Guild Wars 2

Alex.9268:

Making condition damage personal would already be a big step in the right direction. As long kitten people have to compete for one burning debuff nothing else really matters, the design is just stupid.

The design limitations are there because each zone instance only has so much computing power available. While an instanced Dungeon may be able to support a more robust condition damage system, having the system work differently in a Dungeon from a zone would be confusing and inconsistent. It would result in NEW player complaints and just more Dev headaches.

Certainly trying to revamp the entire system to reduce the computing resources needed for a zone to keep up with them would be welcome, but that would likely require a MAJOR change to the combat system that likely would introduce OTHER imbalance issues the Devs are aware of and simply do not want to unleash (or they believe there would be an issue and simply don’t have the resources to pursue the possilbity).

TheDaiBish.9735:

Harper.4173:

@TheDaiBish – that’s all nice and fine but do you really think players want to fight against that?

Do you really think it would make for an enjoyable experience for the majority of the player base?
And how much staying power does your system have?

People repeat dungeons now for the loot. How much do you think they’d repeat a hard and adaptive dungeon?

If you make it too hard for players to get what they want in game they’ll just move on to the next game.

Anet is here to keep the game alive and going not to cater to people who are confusing Guild Wars 2 with Dark Souls and Dark Souls II.

Firstly, there are degrees of difficulty between GW2 and Dark Souls. I don’t remember asking in my post for content that is as difficult as content in Dark Souls.

Secondly, I don’t pretend to know what the majority of players want. What I think would happen though is that players would complain for a few weeks, then adapt. Overall, I feel that adaptive dungeons wouldn’t increase the difficulty of dungeons, but have dungeons maintain a level of difficulty. This, IMHO, would also increase replayability.

Thirdly, adaptive dungeons would also get players to look at the tools in their toolset. As it is, when most content can be done with a single tactic and the same set of skills, it’s completely pointless to add new skills and traits. The whole point of horizontal progression in the form of skills is to add new tools for the player. If the content doesn’t get the player to use these tools, then progression in this form is meaningless.

Finally, I think it’s pretty sad that dungeons have devolved into nothing more than loot gauntlets, but maybe that’s just me.

I have to disagree with you.

Players complain for weeks then leave. Not a lot are going to just “adapt”.
Players adapt to a new game environment – if the dungeons are in a certain way from the game’s launch they’ll adapt to it, sure.

If the dungeons are changed 2 years after the game’s launch most players will feel cheated and these feelings will make them want to pick up and leave.

It’s as simple as this – you make the rules of the game and then we play the game – people hate it when the rules change during the game.
The solution to this is – new content. You can make it anyway you like and players won’t feel cheated.

Dungeon difficulty – another interesting topic – dungeons were designed to be difficult ( and indeed they are) when you’re doing them at their intended level with less than exotic gear.
They were difficult at game start – right now a properly geared party will steam on through with little effort but a party of new players will have quite a bit of trouble. Your suggestion would make dungeons inaccessible to new players coming in.

Dungeon replayability – let’s face it – without the rewards people would have stopped long ago. Even with your system over hundreds of runs people will get tired.

The best option I believe is – Hard Mode with better rewards – thus giving players their number one motivator to go back to dungeons more and better loot.

Your adaptive dungeon philosophy and it forcing players to use more tools kind of goes against Anet’s intended “play how you want” paradigm.

The “Play how you want” Idea is at the core of the game – How can you tell? Any set-up with any gear and any weapons can (provided they’re not terrible or afk) finish the dungeons in the game with no problem at all.
That’s how the game was intended and thought through. Forcing players to do this and that will just annoy them and segregate the player base.

It will force classes that can perform a certain task better to be forever stuck to that role in that dungeon, while other classes will be seen as undesirable since they can’t do that role just as well.

Dungeons will never be more than loot gauntlets since the game is devoid of loot as it is.
Also the fact that they’re not interesting or engaging is another big issue. Most of them feel like a Saturday morning cartoon and don’t really have much story going for them.

Sartharina.3542:

Not impossible from a resource perspective, but probably difficult. And the threat of driving away casual people unwilling to rise to a presented challenge (Even if it’s not actually harder than their current activities) didn’t stop them from implementing the Great Jungle Wurm or overhauling Teq, and sticking with their decision to do so in spite of the complaints of the difficulty – yes, people were whining, but they were also starting to rise to the challenge once they got the griping out of their system.

Yes and no to what you’re saying.
GJW was added on top of everything -as far as casual players are concerned it doesn’t exist or matter.
Teq revamp was something that was needed to give the hardcore players something to do.
You’ll notice however that most world bosses were left easy mode so the majority of players have something to farm.

And as far as Teq goes – this “rise to the challenge” actually only applies to a very few people that care about the event and organize runs. Most players that do Teq just show up to spam 1 and freecoast to victory being carried by TTS, MYTH or other big communities of interested players that happen to be doing the run.

Brother Grimm.5176:

The design limitations are there because each zone instance only has so much computing power available. While an instanced Dungeon may be able to support a more robust condition damage system, having the system work differently in a Dungeon from a zone would be confusing and inconsistent. It would result in NEW player complaints and just more Dev headaches.

Certainly trying to revamp the entire system to reduce the computing resources needed for a zone to keep up with them would be welcome, but that would likely require a MAJOR change to the combat system that likely would introduce OTHER imbalance issues the Devs are aware of and simply do not want to unleash (or they believe there would be an issue and simply don’t have the resources to pursue the possilbity).

making a better ai increase the difficulty much more significantly that anet will have to reduce the amount of mobs in the game. Basically, player will not have to deal with as many annoying mobs doing cripple and other debuffs in open world maps.

No more hordes of stupid dedgre in fractals.

I disagree about the imbalance issues. Builds are balance around human stats and human intellegent gameplay. Lowering mob stats will benefit players as they will be closer to pvp. Less mobs, lower health, lower killing blows, but the mobs are still harder.

Aza.2105:

I hope most people realize that even after the “nerf” zerker remains relatively the same. It should illustrate to everyone that was never the problem, but the AI for mobs is.

Nope. The change to crit damage and the meta not shifting does not logically mean that AI was the real problem. That assumes that the change to crit damage was intended to shift the meta by itself which is not only a popular interpretation but a false assertion. The only roadmap we have to what they really want to change to address the current meta starts here with the introduction to the Ferocity change and what they want to do with the meta going forward http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/b/496005243?t=8m40s . For some strange reason people keep focusing on the ferocity change alone. I agree with the opinion that “smarter” AI isn’t necessarily the best or even most obvious option given that something similar was tried in beta and was scrapped. If anything, the solution would ideally be more comprehensive than simply updating mob skills and AI. Part of the issue at hand is the way active and passive defenses are handled and where the lines of efficacy are drawn within certain stat allocations.