Guild Wars 2

I am not saying having passive elements is bad. I’m just saying that passive elements like RNG based stuff must only be there as a starting point for casuals. However, the passive elements must, in some way or another, be inferior to the elements that require mechanics. Design the game such that it has “passives” for entry level players, “moderate mechanics” that encourage the casual to get better, and “hard mechanics” that reward the guys that master their stuff.

TL:DR
Mechanics > Number tweaking, Blunt additions
Number tweaking and blunt addition make the game shallow and lacking (no skill -reward) Start with the mechanics. Mechanics rewards players which makes them wanna play more and get better. You don’t need content every 3 weeks to drive players to play. Give them something where they feel they can be better and rewards them at a competitive level at and they will keep on playing the game.

Good cases to study:
Drow Ranger Ultimate fix in Dota2
Fungal Growth Fix in SC2:HOTS

Excellent work.

This is what I would like to see more of from the developers. Your Skull Crack example is perfect. I’d also add a bit more telegraph in the initial ability but your general direction is superb.

The reason focusing on skill-based, high risk/high reward gameplay ‘first’ as a priority over everything else is simple: This is what makes the combat moments themselves shine… This is Bull Strike, Diversion, or Reversal Of Fortune from GW 1. It makes playing the game reward in itself when you do well. No matter your personal ability.

This is more important than even balance for many a reason. Least of all because that is a battle that will almost never end anyway… Even when you approach it, to keep things fresh, the meta has to shift and you can easily end up losing it again. There’s no foul in that. Constant positive, lateral flux is healthy.

High risk/high reward, high-skill mechanics are almost black-box isolated forms of ‘win’. Have a potentially problematic skill in game? Adjust it’s active risk/reward relationship.

This can be applied to almost any skill in game, and while the change in itself won’t necessarily ‘fix’ the game, it can easily vastly improve the day to experience of playing the game.

Again, these are things you can fix a little at a time and almost always make the game better for it. I mean what’s the point in fixing balance if the game-experience is essentially shallow and without texture?

@ Red
Exactly the point I was trying to drive home. What Anet seems to forget is that competitive games don’t release monthly content to keep their players. The game works for itself to keep players. Make the gameplay a reward in itself. You dont need some complex reward system. If you can reward players for just learing to get better, they will play and keep playing. Thats what drives pvp and thats what drive esports

I’d just like to mention that in terms of risk/reward, “oh no i wasted my skill and now it’s on cool down” is not really a very good way of implementing risk.

First of all its quite passive and hidden. Maybe the highest quality example is punishing someone for using their stun break. Most other examples of this type of risk isn’t very satisfying for the opponent, and isn’t very visible to spectators.

Contrast to fighting games, where you have moments of “oh, he just missed a big attack, nows my chance to open up a giant can of whup kitten!”

Sure, we also need the more subtle forms of attrition and punishment, but gw2 tends to lack those exciting moments. (in direct combat – it has big moments strategically like guild lord ganks etc)

@Rieselle

Good point. Unfortunately our current meta is infested with such risk/reward patterns. Condi cleanses vs condi application, Stun breaker/stability vs stuns. These things need to be re-examined because whats going on is turning to an arms race and its not good for the game. It will just go on a descending spiral that end up in the game being dead after they have exhausted their resources in their PVE based business model. The game has so much to offer and yet they are wasting it so bad. Nothing frustrates me more than opportunity wasted.

Rieselle.5079:

I’d just like to mention that in terms of risk/reward, “oh no i wasted my skill and now it’s on cool down” is not really a very good way of implementing risk.

First of all its quite passive and hidden. Maybe the highest quality example is punishing someone for using their stun break. Most other examples of this type of risk isn’t very satisfying for the opponent, and isn’t very visible to spectators.

Contrast to fighting games, where you have moments of “oh, he just missed a big attack, nows my chance to open up a giant can of whup kitten!”

Sure, we also need the more subtle forms of attrition and punishment, but gw2 tends to lack those exciting moments. (in direct combat – it has big moments strategically like guild lord ganks etc)

What you write and the example you give of fighting games are exactly opposite… A Player missing a big attack in a fighting game is the same as a Warrior ‘missing’ a Skull Crack. The target is not stunned and they can counter-attack.

It isn’t ‘hidden’ if Skull Crack has obvious animation/effects as the target isn’t stunned or obviously dodge rolls away, and it isn’t ‘passive’ at all as the warrior ‘actively’ failed and just used it wrong.

You mention someone using a break-stun wrong is a better example risk/reward. This is somewhat false as you need a balance of both for a good fighting experience. They are equally important.

If you put all the burden of skill on reactive concerns like counter-measures and counter-play (stun-breaks, dodge roll etc.) you end up with an experience that favours using as many attacks as possible hoping one of them will defeat the skill of the defender which naturally leads to spam.

If there’s no ‘risk’ for the ‘reward’ of attack usage, and all the burden is on the defender to not get destroyed, you have no reason to hold back and you should be spamming as much as possible. Is any of this familiar in the context of the current game?

To use your fighting game analogy, imagine all the big attacks having no real risk. Defence (blocking, dodging, parrying, jumping, whatever…) becomes completely meaningless and the only way to play would be to have the best attacks. It’s just an arms race…

Edit:
Hah! Joon, you beat me to it with the ‘arms race’ thing. Just goes to show does it not?

LOL Red its so prevalent, you have to be such a simpleton to miss that trend.

Anyways, adding on to the mechanics issue, in order to optimally introduce such changes, Anet really needs to look at each class from a holistic perspective (i.e. how the traits and weapon sets interact ). Each trait line must have a central idea as to how it should be played. For every trait line there must be a purpose behind it. If you don’t, you’ll have a hodgepodge of trait lines that are a mess.From there, you can work on the weapon sets that tie in well for that trait set.

For example ranger skirmishing trait line. This trait line has a central idea as to how it would play. Ranger will use traps to enable him to keep his distance and kite his enemy while relying on power based damage and critical hits to deal damage with it. It has a lower DPS output on it to make it balance. This is a very good set up on trait- weapon set (longbow) set-up. The trait-weapon set relation is as follows: trait line – set of ideas, weapon set – implementation. The player must go into the full trait line if he wants to fully take advantage of the “idea” Which means proper tier-ing is needed. The tier-ing must have a set-up such that the player has the option to not take the full trait line. If he does, he gets the full package but if he does not, he is will not be optimizing the benefits from the trait line’s “idea”. At the same time, a specific weapon set must be “focused” for good implementation of the trait line.

If they can somehow focus the design of the traits -weapon sets relation set up such that they follow a certain idea then its easier to maintain traits and weapon sets.

Unfortunately, what happening is like this: " Oh I see that this weapon set is weak. What buff can I add to the skills in it to make it viable?" Same pattern goes on with traits. The problem I see right now is that the current balance team cant identify the line in the middle to guide them from which they can properly approach the issues, which is why a year after release the game still has the feel of a beta and Anet is still fumbling its way how to structuralize things – at the expense of its player base.

Excellent post. I truly hope the developers will pay attention to these kind of posts, rather than those crying for buffs, nerfs, rewards or modes.

I made a very lengthy post myself, concerning the very same issue. Have a read, and bump the thread for visibility

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Gw2-PVP-Community-Improvement-Ideas/first#post2922828

Appreciate it folks.

@Adian
Buffs, nerfs, rewards and modes by themselves are good and dandy. But if we look at the current state of the game what it fundamentally need is a proper competitive set-up with regards to its skills, traits and other related stuff. The only way you can do that is by properly introducing mechanics to both individual skill and combos in the game. Only then can you build up the rewards system, wisely tweak the numbers and introduce better modes. You must have this set up right before you do that. If you do it the other way it will be a waste of resources. I sure hope Anet listens to this, and wake up on what the game is truly missing.

Joon.8931:

@Adian
Buffs, nerfs, rewards and modes by themselves are good and dandy. But if we look at the current state of the game what it fundamentally need is a proper competitive set-up with regards to its skills, traits and other related stuff. The only way you can do that is by properly introducing mechanics to both individual skill and combos in the game. Only then can you build up the rewards system, wisely tweak the numbers and introduce better modes. You must have this set up right before you do that. If you do it the other way it will be a waste of resources. I sure hope Anet listens to this, and wake up on what the game is truly missing.

Exactly my point. The current structure of sPvP is so broken, that even if ArenaNet introduced new modes like Deathmatch, it wouldn’t be enjoyable, because spam and passive play would be the superior strategy. As such, you’d see 10 people run into each other, spam their skills, and whoever spammed the most, would win.
Players, and especially ArenaNet, needs to realize this.

Couldn’t agree more with OP. Currently the more complicated your class is, the less effective it is in PvP (even if it’s perfectly played) -> ele worst, warrior top-tier. Sadly, Anet has this policy of keeping classes easy and simple to play. I don’t know the exact quote but some DEV once said that eles are using two attunenemts only because it’s most effective and everything else is too complicated for players anyways (I guess he got that impression from PvE). They also said that more pet-control for rangers is something that players can’t handle. It’s obvious that they design their game for casuals – since most of their player-base consists of casual-(PvE)-players. Spell-changes would also have effects on PvE and though PvE in GW2 couldn’t be any easier I don’t think that Anet wants to make it more complicated (even though many PvE-players want more difficult “content” too). It’s kinda weird that on one hand they want easy play for everybody and on the other they want competetive play and E-sports etc. These two philosophies can’t go hand in hand.

I understand their point to be honest. They want to make the game as accessible as possible. An entirely fair position to take, however there’s a layered approach that is suited to exactly that.

Look at Joon’s Skull Crack example: The skill will always garner a CC effect if it lands in spite of defensive skills. Always… However the more debilitating effect requires more effort to produce.

A new player who has mastered the ability to activate the skill on a target will receive reward for doing so. Eventually, through experience or simple reading the skill, said player might notice that with this extra effort employed, this extra Risk, a stronger CC effect, and thus greater Reward, can be garnered.

The inexperienced player still gets a very similar experience, despite not being as skilled. Ranger Greatsword 5 already works like this, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that skill.

The point I’m trying to make is that depth can be layered into skills. There’s nothing that says a skill has to be useless until it’s mastered. At the same time, cheapening an ability by making its potential easy to realise is just as shallow.

I read an article recently that interviewed Nolan Bushnell, the father of Atari (40 years ago now).

He was asked: “How do Atari games compare with what they’ve spawned?”

Mr. Bushnell: “Since we were so limited with graphics then, we had to focus on the gameplay. We developed a philosophy that the games should be easy to learn, impossible to master. Some classic games are much better balanced between the risk and reward of play. In Pong, the hardest shot to return was also the hardest shot to make.”

While some of it is directly related to the Arcade games they made at the time (“Impossible to master”), everything else he wrote is entirely rock solid. Risk and reward balance. The last part about Pong is complete and utter gold…

+1 million times this thread
need conditionals, ways to skillfully set up attacks to deal more damage, with ways to avoid these setups.
the devs are a bit lost in this respect, thinking about too many demographics and types of players, and “oh what about the casuals” and general lack of backbone. The problem is this company is too large, and they focus too much on pve. Now they have a solid pve base they don’t want to kitten it off by increasing skill-cap so much because they don’t want to split all the skills and traits for pvp because that would further alienate their pve cash cow. they’ll make a show of saying they want to support esports and they are watching the forums and taking into consideration our ideas, etc etc. but then when patch hits we will see small tweaks and watered down mechanics that are compatible with their main audience. if they had really wanted to esport from the start, the pve population would have adapted and even liked the pve combat the way it could have been, but I think too much time has passed and any inertia to change course is spent. /rant

This is what people have been suggesting actually.

I would really like to see some more telegraphs and risk/reward and just see the gameplay slowed down just a bit to allow for more strategy.

I want a duel between 2 skilled players to be a fast paced chess match of a sorts. Constantly countering each other and trying to think ahead of how to outplay the opponent carefully using abilities instead of just spamming everything on cooldown.

Adian.8756:

Excellent post. I truly hope the developers will pay attention to these kind of posts, rather than those crying for buffs, nerfs, rewards or modes.

I made a very lengthy post myself, concerning the very same issue. Have a read, and bump the thread for visibility

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Gw2-PVP-Community-Improvement-Ideas/first#post2922828

^This

What amuses me the most though is how Anet never learned from their mistakes. Initially, this game was considered lacking an “end game” due to how uninteresting dungeons were. They lacked the very same thing we are talking about here; mechanics that made dungeons interesting. Dungeons initially couldn’t hold a candle to Denova in SWTOR or WOW calibre raiding. To think of it, most players participated in those raids for the sheer satisfaction of being someone who was able to complete the raid. The rewards were just secondary. Again, here we see that the game is the reward itself. If it weren’t for WVW back then, players would have easily left this game. I mean I went from SWTOR to GW2 then went back to SWTOR for sometime till i took GW2 again since for me, GW2 seemed boring. WVW just wasn’t interesting enough for me to stay anymore. Until they started adding stuff that had mechanics like fractals, living story dungeons, etc, people had nothing to occupy themselves with. Right now, they are shooting themselves again in the foot for not learning from that aspect of the game. Im gonna call it now. Give it a few years. If the stick with this current mentality there will come a point that adding item progression, living story, and more fluff to the game wont be enough for them to keep their player base. The game will die a slow, steady death.