Guild Wars 2

No, this isn’t another “QQ our timer ran out” thread. This is a thread I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. I was told to never complain about something unless you can offer a better solution…and well, I think I have one.

First off, let me say that having failure requirements on a world boss is a good direction to go. It makes the encounter less trivial. However, let me also say I think timers are the wrong way to implement these failure criteria. Having a timer simply encourages everyone to run glass cannon builds focused on DPS output in order to beat the timer with no regard for any kind of defense, support, or often times strategy. Increasing a boss’s HP does not equate to making the battle more meaningful, it actually makes you feel like you contributed less due to all the amazing DPS that is going out around you. Couple that with all the skill effects everywhere it’s hard to even see what you’re doing, much less go “ha, is that all you got Mr. Tequatl?”

Instead, I propose we introduce a death count system. The boss will stick around until he kills X amount of players. We can do it at our leisure, but similarly with the timer, the longer a fight goes on, the more likely it is to fail. We can ensure it doesn’t unfairly count deaths for people not in the event by making certain the only deaths that are counted are ones from both inside the event radius and from people who will get contribution when the event succeeds/fails. This prevents people dying across the zone from counting against your world boss and it also prevents people from running by, tagging, then running off to die elsewhere from counting against your death total.

A death count system would further increase incentive to support each other, revive each other, and play a build other than glass cannon “burst and die.” If a death means one more step closer to failure, you better believe people will be trying to revive each other and use support skills to save allies on the brink of death. Furthermore, it introduces more build diversity as people realize the key to success in these events is the ability to not die during them; aka the ability to survive a hit or be extremely well versed on how to dodge/block/invuln properly to live with a glass cannon. This increases the skill ceiling for boss encounters which is good.

Another benefit I see to a death count system over a timer system is the fact that it forces situation awareness. In the current system, your only penalty is a cheap waypoint, armor repair, and a short run back to the fray. There’s not much incentive to try and evade those deadly attacks, revive a downed player, or pay much attention at all to what you’re doing defensively; only maximize your offense. If deaths suddenly started counting against the event, I like to think players would finally start paying attention to things like Tequatl’s wave attack, AoE circles, etc. This forces a more active boss battle. It would be less about standing in one place pounding on a boss until you get low, pulling back until you’re high, and repeating, and more about active defense. Which is what the game was founded on. I think it also helps players feel like they contribute more because the developers would not need to force a massive HP versus timer fight on us, this would allow each attack to potentially deal more damage relative to a boss’s total HP. They could, also, simply force a fight on us that we can take at our leisure, albeit taken carefully. We need to play well, to clear.

Lastly, I’d like to address one inevitable concern I can see arising; “What about the noobs that will join an event and fail it with their constant dying to unknown boss mechanics?!” Well, to that I say “Don’t noobs already fail timer events?” The only way people can beat Tequatl is with extremely efficient combat where everyone in the zerg understands the basic principle of what’s required to win. If there’s something players can do well, it’s teach how to be successful. And if a noob is willing to try to learn, then he can always improve and eventually he’ll stop being “detrimental” to the effort and start really contributing. A sense of progression is felt as one goes from dying 10 times during Tequatl to dying 5 times, to dying once, to not dying, to not being downed. And that says something to one’s skill. Moreover, the death count system could be just as unforgiving as the timer, or more forgiving. This is part of the balance that is picking the right number of deaths to fail at. Probably not 1 death, probably not 100,000 deaths. I’m not going to say what the right answer is, because I don’t know. But system balance around noobs is not a concern one should have for whether a system goes into place or not.

TLDR; Introduce a death count system instead of a timer system for the failure of a world boss. It encourages active play, increases the skill ceiling, encourages support and player cooperation, encourages more build diversity, doesn’t make a boss feel rushed, allows for more situational awareness and active defense instead of burst, death, and repeat, and it helps players feel like they’re progressing/assisting in an event instead of just “being there”

That is all.
Simplicity

The problem I’m seeing with this is that Arena.net is clearly trying to make when these world events happen on a more predictable pattern across all servers and overflows, rather than having players bouncing around the map going, “Is [x] up yet?”

Hence we see the timers. If a server pokes at Tequatl for 65 minutes (just as an example), then it completely throws those timers out of whack.

Now, there certainly can be some discussion about how long that timer should be, but I think for those practical purposes, the timer isn’t going to go away.

chemiclord.3978:

The problem I’m seeing with this is that Arena.net is clearly trying to make when these world events happen on a more predictable pattern across all servers and overflows, rather than having players bouncing around the map going, “Is [x] up yet?”

Hence we see the timers. If a server pokes at Tequatl for 65 minutes (just as an example), then it completely throws those timers out of whack.

Now, there certainly can be some discussion about how long that timer should be, but I think for those practical purposes, the timer isn’t going to go away.

I feel like if that were a real problem, they could simply make the respawn for Tequatl shorter for servers that take longer to kill it. But I don’t even see that as a problem because a 1 hour respawn means a 1 hour respawn. If you kill a boss in 10 minutes, that means you’ve got one rolling out every 70 minutes. If you kill a boss in 2 hours, that means you’ve got one coming every 3 hours. Alternatively, it could just pick the next available respawn time (say you start at 12pm and you kill it at 2:05pm. Then you have to wait until 3pm for the next one to spawn. Or say you start at 12pm and you kill it at 12:55pm, then you get another one at 2pm (a minimum 1 hour between bosses to prevent the content from being trivialized). Either way, it rewards clearing the boss faster, more skillfully, by granting more frequent boss fights. This is a good thing.

If it’s a coding issue with the bosses, I see even less of a reason for this not to exist. You shouldn’t make the players suffer inferior content just based on the difficulty of it’s implementation and I feel ArenaNet really does care for the quality of their game.

It is an idea worth pondering, the main problem I immediately thought of was toxic player behaviour – anyone ever played a DotA game?

Mastruq.2463:

It is an idea worth pondering, the main problem I immediately thought of was toxic player behaviour – anyone ever played a DotA game?

I don’t envision people intentionally trolling, but there are always answers…make bosses stack a debuff that increases armor repair costs for a certain time each time they kill someone, suicidal trolls would just end up paying out the kitten . Or make it so you need to upkeep a certain DPS ratio or attacks per second ratio against the boss in order to have your deaths counted. The second could be exploited by people intentionally slowly killing the boss to have their deaths not counted, but if I’ve learned anything from Tequatl, it’s that a zerg is like a chicken with its head cut off. The odds of that many people coming together to all do something like that are slim, especially if such a strategy would mean a 3 hour boss fight. You could probably get 3 boss fights in the same time doing it the regular way.

That is actually a brillant idea!
This deserves more +1 !

I think you underestimate the trolls. If player deaths counted toward failure, it would be easy for them to strip naked to avoid repair costs and perform multiple suicide runs to grief the event.

I support the idea of having different failure conditions, but I prefer that they are conditions that the players have control over. If tons of players die, I don’t have control over that. They could run into a rotmouth, or get hit by poison clouds. They could even kill themselves on purpose to fail the event.

I think a better idea would be to have some sort of buff on the boss, that increases with each failure on the part of the players. If he takes out part of the battery for example, he gains more of the buff. And when that buff hits maximum, he flies off. Players can respond to this, and decide to defend certain parts of the battle better.

Scenario: I tag Tequatl for a minute or so, guaranteeing that I qualify for participation. Then I go off and kill myself inside the circle over and over and over, of course tagging Teq in between deaths. Basically Leeroying into the beast.

Just playing Devil’s Advocate.

There is a way to deal with it. Make armor repairs exponentially more expensive for each concurrent death. If naked, subtract 15g from player. If no gold, you get negative gold. Unable to use gold for anything until negative “gold debt” paid off.

Look, the solution is unimportant, I could think of a thousand crazy ways to punish people trolling the event, it’d be fun, but it’s not the purpose of the thread. I think a death count would be better than a timer. And there’s already people trolling the timer by being idiots on the turrets.

Heck, even make it so a certain % of the people participating in the event have to be killed X times. One troll won’t alter the % being killed in a zerg. It would take a zerg of trolls, and at that point, they’re not really completing the event so it doesn’t matter if they troll it.

There will always be trolls. But as I stated in another thread, timers are needed. You can’t just have unlimited time to complete a task.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

There will always be trolls. But as I stated in another thread, timers are needed. You can’t just have unlimited time to complete a task.

Not saying there won’t be people trying to troll. Just saying if it costs them 15g per death, and it takes 40 deaths to fail an event, I doubt anyone would try it. As for “timers are needed” have you never played super adventure box? Any dungeon? Fractals of the mists? Were you under a rock prior to this patch when every boss had unlimited time? These things all function with varying levels of difficulty and none of them use timers.

The moment I saw death count as an idea, I didn’t even need to read the rest.
It would not foster people trying to help each other, it would foster flame wars on map speak against certain players, or just everyone in general.
Then you would have trolls who spark the flame on purpose by suicide charging.

Such a mechanic would be best reserved for some sort of instanced fight, and even then, probably not a good idea in general.

magic fly.2041:

The moment I saw death count as an idea, I didn’t even need to read the rest.
It would not foster people trying to help each other, it would foster flame wars on map speak against certain players, or just everyone in general.
Then you would have trolls who spark the flame on purpose by suicide charging.

Such a mechanic would be best reserved for some sort of instanced fight, and even then, probably not a good idea in general.

If you had read, you would have known I already came up with three or four ways of severely punishing “suicide chargers.” And that’s not even close to a comprehensive list. And you’re saying you’d rather have the population shoehorned into a glass cannon with utter disregard for boss mechanics and the only goal being DPS output? You sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable playing a holy trinity MMO?

Simplicity.7208:

Were you under a rock prior to this patch when every boss had unlimited time?

Which is why there are now timers in place.

Simplicity.7208:

magic fly.2041:

The moment I saw death count as an idea, I didn’t even need to read the rest.
It would not foster people trying to help each other, it would foster flame wars on map speak against certain players, or just everyone in general.
Then you would have trolls who spark the flame on purpose by suicide charging.

Such a mechanic would be best reserved for some sort of instanced fight, and even then, probably not a good idea in general.

If you had read, you would have known I already came up with three or four ways of severely punishing “suicide chargers.” And that’s not even close to a comprehensive list. And you’re saying you’d rather have the population shoehorned into a glass cannon with utter disregard for boss mechanics and the only goal being DPS output? You sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable playing a holy trinity MMO?

If you had read, you would have known that i never said I wanted people to be shoehorned into dps and forget to use their brains. The second half of your post is nothing but personal attacks.

After reading your “fixes” I can safely say that there was little thought put into it.
The most appalling of which is the “gold debt” idea. That is a surefire way to get people to quit playing the game.

NEVER say the solution is not important!
Constantly putting band aids on a faulty idea takes more time than it’s worth.
Dismissing a solution as “not important” is a major oversight.