Guild Wars 2

I felt this post requires its own topic, so it could be bumped. We want ANET to read this (BTW gj eatthisshoe.5136):

EatThisShoe.5136:
I think one of the things which frustrates people is that most of the skill in this game is defensive. There’s a big divide between players who can reliably avoid burst combos and those who can’t. This means that almost anybody can pick up a burst build and kill you, and you have to struggle to get better just to stay alive. You can contrast this with FPS games, which often have lower time to kill, but bad players are not very dangerous because they can’t aim. In GW2 there are few skills which really reward high skill with greater damage. In fact some game mechanics really favor low skill attackers, such as blocked and blinded attacks not breaking stealth.

The second issue is that defense is limited. You only get a couple dodges, and whatever defensive skills your profession can add. This has two sub-issues, first even a good player can simply run out of defensive skills and endurance, leaving them an easy kill. Second some professions can retry failed bursts much more often than others, this is part of why shatter mesmers and backstab thieves stand out from 100blades warriors, because bursts come often enough that they can overwhelm defensive cooldowns. Of course the number of defensive skills you can viably pack into a build also varies with profession.

RhysSebastian.7651:

I felt this post requires its own topic, so it could be bumped. We want ANET to read this (BTW gj eatthisshoe.5136):

EatThisShoe.5136:
I think one of the things which frustrates people is that most of the skill in this game is defensive. There’s a big divide between players who can reliably avoid burst combos and those who can’t. This means that almost anybody can pick up a burst build and kill you, and you have to struggle to get better just to stay alive. You can contrast this with FPS games, which often have lower time to kill, but bad players are not very dangerous because they can’t aim. In GW2 there are few skills which really reward high skill with greater damage. In fact some game mechanics really favor low skill attackers, such as blocked and blinded attacks not breaking stealth.

The second issue is that defense is limited. You only get a couple dodges, and whatever defensive skills your profession can add. This has two sub-issues, first even a good player can simply run out of defensive skills and endurance, leaving them an easy kill. Second some professions can retry failed bursts much more often than others, this is part of why shatter mesmers and backstab thieves stand out from 100blades warriors, because bursts come often enough that they can overwhelm defensive cooldowns. Of course the number of defensive skills you can viably pack into a build also varies with profession.

Great post! I agree with it at 100%; I know EatThisShoe and his posts are normally a pleasure to read.

As mentiones already , professions like mesmer get rewarded far too much in comparison with the amount of the skill input, take the mesmer shatter build, being myself a mesmer player ( along of course with my main and trusted ele) I can guarantee that the shatter combo does not require great coordination to pull off as 60% of the work is done by clones controlled by the AI, it takes way more skill to actually dodge the combo that setting it up

Yup Yup, now cross your fingers, make 3 prayers get your lucky charm and hope the 2 devs on pvp hear you out.

Exactly

Burst/Damage for some classes is so easy to play in this game its the classes that try to live past the burst the burden is on. You see it over and over learn to dodge, those same burst players tend to never dodge and just spam the attack rotation.

Zero need to aim alot of skills get your right on target with a single button press, you dont even need to move your char to be facing the target LOL.

It’s a phenomenal post, but what specifically would he (or others) suggest to fix it? What actions would you have the devs take to start fixing these problems? Ideally the answer wouldn’t involve a massive overhaul to the entire system, because I don’t think that’s a realistic expectation.

mouse.1689:

It’s a phenomenal post, but what specifically would he (or others) suggest to fix it? What actions would you have the devs take to start fixing these problems? Ideally the answer wouldn’t involve a massive overhaul to the entire system, because I don’t think that’s a realistic expectation.

Let us pick every single statistic we want to upgrade individually and put trait separated from stat points. Then remove crit damage while lowering condition damage by 50% and healing skills other than 6th skill by 50%.

I want longer and epic fights no matter the builds. I want to be able to dodge more than twice in team fights not just play a chaotic mess where you can get bursted in seconds after using your CDs.

I agree with his post somewhat. This is, after all, an MMORPG. It would be very difficult to implement an FPS’s level of twitch aiming skill in a game of this genre. As you said, this game already gets closer to that level of skill on the defensive side of the game than most games in this genre.

Additionally, I have heard several opinions voiced to contrary of “EatMyShoes” point of view. There are several people already off-put by the amount of the game that does require a more twitch-like level of skill as opposed to the more “typical” static, strategic level of PvP gameplay in the genre (something GW1 apparently did the best).

Finally, a couple of my friends that came over from WoW made a point to exclaim how they were initially challenged by the sheer amount of ground targeting precision required by several classes in this game.

While I agree that it would be great to somehow approach that twitch-level of skill offensively in an MMORPG, I think that GW2 already does a better job of it than any other game in the genre. Maybe in the future some additional considerations can be made to help this idea without having to overhaul the entire system, but again, as mouse said, what exactly could be done?

denyitbattle.2609:

I agree with his post somewhat. This is, after all, an MMORPG. It would be very difficult to implement an FPS’s level of twitch aiming skill in a game of this genre. As you said, this game already gets closer to that level of skill on the defensive side of the game than most games in this genre.

Additionally, I have heard several opinions voiced to contrary of “EatMyShoes” point of view. There are several people already off-put by the amount of the game that does require a more twitch-like level of skill as opposed to the more “typical” static, strategic level of PvP gameplay in the genre (something GW1 apparently did the best).

Finally, a couple of my friends that came over from WoW made a point to exclaim how they were initially challenged by the sheer amount of ground targeting precision required by several classes in this game.

While I agree that it would be great to somehow approach that twitch-level of skill offensively in an MMORPG, I think that GW2 already does a better job of it than any other game in the genre. Maybe in the future some additional considerations can be made to help this idea without having to overhaul the entire system, but again, as mouse said, what exactly could be done?

I agree. I intended my post as a fairly general description gameplay, in the context of the original thread. I didn’t draw any conclusions, or propose any solutions, although everyone has their own opinions on the matter, some of which I don’t agree with.

I think everyone views the game through a lens of whatever games they have played prior. Many people compare GW2 to WoW as an MMO, others to LoL. Personally I was playing Team Fortress 2 before, and that has given me a somewhat different outlook on the game. Compared to other MMOs I have played in the past GW2 is a step in the right direction, having skill in defense is an improvement over not having any control defensively like in many past MMOs.

Unfortunately there are some limitations to what GW2 can add offensively without a serious overhaul of the system, which is unlikely to ever happen. There are however skills which do things better than others. I gave the example before of how thieves don’t lose stealth when their hits are blocked or miss due to blind, and while those skills are defensive the mechanic as a whole favors the offense even when they play badly. I think the game could use more skills like the Elementalist’s Phoenix which rewards a well placed GTAE with a triple hit, while a less precise hit rewards only the blast for about 60% of the total damage. GTAE in general is good because not only can you miss offensively, but you can predict and aim better than the in game targetting.

Given the defensive nature of the game however there is only so much you can add offensively without changing the whole game. As such the defensive options should be given more offensive power. The game currently has quite a few block → counter attack skills, but many of them are rather awkward or weak, having real risks in attacking at the wrong time would put pressure on offensive play without lowering their damage. Another aspect is that there are relatively few duration based blocks with meaningful counter effects, Shocking Aura and projectile reflects are the only ones that come to mind, this means multi-hit attacks are subject to less punishment. I think retaliation was meant to punish these attacks, but it has had some balance issues because it is too abundant to be really powerful. Maybe retaliation should stack in intensity rather than duration.

I think Anet was right in wanting offense to have some advantage. Bunker builds aren’t much fun to play against. Since much of the skill in the game is defensive, then the defensive skills need to create offensive opportunities. Some skills do this quite well already, but others fail. Stealth actually achieves this, although it has other issues. Many block counters aren’t very strong, often swing awkwardly at melee range, and aren’t effective against multi-hit attacks. Perhaps some counter attacks could send the original attack back at the attacker so that the bigger the hit countered the stronger the counter attack.

Most of these ideas are off the top of my head, but I think there are opportunities within the current system to improve things and to harness defensive skill into an offense oriented gameplay.

Sebyos.4089:

I want longer and epic fights no matter the builds. I want to be able to dodge more than twice in team fights not just play a chaotic mess where you can get bursted in seconds after using your CDs.

This

15 Chars

Great post EatThisShoe! (Sorry I got your name wrong before)

Yea I agree, actually, I think the mesmer actually has some absorb/redirect of projectile skill, but I have never considered using it. I guess the challenge would be creating a block/retaliate (not the boon) skill that was good enough to apply to a variety of situations without being too powerful.

I think this is one of the few areas where the game’s limited skill selection (10 for most classes) actually fights against it. Other MMOs where you have 20+ skills can afford to have some more specific counters and abilities without having to worry about clashing with other, more broadly relevant skills.

Personally, the most competitive I have played a game was CS1.6, and also have played my fair share of TF2 (which ironically is a great example of a “stealth” class that seems OP in PUBs but isn’t much of a factor in competitive play).

I do think there is real value on what you touched on regarding the blocks and counters being re-worked to translate more to offensive abilities than simply prevent dmg. That way, a bunker’s only real way to “burst” would be to redirect several attacks successfully and maybe use one offensive ability in there. Also, for any class, accomplishing the true max burst for that class would include at least one successful block/counter chained together with offensive abilities.

By simply giving the more “defensive” classes access to more and better block/counter abilities, you could make them harder to kill without really making them “bunkers” dependent on toughness and regeneration while adding more twitch skill in both the defensive and offensive side of the game.

I also agree that stacking retaliation in intensity instead of duration makes sense, but then again I could rather my multi-hit counters to be an ability that is easier to see than a boon that I can just pop-off.

Anyway, its fun to think and talk about this stuff, and I think there are certainly some awesome things that could be done (after thorough testing), but again, there is a lot more things that I would prioritize above this.