Guild Wars 2

I decided to write this post to express my opinion about the biggest flaw that destroys GW2.
I will try to describe it in as few words as possible.
The biggest GW2 problem is stacking.
You designed a mechanics that requires dynamic combat, dodging, movement and evades. You build everything around it. You promoted the game as being something truly new (and it is).
Why did you then decided to destroy this mechanics by allowing players to stack “on one pixel”. Why did you destroy everything that you have achieved by letting players sit on one spot, just around the corner, dropping guardian wall and hitting keys at random? Have you not seen how majority of ppl do dungeons? Stack wherever you can and bring the might!
Due to this, playing GW2 became tedious. We mostly watch the closest wall and millions of lights blinding us when we all use our skills when we literally sit on one pixel.
There is no positioning (apart from gathering on one pixel), no movement, no dynamic. Thus playing PvE requires almost no skill at all.
What I would like to see to change this state?
A solution that punishes stacking. If players are stacked for longer periods of time, mobs should hit 2x stronger and bosses 10x stronger. By stacking I mean 3 players at least (to avoid problems with reviving, if my friend is down I can resurrect him safely, but when someone else tries to do it at the same time we would be punished). I would like to see real, dynamic combat.
All dungeons are instances. You can make normal and hard mode so that less skilled and less experienced players can play dungeons as they are now. And those who desire more would try hard mode were stacking is severely punished and where you actually have dynamic combat.
What do you people think about that? I would like to hear your opinion. Are you bored with current combat mechanics?

More advanced movement mechanics can easily deal with this problem. But it’s up to Anet if they want players to think or not

Or they could make the AI not stupid enough fall for LoS, and instead of giving bosses virtually no auto attacks and one-hit skills a threatening auto attack and slightly more powerful skills.
However it would require that all dungeons and bosses are redesigned, we won’t see any major changes to existing content, but maybe to new one.

I see your point, but I don’t think adding a new mechanic which actively punishes stacking is a good way to do.

Better is to examine the reasons which cause people to stack, and then try to change that. In PvE it’s mostly to do with needing to be close to share buffs, LoSing opponents, and being together makes it easier to focus down targets together, and finally melee DPS being the best DPS and so naturally everyone is going to be meleeing and thus be up close together anyway.

Most of those are hard to change, but they certainly could (and IMO should) make the range of buffing skills MUCH greater to players in your party. Maybe as much as 2000-2500 range. This would allow people to spread out whilst not missing out on group buffs.

They could also try things like giving more NPCs cleaving / AoE on their general attacks rather than just on big dodgable attacks, or give NPCs big attacks which function like the Sky Hammer does (being un-evadable) which will force people out of their spot and to move around the room, rather than just evading it.

In general though I am not in favour of mechanics which actively push people apart, since this is meant to be a team based game, not 5 individuals runing about trying to avoid eachother.

Futrzasty.6034:

I decided to write this post to express my opinion about the biggest flaw that destroys GW2.
I will try to describe it in as few words as possible.
The biggest GW2 problem is stacking.
You designed a mechanics that requires dynamic combat, dodging, movement and evades. You build everything around it. You promoted the game as being something truly new (and it is).
Why did you then decided to destroy this mechanics by allowing players to stack “on one pixel”. Why did you destroy everything that you have achieved by letting players sit on one spot, just around the corner, dropping guardian wall and hitting keys at random? Have you not seen how majority of ppl do dungeons? Stack wherever you can and bring the might!
Due to this, playing GW2 became tedious. We mostly watch the closest wall and millions of lights blinding us when we all use our skills when we literally sit on one pixel.
There is no positioning (apart from gathering on one pixel), no movement, no dynamic. Thus playing PvE requires almost no skill at all.
What I would like to see to change this state?
A solution that punishes stacking. If players are stacked for longer periods of time, mobs should hit 2x stronger and bosses 10x stronger. By stacking I mean 3 players at least (to avoid problems with reviving, if my friend is down I can resurrect him safely, but when someone else tries to do it at the same time we would be punished). I would like to see real, dynamic combat.
All dungeons are instances. You can make normal and hard mode so that less skilled and less experienced players can play dungeons as they are now. And those who desire more would try hard mode were stacking is severely punished and where you actually have dynamic combat.
What do you people think about that? I would like to hear your opinion. Are you bored with current combat mechanics?

Playing PvE requires no skill at all and yet the difference in clear time between good players and randoms is … well let’s just say the Arah p4 record is 20 minutes and people when getting dungeon master back in the day used to have 2 to 4 hour (if not longer) runs for it.

How about we don’t punish stacking since the whole point of this game’s combat is that we group closely together to share buffs? Or … you go on the LFG, post a no stack group and do that? Everyone wins.

Ahh yes…the “no stacking” post. I’ll just drop these here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Potential-Solution-for-Stack-Thread-Closing

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Potential-solution-for-stacking

As you can see, this has been brought up quite recently. Stacking is designed to improve the team experience. Sharing buffs and being able to focus down a target easier. Even if they made it so people couldn’t stack on top of each other, the next thing would be people stacking staggered behind/beside each other in order to share boons and still be in melee. Then we’d see posts like “Stop holding hands while fighting” or “Get out of my personal space” or some other ridiculous thread title voicing your opinion about how the game should be played.

Stacking in itself is fine. It carries risk. It is good play to maximize shared boons and fields. It maximizes aoe damage. Etc. The problem is the use of corners and walls to move enemies into the stack without using skills. Corners are more effective than class skills for moving enemies into a stack. Walls prevent knock backs from breaking the stack.

I feel like I know why this is in the ranger sub forum and not the dungeon sub forum. I’ll just pop off and have a quiet giggle, nothing to see here.

Why the hell is this in the ranger forum?

It’s fitting. Very fitting.

I don’t want it to be fitting. Make it stop.

Stooperdale.3560:

Stacking in itself is fine. It carries risk. It is good play to maximize shared boons and fields. It maximizes aoe damage. Etc. The problem is the use of corners and walls to move enemies into the stack without using skills. Corners are more effective than class skills for moving enemies into a stack. Walls prevent knock backs from breaking the stack.

Nailed it. It’s not about the stack but the corners/exploiting structure geometry with the mob/boss LoS-based AI.

The best examples I can think of are in AC and CoE. Alpha can be hard fight even when stacking (depending on the group) but it’s substantially easier in stack attempts due to how he won’t cast certain abilities if he himself is cornered into a wall. Therefore you take the whole group to him after knocking him into a corner so that if anyone takes aggro, he doesn’t move/cast.

Fights like Spider in AC and Subject Alpha are frankly extremely difficult without following that kind of tactic. So much so that a lot of people can’t beat the dungeon if they don’t know of it.

So you’re absolutely correct. To reduce the effectiveness of terrain abuse, some bosses perhaps need slight power tweaks downwards at the same time. I think The Huntsman is one of the best encounters because there aren’t really such exploits.