Balanced PvE (Making all playstyles viable)
i guess nobody wants boring tank’n’spank boss mechanics.
but i assume that with the trinity you can actually create fun, challenging and balanced content with way less work compered to the time anet have to spent in order to make the same content fitting for their systemAnd you can’t without trinity? I’m thinking it’s more to do with anet designers than lack of trinity. Games like dark souls (active gameplay) are popular, challenging and fun to play.
The problem is that often GW2 just took the trinity, gutted out tanks and healers and just left DPSs in, in a tank and spank scenario. So you just end up with everyone spanking, which isn’t exactly fun.
and sitting there AFK with Macro for Aggro management and healing is???
Guild Wars 2 “trinity” being Damage, control and support is VERY much in use. Myself and many people that I know use it every single day
i guess nobody wants boring tank’n’spank boss mechanics.
but i assume that with the trinity you can actually create fun, challenging and balanced content with way less work compered to the time anet have to spent in order to make the same content fitting for their systemAnd you can’t without trinity? I’m thinking it’s more to do with anet designers than lack of trinity. Games like dark souls (active gameplay) are popular, challenging and fun to play.
The problem is that often GW2 just took the trinity, gutted out tanks and healers and just left DPSs in, in a tank and spank scenario. So you just end up with everyone spanking, which isn’t exactly fun.
and sitting there AFK with Macro for Aggro management and healing is???
Guild Wars 2 “trinity” being Damage, control and support is VERY much in use. Myself and many people that I know use it every single day
Have you ever been a raid tank?
If a developer makes a raid where all you do is just tank and spank, they screwed it up. Just screwed it up. I can never understand why people think the trinity is just automatically tank and spank.
If it was that easy being a tank or a healer, why do raids fail so much and why are good tanks and healers in such shortage? By your logic, everyone could just pop their macros and the raid’s good as done. In every MMO Ive played, it takes weeks if not months to down a raid smoothly.
Im not saying I like the trinity, but being a tank or a healer isn’t exactly faceroll.
(edited by Xae Isareth.1364)
i guess nobody wants boring tank’n’spank boss mechanics.
but i assume that with the trinity you can actually create fun, challenging and balanced content with way less work compered to the time anet have to spent in order to make the same content fitting for their systemAnd you can’t without trinity? I’m thinking it’s more to do with anet designers than lack of trinity. Games like dark souls (active gameplay) are popular, challenging and fun to play.
The problem is that often GW2 just took the trinity, gutted out tanks and healers and just left DPSs in, in a tank and spank scenario. So you just end up with everyone spanking, which isn’t exactly fun.
and sitting there AFK with Macro for Aggro management and healing is???
Guild Wars 2 “trinity” being Damage, control and support is VERY much in use. Myself and many people that I know use it every single day
Are you really praising the way encounters are right now, where the best answer to almost all situations is find a little hole in the terrain and burn all mindless enemies that funnel in down before they can pose a significant threat. Where we can get our DPS so high that defense begins to become irrelevant. Yes, we all know how you go on and on and one about how great you are at active defense, but if the fight lasts less than 20 seconds, are you really showing you’re pro at active defense or are you showing you’ve found this DPS sweetspot where you can end the battle so quick that even active defense has minimal effect.
GW2 doesn’t need Tanks and Healers, but it does need encounters that require going beyond the standard Stack n’ Burn the game has adopted. They have so many unique elements in that never get a chance to shine in PvE.
They also need a way reward players for dedicating themselves to playstyles other than DPS or DPS/hybrid. Technical Encounters where finesse or hardiness trumps brute force. Sure some encounters can still be brute force but not all of them.
One I thought of is, you’ll have to defend a control console from a stream of infinite enemies, while two of your party members have to navigate 2 separate obstacle courses to reach a set of off switches.
Registered Altaholic
Part-time Kittenposter
Part-time Kittenposter
please read more carefully next time.
i just said it is way easier with the trinity than withoutHow so?
The component trinity-based combat enables is tank&spank. That’s what it contributes.
On top of that, you run into the issue of XYZ-fights. Most common type is the “healer fight”, but only because every fight is a “dps fight” but we never notice that.Meaning that one role has the outcome of a battle on their shoulders, depending on encounter. The rest stand there and mechanically push their buttons while looking pretty, because the most important combat mechanic around which the boss is built doesn’t concern them much.
Yes, you can avoid that pitfall. But, every time you do, you design a fight so it doesn’t care for the trinity in the first place. Alas, why have it then?
i assume you have never played something like wow raids in hc mode.
Thief (80)
Elona’s Reach
Elona’s Reach
i guess nobody wants boring tank’n’spank boss mechanics.
but i assume that with the trinity you can actually create fun, challenging and balanced content with way less work compered to the time anet have to spent in order to make the same content fitting for their systemAnd you can’t without trinity? I’m thinking it’s more to do with anet designers than lack of trinity. Games like dark souls (active gameplay) are popular, challenging and fun to play.
please read more carefully next time.
i just said it is way easier with the trinity than withoutAre you a game designer, that you know this? If not, on what do you base this assumption?
i don’t need to be a game designer to tell you that you will have a hard time balancing PvE content with core-mechanics that are designed to use in PvP mainly.
It is possible but you need an AI that is similar to an “real” player to make it work
and i don’t think this is an easy to do don’t you think so?
Thief (80)
Elona’s Reach
Elona’s Reach
i guess nobody wants boring tank’n’spank boss mechanics.
but i assume that with the trinity you can actually create fun, challenging and balanced content with way less work compered to the time anet have to spent in order to make the same content fitting for their systemAnd you can’t without trinity? I’m thinking it’s more to do with anet designers than lack of trinity. Games like dark souls (active gameplay) are popular, challenging and fun to play.
The problem is that often GW2 just took the trinity, gutted out tanks and healers and just left DPSs in, in a tank and spank scenario. So you just end up with everyone spanking, which isn’t exactly fun.
That’s false.
GW2’s combat is more realistic in its approach.
In a real world scenario everyone is “dps” – you don’t have tanks and healers. These roles were created and enforced artificially in a virtual environment where the AI cannot simply choose to bypass them.
They’re “made up” – the approach GW2 has is more realistic : Fight and kill while trying your best to keep yourself alive. That’s what an action oriented MMO should go for.
You keep saying we only have " dps " in GW2 but there are plenty of gear choices that are far from optimal DPS.
And if by doing damage we qualify as “dps” by your logic then applying the same logic we’re also all tanks. And all healers. Since players in GW2 sustain themselves via their own heals while actually having boss aggro for a while during a fight.
GW2 does not have " only DPS" it has done away with the Trinity altogether.
A “DPS” in a classic trinity encounter gears and specs in order to push out most damage possible since the tanking and healing are taken care of by others.
In GW2 players manage both their own tanking and their self-healing so by the game’s very design you can’t be a “DPS” from a classic MMO since you’re performing and taking on a role that’s much wider than the standard DPS role.
It is unfair to overlook this fact when presenting things like " GW2 has just dps, while tanks and healers were scrapped". It is false – GW2 has done away with the entire trinity.
And you’ll ask – how are you not DPS when going full zerker? The answer is simple:
1) I cannot make sure the boss doesn’t aggro me – for a while it will engage me and I’ll have to deal with that ( the tank’s job).
2)I can’t opt out of having a self-heal skill and add another damage or damage buffing skills ( healer’s job).
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
i guess nobody wants boring tank’n’spank boss mechanics.
but i assume that with the trinity you can actually create fun, challenging and balanced content with way less work compered to the time anet have to spent in order to make the same content fitting for their systemAnd you can’t without trinity? I’m thinking it’s more to do with anet designers than lack of trinity. Games like dark souls (active gameplay) are popular, challenging and fun to play.
The problem is that often GW2 just took the trinity, gutted out tanks and healers and just left DPSs in, in a tank and spank scenario. So you just end up with everyone spanking, which isn’t exactly fun.
and sitting there AFK with Macro for Aggro management and healing is???
Guild Wars 2 “trinity” being Damage, control and support is VERY much in use. Myself and many people that I know use it every single day
Have you ever been a raid tank?
If a developer makes a raid where all you do is just tank and spank, they screwed it up. Just screwed it up. I can never understand why people think the trinity is just automatically tank and spank.
If it was that easy being a tank or a healer, why do raids fail so much and why are good tanks and healers in such shortage? By your logic, everyone could just pop their macros and the raid’s good as done. In every MMO Ive played, it takes weeks if not months to down a raid smoothly.
Im not saying I like the trinity, but being a tank or a healer isn’t exactly faceroll.
GW2 does not have raids. It never will.
If the trinity was implemented you could afk the all the dungeons with just the healer being forced to not go afk.
Can you imagine GW2’s content if you didn’t have to bother with positioning and keeping yourself alive? How engaging do you think that would be?
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
i assume you have never played something like wow raids in hc mode.
Played plenty of that (organized raids for 8 years without taking much of a break, in fact), that’s largely where that analysis comes from.
The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.
i guess nobody wants boring tank’n’spank boss mechanics.
but i assume that with the trinity you can actually create fun, challenging and balanced content with way less work compered to the time anet have to spent in order to make the same content fitting for their systemAnd you can’t without trinity? I’m thinking it’s more to do with anet designers than lack of trinity. Games like dark souls (active gameplay) are popular, challenging and fun to play.
The problem is that often GW2 just took the trinity, gutted out tanks and healers and just left DPSs in, in a tank and spank scenario. So you just end up with everyone spanking, which isn’t exactly fun.
and sitting there AFK with Macro for Aggro management and healing is???
Guild Wars 2 “trinity” being Damage, control and support is VERY much in use. Myself and many people that I know use it every single day
Are you really praising the way encounters are right now, where the best answer to almost all situations is find a little hole in the terrain and burn all mindless enemies that funnel in down before they can pose a significant threat. Where we can get our DPS so high that defense begins to become irrelevant. Yes, we all know how you go on and on and one about how great you are at active defense, but if the fight lasts less than 20 seconds, are you really showing you’re pro at active defense or are you showing you’ve found this DPS sweetspot where you can end the battle so quick that even active defense has minimal effect.
GW2 doesn’t need Tanks and Healers, but it does need encounters that require going beyond the standard Stack n’ Burn the game has adopted. They have so many unique elements in that never get a chance to shine in PvE.
They also need a way reward players for dedicating themselves to playstyles other than DPS or DPS/hybrid. Technical Encounters where finesse or hardiness trumps brute force. Sure some encounters can still be brute force but not all of them.
One I thought of is, you’ll have to defend a control console from a stream of infinite enemies, while two of your party members have to navigate 2 separate obstacle courses to reach a set of off switches.
Stack and burn has been adopted as the standard by the players because that’s what the players want – to burn down the content as quickly as possible and get those rewards.
You can argue against me that I’m wrong and that’s not what the majority want but the very fact that this is now standard and common practice proves I’m right.
I don’t recall ever going in a dungeon and hearing : “Oh boy – too bad we killed that boss before it became a meaningful threat” or " maaaaan I wish this encounter was harder and more threatening, we should wipe more often".
@And just to prove that every design idea can be played in unintended ways – to your proposal I say this :
-Before said part of the dungeon 1 guardians switches from zerker’s to Cleric’s and just keeps himself in the center holding mob aggro while 4 players ( split into 2) rush the obstacle course ressing each other and bruteforcing their way to the end.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
i assume you have never played something like wow raids in hc mode.
Played plenty of that (organized raids for 8 years without taking much of a break, in fact), that’s largely where that analysis comes from.
than i just can’t follow your statement sorry. i my guild we had to working our kitten s off to progress not just the healer, but maybe that was also due the motivation of being first guild on the server.
but this topic aside; atm the fights in all the dungeons are even more boring than what you did describe in your previous post
Thief (80)
Elona’s Reach
Elona’s Reach
snip .
Stack and burn has been adopted as the standard by the players because that’s what the players want – to burn down the content as quickly as possible and get those rewards.
You can argue against me that I’m wrong and that’s not what the majority want but the very fact that this is now standard and common practice proves I’m right.
I don’t recall ever going in a dungeon and hearing : “Oh boy – too bad we killed that boss before it became a meaningful threat” or " maaaaan I wish this encounter was harder and more threatening, we should wipe more often".
@And just to prove that every design idea can be played in unintended ways – to your proposal I say this :
-Before said part of the dungeon 1 guardians switches from zerker’s to Cleric’s and just keeps himself in the center holding mob aggro while 4 players ( split into 2) rush the obstacle course ressing each other and bruteforcing their way to the end.
Do you really think the players should make the content as hard as possible by theirselves?
i mean if those things were exploides i would kinda agree with you but certainly they are not.
“challenging and hard content” imo is not determined by damage or hitpoints or stuff like this but by the mechanics and the strategy around it.
So if you are actually able to “Stack and burn” the encounter and get away with it than this encounter is just bad designed (without any excuses).
People will always aim for the most rewarding/forgiving and easiest possibility to have success, it’s anet’s job to make the easiest way hard enough and make you feel successful for finding the right way/strat in the first place.
Thief (80)
Elona’s Reach
Elona’s Reach
(edited by Felices Bladewing.3914)
i guess nobody wants boring tank’n’spank boss mechanics.
but i assume that with the trinity you can actually create fun, challenging and balanced content with way less work compered to the time anet have to spent in order to make the same content fitting for their systemAnd you can’t without trinity? I’m thinking it’s more to do with anet designers than lack of trinity. Games like dark souls (active gameplay) are popular, challenging and fun to play.
The problem is that often GW2 just took the trinity, gutted out tanks and healers and just left DPSs in, in a tank and spank scenario. So you just end up with everyone spanking, which isn’t exactly fun.
and sitting there AFK with Macro for Aggro management and healing is???
Guild Wars 2 “trinity” being Damage, control and support is VERY much in use. Myself and many people that I know use it every single day
Are you really praising the way encounters are right now, where the best answer to almost all situations is find a little hole in the terrain and burn all mindless enemies that funnel in down before they can pose a significant threat. Where we can get our DPS so high that defense begins to become irrelevant. Yes, we all know how you go on and on and one about how great you are at active defense, but if the fight lasts less than 20 seconds, are you really showing you’re pro at active defense or are you showing you’ve found this DPS sweetspot where you can end the battle so quick that even active defense has minimal effect.
GW2 doesn’t need Tanks and Healers, but it does need encounters that require going beyond the standard Stack n’ Burn the game has adopted. They have so many unique elements in that never get a chance to shine in PvE.
They also need a way reward players for dedicating themselves to playstyles other than DPS or DPS/hybrid. Technical Encounters where finesse or hardiness trumps brute force. Sure some encounters can still be brute force but not all of them.
One I thought of is, you’ll have to defend a control console from a stream of infinite enemies, while two of your party members have to navigate 2 separate obstacle courses to reach a set of off switches.
Stack and burn has been adopted as the standard by the players because that’s what the players want – to burn down the content as quickly as possible and get those rewards.
You can argue against me that I’m wrong and that’s not what the majority want but the very fact that this is now standard and common practice proves I’m right.
I don’t recall ever going in a dungeon and hearing : “Oh boy – too bad we killed that boss before it became a meaningful threat” or " maaaaan I wish this encounter was harder and more threatening, we should wipe more often".
@And just to prove that every design idea can be played in unintended ways – to your proposal I say this :
-Before said part of the dungeon 1 guardians switches from zerker’s to Cleric’s and just keeps himself in the center holding mob aggro while 4 players ( split into 2) rush the obstacle course ressing each other and bruteforcing their way to the end.
What player’s want my kitten.
If that’s all players want we wouldn’t be having these debates, everyone would slot Zerks without question and no one would complain about it. What’s your obsession with wanting the game’s PvE to be stagnant and one note?
I argue it’s the standard because it’s the easiest. Well if they add more variety to the challenges there will be a new easiest and people will go with that. The improvement is there won’t be one be all and end all easiest to everything in the game.
As for your counter example, they could fail proof it by making it so only one person can be on a course at a time. They could also make it so the mobs ignore players only caring about the console.
Oh, and I haven’t heard “we should wipe more often” but I have heard a very dissappointed “that was it?” At the end of SE path 1.
Registered Altaholic
Part-time Kittenposter
Part-time Kittenposter
(edited by Dual.8953)
i don’t need to be a game designer to tell you that you will have a hard time balancing PvE content with core-mechanics that are designed to use in PvP mainly.
It is possible but you need an AI that is similar to an “real” player to make it work
and i don’t think this is an easy to do don’t you think so?
I see in your post history that your oldest post is from last October. Should I presume that that means you were not around at launch, when the dungeons were not old news? While players figured them out sooner or later, they were quite challenging at first, when no one knew what to do.
I won’t deny that stack/buff/burn/done is not a complicated encounter. Tank N’ Spank encounters are the trinity equivalent. In other words, in both types of game, basic encounter mechanics make for simplistic fights that can be perceived as boring.
However, many raid and dungeon encounters involve mechanics that are independent of aggro. Encounter phases are just one example. Most (if not all) of these types of mechanics could be adapted to work in a game without tanks or healers. So, no, I don’t think that making GW2 fights more interesting needs to involve making mob AI more like player AI, any more than adding interesting mechanics to tank n’ spank would.
i don’t need to be a game designer to tell you that you will have a hard time balancing PvE content with core-mechanics that are designed to use in PvP mainly.
It is possible but you need an AI that is similar to an “real” player to make it work
and i don’t think this is an easy to do don’t you think so?I see in your post history that your oldest post is from last October. Should I presume that that means you were not around at launch, when the dungeons were not old news? While players figured them out sooner or later, they were quite challenging at first, when no one knew what to do.
I won’t deny that stack/buff/burn/done is not a complicated encounter. Tank N’ Spank encounters are the trinity equivalent. In other words, in both types of game, basic encounter mechanics make for simplistic fights that can be perceived as boring.
However, many raid and dungeon encounters involve mechanics that are independent of aggro. Encounter phases are just one example. Most (if not all) of these types of mechanics could be adapted to work in a game without tanks or healers. So, no, I don’t think that making GW2 fights more interesting needs to involve making mob AI more like player AI, any more than adding interesting mechanics to tank n’ spank would.
i got the game since release but i wasn’t playing that much so you could be right with your first argument.
back to the issue: i guess i have to give an example to stand my point.
imagine a basic boss fight (T’n’S in any trinity game, or the common in GW2)
in the trinity game where defense and healing is related on different player/roles you can easily add something like a huge aoe spell that kills anyone beside the tanks.
So any DD has to react and run out of range, the tanks needs some of their damage reducing cd’s or similar and the healers need to prepare to heal the tanks back as fast as possible.
In Gw2 the same would mean…3..2..1..dodge roll and even if you failed so you are downed and you can still fight and/or might be up again seconds later.
those active defense abilities that makes PvP so action-reactionbased are the doom of PvE. that’s what i meant with core-mechanics that are designed to use in PvP mainly
imagine a dungeon in GW2 without dodge rolls and downed modus. you actually need to fight way smarter and foreseeing, surviving becomes more important in any way be it through pure health, mobility, defensivespells, armor or boons. Everything would be fine…..besides that you have nobody that really wants to fight especially in melee because the boss can kill you with 3 hits (remember nobody can actually tank) and just kiting the boss 5 mins is as boring as it is now if not more plus it’s forcing you to use range weapons.
So taking these mechanics out of PvE wouldn’t work, only solution left is to make PvE more like (s)PvP and that’s why i mentioned a player-like AI
Thief (80)
Elona’s Reach
Elona’s Reach
(edited by Felices Bladewing.3914)
Everybody that claims gw2 pve is stack and burn and that you kill the boss before it becomes a threat doesn’t run arah or fractals much. There really isn’t anything more to say about this.
Everybody that claims gw2 pve is stack and burn and that you kill the boss before it becomes a threat doesn’t run arah or fractals much. There really isn’t anything more to say about this.
There needs to be more than Fractals, Arah and the Aetherpath. Sure you can go ahead and keep the original dungeons as they are, but future dungeons should be specifically crafted to push players out of their comfort zone.
Registered Altaholic
Part-time Kittenposter
Part-time Kittenposter
back to the issue: i guess i have to give an example to stand my point. imagine a basic boss fight (T’n’S in any trinity game, or the common in GW2) in the trinity game where defense and healing is related on different player/roles you can easily add something like a huge aoe spell that kills anyone beside the tanks.
So any DD has to react and run out of range, the tanks needs some of their damage reducing cd’s or similar and the healers need to prepare to heal the tanks back as fast as possible.
Wait, so DPS has to move out of red circles? How is it that you don’t see that happening in GW2? Because they are dodging instead of just moving?
In Gw2 the same would mean…3..2..1..dodge roll and even if you failed so you are downed and you can still fight and/or might be up again seconds later.
those active defense abilities that makes PvP so action-reaction based are the doom of PvE. that’s what i meant with core-mechanics that are designed to use in PvP mainly
imagine a dungeon in GW2 without dodge rolls and downed modus. you actually need to fight way smarter and foreseeing, surviving becomes more important in any way be it through pure health, mobility, defensive spells, armor or boons. Everything would be fine…..besides that you have nobody that really wants to fight especially in melee because the boss can kill you with 3 hits (remember nobody can actually tank) and just kiting the boss 5 mins is as boring as it is now if not more plus it’s forcing you to use range weapons.
So taking these mechanics out of PvE wouldn’t work, only solution left is to make PvE more like (s)PvP and that’s why i mentioned a player-like AI
Would dungeon mobs who reacted more like players be “better?” I don’t know. Maybe they would. However, I don’t think you can point to what DPS “needs” to do in a trinity game and say, “That’s better.” and be right. All players in GW2 need to have situational awareness and use what they game gives them. DPS in trinity games need to use their rotation macros and move to the right place at the right time, while depending on the tank to hold aggro and the healer to keep the tank going and to top off their HP when needed. The GW2 play style actually sounds smarter to me.
There needs to be more than Fractals, Arah and the Aetherpath. Sure you can go ahead and keep the original dungeons as they are, but future dungeons should be specifically crafted to push players out of their comfort zone.
If there are any future dungeons…
I don’t think ‘everyone does it this way’ necessarily means ‘everyone wants it this way,’ when I see guild recruitment pitches that demand not only your main, but all your alts, too, be in berserker gear, & melee.
I’d say it’s more likely that those who want to race through in dps mode are fine with it, & the rest of us stopped doing them a long time ago.
A game that requires you be in one set of gear, filling one role only, has some issues. I’m sure some are fine with that, but given all the classes & theoretical variety they provide, I think I’d be very sad to see everyone in the same gear, let alone with the same 3 classes. And I hope ANet will get beyond that mentality, even if some players do not.
The trinity seems well on its way to becoming obsolete, but ‘all dps, all the time’ isn’t much of an alternative. Now, I haven’t done many pugs. In those few, I followed people around wondering why they were climbing on the walls rather than fighting, and found them both boring and irritating. In one, I was somehow deemed leader (I was on my male guardian – I don’t think they realized who was ‘behind’ him.) – and I finally stopped & told them I had no clue how a speed run went, so they’d have to tell me. Weirdly, they were vastly relieved and said they’d always wanted to do it ‘right,’ but assumed ‘everyone else’ did it this speed way. So we went through nicely, had a good time, but I’ve stuck to groups with people I know since.
There’s a rather discouraging ‘follow’ mentality in mmos – it’s a shame it’s taken such root here.
A game that requires you be in one set of gear, filling one role only, has some issues. I’m sure some are fine with that, but given all the classes & theoretical variety they provide, I think I’d be very sad to see everyone in the same gear, let alone with the same 3 classes. And I hope ANet will get beyond that mentality, even if some players do not.
Completing the content requires none of the things you mentioned, everything is viable but not everything is optimal and it’s about time people got over it.
i guess nobody wants boring tank’n’spank boss mechanics.
but i assume that with the trinity you can actually create fun, challenging and balanced content with way less work compered to the time anet have to spent in order to make the same content fitting for their systemAnd you can’t without trinity? I’m thinking it’s more to do with anet designers than lack of trinity. Games like dark souls (active gameplay) are popular, challenging and fun to play.
The problem is that often GW2 just took the trinity, gutted out tanks and healers and just left DPSs in, in a tank and spank scenario. So you just end up with everyone spanking, which isn’t exactly fun.
and sitting there AFK with Macro for Aggro management and healing is???
Guild Wars 2 “trinity” being Damage, control and support is VERY much in use. Myself and many people that I know use it every single day
Have you ever been a raid tank?
If a developer makes a raid where all you do is just tank and spank, they screwed it up. Just screwed it up. I can never understand why people think the trinity is just automatically tank and spank.
If it was that easy being a tank or a healer, why do raids fail so much and why are good tanks and healers in such shortage? By your logic, everyone could just pop their macros and the raid’s good as done. In every MMO Ive played, it takes weeks if not months to down a raid smoothly.
Im not saying I like the trinity, but being a tank or a healer isn’t exactly faceroll.
GW2 does not have raids. It never will.
If the trinity was implemented you could afk the all the dungeons with just the healer being forced to not go afk.
Can you imagine GW2’s content if you didn’t have to bother with positioning and keeping yourself alive? How engaging do you think that would be?
This dude is funny!
but this topic aside; atm the fights in all the dungeons are even more boring than what you did describe in your previous post
Yeah, true.
They really need to work on the PvE AI, and it’s not even much work which is required. Look at Toxic Alliance! :o
The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.
A game that requires you be in one set of gear, filling one role only, has some issues. I’m sure some are fine with that, but given all the classes & theoretical variety they provide, I think I’d be very sad to see everyone in the same gear, let alone with the same 3 classes. And I hope ANet will get beyond that mentality, even if some players do not.
Completing the content requires none of the things you mentioned, everything is viable but not everything is optimal and it’s about time people got over it.
Can an engineer be ‘optimal?’ Can a necromancer, or a ranger? What gear besides berserker is ‘optimal?’ If all classes can do this magical optimal build, why are so many groups & guilds requesting zerk warriors, guardians, & elementalists?
That’s not good for any game, though it probably works well for those who play those classes & who obediently follow a meta build.
Yes An Engineer can be optimal.
So can Necromancer.
And a ranger.
and optimal does not always require beserker gear.
I have all three of those classes and more. And most of them have several armour sets. for doing different things…..
you, and so many like you…
really do not get it do you…
I really need to stop coming here.
snip .
Stack and burn has been adopted as the standard by the players because that’s what the players want – to burn down the content as quickly as possible and get those rewards.
You can argue against me that I’m wrong and that’s not what the majority want but the very fact that this is now standard and common practice proves I’m right.
I don’t recall ever going in a dungeon and hearing : “Oh boy – too bad we killed that boss before it became a meaningful threat” or " maaaaan I wish this encounter was harder and more threatening, we should wipe more often".
@And just to prove that every design idea can be played in unintended ways – to your proposal I say this :
-Before said part of the dungeon 1 guardians switches from zerker’s to Cleric’s and just keeps himself in the center holding mob aggro while 4 players ( split into 2) rush the obstacle course ressing each other and bruteforcing their way to the end.
Do you really think the players should make the content as hard as possible by theirselves?
i mean if those things were exploides i would kinda agree with you but certainly they are not.
“challenging and hard content” imo is not determined by damage or hitpoints or stuff like this but by the mechanics and the strategy around it.
So if you are actually able to “Stack and burn” the encounter and get away with it than this encounter is just bad designed (without any excuses).People will always aim for the most rewarding/forgiving and easiest possibility to have success, it’s anet’s job to make the easiest way hard enough and make you feel successful for finding the right way/strat in the first place.
People already feel successful for finding the right way.
And the problem is that this “hard enough” you mention is a difficult thing to put in practice.
Hard enough for who exactly?
Level 80 chars fully geared with ascendend?
New players who have barely even touched the content?
Old players who’ve farmed it so much they know it by heart?
That’s the real issue – where do you draw the line and say “this hard, no harder”.
Some players on the forums are asking for harder content, but what they fail to realize is that they are a minority. Most players that post on the forums are heavily invested in the game and it’s a safe assumption to make that they’ve put a lot of time in the game and been with the game for a long time.
So they’re experienced and well geared – of course the game poses little challenge now. But the majority of players don’t even post here.
The majority log in a few times a week and just do one random thing and then they’re out.
You can’t really increase difficulty without taking into consideration that you’ve got a huge player base to cater too, not just the dozen players asking for harder fights in threads like these.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
What player’s want my kitten.
If that’s all players want we wouldn’t be having these debates, everyone would slot Zerks without question and no one would complain about it. What’s your obsession with wanting the game’s PvE to be stagnant and one note?I argue it’s the standard because it’s the easiest. Well if they add more variety to the challenges there will be a new easiest and people will go with that. The improvement is there won’t be one be all and end all easiest to everything in the game.
As for your counter example, they could fail proof it by making it so only one person can be on a course at a time. They could also make it so the mobs ignore players only caring about the console.
Oh, and I haven’t heard “we should wipe more often” but I have heard a very dissappointed “that was it?” At the end of SE path 1.
I don’t want to make the game’s PVE more stagnant – but you can’t make it harder without having players lose interest. Because increasing difficulty and not increasing rewards is a big no-no in MMOs. And even if you increase rewards above a certain threshold players won’t bother with it.
Don’t believe me? – think back to dungeons before the rewards were buffed to 1 gold per path. They were hardly even done. And we’re still taking about the same dungeons that people say are "too easy " now. They were just as easy then but people just didn’t find them worth their time.
We’re having these debates because you and a few others are different. That’s cool – but you’re not a majority. There will always be a few people who want things different from the majority but that doesn’t mean you’re right and what I wrote was false.
This " new easiest" might be too hard for a lot of players. There are more players playing the game and not posting than there are posters on the forums.
Regarding PVE being stagnant and people being disappointed ( your SE example)
The solution is not to make current content harder but to add more content that’s catered to the challenge-loving hardcore part of the player base.
Leave the content we want now as easy for the majority.
Give us more content that’s catered to the vocal minority that’s asking for “harder” and " more challenging" on the forums.
Give us hard mode in dungeons – more reward for more effort that demands more skill.
Give us more fractals.
Give us more new and complex world bosses.
This way the hardcore “we want more challenge” crowd has something to do that’s fun and rewarding while other players keep doing what they’ve always been doing.
By making all content harder you’re taking away from the game – before you had easy and hard content and now that bar has shifted and you only have harder and hard content.
By just adding hard content you’ll still have easy content but you’ll also have more hard content. You are thus adding to the game and allowing people to play what they want and like.
They’ve partially started this with the addition of fractals and Teq and Wurm but they’re not doing it fast enough. There needs to be MORE content.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
(edited by Harper.4173)
“challenging and hard content” imo is not determined by damage or hitpoints or stuff like this but by the mechanics and the strategy around it.
But..but..but… Elite-PvErs are telling me evading Gw2-AI requires so much “Skill” and Lupicus solo is such a hard endcounter and and and PvP is only for scrubs and is just focused on your build.
challenging and hard content….wuuuuuut
Grimkram [sS]
A game that requires you be in one set of gear, filling one role only, has some issues. I’m sure some are fine with that, but given all the classes & theoretical variety they provide, I think I’d be very sad to see everyone in the same gear, let alone with the same 3 classes. And I hope ANet will get beyond that mentality, even if some players do not.
Completing the content requires none of the things you mentioned, everything is viable but not everything is optimal and it’s about time people got over it.
Can an engineer be ‘optimal?’ Can a necromancer, or a ranger? What gear besides berserker is ‘optimal?’ If all classes can do this magical optimal build, why are so many groups & guilds requesting zerk warriors, guardians, & elementalists?
That’s not good for any game, though it probably works well for those who play those classes & who obediently follow a meta build.
Good rangers running sword+warhorn/gs are desired in real speedclear groups for traited frost spirit and spotter. They alone boost party DPS by 14%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Without a ranger it would be impossible to do a 2 phase skip feedback on GL.
Engineers have a lot of blast finishers and can stack vulnerability really fast, which makes them quite valuable. They are used by speedclear groups as well.
Necros are indeed less desired in PVE but it’s not because of their lack of direct damage, which is quite good on single targets, but because of their lack of utility.
Why are lfg ‘speedclear’ groups asking for warrior, ele and guardians only? Because people are kittened and don’t know any better. Also when you pug it’s more likely you’ll find meta warriors and eles. There aren’t that many engi, ranger and necro players that run meta and it gives them a bad reputation. Most guardians don’t run meta but they are accepted in pugs because people don’t really know how a guardian works, they heard that guardians have great group support so according to them staffcamping guard with 10% dmg reduction signets and without wor must be supporting the group really well => people are kittened.
If we’re talking about berserker/assassins gear being optimal. Why shouldn’t it be? You forego any kind of passive defense for more damage. It’s high risk high reward, you actually need to pay attention and have some experience when running full glass cannon or you’ll get killed.
If you think the gearset is low risk high reward because people stack, yolo and the boss dies before it can do anything then you should try running other dungeons aside from AC.
And then the ‘meta build’. There isn’t 1 meta build you obediently follow. If you want to play it right you adjust your traits, weapons and utilities according to the content you wish to complete, your party setup and the skill level of the people in your party.
(edited by petyr baelish.9675)
That is true, a single Ranger is one of the most important components of a dungeon group because of their buffs, which stack with the usual 25 Might, Fury ‘n so on. Ofc this isn’t stackable (you don’t want a second ranger), but the first one is better than any other character bar maybe a Guardian.
The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.
snip .
Stack and burn has been adopted as the standard by the players because that’s what the players want – to burn down the content as quickly as possible and get those rewards.
You can argue against me that I’m wrong and that’s not what the majority want but the very fact that this is now standard and common practice proves I’m right.
I don’t recall ever going in a dungeon and hearing : “Oh boy – too bad we killed that boss before it became a meaningful threat” or " maaaaan I wish this encounter was harder and more threatening, we should wipe more often".
@And just to prove that every design idea can be played in unintended ways – to your proposal I say this :
-Before said part of the dungeon 1 guardians switches from zerker’s to Cleric’s and just keeps himself in the center holding mob aggro while 4 players ( split into 2) rush the obstacle course ressing each other and bruteforcing their way to the end.
Do you really think the players should make the content as hard as possible by theirselves?
i mean if those things were exploides i would kinda agree with you but certainly they are not.
“challenging and hard content” imo is not determined by damage or hitpoints or stuff like this but by the mechanics and the strategy around it.
So if you are actually able to “Stack and burn” the encounter and get away with it than this encounter is just bad designed (without any excuses).People will always aim for the most rewarding/forgiving and easiest possibility to have success, it’s anet’s job to make the easiest way hard enough and make you feel successful for finding the right way/strat in the first place.
People already feel successful for finding the right way.
And the problem is that this “hard enough” you mention is a difficult thing to put in practice.
Hard enough for who exactly?
Level 80 chars fully geared with ascendend?
New players who have barely even touched the content?
Old players who’ve farmed it so much they know it by heart?That’s the real issue – where do you draw the line and say “this hard, no harder”.
Some players on the forums are asking for harder content, but what they fail to realize is that they are a minority. Most players that post on the forums are heavily invested in the game and it’s a safe assumption to make that they’ve put a lot of time in the game and been with the game for a long time.So they’re experienced and well geared – of course the game poses little challenge now. But the majority of players don’t even post here.
The majority log in a few times a week and just do one random thing and then they’re out.
You can’t really increase difficulty without taking into consideration that you’ve got a huge player base to cater too, not just the dozen players asking for harder fights in threads like these.
thats why i said you shouldn’t make the content hard by increasing HP or DMG because this would result in upsetting the more casual tending players because the only solution how to get forward is to get more effecient in any kind of way (like the things you have mentioned: generel experience of the game and the classes, gear, timing etc.)
if you just make the mechanics of the fight harder it doesn’t require you to be almost perfect in every desicion you make or to have the best possible gear but it requires you to think about the encounter figure out a startegy and maybe die a few times for that so that you will reward smart players and not just maxgeared/farmed players.
Thief (80)
Elona’s Reach
Elona’s Reach
(edited by Felices Bladewing.3914)
snip .
Stack and burn has been adopted as the standard by the players because that’s what the players want – to burn down the content as quickly as possible and get those rewards.
You can argue against me that I’m wrong and that’s not what the majority want but the very fact that this is now standard and common practice proves I’m right.
I don’t recall ever going in a dungeon and hearing : “Oh boy – too bad we killed that boss before it became a meaningful threat” or " maaaaan I wish this encounter was harder and more threatening, we should wipe more often".
@And just to prove that every design idea can be played in unintended ways – to your proposal I say this :
-Before said part of the dungeon 1 guardians switches from zerker’s to Cleric’s and just keeps himself in the center holding mob aggro while 4 players ( split into 2) rush the obstacle course ressing each other and bruteforcing their way to the end.
Do you really think the players should make the content as hard as possible by theirselves?
i mean if those things were exploides i would kinda agree with you but certainly they are not.
“challenging and hard content” imo is not determined by damage or hitpoints or stuff like this but by the mechanics and the strategy around it.
So if you are actually able to “Stack and burn” the encounter and get away with it than this encounter is just bad designed (without any excuses).People will always aim for the most rewarding/forgiving and easiest possibility to have success, it’s anet’s job to make the easiest way hard enough and make you feel successful for finding the right way/strat in the first place.
People already feel successful for finding the right way.
And the problem is that this “hard enough” you mention is a difficult thing to put in practice.
Hard enough for who exactly?
Level 80 chars fully geared with ascendend?
New players who have barely even touched the content?
Old players who’ve farmed it so much they know it by heart?That’s the real issue – where do you draw the line and say “this hard, no harder”.
Some players on the forums are asking for harder content, but what they fail to realize is that they are a minority. Most players that post on the forums are heavily invested in the game and it’s a safe assumption to make that they’ve put a lot of time in the game and been with the game for a long time.So they’re experienced and well geared – of course the game poses little challenge now. But the majority of players don’t even post here.
The majority log in a few times a week and just do one random thing and then they’re out.
You can’t really increase difficulty without taking into consideration that you’ve got a huge player base to cater too, not just the dozen players asking for harder fights in threads like these.
thats why i said you shouldn’t make the content hard by increasing HP or DMG because this would result in upsetting the more casual tending players because the only solution how to get forward is to get more effecient in any kind of way (like the things you have mentioned: generel experience of the game and the classes, gear, timing etc.)
if you just make the mechanics of the fight harder it doesn’t require you to be almost perfect in every desicion you make or to have the best possible gear but it requires you to think about the encounter figure out a startegy and maybe die a few times for that so that you will reward smart players and not just maxgeared/farmed players.
Actually it’s the mechanics part of a fight that are what would make it too hard for the casual player. While they can get the proper gear and build they’ll have a hard time with mechanics they can’t execute.
And this whole “figuring out” deal is really old.
This is 2014, within 1 day of new content being up there will be a posted guide with the best way to do it. The days of “figuring out” things on your own are long dead.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
If the trinity was implemented you could afk the all the dungeons with just the healer being forced to not go afk.
Can you imagine GW2’s content if you didn’t have to bother with positioning and keeping yourself alive? How engaging do you think that would be?
Ehrm, hate to say it, but that is exactly what we have right now. Positioning and keeping yourself alive is irrelevant. Heck, it doesn’t even matter what skills I’m using most of the time. Just stack in a corner, and spam everything till everything is dead. That is what a lot of the dungeons are like right now.
I would LOVE to go back to the old trinity, because the trinity like a lot of people describe, is not the trinity that I remember back from playing GW1. Combat was A LOT more involved.
Case in point, THIS battle:
There’s a lot of stuff going in this battle, unlike anything you ever see in GW2 right now. I’m using a monk secondary profession to keep myself enchanted, and mitigate the massive aoe damage that Dhuum does (this is why I take less damage than anyone else on the team). Meanwhile, our monks are trying to keep both the party and the reapers alive. Defeated players cannot be resurrected, unlike normally, because they become ghosts. You may also notice there’s a heck of a lot of moving around, and no stacking in a corner. THIS is what a trinity is like. Players working together, and being dependent on each other. Activating the wrong skill at the wrong time, means I don’t break even with my energy amount, and run out of energy to cast a spell, or to keep the enchantment up. So I’m constantly managing both my health and my energy, while also keeping a sharp eye on clusters of enemies that I can hit with Spiteful Spirit (so they damage each other). I have my Soul Reaping maxed out, so any death instantly refills all my energy. And I’ve tweaked my health and armor so it is high enough to survive any direct hit should the enchantment drop, but low enough so that my healing and life stealing can refill it back to max quickly.
So, what were we saying about the trinity again? And where is this depth in GW2?
“Madness is just another way to view reality”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y)
(edited by Mad Queen Malafide.7512)
If you would actually leave faceroll dungeons like AC for five minutes and actually do some of the more challenging ones you’d realise that there’s more depth to the combat. Try stacking and smashing keys against the true destroyer of worlds – the HOTW story final boss and see how long you last before you eat the floor.
Serah Mahariel – Death and Taxes
Comparing faceroll dungeons to final boss of elite area doesn’t do justice. If I recall correctly, most of pvers were getting 3 (later 7) heroes with those pvxwiki meta builds (3 necros or variants with rits) and facerolling 95% of the content. The only thing they had to do was to call targets.
True – Comparing UW to AC and other dungeons is unfair.
You could also faceroll 90% of GW1 content with a sabway team, and later on when you could take 8 heroes you could just go all out with sabway and discordway.
Yes I understand you’re nostalgic about GW1, we all are – but GW2 is not GW1 and they’ve made it clear it will never be.
I particularly don’t miss waiting for a healer to be able to do things.
GW2 has different depth – GW1’s depth came from theorycrafting and resource management.
GW2’s depth comes form positioning and good in-combat coordination. It’s an action MMO – it has less resource management and more twitch-reflex elements but that’s normal.
You’ve chosen to display a very high-end PVE area and contrast it against very low-end PVE dungeons in GW2.
Why don’t you post a video of let’s say a player running into COF and just facerolling every encounter with a sabway party? I could literally do that while afk. I would just go in range of the mobs and tab out, wait for the heroes to kill, tab in, move, repeat.
GW2 also has combat where you can’t stack and burn – it even has elite areas that are equivalent to UW in a sense – how much stacking have you seen in high level fractals? (49 and 50).
Also GW2 does one thing right in my opinion – it has players working together but not being dependent on each other and that’s the really awesome part about the game.
In GW1 if the healer wiped the team wiped. In GW2 people may die left and right but if I’m on my best game I can salvage that fight by myself.
If people are nostalgic about GW1 – it’s still there. So are other trinity games.
I don’t see why we should have the trinity in this game given that there already are so many alternatives for the minority that want trinity-based combat.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
@Harper
This difficulty talk feels like a tangent.
Your arguments seem to hinge on being anti-change by ‘speaking for the majority’ and ominously intoning future player dissatisfaction. But you’re not doing much to really support the current state of things on a gameplay or enjoyment level.
If anything, you don’t come across all that fond of it, just afraid to change it.
Which is a normal fear to have, I can’t tell you all the pushback I saw vanilla WoW and early Everquest give to progress. But, ultimately player retention is not your responsibility as a player giving feedback.
(edited by Vox Hollow.2736)
I didn’t say I was or was not fond of it. I recognize some flaws but i’m trying to provide positive and useful feed back instead of going " oh trinity was so much better let’s bring it back".
Have you read my post regarding Hard Mode? I’m not anti-change, I just want the change to be a positive change that adds something and makes the overall game experience more enjoyable for those who need that while not affecting those that already enjoy the game as it is.
The “enjoyment” you say I’m not supporting the game through is a stretch – you can’t really quantify how much I enjoy the game and what I enjoy in the game.
I for example enjoy rewards. Always have and always will.
I can’t be fond of an experience that I’ve been repeating for 2+ years with no pause. I’ve learned it by heart, no matter how good or challenging or whatnot it was those days are long gone.
This game needs more content – at least for a player like me I feel there’s not enough rewarding content in this game at the present time.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
Gods I miss my monk now…. so much fun. I have to admit that I do feel the lack of those types of battles here.
Side note: Is it sad that I recognize what skills are being used just based on the symbols popping up over people’s heads or the sparkly animations?
Don’t look at me like that. Whatever you’ve heard, it’s probably not true.
Try not to worry too much about providing that kind of ‘most players want/do/can x’ feedback. There’s a whole department devoted to recording all the playerbase’s general actions (metrics), analyzing that data (analytics), and providing that information for the team to help them manage risk in their decision-making.
MMORPG makers are so well versed in our behaviors, they could probably teach us a thing or two about how we tick.
I particularly don’t miss waiting for a healer to be able to do things.
True, but that was not the point I was making. People were oversimplifying what the trinity was like, while ignoring just how simple PVE in GW2 is right now.
GW2’s depth comes form positioning and good in-combat coordination.
Then I wish it had more of that.
You’ve chosen to display a very high-end PVE area and contrast it against very low-end PVE dungeons in GW2.
Why don’t you post a video of let’s say a player running into COF and just facerolling every encounter with a sabway party? I could literally do that while afk. I would just go in range of the mobs and tab out, wait for the heroes to kill, tab in, move, repeat.
Again, I wasn’t comparing dungeons. I was simply pointing out that the trinity in GW1 was not what people in this thread claim it was. People weren’t just standing around spamming the same button. Quite the opposite, that is what people are doing in GW2.
In GW1 if the healer wiped the team wiped. In GW2 people may die left and right but if I’m on my best game I can salvage that fight by myself.
That is not exactly true.
All three monks in the party dead:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLouxbk6QPY
“Madness is just another way to view reality”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y)
(edited by Mad Queen Malafide.7512)
Try not to worry too much about providing that kind of ‘most players want/do/can x’ feedback. There’s a whole department devoted to recording all the playerbase’s general actions (metrics), analyzing that data (analytics), and providing that information for the team to help them manage risk in their decision-making.
MMORPG makers are so well versed in our behaviors, they could probably teach us a thing or two about how we tick.
Metrics probably show A LOT of players running CoF1 every day.
Does it mean that it’s an extremely fun and well designed path, or does it just offer one of the best dungeon gold/time ratios for average groups while still being ridiculously easy and totally PUGable with next to zero risk of failure?
Rewards play a huge role on how popular some content becomes and any relevant information about the quality of the content in terms of fun and gameplay can be completely obscured.
Being GW2 such an extremely gold centric game, I can hardly believe in metrics providing useful feedback about most of the content.
Despite how much we all like to fancy ourselves game designers, they do legitimately know more about this stuff than we do.
Which is why I can look at metrics for a completely different sort of game and not be able to determine jack-all, but according to Marionette PR Anet can look at theirs and have some idea of where the playerbase’s collective skill level is at.
…Somehow.
So I’m sure they’ve got the common pitfalls of the system completely under control, and I think they can probably wring out more conclusions from the material than we can imagine.
That said, you’re correct, there are limits to what it can tell.
This is why talking about your subjective experience of playing the game is such important information. Like, what you enjoy and why you enjoy it.
(edited by Vox Hollow.2736)
Try not to worry too much about providing that kind of ‘most players want/do/can x’ feedback. There’s a whole department devoted to recording all the playerbase’s general actions (metrics), analyzing that data (analytics), and providing that information for the team to help them manage risk in their decision-making.
MMORPG makers are so well versed in our behaviors, they could probably teach us a thing or two about how we tick.
Not doing it for the devs, just for the people who seem to not care / understand and feel they constantly need to ask the same thing over and over.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
I particularly don’t miss waiting for a healer to be able to do things.
True, but that was not the point I was making. People were oversimplifying what the trinity was like, while ignoring just how simple PVE in GW2 is right now.
GW2’s depth comes form positioning and good in-combat coordination.
Then I wish it had more of that.
You’ve chosen to display a very high-end PVE area and contrast it against very low-end PVE dungeons in GW2.
Why don’t you post a video of let’s say a player running into COF and just facerolling every encounter with a sabway party? I could literally do that while afk. I would just go in range of the mobs and tab out, wait for the heroes to kill, tab in, move, repeat.
Again, I wasn’t comparing dungeons. I was simply pointing out that the trinity in GW1 was not what people in this thread claim it was. People weren’t just standing around spamming the same button. Quite the opposite, that is what people are doing in GW2.
In GW1 if the healer wiped the team wiped. In GW2 people may die left and right but if I’m on my best game I can salvage that fight by myself.
That is not exactly true.
All three monks in the party dead:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLouxbk6QPY
GW2 has more of that – you have to look for it.
Have you tried high level fractals?
Also you were making a point, and I was making one – most of GW1 was just as easy as most of GW2 is now.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
i guess nobody wants boring tank’n’spank boss mechanics.
but i assume that with the trinity you can actually create fun, challenging and balanced content with way less work compered to the time anet have to spent in order to make the same content fitting for their systemAnd you can’t without trinity? I’m thinking it’s more to do with anet designers than lack of trinity. Games like dark souls (active gameplay) are popular, challenging and fun to play.
The problem is that often GW2 just took the trinity, gutted out tanks and healers and just left DPSs in, in a tank and spank scenario. So you just end up with everyone spanking, which isn’t exactly fun.
That’s false.
GW2’s combat is more realistic in its approach.
In a real world scenario everyone is “dps” – you don’t have tanks and healers. These roles were created and enforced artificially in a virtual environment where the AI cannot simply choose to bypass them.They’re “made up” – the approach GW2 has is more realistic : Fight and kill while trying your best to keep yourself alive. That’s what an action oriented MMO should go for.
You keep saying we only have " dps " in GW2 but there are plenty of gear choices that are far from optimal DPS.
And if by doing damage we qualify as “dps” by your logic then applying the same logic we’re also all tanks. And all healers. Since players in GW2 sustain themselves via their own heals while actually having boss aggro for a while during a fight.
GW2 does not have " only DPS" it has done away with the Trinity altogether.
A “DPS” in a classic trinity encounter gears and specs in order to push out most damage possible since the tanking and healing are taken care of by others.
In GW2 players manage both their own tanking and their self-healing so by the game’s very design you can’t be a “DPS” from a classic MMO since you’re performing and taking on a role that’s much wider than the standard DPS role.It is unfair to overlook this fact when presenting things like " GW2 has just dps, while tanks and healers were scrapped". It is false – GW2 has done away with the entire trinity.
And you’ll ask – how are you not DPS when going full zerker? The answer is simple:
1) I cannot make sure the boss doesn’t aggro me – for a while it will engage me and I’ll have to deal with that ( the tank’s job).
2)I can’t opt out of having a self-heal skill and add another damage or damage buffing skills ( healer’s job).
Note the word ‘often’. Look at the builds everyone uses for AC to CoE. Do they focus on anything but DPS? No, they do not.
In most of the content. You aren’t a tank or a healer, you aren’t a hybrid between them. You’re just DPS. Why? Do you think of other things than DPS when you make a build for CoE? No.
People aren’t complaining that the other two aspects don’t exist in GW2, but because for almost everything, you need to pay no heed to them. A DPS in a trinity has armor value as well, but that doesn’t mean they’re being offtanks now does it?
The boss aggroing you is only actually meaningful if you have to do something different whilst it’s engaging you. In most of the dungeons, I don’t care if the boss engages me, because either its mechanics affect everyone so it doesn’t change a thing, or I just continue facerolling. Do you do anything different when subject alpha aggros you? Do you go ‘oh crap’ when CoF P1’s end boss turns to you? No, you don’t. There’s no threat, there’s no adrenaline rush, there’s nothing.
You do have places like FotM and Arah where you might start thinking of other options, but they’re an exception instead of the norm, and they aren’t even played by most of the players because very few people can run Arah fast enough to make it worthwhile and FotM just isn’t worthwhile at all, so the majority of players just see everything they do as faceroll.
In WoW per say, the game doesn’t go ‘oh by the way, you need a tank now’ only when you go into raids. The trinity is always present throughout the game. In GW2, other factors than DPS are just moot for most of the game.
In conclusion. I don’t think I ever said I wanted the trinity back, that system itself is actually flawed in the same way as GW2’s is: focusing too much on one aspect. However, the trinity as an aspect of the 3-sided consideration of healing, power and defense should be in every game in some form or the other.
(edited by Xae Isareth.1364)
i guess nobody wants boring tank’n’spank boss mechanics.
but i assume that with the trinity you can actually create fun, challenging and balanced content with way less work compered to the time anet have to spent in order to make the same content fitting for their systemAnd you can’t without trinity? I’m thinking it’s more to do with anet designers than lack of trinity. Games like dark souls (active gameplay) are popular, challenging and fun to play.
The problem is that often GW2 just took the trinity, gutted out tanks and healers and just left DPSs in, in a tank and spank scenario. So you just end up with everyone spanking, which isn’t exactly fun.
and sitting there AFK with Macro for Aggro management and healing is???
Guild Wars 2 “trinity” being Damage, control and support is VERY much in use. Myself and many people that I know use it every single day
Have you ever been a raid tank?
If a developer makes a raid where all you do is just tank and spank, they screwed it up. Just screwed it up. I can never understand why people think the trinity is just automatically tank and spank.
If it was that easy being a tank or a healer, why do raids fail so much and why are good tanks and healers in such shortage? By your logic, everyone could just pop their macros and the raid’s good as done. In every MMO Ive played, it takes weeks if not months to down a raid smoothly.
Im not saying I like the trinity, but being a tank or a healer isn’t exactly faceroll.
GW2 does not have raids. It never will.
If the trinity was implemented you could afk the all the dungeons with just the healer being forced to not go afk.
Can you imagine GW2’s content if you didn’t have to bother with positioning and keeping yourself alive? How engaging do you think that would be?
Have you ever actually played any game with the trinity in it?
To put things bluntly, if you think all you have to do as a tank or DPS in a game with the trinity in it is just afk and let the healer do it all, then you have no right to debate about it.
(edited by Xae Isareth.1364)
I think this perfectly illustrates my problem with the game as it is right now. I don’t think the trinity is perfect either, but it did make higher demand in regards to strategy, positioning and roles then what we have now.
I feel as if they stripped a whole layer of depth and strategy, and then pronounced it as an improvement. It isn’t an improvement. It’s a barren wasteland, devoid of depth. I do not feel like I have to pay attention to what the boss is doing, other than dodging an occasional attack (when stacking in a corner isn’t completely trivializing the fight that is). I don’t feel like I have to watch my aggro, or that I can control aggro. I don’t feel like I have to strip certain boons to beat a fight, or that I have to interrupt specific skills.
What happened to actual combat mechanics? Where are they?
“Madness is just another way to view reality”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y)
I think this perfectly illustrates my problem with the game as it is right now. I don’t think the trinity is perfect either, but it did make higher demand in regards to strategy, positioning and roles then what we have now.
I feel as if they stripped a whole layer of depth and strategy, and then pronounced it as an improvement. It isn’t an improvement. It’s a barren wasteland, devoid of depth. I do not feel like I have to pay attention to what the boss is doing, other than dodging an occasional attack (when stacking in a corner isn’t completely trivializing the fight that is). I don’t feel like I have to watch my aggro, or that I can control aggro. I don’t feel like I have to strip certain boons to beat a fight, or that I have to interrupt specific skills.
What happened to actual combat mechanics? Where are they?
And I feel like simple combat mechanics are simple combat mechanics. Simple encounters in a trinity game are devoid of strategy, require very simple positioning (face boss away) and require roles only because developers decided to make AI too stupid to go after the characters who are actually hurting it.
GW2 possesses a much higher potential for fluid, demanding combat than the old trinity games. It’s too bad that the boss fights that get the most discussion time don’t require them and that so few people even attempt the ones that do. It’s also too bad that people can’t get over the idea that a role does not have to be something you adopt in every dungeon and for every fight.
I’m not sure.
There are as many potential roles as there are possible differing goals, so long as somebody takes the time to make a structure to support them.
Survival-based (healer, dps), position-based (top lane, home point), enemy management-based (crowd control, puller), object-based (bomb carrier, ooze runner), information-based (scout, spotter), logistics-based, (logistics, engineer[fps]) and even non-combat-yet-still-affects-combat-based (entertainer, warsmith). And that’s just the ones I know of.
Given the staggering scope of what roles can cover, I don’t know if I’d dismiss consistent roles out of hand for case-by-case basis roles ala’ object-based.
Ooze runner, having the ooze buff, fetching the hologram; it’s definitely a step up from what we have now. But, having a new thing to deal with every boss fight, no better depth in smaller encounters, and encounter designs that still don’t really make full use of character building isn’t necessarily a clear win, either.
(edited by Vox Hollow.2736)
Consistent roles? GW2 was designed with case-by-case-basis roles in mind, just as trinity systems were designed with dedicated roles in mind. I’m not saying that GW2 combat couldn’t use more engaging fights, but I’m not ready to scrap the fluid role system until I see whether the developers will continue to move in the direction of more interesting fights. Maybe this is because in other games what I found most interesting was not the dedicated roles, but intricate encounters. The safety-dance fight in WotLK Naxx was interesting because of the safety-dance, not because tank and healer and needing to purge a debuff now and again.
(edited by IndigoSundown.5419)