Guild Wars 2

IMHO how the team handles downed state affects the score too much. I’ve been in matches when you can’t kill an afker in mid point fight. You can burst him down for sure, but he get ressed in 2 sec by mates with ress traits, that’s way faster than the stomp animation. Even when you got 2 or 3 down, they get ressed by Mesmer, ranger or engi utility skills. Sure there are ways to stomp lock such as thief shadow return, stealth, steal, blind, Mesmer distortion, mist form,engi elixir s. but the stomp animation is way slower than ress with trait. The fact that you have so many skills for stomp and antistomp tells you this game is way too much about downed state, IMHO it’s more important than anything else.
It’s a fun idea to begin with, however now it has taken over the whole game. Most of recent serious games I have played turned to a ress feast at mid point.
The current state of the game is really sad, and the worse part is I don’t know how they can fix it without completely redo the whole game.

I used to argue that down state was important and needed and all that. But now I’m just starting to think that it’s a bad excuse for letting people make stupid mistakes.

matjazmuhic.1649:

I used to argue that down state was important and needed and all that. But now I’m just starting to think that it’s a bad excuse for letting people make stupid mistakes.

That’s exactly it, down state is not needed

Advocates will tell you it adds strategy/etc (like we didn’t already know), but seem to forget (or fail to realize) that this strategy is not unique to downed mechanics, and can be inspired by alternative means.

The problem is down state reaps fun for fun, but what if I told you you could have comparative fun without any cost?

- And you’re kidding yourself if you don’t think down state trades fun.

Without downed state in this game, the meta would be revolving around burst even more than it already does. Furthermore, ress-abilities make for a very interesting gameplay, and can turn the tide of a whole fight.
The problem with downed state is that it’s almost impossible to win a 1v2, and yes, that is actually a problem, since outnumbered fights are exciting for spectators.
In PvP and WvW you should only have one downed state before getting defeated. It’s not exciting to see the same guy rally 4 times, It’s getting rather lame instead actually. The first rally/ress however is always exciting.
The solution is very simple, and already implemented in the game to some extend, only now it requires a person to be downed 5 times.

KrisHQ.4719:

Without downed state in this game, the meta would be revolving around burst even more than it already does.

Erebos.6741:

Gandarel.5091:

Downed state is ESSENTIAL FOR PVP. Since we have no healers, if you get spiked, you can get downed in a blink of an eye. With downed state, your teammates can pick you up, thus surviving the spike.

Gandarel, are you asserting that it is too difficult (e.g. not well telegraphed) or beyond player capability to counter spike damage either or for sustained intervals?

Edit (to save you a reply):

If yes, than the core of the problem lies in the lack of player capability and/or failure in design to cater for human debility.

If no, than you got outplayed, which normally inflicts a penalty (death) to advantage the player towards winning the match, promote skillful play, and give meaning to/reward combat!

[rant]

Instead GW2 implemented down-state, which degrades the capability of the afflicted, which means the fight is biased; not appointing to skill! Or a corrupt loss due to unfair vantage set up by the downed player; also not pertaining to skill!

This demotes skillful play which in-turn degrades combat and befouls the fairness of competition.

[/rant]

KrisHQ.4719:

Furthermore, ress-abilities make for a very interesting gameplay, and can turn the tide of a whole fight.

Erebos.6741:

Cymric.7368:

Yes, reviving is very powerful however, it also put the reviver at a HUGE risk to himself. You are basically a sitting duck in that few seconds and if you can’t absorb that much damage, you are downed as well. Risk vs reward, I can’t count the number of times I am downed while trying to revive.

This is somewhat true, however because you can easily overcome the risk this nowhere near justifies the reward. This isn’t always the case however, and the degree of difficulty fluctuates depending on precursors.
Fixing this will also correct why reviving unjustly counter-objectifies the reward of outplaying/downing players

I’m happy to provide simple examples if you so wish

CrossedHorse.4261:

There are elements of risk/reward and wild card revives thrown into the mix, which means you can’t just look at the team list and go “oh, no point playing” etc. There’s always the chance you could pull off a victory because of the downed state, and I like that.

I think the risk unfairly licenses the reward, degrading skill as a determining factor of combat.
What do you think?

KrisHQ.4719:

The problem with downed state is that it’s almost impossible to win a 1v2, and yes, that is actually a problem, since outnumbered fights are exciting for spectators.

Erebos.6741:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

I think this is because the difficulty in finishing combat is set too high to help distinguish and accredit the weight of players, a trait which would be further appreciated by the viewers.

jmatb.6307:

I think eliminating passive crap from PvP will instantly make the game more polarized between good and bad players, which favors people who actually earn their production

jmatb.6307:
I think eliminating passive crap from PvP will instantly make the game more polarized between good and bad players, which favors people who actually earn their production

While what you say is true, i don’t dispute that stupid passives and passive boons being too powerful is a huge downer on skill.. they are so built into the game they are impossible to remove.
Huge NPC spam – Pets/minions/ect also detracts from skill…however also they are too important to some classes to remove.

Well, to be fair, downed state IS a second chance of coming back up. Basically fits in perfectly with the casual mentality of GW2, where punishing players by making mistakes is avoided at all costs.
After 1 year, the core issues of GW2 combat are beginning to be crystal clear for the dedicated PvP players, because we are the ones who spend more time analysing and improving our combat.

If i’ve said it once, i’ve said it like a dozen time.

Remove Downstate.

Tone down burst and bunker extremes. I know downstate was added so there would be no need for a healer, but hell, this game doesn’t need a healer even if there was no downstate. The problem is that they allowed this completely unasked for mechanic (name one other game that has this) so they could be unique, so it could add “depth” and “strategy.”

Well, its failed. Remove it. The community has said a billion and one times why its bad, and why it should be removed, the only reason people say its “good” is because the burst and bunker polars are so extreme, that it IS necessary to keep things on a somewhat even keel.

Ventilators are necessary to keep some people breathing. Does that make them good? Perhaps. But what would the ideal situation be? Not needing one.

Games like Dota2 and LoL (as much as I hate it) and even Awesomenauts have competitive PvP without the holy trinity. If this game wants to have a future, it needs to start taking notes from successful games.

noobftw.9654:

IMHO how the team handles downed state affects the score too much. I’ve been in matches when you can’t kill an afker in mid point fight. You can burst him down for sure, but he get ressed in 2 sec by mates with ress traits, that’s way faster than the stomp animation. Even when you got 2 or 3 down, they get ressed by Mesmer, ranger or engi utility skills. Sure there are ways to stomp lock such as thief shadow return, stealth, steal, blind, Mesmer distortion, mist form,engi elixir s. but the stomp animation is way slower than ress with trait. The fact that you have so many skills for stomp and antistomp tells you this game is way too much about downed state, IMHO it’s more important than anything else.
It’s a fun idea to begin with, however now it has taken over the whole game. Most of recent serious games I have played turned to a ress feast at mid point.
The current state of the game is really sad, and the worse part is I don’t know how they can fix it without completely redo the whole game.

+1. Downed state does need some sort of tweaking in my opinion. The ability to rez someone from downed state instantly (like rangers elite spirit, signet of illusion/plague, signet of undeath, battle standard) needs to be completely removed or reworked in such a way that it increases the HP regeneration of the downed state person but does not instantly bring him back up.

Its such a cheap way to rez someone just by using one skill (regardless of cooldown). In group fights its especially hard to keep track of everything let alone the guy hiding in the back who has stability or is stealthed trying to instant rez someone. It should be a risk to try and heal someone from downed state because its just as risky going for the stomp if its a group fight.

So please anet remove this instant downed state rez or at least change it so it gives fast hp regen for a short time. If you aren’t going to change that, then how about increasing the cast time and give people sufficient warning that someone is casting it (i.e ‘X player is using signet of illusion on Y!’).

Conan.8046:

jmatb.6307:
I think eliminating passive crap from PvP will instantly make the game more polarized between good and bad players, which favors people who actually earn their production

While what you say is true, i don’t dispute that stupid passives and passive boons being too powerful is a huge downer on skill.. they are so built into the game they are impossible to remove.
Huge NPC spam – Pets/minions/ect also detracts from skill…however also they are too important to some classes to remove.

jmatb was a little harsh, but it’s 100% true, only some passivity is needed to serve as a buffer to lower combat difficulty to cater to the masses, and it also allows expansive depth to be added

Also less experienced players need time to learn from encounters.
Otherwise if they die too soon, they may feel as though there was nothing they could have done! Which is frustrating! And leads to rage-quit moments ;P

In a PvE environment i accept the “allowance” of letting a player be resed 5 times, but in PvP it’s penalizing players that “win” a 1v2.

In PvP these res system should be different, reduce the amount of possible reses to 2, meaning the third time you god down it is permanent…

I’m kind of tired of killing the same person over and again in a heated group fight only to see them get raised 4-5 times before someone can actually land a stomp, though also, to be fair, kudos to the team actually bothering to help their own team mate that many times!

Instead of removing downed state completely, how about introducing some kind of weakness debuff like has been seen in other games (FFXI for example) whereby the player has reduced stats, HP etc. At the moment, you can res a team mate (or an enemy can), they heal to full and are completely ready to go again with no punishment whatsoever including full cooldowns in most instances (save for their elite if they used it) whilst everyone else is running on cooldowns due to still being part of that heated battle, it’s essentially giving them an extra life.

Here’s a few things that can be done to make battles less dependent on the downed system.

1. Limit rally to 1 person. So if 1 guy dies, 4-5 people will not rally it’d be whoever has the highest priority on that person’s death (maybe the one who did more dmg? or so)

OR

2. Remove the rally mechanic. So any person downed must be resurrected directly.

OR

3. Remove Res Skills & Rally.

OR

4. Make Res skills like Elixer R.

OR

5. Put a limit on the amount of times you can res. Maybe after this first res, you’ll die the next time you get downed or res is less effective each time you down aka if 1 person can res you at 5% hp/s, they would res you 3% hp/s the next time you down and so on and so forth. You can also make this a permanent effect until they die and respawn so players who have downed have a disadvantage in being downed again. Or we can add a debuff like the poster above me mentioned.

OR

6. Make it risky to res someone! Ressing requires you to transfer part of your hp pool to get them back up. hehe.

OR

7. Remove downed state, but this one is tricky because this would affect a lot of GW2’s mechanics.

Just some suggestions.

The issue with downed state comes up now and again on the forums. I wish to tackle a few issues that are connected to the idea of a downed state and cited as reason for its removal on a general basis.

One claim that comes around in various disguises is that a downed player got outplayed and deserves to die. Here a quote from Erebos (it is his signature in one of the posts above) and Erebos is probably the one person who is pushing really hard for removal of downed state (If you are new to the discussion and to see the discussion he led check the link in his signature.)

“Down-state aims to counterbalance my mistakes; punishing those that outplayed me,
and snares my capability, in fairness of vantage…”

The perspective underlying this claim is that getting the opponents health bar down to zero before he/she gets down yours down to zero equals outplaying the opponent and is a measure of your skill and this is where it should end. Anything that comes after in downed state is not a measure of skill. This is, however, a question of definition and where you draw the line, rather than a hard and fast fact. While I think it is a valid claim for somebody to say that that is what they like to play, I think it is hard to keep up the claim that everything that comes after downing is a not a measure of skill. Basically I am saying that having downed a player does not mean that you have outplayed him/her rather only once he is dead you have outplayed him/her in that you have managed your resources during the fight before you downed him in a way that you can still take some damage by him without being downed yourself, have some utilities that counter his downed skills to prevent you from stomping or dodge them (i.e. reading the downed state animations). Generally being able to finish off a player is also a reflection of your skill, your skill before downing him (managing your resources, i.e. strategizing for after downing) and your skill after downing the player. The fight is not over until its over and it takes skill to finish somebody off right to the end. The fight before and after downed state are not two separate entities but have to be taken as a whole when evaluating skill. Defining away one section of this whole as not being skillful does not do the game as it is played justice from an argumentational point of view.

There will be further posts coming.

Another implicit claim that is often made that being downed is a necessary and direct reflection (or consequence) of the intellectual capabilities of the downed player.

Here two quotes:

matjazmuhic.1649

“I used to argue that down state was important and needed and all that. But now I’m just starting to think that it’s a bad excuse for letting people make stupid mistakes.”

Erebos.6741

“If yes, than the core of the problem lies in the lack of player capability and/or failure in design to cater for human debility.

If no, than you got outplayed, which normally inflicts a penalty (death) to advantage the player towards winning the match, promote skillful play, and give meaning to/reward combat!

[rant]

Instead GW2 implemented down-state, which degrades the capability of the afflicted, which means the fight is biased; not appointing to skill! Or a corrupt loss due to unfair vantage set up by the downed player; also not pertaining to skill!

This demotes skillful play which in-turn degrades combat and befouls the fairness of competition."

[/rant]

The idea underlying this claim is that everything that happens to a player in the game is actually preventable by him/her and failure to do so means he is not intelligent enough. This claim is equally untenable in regard to the following:

In any fast paced competitive team oriented game there are instances where things just happen, i.e. everything that happens in a fight is not planned and under some players control. Especially in teamfights the resulting dynamics of individual player actions are not completely under player control and being downed is not in a necessary relationship of cause and effect with skill or intelligence. (Arguably the number of times being downed in the long run over several games is somewhat reflective of game awareness and positioning, but not every single case of being downed means the player is dumb or made a mistake.)

In an offspin to this, there exists the idea that making a mistake should result in death and players hide behind downed state to cover up their inadequacies when the team covers for them and rezzes them and that therefore GW2 is not really competitive.

The underlying idea here seems to be that competition is defined from a perspective of measuring individual player skill vs. individual player skill and that is the only true form of competition, because it allows an individual to shine and that is what competition should be: a platform for individuals to stand out by killing opponents. In return being killed is a measure of inadequacy. Here some quotes to that regard:
Erebos.6741
“This is down to personal opinion, but I think based on your (presumed) enjoyment of other aspects of combat, that you would also enjoy transposing your time elsewhere. e.g. say, besting more opponents ”
Calae.1738
“Mandating team play takes away from the individual; limiting the effectiveness of oneself; depriving otherwise achievable glory and satisfaction
This is ridiculously important when it comes to competition and is the exact reason why I don’t participate in sPVP.
Everyone can agree that team play is extremely important and is what wins games. When it comes to the fans and the spectators; they’re looking for super heroes. Super heroes are athletes with extraordinary abilities.
GW2 doesn’t have athletes because the game doesn’t allow them to exist.”
This comes down to what you want from PvP, but the claim that besting individual opponents is the only real aspect of competition is untenable. A case in point: all the team oriented sports where teamplay is rewarded. They are still competitive. And soccer teams like Barcelona while employing players like Messi who are superstars equally gained renown and admiration for playing an enjoyable to watch fast-paced game where the whole team moved as one in incredible ways and dominated other teams (and thus enabling Messi to shine above them). It was a pleasure to watch (they are slacking at the moment).
However, I think it is valid that people like game modes that emphasize individual besting and I agree that Gw2 currently does not focus on that (even though it still plays into it, e.g. in far point assaulter vs. defender and people who like besting should maybe opt for playing that role similar to let’s say a striker in soccer). Maybe one solution to that would be to come up with other game modes for Gw2 where this type of gameplay is focused thus diversifying sPvP rather than only going one route (either a downed mechanic or not). For the future of the discussion here I think it is helpful, if players indicate from what type of competitive philosophy they are coming from because it determines considerably where their opinions on the downed mechanic lie.
Another claim that was made in the quote above is that a game mode that promotes heros is more pleasurable to watch than a game mode that does not do that. The fallacy in the above quote seems to be that besting other player as an individual is the only way to stardom. Many team oriented sports show that this is not really the case.
The problem (for putatively emerging heroes) in GW2 rather seems to be the fast pace of the action in teamfights, where it is often not really clear to whose actions the fight can be attributed most of the merit for winning a teamfight, i.e. (to make it brief albeit skewed) the thief soccer equivalent of striker, many stars e.g. Etoo) who effectively downed many players or the guardian (soccer equivalent of midfielder (many stars: e.g. Zinedine Zidane)) who protected the thief efficiently and stomped the downed players.

To stay with the enjoyment of watching and playing games, claims have been made that continuous rezzing takes away from enjoyment, implicitly because it is preferable to see or have players die rather than enjoying a long fight where the possible outcome is always kept unpredictable because the upper hand continuously shifts from one team gaining the upper hand to the other.

Here again some quotes:

Static.9841
“I’m kind of tired of killing the same person over and again in a heated group fight only to see them get raised 4-5 times before someone can actually land a stomp, though also, to be fair, kudos to the team actually bothering to help their own team mate that many times!”
KrisHQ.4719
“In PvP and WvW you should only have one downed state before getting defeated. It’s not exciting to see the same guy rally 4 times, It’s getting rather lame instead actually. The first rally/ress however is always exciting.”

Again I think this boils to the wish to play a game where killing other players should be the focus (i.e. besting other players) rather than fighting continuously over achieving goals as a team and strategizing and moving appropriately as a team for that. Note that this seems to be a question of where a game focuses on, of course, often games have a little bit of both as does GW2. It seems to be a bone of contention where the focus lies. Some people like the former and other people like the other, but there are no ‘objective’ arguments for either preference and basing claims on a narrow understanding of competition is not helpful. It obfuscates the subjectivity behind the claims made. (Also note the use of the verb “killing” for “downing a player”. This ties the comment made by static to the discussion about viewing downed state as an integral part of the fight rather than actually having achieved the goal of killing someone. The use of the verb killing provides a false idea of what getting somebody into downed state is, i.e. downing equals killing. For a counterview see above.)

Finally, there some of the posts above imply that there are instarezzes out there, where with a quick push of a button players are rezzed. Most rezzes take time and to land “Signet of Undeath”, for example, after you realize a player has been downed, not shortly before, is difficult in a fast paced game, i.e. it takes skill to land it before a stomp starts and decide not to use it if the stomp started already (i.e. skill and management of resources). Also players with rezz utilities can be interrupted or cced once a teammate goes down to prevent them from using rez utilities (adding strategy, skill, and team coordination). Quick rezzes (or so called insta rezzes) come about from a concerted effort by a team to rezz a teammate (I view rez here as opposed to rally for this argument). Players can like that or not, but there are no insta rez utilities out there.
Note:
Stomp: 2 seconds to cast
Signet of Undeath: 2 seconds to cast
Battle Standard: 2 seconds to cast
Illusion of Life: 1 1/4 seconds, have to kill an opponent (as argued by opponents of downed state too difficult).
Glyph of Renewal: 3 ½ seconds to cast
I probably forgot something, but this is just to give you an idea.

In conclusion, I hope to have debunked the idea that there are essentialist arguments for or against a downed mechanic based on competitiveness, ‘true’ PvP’ or enjoyability. Any argument made for or against keeping downed state will come from a personal subjective preference on PvP and how it should play out.

That being said, this does not mean that the mechanics can be changed in order to find that sweet spot where it is equally skillful to set up a stomp as well as rez a teammate. Although I think that Anet is not too far off at the moment. Also when talking about the downed mechanic there should be a separation about the downed mechanic and the rallying mechanic they are interdependent but can be altered separately.

Personally, I think Arc has put forth some interesting ways of going about it, which I think would be fruitful to explore. Although the highest priority I think should be to make the downed states of the various classes somewhat more balanced.

That being said, and I will now seg to a completely different issue, but which ties into balancing and commiting resources to sPvP by Arenanet. Therefore it indirectly applies to this as well.
The community of sPvPers is so small that, I think, from a business standpoint it does not make sense for Arenanet to put a lot of resources into it. I honestly think that they have an ideological commitment in that they really want this to work, but they have to content with the hard facts that we are just a small number in the overall scheme of things. Considering this, I think that they have already put a lot of effort into this despite the fact that SPvP is not really monetizing their enterprise.

Now before people start saying yes, but Anet has to do this and that, and then all will be good, while we as a community do not do anything to increase the numbers from our side in order to increase (positive) pressure on Anet to actually commit more resources is working against our interests. I have posted in reply to other posts on this (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/New-player-s-opinion/first).

lynnhood.8270:

To stay with the enjoyment of watching and playing games, claims have been made that continuous rezzing takes away from enjoyment, implicitly because it is preferable to see or have players die rather than enjoying a long fight where the possible outcome is always kept unpredictable because the upper hand continuously shifts from one team gaining the upper hand to the other.

Here again some quotes:

Static.9841
“I’m kind of tired of killing the same person over and again in a heated group fight only to see them get raised 4-5 times before someone can actually land a stomp, though also, to be fair, kudos to the team actually bothering to help their own team mate that many times!”
KrisHQ.4719
“In PvP and WvW you should only have one downed state before getting defeated. It’s not exciting to see the same guy rally 4 times, It’s getting rather lame instead actually. The first rally/ress however is always exciting.”

Again I think this boils to the wish to play a game where killing other players should be the focus (i.e. besting other players) rather than fighting continuously over achieving goals as a team and strategizing and moving appropriately as a team for that. Note that this seems to be a question of where a game focuses on, of course, often games have a little bit of both as does GW2. It seems to be a bone of contention where the focus lies. Some people like the former and other people like the other, but there are no ‘objective’ arguments for either preference and basing claims on a narrow understanding of competition is not helpful. It obfuscates the subjectivity behind the claims made. (Also note the use of the verb “killing” for “downing a player”. This ties the comment made by static to the discussion about viewing downed state as an integral part of the fight rather than actually having achieved the goal of killing someone. The use of the verb killing provides a false idea of what getting somebody into downed state is, i.e. downing equals killing. For a counterview see above.)

Finally, there some of the posts above imply that there are instarezzes out there, where with a quick push of a button players are rezzed. Most rezzes take time and to land “Signet of Undeath”, for example, after you realize a player has been downed, not shortly before, is difficult in a fast paced game, i.e. it takes skill to land it before a stomp starts and decide not to use it if the stomp started already (i.e. skill and management of resources). Also players with rezz utilities can be interrupted or cced once a teammate goes down to prevent them from using rez utilities (adding strategy, skill, and team coordination). Quick rezzes (or so called insta rezzes) come about from a concerted effort by a team to rezz a teammate (I view rez here as opposed to rally for this argument). Players can like that or not, but there are no insta rez utilities out there.
Note:
Stomp: 2 seconds to cast
Signet of Undeath: 2 seconds to cast
Battle Standard: 2 seconds to cast
Illusion of Life: 1 1/4 seconds, have to kill an opponent (as argued by opponents of downed state too difficult).
Glyph of Renewal: 3 ½ seconds to cast
I probably forgot something, but this is just to give you an idea.

I am not saying to remove it as a whole, but its currently state is uninviting IMO. Say a newbie came stumbles into a tourny with builds and tips from forum and only to find out he can’t finish anyone no matter how unless there is a team backing him with stomp person and downstate strategy. I wouldn’t bet on him staying.
I have been in matches that team won by not defeating opponent but staying in mid point and spam SYG, sanctuary, scepter 5, shield 5, toolkit 4. There is no need to ever attack, just push/knockback opponent from the point and then the rest is ress.
The wvw community has learned to counter down-state gaming by running only PVT gears and go full bunker traits, and I am seeing this trend spreading into PVP. There is hardly any reason not doing so. After all, you win by holding two points, and it only requires a ress feast at min point or knockback spammer at far point to win it. Anything else is trivia. In other words, even if you’ve mastered the combo 100% and mad skill daze burst 3142152131 your target into pieces, don’t feel good about it, it has nothing to do winning the game, in fact you should be ashamed since you’ve contributed no stability, no knockback, no ress to the fight and team will be much better off replacing you with a macro bot that does above-mentioned thing on point repeatably.

It’s a depressing game to play.

Hey lynnhood~ holy crap that’s a lot of text!

Just wanted to say thank you – I’ve never had such technical feedback before!
I’m anxious to analyse your points and reevaluate my assessment
However I’m busy tonight and won’t have the time till tomorrow after work.

You can expect a proper reply then ^^

Just wanted to contribute my own thoughts here. This type of thread has come up many times before, and I think for the most part, a majority can agree on a few points:

• Downstate, like it or not, is something integral to Guild Wars 2, and something too tightly woven into the game at this point to ever be removed completely
• The existence of downstate adds a unique teamplay mechanic to pvp not seen in other games and especially rewards teams with good downstate management and communication
• There are currently too many tournament-viable res utilities to manipulate downstate which can make team fights go on too long and make them too confusing to watch

Two things to “save downstate” and make it a better pvp mechanic:

1. Reduce the efficacy of certain res utilities (Elixir R should have its stun break returned but the res effect should tick for less, Spirit of Nature is a bit too powerful/tanky esp. in smaller fights)
2. As previously mentioned, add a “rally sickness” effect to reduce the strength of allies that are rallied multiple times per fight. Implementation particulars can be argued, but here’s an example: [Weariness] You are weary from recently being downed. Your stats are all decreased by 10% per stack of Weariness. You lose 1 stack of Weariness every 20 seconds in combat, every 3 seconds out of combat, and all stacks when defeated. Stacks up to a maximum of 5 times. (this is not a condition, just an effect that appears on your bar when you rally that cannot be cleansed or stripped). The intended effect here is to retain much of the importance of downstate and teamplay in stomps/resses, but to make sure that teams are eventually “attritioned out” after a long fight with several rallies. No more of these never ending teamfights, we want to see blood!

noobftw.9654:

IMHO how the team handles downed state affects the score too much. I’ve been in matches when you can’t kill an afker in mid point fight. You can burst him down for sure, but he get ressed in 2 sec by mates with ress traits, that’s way faster than the stomp animation. Even when you got 2 or 3 down, they get ressed by Mesmer, ranger or engi utility skills. Sure there are ways to stomp lock such as thief shadow return, stealth, steal, blind, Mesmer distortion, mist form,engi elixir s. but the stomp animation is way slower than ress with trait. The fact that you have so many skills for stomp and antistomp tells you this game is way too much about downed state, IMHO it’s more important than anything else.
It’s a fun idea to begin with, however now it has taken over the whole game. Most of recent serious games I have played turned to a ress feast at mid point.
The current state of the game is really sad, and the worse part is I don’t know how they can fix it without completely redo the whole game.

When I first started playing this game in beta, I immediately hated downed state. I was so used to killing, then moving on from other PvP games, that it was disruptive to may paradigm of thinking. That has since changed. I think securing a stomp, denying a stomp, etc, is a fantastic way to add dynamic team play. It’s really one of the few things currently that really separates good teams from great ones.

So, at one point I would have completely agreed, but I think I’ve adapted and actually grown to like it.

Now, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. It still needs some tweaks, but overall, it’s great (IMO).

Sorry lynnhood but I wasn’t able to finish compiling my reply tonight

I’ve spent about 2.5 hours so far (sadly this isn’t too uncommon among my posts) evaluating and formulating my opinion (I’m still on the first point ;P ).

I don’t have as much time to spare tomorrow but I promise I will eventually get to answering all your contentions

p.s. I agree with a lot of what you said ^^

Volrath.1473:

In a PvE environment i accept the “allowance” of letting a player be resed 5 times, but in PvP it’s penalizing players that “win” a 1v2.

In PvP these res system should be different, reduce the amount of possible reses to 2, meaning the third time you god down it is permanent…

I think that similar to revive orbs, players should recieve a penalty condition for a short period of time (Perhaps disabling heal skills for 10 seconds?) However, who says that you “beat” a player once they’re down? You “win” in a 1v2 when both players are dead. Everyone in here has the wrong mentality. Instead of changing their playstyle and adapting to the game, they want to bash their heads against the issue and say it’s the game’s fault not their’s. If you see a play downed, you don’t have to stomp them immediately in some situations yeah, you do, but instead of racing the reviver, trying to stomp the downed, why not CC the reviver and dps him? Hotjoins will always be different, so let’s assume we’re talking about tPvP strictly. Let’s say both teams has a warrior. One chooses Signet of Rage, one chooses Battle Standard for their elite. Whose fault is it if they lose a team fight? The game mechanic’s or the player’s? One warrior may choose Signet of Rage, to add to his own ability, while one chooses to have a safety net for his team. Both can result in winning the fight, but it’s in your hands.

I know this comment is almost always stated by ignorant people, but in this situation I honestly mean it. Learn to Play. If there’s a situation where a player needs to be stomped, have one player start the animation (preferably a class that can be uninterrupted), and have your team deal with the players trying to revive.

If you’re in a 1v2 situation, don’t be. This game is a numbers game, which is a totally different conversation. Think of TF2, a highly competitive Esports scene. Can you pull off a 1v2? Yes, but it puts you at a severe disadvantage. So, if you do get in a situation like that. You can A. Run, or B. buy time for your team C. Last until reinforcements arrive. D. Kill both players, where D. has a very little chance of success.

Stop blaming game mechanics when you’re too stubborn to change your playstyle.

Downed state does not necessarily mean you have “beaten” or “killed” the player, and it honestly does add a new level to the game.

Erebos.6741:

Sorry lynnhood but I wasn’t able to finish compiling my reply tonight

Thank you for reading my posts. I know they were long. And do not fret it too much, while I was looking for your reply today I understand what it means being busy: work, family, friends etc. Whenever you have time. And if for any reason you cannot post, rest assured that your prior posts have done a lot to shape my thinking on this.

And Noob (sorry but i could not resist shortening your name noobftw),

Thanks for reading my posts and I hope that you did not read my post as a criticism or direct attack of yours, my aim was to reply on a more general basis and take your post, as it was the newest, for doing so.

Anyways, I sincerely hope that you do not mean that playing the game literally catapults you into bouts of depression. I would advise not playing it anymore then.

cymerdown.4103:

• Downstate, like it or not, is something integral to Guild Wars 2, and something too tightly woven into the game at this point to ever be removed completely
• The existence of downstate adds a unique teamplay mechanic to pvp not seen in other games and especially rewards teams with good downstate management and communication
• There are currently too many tournament-viable res utilities to manipulate downstate which can make team fights go on too long and make them too confusing to watch

I really like your synthesis cymerdown, I would however like to take a closer look at your last point.

In essence this says that a) teamfights are often too long for enjoyment of play (i.e. there should be more or rather quicker stomps (as in stomps should come earlier in a fight), aka. blood). And the fact that people are rezzed too often makes the fight confusing.

As to the first part of this: teamfights are often too long. And even though ‘too long’ is a vague concept, I think we can say that we will all probably recognize something as too long when it actually is too long. That being said, I do not really see that teamfights are regularly too long at the moment. Be that as it may, my experiences are limited and without proper statistical data (I will take this point up below), we can only hope to come close to what is going on by taking our experiences as a base and try to make plausible claims based on what we can see. [I mean we could go and analyze mistleague videos and get some statistical data that way, but tbh I do not have the heart and time to do it. That is something that Areananet can do. They are the developers. I think that sharing statistical data with us would be an interesting thing to do though.]

Here is why I think that teamfights are generally not too long. I base this on my experiences in soloQ (around 120 games), playing with premades prior to last patch, and from what I remember looking at videos form mistleague.

To give you some background. In soloQ I have worked myself up to about 65% in the
leaderboards. I have started out badly during the first days after the patch and racked up a 22-7 loss win ratio (I think I was around the 20% bracket, if I remember well) and have been slowly crawling out of that ever since. I think where I am at currently is an adequate reflection of my skill level compared to other players.

So let us look at my experiences in the lower brackets. Rezzing was definitely not an issue there. In fact, I tried to make teammates understand the importance of rezzing in each pre-game chat, because there was not enough rezzing going on. [And if you take the rage that is going around in the lower brackets as a guide to how people react to being stomped, maybe more stomps are not really what we should go for.]
At the level where I am at in SoloQ right now I do not experience teamfights to go on for too long. In fact, I think it is safe to say that the first midfight is usually over in the first 2-3 minutes of the game (except Foefire, but here you could argue long teamfights in mid are a feature of the map.).

I cannot speak for what goes on in the higher brackets of soloQ, but we can look at teamQ where it can actually be argued that coordination is easier owing to voip software. I will limit myself to what I can see on official matches of mistleague, because I have not played in a match using voip ever since the patch and I can only say that I did not experience the teamfights to be too long.

Without doing a proper statistical analysis with clearly stated criteria for when a fight is considered to have started to when it ended, I think we can plausibly claim that (except in Foefire) the initial teamfights are not longer than around 2 minutes in general (Please bear with me, I have not looked over all the matches again, but have only rechecked a few matches. If somebody wants to go over that and do a proper count, please feel free.). So it seems that at most levels of skill teamfights are usually about 2-3 minutes long.

That would amount to at least 1 stomp (or kill of a downed player) every 37 seconds, i.e. in the case only the team that looses gets wiped. In my view that is not really a bad ratio of stomps/player kills. I think it would be interesting to see, how that would relate to the number of rezzes in said teamfight, i.e. to have a stomp/rez ratio.

[Excursion: In terms of game statistics after a game, it would be nice if Anet implemented a team and total game statistic that indicated, among other things: a a) match total of player kills, player downs, player rezzes, player rallies, player stomps, number of caps and decaps for each point, number of minutes each point was held by each team and b) for each player how many rezzes, stomps, downs etc. they completed successfully. I think that would be a great addition!]

Downed state is the worst pvp related gw2 feature, its a joke of a system. Anet should just admit it and remove this $%&@

Sorry for the delayed second post. I got interrupted.
Let us look at the second point: The fights are too confusing owing to too many rezzes.

I think that that there is something here, but I do not think that it has something to do with the mere fact that players are rezzed.
Firstly, I identify the prime reason of confusion especially for somebody who casually watches a game as
a) the fast pace of the action.
b) the fact that there are no clear roles associated with the classes. (i.e. it is easier to watch a game with the holy trinity in place, because you know a monk is a healer and what he primarily does is keeping the tanks and dmg. dealers alive (he mostly does nothing else and his performance is easier to evaluate and watch because of a well defined role)

[Btw, memory might not serve me well, but even though I did not really participate in GW1 PvP I remember watching a few games and thinking: Man, these fights go on forever (not in a bad way.)
And, in terms of confusion. While the game is really fast paced, I find watching a gw2 fight in slow motion extremely awesome. More awesome than anything I have seen in games so far. I do not know how that relate to what I said above, just two thoughts that came to my mind.]

c) For an outside viewer the toons are hard to identify in terms of what class they are, owing to the continuoulsy shifting nature of the fight and the graphics of the toons.

There are probably more reasons, but I will make it short, in saying that all of these reasons are probably much more contributive to the confusion and thus confusion will not really be lessened by taking away or changing the rez mechanic.

However, I think there is a discrepancy between the stomp animation and the rez animation. Thus it is easier to see the stomp than to see a rez: The stomp animation itself is quite distinctive, the fact that somebody got stomped is indicated by a lingering pole on the battlefield, and the stomp animation ends in a clearly seeable particle effect. The fact that a player got rezzed is, however, only indicated that by the fact that he is up and running again. That is something that is more easily missed than a stomp, if for example, a viewer is checking out the map to see what else is happening, or focusing on a different aspect of the teamfight.
One solution here could be to make the fact that a player got rezzed more apparent with animation.

On a personal note though, I enjoy the playing in team fights that are going on for a long time. I usually experience this on Foefire, and the continuous back and forth builds a suspense in me that I find quite enjoyable and provides me with a real sense of accomplishment, if we finally manage to accomplish wiping the other party and cap mid. The sense of accomplishment is far greater than the sense of accomplishment of having stomped a player, to me that is just a means to an end for capping a point or whatever other goal you have in tPvP.
Also, on the rare occasions where a fight is actually really long, I feel my concentration slipping and in terms of game mastery and skill, being able to keep up such intense concentration for a long time is also a measure of skill.

lynnhood.8270:

I really like your synthesis cymerdown…

Ok, to be clear, what I was referring to are the high-end team matches, the type that spectators will be watching. I float around top 50 team arena lb and, depending on the enemy team, team fights that go on for over 2 minutes are rather common with the level of res coordination and number of res utils seen at this tier of play. These long, back and forth fights can be fun for experienced players to watch, but really, really hard for the common spectator to follow and even experienced commentators like Grouch can have trouble processing all the plays in these long 4v4s. Compared to MOBAs whose team rights typically last 10 or 15 seconds, GW2s team fights in the current meta are sometimes an endurance test for the viewer and commentator rather than being “quick plays” that are more exciting and visually appealing. And like I said, I believe a big part of that is there are too many viable res utils currently and they should be nerfed a little bit.

I’m not so against downed as I am the crazy downed abilities and rallying.

With that said the frequent excuse “downed is what allows burst builds not to pwn” is sorta ignorant and has no grounds for debate. The truth is most people who run burst builds also carry an ability that makes themselves unstoppable while stomping you…SD power engineers will use elixir S and thieves smoke field..etc etc.

So it does not stop this….it is not required for any other reason than it was a gimmicky thing that allowed team play and fun encounters in PVE that got ported over to SPVP along with many other pve designed features that simply are not healthy for spvp.

with that said….it wouldn’t be hard to make it less annoying and work better for the game. But i’m not sure we’ll ever see those changes as they FREQUENTLY go on about how they don’t want SPVP to be too different or PVE players coming over will get confused…..which, tbh is them basicly saying “we think our community is full of idiots”. Which hell might be true….I sure feel like one everytime I log in and waste my time in a few matches that require 5-10 minute ques that usually result in an afk on one of the teams anyway…so I can harvest some weird currency I have no use for and go up in a ladder system that has tons of exploitable problems and thus little meaning.

People still argue about down state…? Huh, guess i don’t think much of it since I’m a thief anyways.

Stomping = Got stealth/invisibility/Stability?
Yes – Its easy can first time stomp
No – Prepare to take a truck load of damage.

Downed? Totally depends which class you play, if your playing a Ranger, Necromancer or Mesmer your probably thinking its totally fine.
If you play say an engineer or warrior you probably aren’t so thrilled.

I don’t mind the downed state.

The downed state, as I’ve always seen it, is an extra threshold that was added to increase the overall damage that players could inflict on each other, as a means of making burst and pinch plays meaningful. If DPS is too low, then burst has no place. If DPS is too high, then burst is king. In order to make meaningful burst without making it king, they invented the down state. This allows you to get downed via burst, but not completely defeated or neutralized. Then, either through your own actions or the actions of your team, you can recover and continue in the fight.

It also gives every class a viable method of healing without occupying their stats or slots to heal. In this sense, the down state is successful.

By contrast, if players wanted to remove the downed state, then they would have to adjust DPS to be much lower than it is now, but then make toughness and healing power less effective, and then give players a whole lot of HP so they can’t die too quickly. All of the fights would become big ole’ bag o’ HP fights, and burst wouldn’t be nearly as meaningful.

We can ask for things all we want, but the fact is that this crap is built into the core mechanics of the game. Nothing major will ever get removed/majorly tweaked to the communities liking simply because it’s impossible (unless they want a whole different game)

Just to be clear, I don’t do any high end spvp. When I do spvp I only do hot joins and I am only rank 17. I do however solo/duo/small team roam a lot in wvw fighting unfavorable odds often. I also main a mesmer (although I have a lv 80 of every class), so my opinion will be from these perspectives.

I find down state fun and exciting, because when someone is down so many choices can be made that it is very interesting.

If I down someone, I need to decide, is my mesmer F4 distortion up? If F4 is not up am I able to do a stealth stomp using decoy or mass invis? Is that an ele, thief or mesmer who can avoid my distortion stomp? Do I have enough hp to risk stomping? Is blink up? Should I use it to save a few sec of traveling time to the downed opponent? Can I dodge roll on the way there to generate a clone for an additional second of distortion. If someone on my team is down as well, should I try to stomp or play it safe and try to rez?

Are the opponents trying to rez? If they are is my geastsword #5 on CD so I can do an AoE knockback? If not can I do a F3 daze? Else can I switch to pistol for #5? Are they low enough for me to burst them down instead before they can rez? Do they have stability?

If someone on my team is down and the opponent is trying to stomp, I have to go through the same thought process as above again to prevent the stomp. If no one is stomping, I need to decide, should I try to rez or should I try to down and finish someone off? Do I have enough hp to rez? Do I have F4 on CD? Can I mass invis to save the down person from a stomp and rez?

Then when I am stomping or rezing, I need to time my distortion well as I rarely have enough clones to cover the full 3 sec stomp or the full rez duration. A cc could come in from anywhere out of my field of vision. Can I make it? Especially when this stomp will rally my teammate.

A judgment need to be made in a split second. A correct judgment plus execution can turn the tide of the battle in my team’s favor and an incorrect one can doom us all. I don’t know about the rest of you, but this make the game exciting as hell for me.

Downed state is fine except one thing… If one person is finished then one person should rally in pvp and in wvw this whole talking 5 people off one dead body is quite ridiculous.

Removing downed state would be a horrible idea

All the speculation in the world is useless without actual testing. Would the game be better without the downstate? We’ll never know at this point because it isn’t an option.

Anet should allow Custom Arena owners an option to disable the downstate in their rooms. This might settle some arguments or, more likely, create new ones. But the point is, options are almost always better for games.

If Anet refuses to implement this, it is because they are reluctant to be open to the possibility that their unasked for game mechanic may not be the best thing for the game. So what does that say about them as a game company?

lynnhood.8270:

Erebos.6741:

Down-state aims to counterbalance my mistakes; punishing those that outplayed me,
and snares my capability, in fairness of vantage…

The perspective underlying this claim is that getting the opponents health bar down to zero before he/she gets down yours down to zero equals outplaying the opponent and is a measure of your skill and this is where it should end. Anything that comes after in downed state is not a measure of skill.

The view focuses on punishment and reward.
My angle discerned down state as a milestone (or turning point) whereby combat logistics strongly favour the non afflicted. Even though death is far from certain, I consider going downed as a loss in and of itself, because the battle of comparative skill-instigated ability ended.

I’m not of the opinion that this is where skill does or should end, rather skills influence becomes of little value to leverage a comeback.

p.s. As passionately as I feel about this topic, it stacks fairly low on my list of other priorities – hence my delay ;P
Thank you for your patience! And you can expect further discussion

I wish custom arenas had a downed state off toggle.

lynnhood.8270:

Another implicit claim that is often made that being downed is a necessary and direct reflection (or consequence) of the intellectual capabilities of the downed player.

Player skill is a mix of knowledge and adroitness.
It is the best means for determining combat outcome.

lynnhood.8270:

being downed is not in a necessary relationship of cause and effect with skill or intelligence.

Basically you’re implying the results of combat has elements not determined by skill or intellect, and player skill doesn’t necessarily grant control of the situation, thus, skill is an unfair gauge to hold players accountable for being downed.

I agree skill isn’t the only factor for determining combat, but I think your conclusion is… lacking data — to put it nicely.

Before I really consider your notion, please explain a fun & fair way to determine combat without using skill as the principal factor.

Erebos.6741:

Is it fair if one player dies from an overwhelming number of enemy players?

There are limits to player capability. If skill was the only factor for determining combat than characters would be immortal at high skill levels! Trivializing combat!