Guild Wars 2

Downed state is the oddest thing. It only helps the design of unfun encounters and severely hinders the design of fun encounters. Can’t believe they thought it was ever a good idea.

This topic has been brought up before.

I was watching some old streams of the PvP World Tournaments. As an experiment I brought my fiance in (who is an avid gamer who plays Smite and Couterstrike religiously) to spectate the game.

She has never watched a Gw2 game before and her synopsis was complete confusion. She complained about the particle effects obscuring all of the animations. Majority of people were using Asura characters so her comment was it looked like a “Chibi Smurf War.”

At one point, a Shoutbow warrior landed a final thrust and dropped a guy. She was like WTF just happened? The animation for the burst was so obscure she couldn’t figure out what was going on and why the guy died.

After about 10 minutes she got bored and wandered off to do something else. I wonder, how many other people watch tournaments and feel this way? How many are met with confusion and view the game as unappealing from a spectator standpoint because they can’t figure out what’s going on?

She complained to me that all she saw was “A kaleidoscope of disco lights spewing from every player and a ton of boring numbers popping up.” She couldn’t telegraph big hits or even figure out what people were doing. She seemed surprised when people died and kept asking me “How did that guy go down?”

Just something to take into account of how the game might look to a first timer from a spectator perspective. She never really got excited. It made me realize that the way the game is presented to outsiders and it’s not good.

And found this

If you wanna have a laugh feel free to watch it.

Solstice.1097:

…unless you’re bad

Best answer so far

…unless you’re bad

I think the 1v1 people’s point is that in a basic 5v5 with 3 nodes 1v1s are EXTREMELY common, and being shut out because you’re not “the right build” to do it just isn’t very fun/engaging for some. The nature of the beast is that this is all opinion so no one is going to have a right answer… Juts an answer that will appeal better to some rather than others…

Capitol City.4856:

Seriously, I’ve never heard of anyone complaining about the downed state, of all the things to complain about, I thought that was pretty good.

Maybe you weren’t here at the start of this game. There were quite a few people who didn’t like the downed state.

Mugiwara Luffy.1087:

This again?

GW2 doesn’t need mounts. Every MMO I played with mounts they are a clunky mess that clogs up the screen with unnecessary particle effects.

A big no for me.

Hmm. Which of these screenshots depicts the most unnecessary particle effects?

Downed state has three problems to me.

The first problem is how it interacts with GW2’s aoe/ cleave-driven combat. In the middle of a teamfight, any player can “randomly” rally everytime any opposing foe is killed. Why? Usually by spamming aoes and tagging all foes. You often see characters entering the downed state and rallying right after two or three times within seconds. And it’s ridiculous.

The second problem is how unsatisfying/ unfair it feels like, after outplaying your opponent and taking their health to 0, when a random opposing player just comes in, rallies their ally, outnumber you, and you didn’t get credit for anything. Some people call it “tactical” and “team-driven”. I’d rather say it simply “doesn’t feels good”.

The third problem is similar. It occurs when, after downing their health to 0, they spam their downed state skills to you and put you down as well, before managing to win out of it. This is not just a balance problem (some professions have better downed states than others), it can also be used to delay/ stretch the duel until a random team members pops at either side. So luck can ultimately determine which one of them gets the kill.

Also, how many pvp games offer that exciting moment where you barely get out of a fight alive, but have managed to beat your opponent? It’s epic and exciting, but the problem number #2 and #3 cripple that feeling.

Ultimately, and in my opinion, downed state is an example of how innovation for innovation sake’s does not makes for good gameplay.

I had a philosophy teacher who once told me “if you can’t say what you are trying to say in two paragraphs or less then you need to think harder on what it is you are trying to say.”

Carighan.6758:

scerevisiae.1972:

That is pretty much the opposite of what a well-designed game should be aiming for. A smaller, more skilful force should always be able to overcome a larger, disorganised force. DS in this respect is very much an anti-skill feature.

No that’s actually a very important design-decision to make.

Do you want your game’s large-scale combat to focus on top-end balance? The higher your balance pivot point, the more personal performance should be able to trump numbers or classes or specs. At the very highest point your “game” should no longer even matter. The player has “a class”, “a spec” and “a context”, but none of these have any impact whats-o-ever on the outcome of a fight. Even if it’s that one player versus 30 other players. Only skill matters, if the one player can fight well he can kill 30 players one-by-one.

On the flipside, do you want your game to feel meaningful to more casual players? You’re designing a RPG, use its inherent system to make players feel viable even when they aren’t experience or simply aren’t good at it (you may disagree, but these players want to play video games and feel viable doing so, and usually they are aware they’re bad players so there’s no reason to rub it in). Classes can counter each other, so a lesser player on the right class against the right class will have a serious advantage, securing them wins against players they should normally not be able to best.
Or maybe you support a larger scale of warfare, where players can band together and despite weaker individual performance down their enemy with sheer numerical superiority.

This is in no way inherently negative. It may seem to from yours or mine perspective because we’re good at what we do and we want our games to reward our personal play performance, but as a developer it’s not an easy decision to make, and depending on game you’re working on it is very important to be more inclusive with your design.

So are you saying that ANET implemented DS in part so that a larger force will have an insurmountable advantage over a smaller force? I dont’ think so. I think it is just a by product of how DS works and is an unintended side effect they don’t wish/don’t care to change.

Shouldn’t a numbers advantage be enough? Why does the larger force also get to have an additional advantage in DS rez time?

I agree that new players should feel helpful, but TBH it doesn’t take much to hop on your GWEN character find the commander tag and spam your skills. You ARE contributing and being helpful.

But part of the fun in playing the game is to learn how to be the most effective, so you can get better, and that getting better will MATTER in future encounters.

Otherwise the game truly is only about greater numbers, not performance or class knowledge, which is sad, boring and drive people away from the game mode.

scerevisiae.1972:

There is nothing more annoying in this game than fighting 1v2, getting one of your opponents downed, and then being unable to do jack kitten while the other casually rezzes his friend and there’s not a kitten thing you can do other than AOE and hope for the best.

On the other hand, that is probably the point of the system: Enforce the effect of numerical superiority.

Usually in MMOs this isn’t immediately obvious because players die “too” fast. Same in GW2, you can get downed really really fast in most situations. To counteract that, the downed system allows the team with the numerical advantage to recover their injured from the surprise attack.

That is pretty much the opposite of what a well-designed game should be aiming for. A smaller, more skilful force should always be able to overcome a larger, disorganised force. DS in this respect is very much an anti-skill feature.

Carighan.6758:

dandamanno.4136:

I do wish they would change the downed state in WvWvW. It is annoying when a smaller group outplays a larger one, but simply can’t wipe the other group out because the numbers advantage allows them to consistently rez.

In PvE it’s fine, and in sPVP it works because of balanced numbers on each team, but yah in WvW it could use a tweak.

My suggestion would be to double the rate of health loss in downed state in WvW and also no hard rez at all. If you die you die. Respawn.

But… then how would numerical advantage be important? One of the key concepts of warfare, have better numbers and deploy so that at each individual engagement you got superior numbers despite in total not having more (same map cap!).

That’s how army tactics work. Superior local force. I mean, that’s quite obviously what the escalating rally/rezz mechanics are there to implement. They give a serious advantage to whoever can have the better local deployment. Now, how to consistently do that despite having the same team size in total, yeah, that’s difficult.

Numerical advantage would still work exactly as it does now. You have 40 guys, they have 10 guys. You have the advantage. My point is if the 40 are outplayed by the 10 and end up having 10 players downed, while the other team only loses 1, that should count for something.

As it is now the team with 40 can simply, easily res the 10 downed players and be back at 40 no problem, but the 10 will probably be working too hard to res the 1 they lost. So in the end the 40 “bad players” will win even though they are outplayed BECAUSE of the downed state.

Without the downed state they very well may lose.

PhDusk.2590:

The idea of being 1shot by a thief does not fun at all, please dun give anet bad ideas.

Downed state is the reason why thieves can have high burst — downed state is intended to be a second chance. Removing downed state would necessarily involve increasing HP and/or reducing burst across the board to achieve roughly the same time-to-kill.

scerevisiae.1972:

Anet should seriously consider making DS optional (eg: in custom arenas) and seeing how players react.

I agree with this, have the option to disable it for tpvp servers, everybody wins. You don’t like it disabled? Don’t play on that server.

One year he personally sent me a Christmas card. I have his signature now…I dream of the day we can be together.

yiishing.9057:

nerf rock, paper is fine
greets, scissors

That’s only true if your game actually follows a rock/paper/scissor balancing approach, which very few MMOs do for a very good reason. Running up against hard-counters is no fun.

While people always love to spout about “team-balance” etc. I think that by focusing on 1v1 balance, you can balance team-fights by extension. This is especially easy in a game without dedicated healers.

What I mean by this is that a class that dominates 1v1 is probably also overpowered in team-fights.

Also what devs need to understand is that players will always evaluate balance around 1v1 scenarios. Balance those and people will be more content than when balancing around something as intangible and abstract as “team quality”.

Turret Engineer is fine. What’s not fine is that you didn’t roll the hard counter to the turret Engineer who you knew that you would be fighting before you pressed the “Enter queue” button. Stop being a bad player.

BLUna.7928:

I just would like to say in advance that if the tone or wording I use in this post offends anyone, I do apologize, this is an extremely important issue to me, and I would like to have my chance to retaliate to some of the comments being made today.

So to reply to the phrase in the title, maybe I’m not. That does not, however, mean I lack the commitment or the drive to get myself to that level.

When I first heard about Gamescom I was hype, same as anybody else was because holy kitten we actually have a Guild Wars LAN happening again. I had thought there would be an opportunity for me to shoutcast this event, but unfortunately ArenaNet was unable to accommodate this. I then tried to see if there was anyway I would be able to send myself there, but alas as with any American college student I dont have the 2500 USD or more to send myself to Germany, especially with this little notice.

When this fact finally sunk into me it sucked, and I was mad, not at ArenaNet, because I understand fine that stuff happens, but mad in general that, for the second time now, I wouldn’t be able to go to a Guild Wars event LIVE and meet the people I have worked besides and become friends with over the past two years now. It was then that I was invited as one of the all stars.

At first glance I was surprised too, because again, for the majority of my time in this game I have been a caster, and I haven’t played on an official team in quite some time, but seeing as this was my only chance to go and I have no guarantee there will ever be another GW2 LAN, I took this as an opportunity to better myself.

I am 300% committed to earning my nomination. Quite a few top tier players have already told me that my communication and general team play is good, and that only my mechanical skill needs work. If that means I have to spend 12, 18, or more hours each day playing and getting myself to the level of others on that list, I will do it. There is still over a month between now and Gamescom, and I personally believe that by the time it rolls around, I can be ready. I have no job, this is my job. I run tournaments and cast Guild Wars. That leaves me with all the free time I need to play, practice and improve.

My life for the past two years now has been (as pathetic as this sounds) about 90% Guild Wars and attempting to keep the scene alive, and the opportunity to finally see that evolve into a live event would mean more than the world to me. If you don’t believe I can prepare myself, that’s fine, but if you do, your votes and faith in me would be extremely appreciated.

Thanks for reading.

I’m literally going to base my opinion off of the official statement from this link. https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/your-vote-decides-the-guildwars2-international-all-stars-teams/

In there it states that “top players” to go against each other in the tournament, we all know you are indeed not a “top player”. We are well aware that you have invested a lot of time in trying to make the community grow, despite whether it has or not, it does not say we are sending the most “committed” players, it says top players. If it was most committed players I would take a wild guess that ostrich eggs, would probably be on that list almost before anyone else from the amount of time he has spent playing. And I say probably because other people could be more committed than him, he was just the first person that came to mind.

So in short A-net says one thing, and then does another. I’m not really shocked by it at this point from all that has happened with this game in general. Personally I think that there should be a completely different vote that the players decide what casters should host in the tournament, and I don’t think that the vote should be limited to who’s in the official shoutcaster program. Sure it means A-net chose those people to cast, but personally I believe if you left a vote solely to the players, then the people chosen to take the seat for the shoutcast spot would not be limited to who holds a fancy title by A-net. And doing so might get the viewers this game desperately needs. At face value this means a lot.

Personally I think A-net should pay for the expense for whoever shoutcasts their event. To not do so is a cheap move in my opinion.

Countless

Reviving as a whole is too quick in this game IMO.

ricky.2679:

Arenanet will not listen to your complaints obviously biased against certain professions. Because all you want is for them to be nerfed and your own profession buffed. I will link “Playing to win” by Sirlin now.

Play to win, don’t be a Scrub

That is one of the most disgusting reads I’ve ever seen. He implies that you must win to win, and that that is fun. To the point where using exploits to win is a good tactic.

I love PvP, I win some, lose some but I play not only to win, but also to feel good about it. To know that I beat them, whatever they tried because I was faster, knew more counters, played creatively and countered him better. If I’d use bugs or exploits, where’s the merit of winning? Yay, I won because I used a bug, no sense of gratification in that. Nor in using one move over and over because there is no counterplay.

If according to this dude, that makes me a scrub then I’d rather be a filthy casual scrub than ‘an expert’. I play to win and feel good about it, not win because it’s the only goal that matter to the game.

On topic, Balance is not subjective. saying: I can’t beat X while playing Y so X is OP, THAT is subjective.

ricky.2679:

I will link “Playing to win” by Sirlin now.

Play to win, don’t be a Scrub

People idolize this guy like he is some kind of prophet, and act as though everything this guy says is fact.

News flash: this is just one guy’s opinion. No matter how eloquently he puts it, or vehemently he argues it, it never was, nor will be, a fact.

Please stop pushing one guys opinion that agrees with your own as if its a fact. That is called “confirmation bias,” and it is one of the many psychological faults that people can experience.

As others have said, Sirlin’s entire opinion about “playing to win” completely misses the point of a game being a game. Especially something like an mmo, that is meant to be both fun and competitive for everyone, not just people exploiting every bug and OP spec out there.

When people complain about things being OP, it is because it actually destroys their fun. There are a lot of things in this game that do not adhere to the goal of making combat based on skill, and rediculous specs/combos that are discovered are a big problem with that. When some players make sacrifices and trade-offs with their specs, but incredibly simple specs have no holes and can wreck almost everything else easily – it is an issue. At that point, you either play that spec (which is often stupidly boring), or accept being frustrated when fighting it in a matchup overwhelmingly in their favor.Either way, the only people who enjoy themselves are the fools who ignore playing the game and “play to win, no matter how tedious and unfun it is”

I find it more helpful to use words like “enjoyable” or “not enjoyable,” “mandatory,” etc than “imbalanced” or “OP.”

However, “balance” feedback in general can be important. Granted, 90% of the feedback on these forums is not, but it can be. Balance decisions are important, even if “balance” is subjective.

I’m not sure what sirlin has to do with any of it. Yes, playing to win is fine, but no, that is not an end-all argument: “I disagree with your idea on how to make the game more fun because of Sirlin!” It’s a little weird.

The Kurt.2518:

Zinwrath.2049:

Reviving someone should require you to stop what your doing and heal that person (or use an ability to revive them). I understand rally in pve, but pvp it should be a conscious choice to stop what your doing to save your friend, or continue killing your enemy.

Where the downed mechanic really shines imo is when you come to save your downed ally fighting your downed enemy, with the enemy having more health. The fact that you have to quickly choose if you should kill the enemy with damage, stomp them or revive your ally instead provides a lot of depth

it SHOULD have depth. Risk/reward. saving a team mate should not be a walk in the park. right now, in the midst of a team fight, I can go down..and my allies can resurrect me without even risking anything or even consciously making the decision to do it. its not a decision, they were attacking someone…they can just continue attacking people. I’m mindlessly resurrected as a result of a mechanic that took no choice or thought on their part. no risk, no change in strategy. they just keep on attacking stuff and because I’m the vicinity or happened to damage the guy who died, I come back.

this is the problem. rally allows for no effort resurrects. resurrecting should ALWAYS require a risk and always be a decision. stop what your doing to help your friend, or continue on fighting and try to keep them off your friend till you can kill your enemy THEN return to resurrect.

also, rally causes snowballs in team fights. the moment someone managed to kill someone on the other team, even if 3 of your teammates were downed, they all resurrect and instantly you have the upper hand.

I guarantee if it never existed, no one would complain that the game needed it. its just one of those things some people have grown accustom to so hate to see it go, but tbh it would be a more interesting game if it did not exist.

Ehecatl.9172:

Erebos.6741:

Ehecatl.9172:

So long as that burst exists we need the downed state.

Now whether or not we should remove the extreme burst as an option is an entirely different debate.

It’s absolutely relevant as you clearly noted a relationship between burst and down state.

It seems you’re saying we “need” down state because burst exceeds normal human reaction time, so I’m asking you: do you think that’s a rational approach to game design which also aims to distinguish players based on their knowledge and adroitness (skill)?

This thread is not about burst damage, it’s about whether or not the game needs the downed state. Unless the developers completely redesign every profession in the game or alter the core mechanics that govern damage and survivability, we do in fact need downed state. Simply removing it will not solve anything.

You are absolutely right. You cannot remove the downed state and leave the extremes as they are. But this game will never succeed in the competitive scene in its current state, and something has got to give.

I dont understand this arguement that “larger groups should steamrole smaller groups”

Thats true, they should. But they should be doing it because they have more people, thus more damage output, more combined health and generally more of everything. They shouldnt need a game mechanic in place to give them an advantage and to ensure they always win, because they should be winning already.

You cant just say WvW is a game of number thus they bigger group should be given bonus mechanics to help them win.. No.. WvW is a game of number BECAUSE of those mechanics. If they were removed then blobbing anf winning through sheer numbers would be harder.

Erebos.6741:

If anyone’s interested in reading some more 1v1 balance discussion — here’s a former topic of mine discussing just that:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/1v1-Balance/first

Thanks!

This was a good read thanks for the link.

Another issue with the current update system is the clearly missing focus on severe, major problems the game has. Some of them are currently beeing adressed, as a “feature pack”. There are problems i’m sure of having been reported thousands of times, that still were not adressed to this date. Since I’m not certain of what actually will be in the upcoming 4/15 patch, and do certainly not like to repeat what other people already posted, i’m just going to post two examples in different areas of what are major issues :

• You’re playing a ranger. Your axe auto attack bounces off a yellow mob, causing it to attack you. It also bounces of dead bodies on the floor instead of your enemies.
• You log in the first time. You create a character, chose your race, class, your storylines, so on. Enter game, fine. Sooner or later you’ll ask yourself: “how did those choices affect my character? Did i spend enough attention on my personal story?” Or even: “Should i have chosen fire element and balthazar to deal more damage?”

So basically it seems the focus of updates seems to be alot on quantity instead of quality. Since the game released, many bugs were fixed, many improvements were made, that’s right. Not going to be unfair here. Yet, for a game as big as GuildWars 2 it’s not remotely ACCEPTABLE that, after almost two years, there are really basic bugs and missing announced features that might not be breaking the game like the ones in the example, but show blatantly that there are flaws in the game. As a merchant, i’d especially keep an eye on the tidyness of the entrance of my store, not only the quantity of items, or the amount of banners on the sidewalk.
The less flaws you show ingame, the less people will be leaving because of irritation.

One major reason seems to be the lack of perspective in the game design. Without having attended to any design meeting at ArenaNet, I tend to think many design decisions on game release were written in stone, like if they were a ne plus ultra and could not be improved ever. This especially contradicts to the quality method of iteration.