Guild Wars 2

Jerus.4350:

If you look at that whole post I even note that they coudl do a harder version with all bosses at once

There are some things I really enjoy. Locking it behind me winning the roll of the dice… well kitten that. And, that’s why I still hope when they add new challenging content it comes int he form of a dungeon rather than a fractal. It’s purely because of the RNG nature of fractals, words can’t describe my hatred for RNG based “fun”. “roll a 1 and you get to do what you wanted to have fun with, roll a 2,3,4,5,or 6 and you don’t, muahahahah”.

My dream, which they won’t do because it’s too much work (specially more ui) is single fractal challenges, where you choose out of a list:

“Do the Snowblind Fractal with the following instability effects: the fire buff lasts half as much time and take a hit of X damage each time a stack of frostbite is applied”

Give a list each day, make the fast ones ugly as hell, and you get a reward for completing (1) of them, then we have some actions.

That sounds like a lot of fun.

Jerus.4350:

If you look at that whole post I even note that they coudl do a harder version with all bosses at once

There are some things I really enjoy. Locking it behind me winning the roll of the dice… well kitten that. And, that’s why I still hope when they add new challenging content it comes int he form of a dungeon rather than a fractal. It’s purely because of the RNG nature of fractals, words can’t describe my hatred for RNG based “fun”. “roll a 1 and you get to do what you wanted to have fun with, roll a 2,3,4,5,or 6 and you don’t, muahahahah”.

Shouldn’t the dislike be toward RNG rewards? I see RNG encounters as the first step to challenge, second would be RNG in mobs from that encounter. Harder mobs in dungeons is a lazy band aid, you end up knowing every best action and it goes from hard to easy, you just recycled the same issue you were fighting against. RNG rewards are what’s not making them popular, as long you know what you are up against it becomes easy.

Sagat.3285:

Jerus.4350:

If you look at that whole post I even note that they coudl do a harder version with all bosses at once

There are some things I really enjoy. Locking it behind me winning the roll of the dice… well kitten that. And, that’s why I still hope when they add new challenging content it comes int he form of a dungeon rather than a fractal. It’s purely because of the RNG nature of fractals, words can’t describe my hatred for RNG based “fun”. “roll a 1 and you get to do what you wanted to have fun with, roll a 2,3,4,5,or 6 and you don’t, muahahahah”.

Shouldn’t the dislike be toward RNG rewards? I see RNG encounters as the first step to challenge, second would be RNG in mobs from that encounter. Harder mobs in dungeons is a lazy band aid, you end up knowing every best action and it goes from hard to easy, you just recycled the same issue you were fighting against. RNG rewards are what’s not making them popular, as long you know what you are up against it becomes easy.

While I hate RNG rewards I really don’t care about rewards all that much in this game, I got what I need, if I need more I farm for a while. I hate RNG as a concept for a lot of things, while I feel randomness in attacks is good so as to keep you having to pay attention, I don’t like RNG for loot, or at least not in the all or nothing fashion. And I don’t like RNG based content, where I can’t do the things I enjoy unless I get lucky, it just sucks when you have your favorite encounters locked behind a wall of RNG.

Random loot has very strong motivating features — if the payoff is big enough.

It’s one of the core concepts of how FTP mobile games make money ><

Windsagio.1340:

Random loot has very strong motivating features — if the payoff is big enough.

It’s one of the core concepts of how FTP mobile games make money ><

If you’re talking about BLT chests or the mystic toilet, those are different. That’s strait gambling, and I’m ok with that, but when I do content, I want to know I’m at least making progress when I’m after a certain reward. I absolutely hate RNG to the point that when I finally get stuff I’m not even happy because I’m just thinking about “god I hate RNG”.

Jerus.4350:

Sagat.3285:

Jerus.4350:

If you look at that whole post I even note that they coudl do a harder version with all bosses at once

There are some things I really enjoy. Locking it behind me winning the roll of the dice… well kitten that. And, that’s why I still hope when they add new challenging content it comes int he form of a dungeon rather than a fractal. It’s purely because of the RNG nature of fractals, words can’t describe my hatred for RNG based “fun”. “roll a 1 and you get to do what you wanted to have fun with, roll a 2,3,4,5,or 6 and you don’t, muahahahah”.

Shouldn’t the dislike be toward RNG rewards? I see RNG encounters as the first step to challenge, second would be RNG in mobs from that encounter. Harder mobs in dungeons is a lazy band aid, you end up knowing every best action and it goes from hard to easy, you just recycled the same issue you were fighting against. RNG rewards are what’s not making them popular, as long you know what you are up against it becomes easy.

While I hate RNG rewards I really don’t care about rewards all that much in this game, I got what I need, if I need more I farm for a while. I hate RNG as a concept for a lot of things, while I feel randomness in attacks is good so as to keep you having to pay attention, I don’t like RNG for loot, or at least not in the all or nothing fashion. And I don’t like RNG based content, where I can’t do the things I enjoy unless I get lucky, it just sucks when you have your favorite encounters locked behind a wall of RNG.

The thing is if it’s your favorite it’s usually the less problematic/annoying to you. That’s to avoid while it is an opinion to prefer it the RNG in encounters and mobs is used to put you out of your comfort zone thus creating a challenge it doesn’t have to be hardcore it just has to be anti-casual,GW2 only has it in encounters tough.

cletiscake.9173:

I see a lot of people here saying that the only way to kill the Zerker Meta is to make dungeon content harder (less stacking in corners, and less DPS stats), forcing people to run builds with more survive-ability instead of full Zerker. This isn’t the solution. Have you ever tried going into a dungeon with “tankier gear” instead of Zerkers?

I used to run tanky builds all the time. I’ve been away from GW2 for 2 years. I’ve been testing the waters of it the last few days.

The more things change the more they stay the same I guess.

I’ve been running tanky builds again. No problems.

Nobody actually seems to notice. All I notice is that mobs seem to like attacking me over the others a little more, and I’m fine with that.

One way to really kill the stacking meme: making living objects solid.
- No ability to stand in the same spot as another creature.
YES this will drive up lag, but if you do it right, not by that much.

GW1 had this, but only for enemies. I suggest adding it for both sides.

There is already some kind of invisible box around all characters, used for determining if you can fit through a door or jumping in caves and such. Just make it so no other character can pass through that box.

(optionally limit this to dungeons / fractals or jumping puzzles will get ‘griefed’, or… add an ability to push someone – and then jumping puzzles will get griefed in another way… so maybe some limits would be needed)

cletiscake.9173:

a) You have limited amounts of dodges and blocks which means you will take more hits over a longer fight. Because Mobs hit so hard, it’s more efficient to run Zerker and kill everything quickly before you run out of ways to avoid damage.

Technically this is true. In play, I actually don’t have this problem. When I am not staked somewhere, I find other solutions. Including running a thought out build and thinking about the order I use my buttons in rather than just spamming my keybinds.

In practice, I find that I can always find some solution. My reactions might not always be fast enough to get to it… because I can always see that it is or was there (sometimes I notice it too late).

The other thing is… I find this a LOT more fun.

Sure, I am not as efficient.

BUT THIS IS A GAME, NOT MY TAX RETURN. I DON’T CARE ABOUT EFFICIENT, I CARE ABOUT FUN.

Ask yourself this: WHY are you grinding to get 3.26 gold per hour (or whatever)?
- what is it you hope to achieve with that gold?

Buy a new look for your armor, or get a legendary right? Or something like that.

Ok, why? And once you answer that, why again?

At the end of the day, when you finally run out of questions to ask why over… the last question should be ’WTF am I doing here?" and the answer should be “having fun.”

Now just see how many steps between the first question and the last can you skip…

Me? I go all the way to beginning… my playstyle better be fun, or I got other things to do.

So I like tanky builds, I’m going to play them.

If you don’t like tanky builds, fine. Play what you like.

Frankly so far nobody’s noticed I was not ‘doing it right’ and I’ve been using that new fangled-LFG tool the whole time I’ve been back.

And what else is nice about this is… I don’t care if they run zerker, as long as they don’t bug me about running tanky. It actually meshes together well enough anyway.

cletiscake.9173:

b) Not stacking in corners is simply not feasible. Because there is no reliable aggro mechanic, and no reliable way to “tank” damage (due to limited blocks and dodges), fighting mobs becomes a chaotic mess.

This is actually not true.

Things get more complex, but that is NOT the same as not feasible. Back before I took off, my guild ran things without ever using zerker / corner stack runs. We all came from other MMOs – and we frankly didn’t even know you could pull off this stacking stuff…
- and I’ve had the ‘Dungeon Master’ title for over 2 years now… (or however long its been since the Karka Island part of Living Story – that’s about when I got it). Which is to say, I got it running the dungeons they way they were intended to be run, and without any of the gimmicks. All but one of them (I forget which), which I PUGed and ended up in a group of 4 zerkers and myself. But that was just the first time I went to it. I led guildies through it later.

We used a lot of team tactics, careful pulls, mobility, calling targets, coordinated buffs, and other tricks. And we also learned how to do this without much communication – as we often brought 1-2 PUG people along.

cletiscake.9173:

design encounters with more order to them.* The developers need to allow other builds to emerge.

Anet really needs to communicate to us how they want us to play the game. They need to talk about it openly. IF they truly don’t intend for us to stack in corners, they need to describe to us how we are supposed to cope without a Trinity. And if they want to lessen reliance on DPS, how will they go about doing that?

They did communicate it, a lot, pre-launch. Watch some of the hype videos from before launch.

ArenaNet lost its mojo after that. I think they were unprepared for the players they got. They were expecting people to play like they did during the first few years of Guild Wars 1. They were not prepared for the changes a decade of other MMOs brought into the player-meme.

When they zerker thing popped up, they seemed to flounder with no answer for it. It was NOT what they designed around, and it never occured to them, I suspect, in testing, to try and ‘kitten ’ the content… They seem to have tested to make sure all the mechanics worked, and tested to see that if players coordinated well, and ran as a varied team switching up tactics in play, the thing would work.

But they failed to test for ‘cheats’ or ways to ‘break’ the content.

Post launch, at least up until I left… the dungeons seemed to be getting sloppier as they rapidly shot off a number of different styles to see if they could find a quick fix for a fatal flaw in the original concept… And it showed. Thinks like the dungeon on Southshore that had such a weird way to be done looked like obvious ‘testing while live’ attempts to find a way to fix something they were unprepared for…

Its not the developers that need to allow other builds to emerge though – its the players.

But the devs, do apparently still need to fix the ability of their content to be ‘kitten through / run around’.

NoTrigger.8396:

i got my dungeon master title 3 weeks after my first char hit 80 and the only experience i had was leveling from 1-40, because i crafted the other 40 levels.
how can gw2 dungeons be hard?
in wildstar we wiped to a single dungeon boss for hours, HOURS.

first of all we dont cheese through dungeons and secondly without berserker gear the dungeons are even easier because there is more room for error.

for HoT instanced content, i want content that utterly destroys me for weeks and months, just like in wildstar. i want to do pulls for weeks on a single boss to figure out the fight and get a perfect execution done.

Oh man I remember that about Wildstar. I also remember those in my guild that cheered when we wiped so much.

A lot of us felt that sort of feeling of “FINALLY… An MMO says it will be tough, and is.”

Yeah I also hope the expac to GW2 can do that… I may even wait to get it, see what all of you people say first… after running it for a little bit…

Kichwas.7152:

NoTrigger.8396:

i got my dungeon master title 3 weeks after my first char hit 80 and the only experience i had was leveling from 1-40, because i crafted the other 40 levels.
how can gw2 dungeons be hard?
in wildstar we wiped to a single dungeon boss for hours, HOURS.

first of all we dont cheese through dungeons and secondly without berserker gear the dungeons are even easier because there is more room for error.

for HoT instanced content, i want content that utterly destroys me for weeks and months, just like in wildstar. i want to do pulls for weeks on a single boss to figure out the fight and get a perfect execution done.

Oh man I remember that about Wildstar. I also remember those in my guild that cheered when we wiped so much.

A lot of us felt that sort of feeling of “FINALLY… An MMO says it will be tough, and is.”

Yeah I also hope the expac to GW2 can do that… I may even wait to get it, see what all of you people say first… after running it for a little bit…

The essential problem is that most people don’t want that, and it ends up being wasted content.

Windsagio.1340:

Kichwas.7152:

NoTrigger.8396:

i got my dungeon master title 3 weeks after my first char hit 80 and the only experience i had was leveling from 1-40, because i crafted the other 40 levels.
how can gw2 dungeons be hard?
in wildstar we wiped to a single dungeon boss for hours, HOURS.

first of all we dont cheese through dungeons and secondly without berserker gear the dungeons are even easier because there is more room for error.

for HoT instanced content, i want content that utterly destroys me for weeks and months, just like in wildstar. i want to do pulls for weeks on a single boss to figure out the fight and get a perfect execution done.

Oh man I remember that about Wildstar. I also remember those in my guild that cheered when we wiped so much.

A lot of us felt that sort of feeling of “FINALLY… An MMO says it will be tough, and is.”

Yeah I also hope the expac to GW2 can do that… I may even wait to get it, see what all of you people say first… after running it for a little bit…

The essential problem is that most people don’t want that, and it ends up being wasted content.

i dont think wildstar died due to hard dungeons, it died due to other tthings.

Only casuals want to dumb down the already pathetically easy pve. Anet make harder pve so the casuals will quit pls.

^ this right here
Anet plox make harder content that requires the use of basic cognitive skills

phys.7689:

Windsagio.1340:

Kichwas.7152:

NoTrigger.8396:

i got my dungeon master title 3 weeks after my first char hit 80 and the only experience i had was leveling from 1-40, because i crafted the other 40 levels.
how can gw2 dungeons be hard?
in wildstar we wiped to a single dungeon boss for hours, HOURS.

first of all we dont cheese through dungeons and secondly without berserker gear the dungeons are even easier because there is more room for error.

for HoT instanced content, i want content that utterly destroys me for weeks and months, just like in wildstar. i want to do pulls for weeks on a single boss to figure out the fight and get a perfect execution done.

Oh man I remember that about Wildstar. I also remember those in my guild that cheered when we wiped so much.

A lot of us felt that sort of feeling of “FINALLY… An MMO says it will be tough, and is.”

Yeah I also hope the expac to GW2 can do that… I may even wait to get it, see what all of you people say first… after running it for a little bit…

The essential problem is that most people don’t want that, and it ends up being wasted content.

i dont think wildstar died due to hard dungeons, it died due to other tthings.

In that post I didn’t refer to wildstar, that also appears to be the pattern in GW2, and in general.

Edit: Since you mentioned Wildstar though, I"ll say what I said before: Dungeons didn’t kill Wildstar, they simply weren’t a selling point to make it succeed.

Relevant video:

http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/bwhrt5/the-final-bosman-report--undisputed-scrub-likes-bloodborne

I hope someone bothers to actually watch it

Windsagio.1340:

Kichwas.7152:

NoTrigger.8396:

i got my dungeon master title 3 weeks after my first char hit 80 and the only experience i had was leveling from 1-40, because i crafted the other 40 levels.
how can gw2 dungeons be hard?
in wildstar we wiped to a single dungeon boss for hours, HOURS.

first of all we dont cheese through dungeons and secondly without berserker gear the dungeons are even easier because there is more room for error.

for HoT instanced content, i want content that utterly destroys me for weeks and months, just like in wildstar. i want to do pulls for weeks on a single boss to figure out the fight and get a perfect execution done.

Oh man I remember that about Wildstar. I also remember those in my guild that cheered when we wiped so much.

A lot of us felt that sort of feeling of “FINALLY… An MMO says it will be tough, and is.”

Yeah I also hope the expac to GW2 can do that… I may even wait to get it, see what all of you people say first… after running it for a little bit…

The essential problem is that most people don’t want that, and it ends up being wasted content.

the essential problem is most people who dont want difficult content dont play dungeons/raids anyway. they are not even interested in content like that and it wouldnt affect them at all if we had content like that.
and yet these people are here and they are here crying.

why?
because they dont wanna live with the fact that they could be too bad at the game.

and if you check how many people raid in wow its about 20-25%. i dont think that is wasted content.

Windsagio.1340:

phys.7689:

Windsagio.1340:

Kichwas.7152:

NoTrigger.8396:

i got my dungeon master title 3 weeks after my first char hit 80 and the only experience i had was leveling from 1-40, because i crafted the other 40 levels.
how can gw2 dungeons be hard?
in wildstar we wiped to a single dungeon boss for hours, HOURS.

first of all we dont cheese through dungeons and secondly without berserker gear the dungeons are even easier because there is more room for error.

for HoT instanced content, i want content that utterly destroys me for weeks and months, just like in wildstar. i want to do pulls for weeks on a single boss to figure out the fight and get a perfect execution done.

Oh man I remember that about Wildstar. I also remember those in my guild that cheered when we wiped so much.

A lot of us felt that sort of feeling of “FINALLY… An MMO says it will be tough, and is.”

Yeah I also hope the expac to GW2 can do that… I may even wait to get it, see what all of you people say first… after running it for a little bit…

The essential problem is that most people don’t want that, and it ends up being wasted content.

i dont think wildstar died due to hard dungeons, it died due to other tthings.

In that post I didn’t refer to wildstar, that also appears to be the pattern in GW2, and in general.

Edit: Since you mentioned Wildstar though, I"ll say what I said before: Dungeons didn’t kill Wildstar, they simply weren’t a selling point to make it succeed.

wildstar isnt even dead + growing. and it looks like wildstar will go b2p. then the population will increase by a good amount.

NoTrigger.8396:

Windsagio.1340:

Kichwas.7152:

NoTrigger.8396:

i got my dungeon master title 3 weeks after my first char hit 80 and the only experience i had was leveling from 1-40, because i crafted the other 40 levels.
how can gw2 dungeons be hard?
in wildstar we wiped to a single dungeon boss for hours, HOURS.

first of all we dont cheese through dungeons and secondly without berserker gear the dungeons are even easier because there is more room for error.

for HoT instanced content, i want content that utterly destroys me for weeks and months, just like in wildstar. i want to do pulls for weeks on a single boss to figure out the fight and get a perfect execution done.

Oh man I remember that about Wildstar. I also remember those in my guild that cheered when we wiped so much.

A lot of us felt that sort of feeling of “FINALLY… An MMO says it will be tough, and is.”

Yeah I also hope the expac to GW2 can do that… I may even wait to get it, see what all of you people say first… after running it for a little bit…

The essential problem is that most people don’t want that, and it ends up being wasted content.

the essential problem is most people who dont want difficult content dont play dungeons/raids anyway and yet they are here crying.

why?
because they dont wanna live with the fact that they could be too bad at the game.

and if you check how many people raid in wow its about 20-25%. i dont think that is wasted content.

Let’s try to judge from Arenenet’s actions. It at least looks like they don’t feel further dungeon development is a good investment.

nobody who is serious about gaming cares about gw2 or gw2 dungeons anymore.

and to judge from anets actions, they hired a raid content designer. and tbh they dont need a raid content designer to create more boring open world zombie gameplay.

NoTrigger.8396:

nobody who is serious about gaming cares about gw2 or gw2 dungeons anymore.

and to judge from anets actions, they hired a raid content designer. and tbh they dont need a raid content designer to create more boring open world zombie gameplay.

No they hired a designer with raid encounter experience. You’re seeing what you want to see.

And that’s what it comes down to. I’d love to see more dungeon content in this game (as long as it’s interesting), but I’m not about to tell myself fairy stories about what’s going to happen, or about how all the playerbase is either just like me (and thus awesome) or sucky losers that are really bad at the game and also stupid.

Instead I’m going to look at my understanding of design and try to read Arenanets actions or trends in the industry —not for what I want to see, but to see what’s probably going on.

i see what the job advertisement said and it was “raid content designer”. im not telling myself fairy stories, i couldnt care less.
but reality is either anet will release something big for PvE or the expansion will be doomed to fail and people will look for other games. open world zerg content and 1h gameplay every two weeks is not going to keep people in the game forever.

here is what “raid” means:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/2#post4522821

Bubi.7942:

Relevant video:

http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/bwhrt5/the-final-bosman-report--undisputed-scrub-likes-bloodborne

I hope someone bothers to actually watch it

You can’t really compare GW2 with that kind of games.

Those are mostly single player games.

Most GW2 bosses (with the exception of some AC bosses which could be lacking some health) won’t die fast on a solo enviroment, so any survival advantage obtained from a short fight is not there anymore.
On top of this, there’s a way shorter access to utility, a 100% aggro bearing and a complete inability to recover from downed state (unless ranger).

There are still mechanicaly terrible fights (like Sure Shot Seamus, for example), but for the most part the difficulty increase is obvious and the advantage of raw damage isreduced to merely saving some time.
Unless there’s some true oneshot move involved, it becomes quite clear that a defensive build would provide a much easier time, so the player beating the fight on berserkers achives it by skill.

It’s when you throw 5 players in the fight, with all their combined damage, utility, control (which makes necessary to implement systems like defiant), … plus the ability to swap aggro, res each other and even take casualties, when things get out of hand.
For these cases, I totally advocate for some spiders coming down from the roof.

I’d like to bring to this thread an uncommon point of view :

Your so-called discussion about “should dungeons be harder or have more viable builds ?” is a false one.

The real discussion is (as pointed out earlier by NikeEU) :
“Should dungeons be completable with a party made up of any class combination ?”

If the answer is YES, then there is little than Anet can do to satisfy Nike, NoTrigger, Spoj and many others. We’ll likely have dungeons/raids/whatever that they will complete in no time and then spend their remaining time trying to break world records with small size parties.

If the answer is NO, then the same people can have hope for some really crazy content that will require precise party composition and excellent timing. However it means the end of pugging for this type of content.

What makes the GW2 dungeons so awesome is that a team of 4 good rangers and a mesmer can still complete CoE P2 in acceptable times despite the subpar team comp. It allows pug groups to get filled faster and does not force people to play a specific class.

Now I wonder : is increasing the difficulty of instanced content at the cost of losing pugging quality of life worth it ?

To that I have no answer.

Windsagio.1340:

Jerus.4350:

NoTrigger.8396:

good “randomness” in pve is the wildstar elemental pairs in DS for example.
you have to fight 3 elemental pairs to get to avatus, 1 pair -> 2 bosses. and each week after ID reset the combination of each pair changes.

like this:
pyrobane is in each fight, the second boss is a different one. the whole fight is completely different.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLa_D-zqKIs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT0tsCgIJbU

Personally I see that as annoying RNG, in that I hate that fractals don’t let me choose stuff because some fights I love, some I hate. Having my enjoyment be determined by the RNG is lame as far as I’m concerned.

The fractal thing is kind of tricky, because, as we see from swamp rolling, people would decide the set of four that is the quickest and never do any others, and it would become an orthodoxy.

As it is I can’t think of the last time I did underwater.

the solution to that is easy:

difficulty:reward ratios.

put better/more loot in the harder fractal chests.

Mai trin is harder than maw, but the rewards are the same. Personally I don’t like this design.

VodCom.6924:

Now I wonder : is increasing the difficulty of instanced content at the cost of losing pugging quality of life worth it ?

To that I have no answer.

If anet had infinite development resources, I would say it is worth it. My example would be, “spending development time on dungeons or pvp shouldn’t make WvWers feel like they had something stolen from them.”

But I think we all know that resources are limited and if a substantial portion of man-hours are dedicated to A by definition there is less for B.

FWIW, I don’t think they could make something that is really unpuggable. Even really challenging coordination checks that “require” voice comm will eventually be completed by silent pugs. All it takes is a “pug method” to be developed by the community as in ‘everyone knows when the boss turns red you count to three and use CC while standing on the switches.’ Sure that is easier on voice com but once the pug community ‘knows’ something it will be doable in silence.

Other games have a pretty good solution for this issue. They introduce hardcore content that is actually legit challenging, and if you beat it in the first 30 days you get a special title. After 30 days they nerf the content or give players a buff to make it easier but once they beat it after it’s nerfed you don’t get the special title anymore. The idea of a limited time prestige title attached to hardcore content as a reward rather than more gold is rather appealing.

VodCom.6924:

If the answer is YES, then there is little than Anet can do to satisfy Nike, NoTrigger, Spoj and many others. We’ll likely have dungeons/raids/whatever that they will complete in no time and then spend their remaining time trying to break world records with small size parties.

That’s just not true. Mai Trin level 50 is feasible with any composition. Arah is feasible with any composition. And they are a lot more fun and challenging than CoF path 1 or AC.

It’s not black and white here. You can create content that is more challenging and engaging than the basic dungeon, while not forcing a team into certain composition. They did it already, we just want that kind of content not to be some exception, but to be widespread. Or at least that new content will be more like this.

VodCom.6924:

I’d like to bring to this thread an uncommon point of view :

Your so-called discussion about “should dungeons be harder or have more viable builds ?” is a false one.

The real discussion is (as pointed out earlier by NikeEU) :
“Should dungeons be completable with a party made up of any class combination ?”

You’re jumping to the conclusion that those advocating build or content variety are suggesting said build or said content wouldn’t also be completable a multitude of ways or with a multitude of builds. No one’s suggesting things should be made to require a specific answer to complete, on the contrary.

Leo G.4501:

VodCom.6924:

I’d like to bring to this thread an uncommon point of view :

Your so-called discussion about “should dungeons be harder or have more viable builds ?” is a false one.

The real discussion is (as pointed out earlier by NikeEU) :
“Should dungeons be completable with a party made up of any class combination ?”

You’re jumping to the conclusion that those advocating build or content variety are suggesting said build or said content wouldn’t also be completable a multitude of ways or with a multitude of builds. No one’s suggesting things should be made to require a specific answer to complete, on the contrary.

If a specific team comp should not be required, conversely, shouldn’t that content not exclude team comps?

currently anything can be completed by anyone, with any build/comp.

However there is some who wish to exclude certain builds, such as the current meta built parties.

Isn’t this a contradiction in goals?

Huuuuuuge change to the whole ball of wax coming.
many builds will change, stat allocation and distribution will change.
3 trait lines now.
no half lines or 1/3rd lines.
less traits in total.
traits/stats not linked.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/news/guild-wars-2/guild-wars-2-heart-thorns-specializations-and-jon-peters-qa

Shifts gear into even more of a difficulty slider.

The change is good overall.

Leo G.4501:

I don’t see a problem with such. It’s not like the boss randomly dodging affects much. Honestly, it’s inconsequential to discuss. Every boss should have their ‘thing’. Unless it’s some sort of unfair mechanic like “everytime the boss dodges, someone goes down”, it’s not disruptive just unique. Trying to pin a specific formula to provide to every boss’ ‘thing’ isn’t going to happen though. Also, who suggested replicating PvP in PvE is the epitome of game design?

Specifically what is being said there is that if a boss just goes invulnerable or dodges attacks for no reason at all, that’s really nothing more than a “ha ha screw you” to players.

In PvP, enemy dodges, blocks, etc., contribute to your fun because all of them are limited resources and you’re dealing with a human being — you have counterplay because you can bait enemies into wasting their defences on less important attacks.

In PvE, you need to provide some sort of mechanic for players to engage with before evades and invulns are fun on mobs and bosses, because barring some pretty major AI advancements, you simply don’t have the same sorts counterplay available to you that you would when you’re up against another human.

If the boss turns invulnerable at fixed time intervals, that’s fine. It’s also OK if there’s a tell that shows the boss is about to go invulnerable. In these cases, there’s actually a mechanic for the players to engage with — you need to figure out the tells and the patterns in order to avoid wasting too much damage.

Invulnerability can also be used to provide feedback to players — a boss might turn invulnerable to signal to players that there’s something else on the field that requires their attention, for example.

spoj.9672:

Shifts gear into even more of a difficulty slider.

The change is good overall.

Yeah I’m pretty pleased with it. Pretty curious to see how the stats balance out, sounds like glassy people are gonna be glassier.

Well in some instances where glassy people would have defensive stats from traits they might be glassier. But for others where they didnt have any from traits they should be tankier. Thanks to the baseline stat increases.

Aye Hammer guard for instance will lose teh 200 vit bonus, but it will gain the base stat increase and the ability to pick up force of Will for an additional 3k hp if they want it.

It’ll be fun to see when they have everything fully fleshed out for viewing, curious what traits will be where.

spoj.9672:

Well in some instances where glassy people would have defensive stats from traits they might be glassier. But for others where they didnt have any from traits they should be tankier. Thanks to the baseline stat increases.

I see you’re right, I missed the part where they’re split between gear and stats, thought it was all gear.

Jerus.4350:

Aye Hammer guard for instance will lose teh 200 vit bonus, but it will gain the base stat increase and the ability to pick up force of Will for an additional 3k hp if they want it.

It’ll be fun to see when they have everything fully fleshed out for viewing, curious what traits will be where.

It’s fun to think about what will be rolled into base like that.

Aye, I’m very curious to see how it all works out. With the reduction to 3 options per trait tier it’ll be interesting to see what goes away, what gets combined and what not. Like larger radius symbols, maybe rolled into writ of persistence?

Then also not being able to take multiple adept, there’s quite a few current setups where I’m grabbing 2 adepts.

I just hope it ends up with more tweaking rather than a harder meta. I could see it going either way depending on where they place what.

oh yeah part of your stats will be proffession specific now.
inferior dmg on some classes!
probably wont be a lot of stats but, there you go.

Yeah not downgrading your majors is teh first thing I noticed. They specifically mentioned preserving existing builds, though.

~~~

To try to center myself, how will this actually effect the OP’s build diversity question?

It might just be totally too early to tell tho’

Windsagio.1340:

Yeah not downgrading your majors is teh first thing I noticed. They specifically mentioned preserving existing builds, though.

~~~

To try to center myself, how will this actually effect the OP’s build diversity question?

It might just be totally too early to tell tho’

possible build diversity will go down drastically.

top end build diversity was super small, looks like hobby players are going to take the big hits

That’s kind of my position, I’m excited by it in some ways, and it’ll be a general power boost, but it looks a lot like the WoW talent cleanup, which I was not a fan of.

Flip side, the old system had a ton of choices, but they were either false choices or simply not meaningful.

Murders build experimentation though.

Windsagio.1340:

That’s kind of my position, I’m excited by it in some ways, and it’ll be a general power boost, but it looks a lot like the WoW talent cleanup, which I was not a fan of.

Flip side, the old system had a ton of choices, but they were either false choices or simply not meaningful.

Murders build experimentation though.

they will kill a lot of viable, and even some top end builds.
many builds used multiple adepts or masters.

but top end doesnt care they only use the optimal builds anyhow.

Its the people who werent going top end who will lose a lot of possibilities.

phys.7689:

Windsagio.1340:

That’s kind of my position, I’m excited by it in some ways, and it’ll be a general power boost, but it looks a lot like the WoW talent cleanup, which I was not a fan of.

Flip side, the old system had a ton of choices, but they were either false choices or simply not meaningful.

Murders build experimentation though.

they will kill a lot of viable, and even some top end builds.
many builds used multiple adepts or masters.

but top end doesnt care they only use the optimal builds anyhow.

Its the people who werent going top end who will lose a lot of possibilities.

I think you’re making quite a large assumption.

People tweaked the meta a lot to slip in more sitautional tools when needed.

In the end it’ll all depend on how they do it. What gets combined, what gets dropped, if you have 2 very popular adepts do you leave them to compete or make one a major?

I could easily see it where we are constantly wanting to swap out a few traits for different stuff, but I could also see it where we have one clear winner, all depends on how it’s done.

For instance firearms for engi, adept I could see them leaving precise sights, which would be our usual choice. Having fireforged trigger could potentially have some use if vuln isn’t needed. Then if they combined hair trigger and rifled barrels that would be a nice option in a few situations. I could see using all 3, however precise sights would almost always be the way to go.

That’s kind fo the situation I hope to see in most areas. There will surely be a dominant option that arises, but if they combine stuff and make the alternatives strong enough I’d bet they get use as well even if jsut for specific fights.

Actually Phys I think that this new system will give more possibility to the general population. Trait line like Honor and Valor for the guardian will now be a lot more viable than they are now. They probably won’t be part of the optimal meta, but putting point into them will give you new possibility while not sacrificing too much of your dps.