I’ll be your doom and gloom guy for today – these changes are going to do nothing positive for the game.
Okay, warrior bunker is seemingly getting buffed. Not really, if shouts and banners etc. are too powerful, they will get nerfed. This will make the build a non-build and make lesser variations of said build to be non-existent.
Counterplay is basically being removed altogether and classes are receiving more buffs than nerfs. Yes, some classes like necromancer have pathetic implementation for upcoming patch, but this will (I would hope…) change and they will be buffs only.
Our stats are basically not changing. Our ability to have stat variation is, though.
How the Evolution of Combat killed RuneScape.
CEO of Jagex admits EOC was a mistake
“Jagex introduced the Evolution of Combat for many reasons, some of which were: "
To balance out the combat triangle. Previously, melee was much more powerful in most cases when compared to Ranged and Magic.
Same change has happened in Guild Wars 2. Stability changes totally ruined that (WvW only) and the pew pew from different sources continues to increase.
WvW is in its worst state its ever been and WvW is the end game and one of the main reasons so many people bought the game. The new map will just magnify this issue because of ranged having better terrain to take advantage of and new PvE mechanics being introduced.
To make the combat system “more fluid, interactive and exciting for everyone”
Same thing is happening in Guild Wars 2 – it’s having the complete opposite effect. My trait panel lights up, so exciting! Balance will be butchered! So exciting!
Balance wasn’t even that bad before. If the devs put all of this “effort” into the old system, it would already be balanced. Years go by and they continue to butcher balance by adding more passive/on crit play, make no changes to existing bad traits at all and instead create less builds over and over by first removing trinkets, but now also stats from traits.
To refocus combat to be more about player skill.
No. These upcoming changes are mostly keeping our stats the same but giving us more abilities and more traits. More abilities and spam does not = skill.
Simple was better. For example, I actually liked the necromancer trait, “Spiteful Spirit”. If you entered death shroud at the right time, you could make your opponent eat a large burst such as against a guardians Whirling Wrath or Zealot’s Defense Now, Spiteful Spirit will activate the axe#3 skill, removing boons, crippling, giving retaliation and doing AOE damage.
Why? Kitten why? That’s broken and unskillful. Just like a thief having 2 basilisk venoms for no reason.
You can’t just combine “useless” traits with good traits. Yeah, no one took them before. (Maybe you should have actually balanced the game once in a while) But just because no one took them, that didn’t mean that they were useless. Adding more effects into traits that were already good is not how you balance. This further dominos in the fact that we can choose much more traits now.
So you think you’re choosing 3 grandmasters and 9 traits? Wrong! You’re actually choosing 3-5 grandmasters and about 15 traits! Because we combined them!
Good luck balancing this mess.
To encourage a variety in combat equipment.
The complete opposite is going to happen since we can no longer get stats from 3 areas (runes, armor and traits). We can now only get stats from armor and runes. No one will use stats such as cavalier or other “lesser” combinations because you can no longer make up for low stats by investing into traits.
_"Many vocal players have seen the Evolution of Combat as one of the most controversial updates in RuneScape’s history and the player count has taken some losses as well."_*
_"About two thirds of those surveyed had a generally favorable opinion on the new combat system, while two fifths of those surveyed didn’t like the new system. *This resulted in a massive drop of active players."_*
The same thing will happen here. I don’t know how you can take such an amazing combat system and kitten it up, but you’re pretty good at it.
Less players in RuneScape meant they had to invest more development time on their cash shop. People already complain that Anet focus too much on that. Yippy.
Jagex has spent the last few years basically reverting back to the old system (even creating an entire server dedicated to the old system) because players preferred the better system.
All you had to do was actually do stuff to the old system. This new system doesn’t even solve anything. Can anyone actually look at this upcoming system and say, “Yep, that solved a lot of balance issues!” No, I don’t think that anyone can.
(edited by Zefrost.3425)