, it dies. Pretty boring. GW2 bosses aren’t even good for a game 5 years old (GW1 were better). Why can’t they have better combat routines or something? The point is there has to be something other than being large and having 9000000000000 hit points that makes them bosses.

Przemek.6835:

The whole discussion about trinity on this forum is like a bunch of kids saying that everything is easy and they can do everything as good as someone who practiced doing something for years because “hey, it’s just about doing this that and not doing this and that, easy I can do it too np”. Ignorance.

Przemek.6835:

Ignorance.

That’s always been the Guild Wars community. Way back since GW1. They bite hard on the no-subscription fee bit and the ignorant righteous indignation of all else takes root. Ever wonder why WoW and SWTOR are the only MMO’s mentioned by 95% of the ones who “hate traditional MMO’s”? They don’t know of any others lol. Get used to it, man. :x

WoW is mentioned for good boss battles because that’s the one thing it did do well. Also Vindictus boss battles are (or used to be) pretty intense. Asheron’s Call had great boss battles. Transformers The War for Cybertron and it’s sequel The Fall of Cybertron have some great boss battles. Oh, Guild Wars One had some pretty fun boss battles too. And all of the bosses in GW1 didn’t have a billion hit points and they almost always dropped something good. In GW2 it seems like for every 10k hit points a boss has you have a 0.01% chance of getting any drop at all and a 0.00001% chance of getting a good drop. Why? Cash shop. That’s why.

HiddenNick.7206:

Also when I use mace I’m becoming a hybrid healer/tank which is never possible in Trinity games.

Absolutely false. Shadowknights in EQ and EQ2 are hybrid tank/healers, able and required to do both at the same time.

Besides that obvious example, we could look at something like the Paladin or Druid from WoW, hybrids that are capable of filling all roles.

Rather than taking AWAY options in favor of making everyone do DPS as their main role, why not do what WoW has done? Give people multiple options for what roles they can fill. That way instead of dungeons being the mindless zergfests that they are, they could instead be balanced towards intelligent pulling and aggro maintenance, proper upkeep of healing abilities, etc.

You don’t need to have some mythical archaic trinity system from back in the EQ1 era. Heck, there isn’t really any MMOs even using the old standard trinity system that everyone here whines about. If you look at WoW again, you have a game with 11 classes. Out of those: 5 can main tank. 5 can main heal. 11 can DPS. You only need 1 tank, 1 healer, and 3 dps for the simple dungeons. It takes a whopping couple minutes at most to find a group. If you want to be dps, there is nothing stopping you from doing so. This myth that it takes you forever and ever to find a tank simply isn’t true in this era of cross-realm dungeon finding systems(which I might add, GW2 already has the support for cross-realm grouping).

I’ve yet to hear a single reason against more defined roles with any actual merit or solid point to it. It always boils down to not wanting to wait to find a tank or healer. And I’m sorry, but we have plenty of examples where it just isn’t a problem.

Honestly I prefer the lack of the Trinity, and not just for party setup reasons. For starters, any ‘DPS’ had a very mediocre job, just shoot at the boss and let the other 2 do all the work. Healers had a slightly better role, but not great. And well tanks, just had to keep boss attention. Now to I agree improvements can be made to gw2? Of course, the game is still in its first year, chill people xP

I dont see bringing the trinity back as a solution, but some things can be done (as mentioned above) such as closing off the boss rooms so people can’t res and run in again. This will put more strain on teams who don’t save downed players. Also if a boss is chasing someone for 10 secs w/o any hits, they should switch targets. Lastly, I think bosses should me more vicious in the sense they will target downed players, so the team will have to save their partners quickly.

Also, I’d like to say that an increase in difficulty will kill it for casual players, but that being said a Fractal Type system is a step in the right direction. Allowing the hardcore players to get their fill on difficulty might be what the normal dungeons need, and although some bosses may not be exciting as stated, their promise to make dungeons more fun may solve that issue.

Just my 2 cents <3

XanBie is right, making existing dungeons play the way fractals do (no res rushing) would fix a lot of the percieved easyness.

emikochan.8504:

XanBie is right, making existing dungeons play the way fractals do (no res rushing) would fix a lot of the percieved easyness.

aggreed make the normal dungeons loose wp’s and make it like the checkpoints when you wipe completely like fractals/story instances do would do a LOT
Yes it might turn some ppl off from doing it due to them becoming “too hard” but those you do get to play with in tuern would likely be more competent in general too

Przemek.6835:

Wtf? Those are just… basics.

Yes they are… I’m not arguing with that.

Przemek.6835:

DPSers can do A LOT of mistakes, gearing, doing dps,

Covered all that here:

Just choose the best build from the internet and use your skills in the correct order.

Przemek.6835:

failing at boss mechanics

Did you even read my post? Or did you just skipped this:

(I’ve just skipped specific boss mechanic intentionally. I’m aware of that some fights require much more from all roles)

Przemek.6835:

Same with healer

You said it…

Rhysati.4932:

Besides that obvious example, we could look at something like the Paladin or Druid from WoW, hybrids that are capable of filling all roles.

But you HAVE TO choose one of those roles!

For example you choose to be a tank (like Paladin with Protection) and you use healers equipment then you will suck hard with tanking.

In gw2 it’s combined effort that counts. So if you tank a bit and heal a bit then your doing a lot.

PS. I’m not saying that holy trinity is completely broken! I’m just saying that Gw2 system isn’t as bad as some of you say it is.

Given the quality of a fair number of Fractals bosses I’m pretty confident that as time goes by ArenaNet will improve their boss encounter design, and with all the new things they’ll put into future content they’ll be able to use mechanics from dungeon bosses in the open world.

ArenaNet have also stated somewhere before that they plan on keeping older content fresh so I can hope they’ll stick to that and look back on old content that’s using somewhat boring mechanics and spice things up a bit.

HiddenNick.7206:

Rhysati.4932:

Besides that obvious example, we could look at something like the Paladin or Druid from WoW, hybrids that are capable of filling all roles.

But you HAVE TO choose one of those roles!

For example you choose to be a tank (like Paladin with Protection) and you use healers equipment then you will suck hard with tanking.

In gw2 it’s combined effort that counts. So if you tank a bit and heal a bit then your doing a lot.

PS. I’m not saying that holy trinity is completely broken! I’m just saying that Gw2 system isn’t as bad as some of you say it is.

I made a big post to reply to you and then the forum decided to go nuts again so I am not doing it again.

So just a short reply here. Not all game require what you say. Someone already mentioned EQ I think.

But on the subject of choosing a role. Yes you have to make a choice and that’s the point. Making a choice that has consequences makes the choice matter. It means something. GW2 is too flexible in roles because there aren’t really any. Add to that the lack of depth and flexibility in the skill and trait system and then there’s nothing left that keeps my interest here.

It obviously is enough for you but this is this the most boring set of character classes I’ve ever had to play with. It all looks great for sure, but functionally it’s all too generic. It just gives too much flexibility in the role department and too little in the class depth.

Vasham.2408:

Lupi is the only decent boss in this game.

Most of the current bosses in this game have 1 phase. For all the hate on lack of trinity well this is the thing that most people are really missing. This boss has multiple phases and requires a group to talk about them up front, learn from what was done wrong, adjust then try again. To use WoW as reference that is what separates a raid boss from a heroic dungeon boss and raiders do not typically view heroics as “progression content”.

I really do think we just need to give them time on this one and see what they come up with. The fractals is such a huge improvement over the explorable dungeons and they have stated their next priority is to take a second pass at the release dungeons to make them a better experience. They need time to see what works and what doesn’t work with their new experiment and add mechanics/challenges accordingly.

I dont really understand how is the holy trinity any better than what we have here…
If a player is using a DPS character, another one is using a tanker and the thrid uses a healer… Doesnt that equate to a lack of variety? Yes, I have played WoW to death, and other MMO’s with that system, and yet I always wanted to be able to do a bit of everything. So if anyone here just wants the trinity back, shouldnt they just go PLAY something else? Why change something that has been stated it would be DIFFERENT.

Another thing, Yes, Bosses need to be improved. Some have waaaaaay too much hp and about the same moves, but there are others who are quite the challenge. A lot of you say this is an afk fest, well I would like to see ANYONE here AFK on Lupi or Kholer and I will eat my socks!

GIVE ANET TIME!

ColinJohanson.2394:

On our goals for 2013 will be evaluating all of the bosses and creatures in the game, from open world to dungeons, to try and make them more exciting and fun to fight against.

In general if anything has a really high health pool, it needs to have unique abilities to make it exciting for the entire time, or actually change abilities/tactics as it goes down in health to ensure it stays fun and exciting to fight against.

We realize there are a number of bosses in the game, from the open world to instances that all can be more fun to fight than they are now. We’ll be tackling that this year in part of our goal to make our core game as strong as possible.

Ha, look at you Mister Double Post!

Here’s a random thought, and I’m not sure how well it would work or easy it would be to implements… if various bosses had “pools” of skills they could dip into at random that could really make a fight interesting. Say, hypothetically, people are fighting a boss and it comes to where that boss would use skill “5”. Skill “5” could, in my imagination at least, randomly select one of ten, twenty, however many skills from a pool of them to use. People wouldn’t know what to expect… one time it could be a stomp, another a big AoE changing everyone’s boons to conditions.

Like I said, a random thought… but it would add a whole new layer of dynamic to the fights.

ColinJohanson.2394:

On our goals for 2013 will be evaluating all of the bosses and creatures in the game, from open world to dungeons, to try and make them more exciting and fun to fight against.

In general if anything has a really high health pool, it needs to have unique abilities to make it exciting for the entire time, or actually change abilities/tactics as it goes down in health to ensure it stays fun and exciting to fight against.

We realize there are a number of bosses in the game, from the open world to instances that all can be more fun to fight than they are now. We’ll be tackling that this year in part of our goal to make our core game as strong as possible.

Even Colin is having lag issues on the website. Double post ftw

Take points from WoW, make all bosses have phases with unique abilities and functions at certain health % maybe even enrage timers, no wp zerg rushing should be allowed in ANY dungeon. Because with the boring skill system we need absolutely amazing fights to keep it fun.

More team work, buff a lot of the combo fields dramatically or make it that they are actually REQUIRED in some fights or at least heavily influence a fight other than moar deepz. Let combo fields be able to chain off each other to make even more powerful effects. Stray away from this pure-DPS trinity you have going on, it’s lame.

Let us heal

Anything to make combat engaging.

As I said in my earlier post, yes, there is still some polish that can be added – and if fractals are an indication, they are definitely doing that.

At the same time, the fights are more engaging than alot of people give them credit for.

Let’s take a very basic fight – the giant nightmare vine in Twilight Arbor. Yes, even if you do the fight “wrong” you can still beat it. You can waypoint death rush the fight even if you ignore all the mechanics.

The challenge is in doing it right.

Where one group just lets people die to volatile blossoms and does a straight dps burn on the big vine when it comes out, a good group will add layers of strategy – assigning a player with fast attack abilities to deal with blossoms, having heavy dps switch and burn the smaller vines, getting a “tanky” player to focus on additional small vines and the big one to draw fire from the more fragile dps, having a support class focus on removing poisons and laying down combo fields, etc.

You may say ,

“so what? the zerg group can still kill it.”

and you would be right. The difference comes in the definition of failure and success. For me, if I die a couple of times on the above fight, I consider it a personal failure. The punishment for that failure is a repair bill (which only affects me), where in most games, the punishment is not being able to proceed in the dungeon (which affects the entire group).

I think most people get stuck on this one element – that you are allowed to proceed in an instance even if you did a poor job on the boss and died a bunch of times.

Im actually okay with this because it allows me proceed at my pace while others in the group may be at a different level. I can measure my personal progression without completely hindering the groups ability to proceed. If Im new to a fight, I wont neccesarily hold the entire group back because I died. At the same time, I can see an argument for doing away with waypoint zerging and going with the system used in fractals (and do think, if they did, it would change most people’s perception about the fights).

Again, all of that said, I do foresee the developers only getting better at designing encounters – with more multi-phase and extremely complex encounters in our future.

As far as the trinity is concerned and as a final note – there are thousands of video games where it doesn’t exist and fights are still interesting (in fact, most don’t use it). In games where it does exist, it works because developers design fights around it. The rules of engagement in GW2 are different and the developers are designing around those. People just have to get past the “only one way to do an MMO” mentality and give ANet a chance to show us what they can really do.

ColinJohanson.2394:

On our goals for 2013 will be evaluating all of the bosses and creatures in the game, from open world to dungeons, to try and make them more exciting and fun to fight against.

In general if anything has a really high health pool, it needs to have unique abilities to make it exciting for the entire time, or actually change abilities/tactics as it goes down in health to ensure it stays fun and exciting to fight against.

We realize there are a number of bosses in the game, from the open world to instances that all can be more fun to fight than they are now. We’ll be tackling that this year in part of our goal to make our core game as strong as possible.

I really could not be more disappointed with world-boss encounters. Take, for example, the event to defeat Tequatl the Sunless.

Tequatl has a few tools at his disposal: an AOE fear, the environmental “fingers” which are supposed to throw melee characters away from Tequatl, summoned bone walls to defend Tequatl from ranged attacks, and dangerous bloated creeper minions that advance on the player’s position.

On a player’s side, there’s the option of attacking Tequatl or its various defenses (the bone walls, the “fingers”, and the minions), and we’re charged with manning and protecting turrets as well as the Asura “mega laser” (which must spend several minutes recharging between shots), in addition to defending turret repair crews.

All in all, it sounds like the stage is set for one epic battle where players are scrambling to tackle the crisis of the moment, making use of a variety of tools to overcome a variety of obstacles in a tricky battle.

In reality, it’s five minutes of a zerg of players attacking Tequatl’s big toe and nothing else.

I look at World of Warcraft’s “Onyxia” dragon encounter, which at this point is ridiculously old from an MMO technology perspective, and I find myself wondering how content so dated and simple can be executed so brilliantly when compared to the boss fights in GW2. Content-wise, ArenaNet kicks so much tail in so many areas, and so I know the effort and desire is there. But when it comes to these boss fights.. I just don’t get it. It’s like you made the mistake of believing players would take the required steps to make these encounters interesting themselves as long as you left the tools laying around to do so, rather than realizing players will always stick with whatever method works easiest. In this case, it’s beating on a dragon’s toe with the weapon they already have in their hands.

If you don’t want encounters like Tequatl the Sunless to boil down to a zerg of players attacking a dragon’s toe for five minutes, you need to flat out prevent them from doing so. If you want them to use the other toys in the playground, you have to force them to do so. Players are never going to make the encounter difficult or epic for you. You have to design it in a way that it can only be epic and nothing else.

I doubt I’m telling you anything you don’t already know. But, ugh, these world encounters need serious help quickly.

Edge.4180:

- snip -

The Tequatl example is a good one and brings up a tricky situation for ArenaNet. In these world encounters, where you dont necessarily know/have control over the people you are fighting alongside, how do you design a fight that rewards playing well and punishes playing poorly (ignoring mechanics).

I think Tequatl goes too far in one direction – making the fight too easy – and a fight like Grenth goes to far in the other – punishing everyone if even one person does something wrong – in that case, dragging shades to the NPC.

I love both of those fights as they are now, but could see where they could/should make the reward/punishment system more personal – while still requiring some coordination in the fight.

As an example – the simplest way is to simply kill those players who try to zerg Tequatl – give him massive stacks of retaliation and drop more deadly poison clouds between him and the bone walls during certain phases – forcing players to deal with the walls and adds. At the same time, you could make the bone walls immune to everything except the siege weaponry (just a couple of examples to make a point). To encourage/reward at least some coordination, make certain semi-complex activities required.

To encourage some coordination, make certain elements of the fight mandatory for success and remove elements that can be exploited to cause a fail (like dragging shades onto the npc in grenth). An example of a cooperative mechanic that couldnt be exploited would be to employ four switches for the asura mega-laser that have to be activated after the laser has charged up. Even though one person could do it, having 4 people coordinate would be much faster/safer.

There are many ways things like this could be done to spice up these – already fun – encounters and make them feel much more epic.

Thank you Colin for your statements, always a pleasure.

What I think about Boss-Fights with big crowds of people: make content in those battles for everyone.

for example the possible content for Tequatl:
-) very easy: an explosion destroyed the supply-tanks and ammunition for the heavy weaponry is spread all over the battleground. Return those to the mortars.
-) easy: use the mortars and shoot the boss + defending the mortars from enemies
-) medium: …
-) hard: …
-) very hard: get up close. This part is pretty unvorgiving. People have to learn the animation-patterns of the boss in order to survive the attacks. Otherwise they die. It won’t be possible to get close and survive without having REALLY good movement.

now this sounds not new, but that’s not all. The new thing would be: the boss can only die when each of those steps is done with success. I’d describe it this way: the Boss has a health bar for each of those steps.
-) very-easy healthbar
-) easy healthbar
-) medium healthbar
-) hard healthbar
-) very hard healthbar – for the pro-players

This means: a Boss can’t be defeated only the easy-way (shooting mortars in this example). The really good team which goes toe-to-toe with the dragon has to be successful too. The way it is now there is not really a very hard way, you can stand next to the dragon and nothing happens most of the time. I stood in front of the Shatterer and he ignored me. The closer you are to a dragon, the more dangerous it should be. Take the champions in the open world. Each of those is more dangerous than a dragon currently. This shouldn’t be imho.

more advanced bosses would additionaly have the players to bring all health-bars to 25% in the same minute, else certain health-bars would regenerate.

So people can choose which health bar they want to drain. They can try the close combat route – if that’s too hard and they constantly get killed, they can help in those easier routes. The unexperienced players would cheer for the elite-group. And the pro-players would need the less experienced players too, so that the battle wouldn’t last forever.

The more you participate on a specific loot-bar, the more loot you’d get. Not better loot, but more of it. Doing the hardest part with gold would also be a good choice for cosmetic rewards (like a piece of armor made of dragonscales for example). So in the end every player would get exotics, the easy-route 1, the hard-route 2, the very hard route 2+cosmetic.

to add something important:

Anet has now the chance to make those battles really as difficult as they should be, because they want to bring the Ascended gear to the people in more varied ways.

ColinJohanson.2394:

One of our goals for 2013 will be evaluating all of the bosses and creatures in the game, from open world to dungeons, to try and make them more exciting and fun to fight against.

In general if anything has a really high health pool, it needs to have unique abilities to make it exciting for the entire time, or actually change abilities/tactics as it goes down in health to ensure it stays fun and exciting to fight against.

We realize there are a number of bosses in the game, from the open world to instances that all can be more fun to fight than they are now. We’ll be tackling that this year in part of our goal to make our core game as strong as possible.

Thank you! That’s good to hear.

ColinJohanson.2394:

One of our goals for 2013 will be evaluating all of the bosses and creatures in the game, from open world to dungeons, to try and make them more exciting and fun to fight against.

Thank you! Really happy to hear this!
And please, don’t forget to evaluate the final battle (Zhaitan’s battle). It really needs something more! Everything else can be fantastic, but if the final battle is disappointing, players will be negative about their opinion of the game. After all, it is the FINAL battle, it’s suppose to be the hardest and the most epic of all!

I’m really glad ArenaNet has bosses fights in their thoughts!

(As an opinion: you could make an inquiry to see what players like and dislike about Zhaitan’s battle)

zerg and dodge.

After playing many MMO’s and games that have boss fights I’ve come to the realization that the bosses never actually feel like they deserve their position as a “boss”.
Most bosses (from a game play perspective) can be summarized as “a visual spreadsheet” where winning is a case of applying an algorithm that “solves” the spreadsheet, it just feels like a case of “we aren’t heroes because we defeated the big bad, we’re heroes because we know maths” which isn’t very heroic in a fantasy context.

In an ideal context bosses should have a dynamic AI system that is more complex than the “trash” that precedes it, and a big pool of abilities that the AI system can call upon to make the boss a threat rather than a spreadsheet. The only downside to this is that the boss actually becomes “hard” for most people if they are poor at reacting to an unknown circumstance or action, which creates a balance problem in addition to the “this is too hard, can you please nerf it” mentality that seems prevalent in games today.

PS. If I can make a simple AI that can defeat your “boss” then it isn’t a very good “boss” to begin with.

Many of the open world boss battles are mind numbingly boring sadly.

The first time I fought The Claw of Jormag my thoughts were “Holy crap, that fight was awesome!” However, after a few runs and getting over how cool it was that a dragon goes bouncing across the zone, I thought it was agonizing. You have two options really. Smash your face against the Ice Wall of Doom or you kill elementals. There is little danger in dying and the ice spikes and shards the dragon sends down the middle of the hill are pretty much negligible and easily avoided. You get feared around a bit, but really it is just a time sink. Then part two comes around and you can sit on a ledge and shoot the dragon the whole time, or you can smash ice pillars. If you really want to shake things up you can fight the champions/veterans endlessly for really no reason.

My point is, the only thing that used to make the fight bearable was the drops made you enough materials or money to sit through the repetitive pain. Now that is gone it is really bad, especially if enough people don’t show to make it happen as quickly as possible. The fight is one of the coolest fights visually in the game, and it would be really, really nice if there was a good amount of effort and teamwork required to kill the dragon. Of course, it would also be nice if that effort was rewarded in equal measure.

Thanks for the reply and the look ahead though Colin. I have my fingers crossed!

i really like a lot of these ideas. it kind of matches the whole, ever changing event and world. us as players are consatntly improving, changing builds and traits… the same could be applied to mobs no? or bosses and vets at least. as time goes on, surely after getting their butt handed to them by random pugs of asura, charr, humans teaming up.. they’d get tired of it. and learn new moves? get stronger? so to seek out revenge on those that always thwarted their plans to take over so-and-so village! so with each big patch perhaps, programming, time, complications permitting, if new fighting styles could be added to bosses, new moves, new mechanisms… it’d make fight more interesting too : ))) so even veterans of the player base, could experience something new and more challenging and have to “re-learn” so to speak. and what’s more valuable than truly being in a world that’s always changing and learning!D

ColinJohanson.2394:

One of our goals for 2013 will be evaluating all of the bosses and creatures in the game, from open world to dungeons, to try and make them more exciting and fun to fight against.

In general if anything has a really high health pool, it needs to have unique abilities to make it exciting for the entire time, or actually change abilities/tactics as it goes down in health to ensure it stays fun and exciting to fight against.

We realize there are a number of bosses in the game, from the open world to instances that all can be more fun to fight than they are now. We’ll be tackling that this year in part of our goal to make our core game as strong as possible.

So are you going to fix the “spam 2 to win” final boss of this game as well? I refuse to believe you guys can honestly call that a well designed encounter.

@Vasham
I agree with you i was so excited to fight zhaitan the first time only to get dissapointed by buttonmashing attack button and shield button without any aiming or movement at all i almost couldn’t believe that was it? did they really made it so braindead? yep they did. and it toke me about 1 week to get there.