Guild Wars 2

I agree, it was overall a mistake to take this approach at least from the PvP side of things. The best approach would be for expansion content to be free in the Mists while the rest of the game is locked until you purchase the expansion.

It ends up being two fold beneficial. One players who are on the edge can get a sample of what the expansion offers. As character classes are mostly front loaded in terms of the excitement they generate in the first few hours of playing they are great candidates for demo content. It is why all mobas operate on a rotating free character pool.

Secondly PvP depends so heavily on player population to be healthy. It is a social experience by nature and what drives players to many competitive games is to pull a large group of your friend circle into the game. It is why MMO’s and PvP games end up being very robust. The social aspect makes it difficult to compete with established games as you are not vying for just one player to join, you are vying for a friend circle. It is important to breakdown as many barriers as possible to allow that transition.

Say for example you are competing for the same player base as league of legends. I have a group of 5 friends I play with regularly. Now lets say Gw2 is released and has a fair bit of hype around it. 4 of the 5 friends are interested enough to pay for it. The 5th is not. Now those first 4 friends also have increased resistance to buying it because even if they enjoy the gameplay of Gw2 more, having that complete friend circle can add more value. Sure those players may purchase Gw2 but they don’t have a large investment as they will still likely return to League of Legends to play with their full group of friends. Now if you get all 5, any other game is going to have to jump through a huge amount of hoops trying to get them all away from your game.

The other problem is just the content of the expansion. Personally I found it hurt how fun the game was and I wasn’t about to pay for a worse experience. The expansion increased a lot of the negative aspects of the experience with more clutter, a higher % of a characters power coming from passive effects and even less build diversity. Pretty much all symptoms of power creep.

manarchon.2089:

Great post. A “remaster” version of a game like gw1 would still have audience. Maybe not the biggest, but would be profitable anyway.

They will not change gw2 to that direction, we would need a whole new game for it. Sadly it’s not very likely to happen.

Maybe in a few years time, don’t give up on that experience coming back. Who knows, something to that feel might already be in the works.

I always found there was very rarely a moment of idle time where you could only autoattack. At the same time though there is a long wait between specific skills. This I find more the root of the problem as there is a lack of secondary skill gating for most classes. Having some type of energy or mana system allows classes the flexibility of spending that resource to target specific threats while potentially leaving themselves more vulnerable to other effects. This allows a character to maintain at least a decent coverage against condition heavy threats or stun heavy threats while using a balanced build.

Right now utilities get grossly overpowered by the effects they aim to mitigate so instead a large portion of the mitigation occurs passively from traits. So I agree the cooldown on a lot of utilities could come down but with the addition of a gating resource mechanic and a large tone down of passive traits filling the same role as utilities.

5 represents the current state the game is in. I’ll add that to the survey as well for people that missed it in the main post. The idea is simply to see if the game is close to what people envision or far off.

So I would like to gather a bit of data on where people think the combat should be, looking more at the overall than specifics. The idea here will be to have a scale of 1-10 with 5 being where Gw2 is now and 1 being closer to the first option.

1) Team Defense vs Personal Defense
How in control of your own survivability would you like to be? Dodging and your own healing skills would be your own comparably to an elementalist healing you or the monks for Gw1 throwing up protective spirits and reversal of fortunes. Note that having it being team based allows the choice of which players should receive defensive resources whereas in personal that is not the case.

2) Victory dependence on: Combat Skill vs Skill in using Map Objectives
So should it be more about those kills in 1v1/2v2 etc situations or should it be about moving around the map to create favorable 3v2 etc types of situations.

3) View ability vs fast combat pace
Would you be willing to give up some of the combat pacing for better visual acuity?

4) Transparency vs Character Customization
Would you like more control over where your Power, Vitality etc is? Would you like to be more informed as to what your opponent has built for? Would you be willing to give up runes and sigils?

5) Resource Allocation Between: PvP vs PvE
Basically a gauge as to whether you are invested in both sides or prefer one more than the other.

Here is a link to a survey to answer these questions:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Y2TW2RC

I am working on one that will fit the bill as an indie dev so maybe in another 2-5 years.

I believe they do listen to their test community. It just ends up being slow and convoluted with a lot of voices that are not objective.

Some problems:
1) Devs don’t have enough personal knowledge of classes to filter advice quickly themselves.
2) A clear direction has not been set for each class. Even say taking 3 specs per class and focusing on fully defining them in the spectrum.
3) Devs really need to weigh in on creating “fun”. Player advice is inadequate as it is usually based on the current framework which I think is completely crooked when it comes to ‘fun’ and transparent. Like when league of legends decided stealth, although not the strongest was just unhealthy for gameplay.

Gw2 could probably be balanced for 1v1 and balancing like that would improve group balance as well. Naturally some specs that slant heavily towards mobility or team support should be exempt from 1v1 balance.

Right now a lots of specs follow a very similar spread of team support/selfishness. But they are not balanced well between one another.

Really though trying to balance this game is going to be a monster. Way too many effects to the point a basic attack is throwing out 3. There is no usable baseline for classes to be balanced against currently. The game really needs more streamlined standardization and roles.

Just add protection monks, then do away with passive and uninteractive defenses.

On the fence about this. Lots of players need something to strive for and that has been a long standing complaint Gw2 has struggled to implement. Secondly there is lower incentive for the producers to allocate as many resources to PvP if it doesn’t generate as much Income.

Mostly I have a problem with their method. They have royally F’ed up on sticking to a singular set of principles. First you attract a target audience that is all about equal playing field then you push them away by changing that mentality. If it was a bad choice in the first place too bad, stick to your initial target audience. And especially if you really think the system needs to change do it clearly and completely, not keeping two separate rule sets in the game. Otherwise a slow creep doesn’t feel like it has a descrete end point.

Looks the same to me as well. It is a kaleidoscope of disco lights spewing from every player. Experience only lets you determine what most of those lights mean.

Game needs to be balanced around effects like eviscerate and dragons tooth. Those should be the norm for what constitutes a burst skill. Almost all meta burst specs are based around effects with as little tells as possible. And lets be realistic a skill that takes off more than 50% of someones hp alone requires even more than 3/4s notice. Fire/Air is a large culprit but is hardly the only one. Personally weapon sigils being removed entirely would be healthy for the game.

Even condi has gotten really weird role wise. They can burst like a power build but I would have thought they would be designed as the sustained damage type.

Best description for Gw2 I can give it now is an FPS with a convoluted and cluttered screen. I don’t think there is a market for that. For Gw2 PvP I think people expect much slower gameplay with more strategic thought into skill use. Definitely not spam damage skills on cooldown with just a small bit of attention to things like blinds, blocks and evades. A bit of a simplification but really the thought that goes into skill use is definitely much too low.

Trying the game again and have to agree way too much trash effects going on. Can land back to back eviscerates and high impact hits but die to incremental effects. Guess I am just not using a build that relies on extremely frequent, uncounterable chip damage. Too much damage comes from traits and not enough from landing skills with some windup. Add some windup and the screen clutter goes down and the game might be viewable.

Frankly if playing a class that relies on slower and more meaningful effects isn’t remotely viable the game has no competitive future but that isn’t any new news for gw2.

I think the Devs are making a conscious choice to overpower procs. Easy way to balance if most of a characters power comes from runes and sigils. Also much easier to power creep the game to encourage purchasing new unlockables. Creating a single OP passive trait that needs to be unlocked is much easier than creating a new OP weapon set.

I think they are trying to make a quick buck but not looking out for the long term health.

More so than how arenas are implemented I would like to know what type of combat people imagine they would like in strict 3v3 or 5v5 situations mostly focusing on the quality of combat over arbitrary balance concerns.

Such as what is an acceptable time range to kill another player/team. The role of support and its prevalence. What type of hit delay skills should have. Counterplay ideas, etc.

I’ll start it off by giving my own opinion in brief.
I think time to kill (ttk) should be set at a point where getting the jump gives a decent advantage but doesn’t totally eclipse the rest of the combat. It is why I am not a big fan of mobas where ttk can be 1-5s and the game is mostly about the map as opposed to character execution. Gw2 is much more my style though maybe the ranges are a bit too wide? At least when it comes to an individual build as opposed to the influence of outside support.

Considering specializations are supposed to be more support oriented I think there is opportunity for combat to evolve. To me support becomes rather important when ttk is meant to break well past the 5s mark. At the start of the fight there is positional organization and in 5s fights the cost to break your opponents organization and go for the high value targets has a large opportunity cost. However for longer ttk the opportunity cost is much less where the choice is always charge the high value targets. Defensive support roles end up reestablishing more structure which comes with strategic choice of pushing harder or keeping safe as seen in Gw1. I played a monk so might be biased.

Any other factors of good combat you find lacking overall? Yeah less passive engi stuff and well passive play for all classes would be nice. I don’t think enough skills have high enough opportunity cost to use. I might be able to put some of the feedback to use myself in a project I am working on as well.

Really didn’t enjoy it. It puts too heavy of a time constraint on players where fighting opposing players is often a waste. Time to kill players is too long in relation to the objectives especially when players have the option of just running. Can’t say I have seen an honorable fight play out yet which is really what the game has been lacking in a competitive mode.

From a strictly PvP standpoint how traits are implemented is abhorrent. I see two purposes of traits, to refine a player’s role by enhancing current base actions or to refine a player’s role creating new/altered outcomes to specific actions with the main purpose of increasing the in combat decisions player’s must make. There can be a third option falling in more of a grey area that gives some additional resistance to potential weaknesses but it has to be a true weakness for such a trait’s initiation to be based on an opponents action.

Now in Gw2’s system they implement a lot of additional issues in terms of trait placement and selection. This stems from a lot of old traits enhancing specific as opposed to base affects creating pigeonhole situations.

Second the volume of traits used by a characters creates overwhelming situations that offer limited play. Having 1 available on next crit passive effect is fine. Having 4 available is extremely bad because of the limited interaction. Ultimately becoming a power issue where a very large chunk of your opponents power comes from attacks that have very limited counterplay. It ends up diluting where power comes from, the vast majority should obviously come from active effects but when your starting to approach 40% passive influence vs 60% active influence over a fights outcome players start to feel fairness of fights slipping. Personally I prefer designing passive effect selection as being more linear so as a designer I have more control over synergies.

I thought they were in seattle? Less than a 5 hour drive for me and 200+ ping. Other games ping is usually under 20 so it is likely on their end. That much delay just doesnt work woth Gw2’s gameplay either. Chances are they are dialing back on Pvp servers as I just dont see their marketing model as long term sustainable

robertul.3679:

They should add 2 options when you queue:
1)fast queue – limited matchmaking, priority on time
2)slow queue -superior matchmaking but taking a bit longer
This way people can decide if they want to wait longer for a better matchup or play as soon as possible.
Everybody happy!
Cons: Given how the devs work this might be a feature in 2020.

Can’t imagine this would work. The queue times for the slow queue would skyrocket due to low population. I have a feeling many times a match will never be found because the majority of players will lean towards the shorter queue. Only real answer to balancing wait time vs quality is number of commited players.

The other thread is fine. He is just speaking from a different position. Yes it is obvious he is new but feedback from new players is equally if not more important. I would expect a fellow game dev to be smart about it when reading such feedback and grade their response appropriately. Gw2 does seem unfriendly towards new players for I am sure 100s of reasons that may not seem obvious to experienced players.

As for a devs response it is very possible to address some of these concerns, not all entirely obviously but enough that it would help new players understand why certain things are happening and help them learn.

They are definitely taking the mesmer in an off direction promoting more passive play. I really am not getting the impression the class is based around manipulating an opponent, giving them tough choices to make. Torment doesn’t do that. Not moving is almost never an option.

Oh well if Anet isn’t able to offer up competitive changes all the better for me.

I would say it is a small factor. True esports should be clear on what tools your opponent has at their disposal, at least in terms of any stats chosen before the start of the game.

As for the process of building a character, its not too difficult. There is room for that trial and error when starting out and it adds to the replay value.

Now in terms of actual combat there is just a massive lack of direction. The designers seem dependent on the player base for the direction of the classes in terms of PvP while at the same time being hesitant to follow through on suggestions because they don’t have a their own image of a class they can use to relate to. I don’t even feel they have a reference build they consider the ‘standard’ that other classes should be balanced around power wise. The result is poor balance dominated by gimmicks.

The other issue is how well the game can be watched/commentated. I find commentators put me to sleep as they end up focusing on the macro level too much but watching a single player for the match works. The game mode selected doesn’t have a central focal point and ends up splitting the action too much. A match should present a variety of fights with different scale but this should be done with imbalanced objectives so one objective takes the larger focus with other optional side objectives to break up the pace.

Last important issue is visibility, probably the most important issue when it comes to esports. Asura…. Someone please blow the f out of ratasum. make them go extinct, permanently. But really its not just asura. There is too much ai clutter, lingering particle effects, instant cast teleports which extend past the spectator screen, subtle animations with large effects, animations that don’t match hit boxes, etc etc.

Lopez.7369:

High-rated PvP isn’t dying; it’s dead.

In fact I believe its funeral was held sometime last year if you missed it.

vana.5467:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

now just because you do not like it, does not mean everyone else has to not like it too, yes?

Obviously. That’s why I’m asking.

If you’d indulge me, let me follow up on some points where I’m not too sure what your stance is:

Quite often, risk in skill usage comes from recharge- and resource management as well as cessation of movement. In GW2 it comes entirely from either recharge or resource management. Is this also a case of simplicity being better to you? Do you prefer the lower risk / more straightforward design?

You say simplicity of skills is a good thing and to a certain extent I agree with that, but it necessarily takes away from the “player skill” required to use it, no? (this being anything from individual timing/reflexes to team coordination).

The only parts that I consider ‘core’ and would think of replicating is the fluidity of skill movements, evade/block system and the general camera, movement and targeting systems. ie. few skills that outright prevent a player from moving. Though I would definitely adjust the risk of skill use. Mainly many classes would use a resource + cooldown and some higher impact abilities will slow movement during the channel.

Honestly outside of those basic controls there is a LOT of room for improvement.

Ps. Already have 3 working weapon sets coded and the rough control scheme within a month. It isn’t hard to make aside from the graphics and animations.

I don’t get the same impression that the devs have successfully created a game based around team interactions to cover each others weaknesses in which players are unable to grasp. And even if they did, it is still a failure because that means their systems lack clarity. There’s also no skills in the game that actually target allies in the first place so I have a hard time believing this.

Plus the game mode is hardly based off fair even fights where team synergies come into play. It is first and foremost about rotations and having someone on your team with the ability to stall until numbers can shift to your advantage.

But really the impression of combat I get is it is full of gimmicks, things that don’t promote choice and create mostly a one line direction of play. Pretty much every kit has a quick cast, almost impossible to react to cc effect → longer cc effect → burst. Answer? Use a stunbreak then dodge. Outside of that? Random dodge or have a build with enough stun breaks to get away from the reliable cc opener. This really doesn’t seem like intelligent play, its just a check to see if you have the right cooldowns.

This song and dance has happened numerous times. It is obvious Gw2 looses out on a very large population margin because of downstate. Most Gw1 players or other competitive players are instantly turned off by the premise of such a mechanic and it get even worse when you look more at the specifics when it comes to rallying, stomp evasion and damage that can be dealt from downed state.

Now there is a bit of method behind downstate. The game is very individual focused and downstate tries to bridge the gap between team interaction that the game is inherently missing. It also tries to give a bit of a safeguard against burst class.

(the origin of this necessity is questionable though as burst can be scaled such that a player has options to reasonable react to it while alive, ideally in such a way without a coordinated team effort a burst would be difficult to land)

So yes, downstate does add an entire layer of depth the game is missing. However, it is important to dig a little deeper. Why is this layer of depth lacking in the first place? Well trying to stay away from the holy trinity. The only thing about this is, is it not possible to not have a holy trinity where support is mandatory but still keep it as a viable option for those who wish it? Of course it is lol, in fact that is largely what a guardian/bunkers are except their primary support comes from control over the downstate. So now this raises the real questions, why can’t more of the support be targeted at the living player? And would this create a better gameplay experience as opposed to the experience downstate creates?

uhg… it would take me so much longer to break everything down to the level Anet would be willing to readjust for and even then… Might as well just make the game that follows those principles myself.

Or they could balance the game? The only restriction I would like to see is getting rid of asura.

Longbow seems to be a prevalent weapon on warriors because it just covers too many of a warriors weaknesses. Easy way to clear blind, easy way to land a condition removal burst skill, easy way to give yourself some distance from all the aoe. I would say either tighten the initial damage radius of the first blast on the burst skill or add a clause to cleansing ire where it doesn’t effect ranged weapons. Need to be manly!

Agreed. Horrible on so many levels. Doesn’t tell you anything when your alt tabbed. But if you are actually playing the game it just gets in the way.

EverythingEnds.4261:

Romek.4201:

i dont think any PVPer would buy gw3^^

Sad, but true.

How about this suggestion:

Make a pvp focused GW3, but don’t let it be produced by ANet.

This. Just have to show investors there is a market for it though.

Have to agree with redslion. The time you choose to bleed someone is the situation when you know the opponent has no way to interact and might as well be on respawn. The only skill/depth at play here is knowledge. Knowledge like this that can have such a large impact on the games outcome just acts as a barrier for entry and creates scenarios that just are not fun.

If I was playing competitively sure I would use it because it vastly improves win chance but otherwise I just feel like a kitten for doing it.

Agreed. Seriously there is no way to argue against changing it. The goal here is to make a game that is both fun and has depth. Now a mechanic that adds depth at the expense of enjoyment doesn’t match this goal. At best I would give it a 4/10 as a mechanic. Sure its ‘fun’ for some people to do to opponents, especially as an engi with knockbacks but there is two people to the equation. Taking control away from one player almost entirely isn’t fun.

There is nothing in that situation where the downed player has room to personally leverage an advantage. Either give the downed player a reason to keep playing under all circumstances or allow them an out.

ruffoth.9024:

Fourth.1567:

Any plan to overhaul it? The effectiveness of downed state far outweighs how interesting it is, how fun it is, how much effort it requires, a build aiming for a different form of support, etc.

I have one grin and one gripe about downed state (in structured PvP.) It’s funny when two downed players are smacking away at each other until one or both get banner-spiked.
My gripe is that I go into downed state with my elite downed skill on cooldown, every time. It comes off cooldown just when the finishing move happens. It’s coincidence, no doubt, but it happens every time.

It is actually designed such that a person has time to try and stomp you 2x if they start right away and you interrupt their first attempt. Just enough time that you need the help of someone else for it to come off cd.

Ideally downstate should be removed but it would have to be compensated for in an extreme way such as bringing back the trinity. Doing so would easily fix complaints about burst classes dominating, loss of depth etc. However that’s not Gw2 but it is feasible to change the relative importance of downed state while making smaller changes towards promoting support and higher synergy between teammates in keeping each other alive. Again, not trying to remove depth, simply trying to transition away from some of the limitations downstate imposes such as its impact on 1v2s and close fights that are interesting suddenly swinging to a boring one sided slaughter because of a rally. Downstate is still there, and there is more team synergy.

Have to agree, the casual crowd drives viewership which in turn drives the competitive scene. League could be tweaked quite a bit to be an overall better game for people at the competitive level but that would effect the rest of the player base negatively.

Now I do have a really good grasp of how to play around the downed state. I played at the highest competitive level during the first 5 months after release but left after my team all saw the direction Anet was going. Within the first 5 months basically every team that went into Gw2 to play competitively quit. Only one I can think of that stuck around a bit longer was Team paradigm. Even when I play maybe one weekend in a month I can still quickly get back into the top 100.

But when it comes to the downed state I just simply don’t enjoy the gameplay it takes. I played a monk in Gw1, now that was good gameplay and covered the same role of preventing burst.

The hard part about talking to the Gw2 forums is it hardly covers the opinion of players that would have otherwise been interested in the game or all the individuals who left. Talking to old players and players from other games downed state is the most common reason given for not taking an interest in Gw2, the second being a lack of energy management. Most have tried it for a free weekend but were put off.

You’ll have to explain to me how bleeding people out creates counter play. That part in particular seems like a gimmick and is just counter intuitive for new players. And honestly it is a very large advantage for engi’s to take advantage of because they ever further negate the counter play of trying to die on point to prevent that.

As for the rally mechanic really do you think that makes rallying irrelevant? Instead of being given a two person swing in a fight now it is 1 with a high chance of a second. However if a team has put the time into damaging a target that is not completely negated instantly. This opens up the possibility of a more conservative approach on top of the current play styles that can be used. Now numbers can be tweaked, maybe 20% per second is more appropriate but 15% is probably better with the general hate for the mechanic.

And as for compensating classes for changed downed abilities well a competent design team could accomplish that in short order to be perfectly honest. Ultimately the game would be better for it too. Its why I care about tackling gameplay as opposed to balance first. Balance is the easy part at least to get it within a functional range.

Lopez.7369:

Everything in this game comes down to knowledge.

It’s okay if the mechanic is easy to use if it broadly adds layers of counterplay and strategy. Downed state does that.

That is why I am not proposing to remove it as opposed to reduce its level of impact a bit. In fact I am trying to add more counterplay to the downed state.

Lopez.7369:

Top-tier players complain about a lot of bad things in the game. They don’t complain about downed state because it creates counterplay and interesting tactics. The game would, in fact, be pretty basic and dumbed-down without downed state, or even if bleeding people out was somehow nerfed.

The problem is low-tier players generally refuse to adapt to downed state and think of it as a mini-game. But there’s no reason to think of it as a mini-game. It’s an extension of a character’s normal life in Guild Wars 2, and it demands just as much attention as a fully alive player.

I think the only thing top-tier players would agree with is that rallying needs a range limit of some sort.

That is my problem with it. It does require as much attention as a living player but at the same time is very simplistic to use. Its basically comes down to just knowledge which tends to be counter intuitive in many cases. Downed state takes the place of more traditional support type of play and doesn’t hold a candle to it in terms of how much skill it takes. The transition I am looking for a less of an emphasis on downed state and more of an emphasis on clutch support effects. But if you ask me downed state as it is, is toxic and can receive some changes before support receives more emphasis.

Lopez.7369:

Top-tier players generally disagree with most of what you said. Consider why that is.

Top players are usually the ones that care the most and put the most time in. Most satisfied at least compared to those who left. Though really when I played regularly most of the top players (a long time ago I know) would agree some tweaks do need to be made, mostly in line with what I said. But if your right that can largely be chalked up to self selection bias.

Not everyone has stability and why would you want to dedicate one of your most important skills to a mini game when there is already so much cc flying around.

Any plan to overhaul it? The effectiveness of downed state far outweighs how interesting it is, how fun it is, how much effort it requires, a build aiming for a different form of support, etc.

1. rallying needs a fix. I think I have told you 100×. Instead of instantly getting up if someone dies around you the downed bar fill at 15%/s for 5s. Much more balanced and allows counter play.

1. Does there really need to be a stomp escape skill? This bar position is obviously only designed for PvP but I can’t say it is a good one. What was your rational for going in this direction instead of removing the downed evasion skills of the few classes that initially had them? Personally this should be the spot of a more interesting skill shot but that requires fixing the camera angle as well. Don’t think anyone likes the camera when downed anyways.

1. Small point but wth is with the 50% damage in downstate traits? Landing a downed ability doesn’t take any skill so rewarding it this much seems really stupid. For starters if someone has the trait that is must know information because it changes the entire approach. 30% seems more appropriate.

1. Leaving people in downstate to bleed out seems very bm, especially when certain knockbacks can hit downed targets. However it is so important to do! And is completely contradictory to common sense. Try making bleed damage ramp exponentially between using #4.

You have a lot of work to do to clean it up. It is no wonder, even out of the players that haven’t quit there is a large amount of hate for the downstate.

The big selling point of longbow over axe is it pulls blinds off with the aoe field. That way you have a tool to deal with blind spamming thieves.

Personally I prefer axe though, enough damage to force dodges before even trying to burst someone.

Though question. Does anyone else notice earthshaker specifically does not go off. Usually need to hit it at least 2 times before it will cast. Seems really buggy, causes a lot of rubber banding too and I can’t say I get any lag with any other skill.

Well I think the thief class identity ultimately forces poor balance upon the other classes to give them an identity as strong as the thief.

The thief is supposed to be the most mobile class, being a top contender for highest burst, probably the highest burst to reliability ratio and having tools to avoid damage.

So what do you give other classes to rival that? God like cc, AoE, sustain’d healing, sustain’d damage, ai, etc. Nothing can really be done in moderation.

Now assassins are a popular archetype and pretty much require those advantages. So how would it be properly balanced? Well with what most developers hate and that is punishing mechanics. Long downtime and low passive defense is usually the approach but having a one and done rotation is poor gameplay as well. In Gw2’s case they chose to have very short downtime balancing it with extremes across other classes and low passive defense for thieves.

Ultimately this approach is not good enough. Role extremes suck. How I would do it is scaling downtime with good execution/success. Use multiple get out of jail free cards in succession, lose some of your offense. Get hit too much while executing a burst, resource regeneration is decreased. This makes it a lot easier to give other classes more moderate roles.

There seems to be a bug atm where AI is hitting harder than normal. Probably due to the change in crit damage. Check the NPCs in the mist, they hit a lot harder as well. Same with forest NPCs.

I would guess ferocity for AI is instead being treated as 1% crit damage per point or something.

Balance is a bit better but if you ask me that is irrelevant to the issues Gw2 faces. The class design across the board is just no good.

“I believe in fights taking multiple executions to resolve, being the accumulation of advantages through good reaction and planning. There should still be room for extreme outputs but they should have many ways to be interacted with.”

Gw2 is a long way off from accomplishing this. The role planning has is minimal as very few skills have much of an opportunity cost.

I’ll just go over how Gw2 uses setup skills poorly though there are many other areas that play into the low opportunity cost of Gw2. There are a number of good ways to make them work. A couple things to keep in mind:

Ideally one of these skills should be positional/a skill shot so that both the burst and setup skill do not 100% require a resource commitment to prevent so that simply using a skill doesn’t always progress the fight.

Setup skills that are easy to land should not singularly lead to a burst for maximum effect.
For example – setup skill stuns for 1s and reduces endurance by 50%, the burst that follows takes 1.5s to execute however the radius is set that with a small movement speed boost they are able to walk out of the radius within that 0.5s.

They should be based on a gradient in terms of reliability versus level of defensive resource required to still respond to the burst. If an easy setup skill lands it should require a dodge to stop the burst whereas a harder setup skill might require a block or condition removal + dodge.

Really I don’t believe Gw2 will ever be up to the standard I am looking for. There are so many other factors that need work that I simply don’t have the time to go over them. Sure there is potential but short of someone taking the core and basically releasing a new game I can’t see it getting far.

This thread has a number of points I believe to be right on which is nice to see. Generally they encompass the direction I would take a competitive game if I were to design one (I am an ergonomist myself so I deal a lot with design). However really when it comes to Gw2 it is not about finding that one issue that if solved will fix everything. Gw2 Pvp is really a conglomerate of separate issues that ultimately sum up to create an experience that just isn’t fun for the majority of players. Just different people find different issues more prominent.

Even take the issues of balance, rewards and the difficulty finding players out of the equation and it is still not fun. The game is lacking meaningful interaction between players. There is just not enough depth compared to the complexity of the system. Gw2 has a lot of information being thrown around but often that information is designed in such a way it is irrelevant to how a person plays. Either animations are improperly scaled either by cast time, visually, or both, precision of information is lacking such as in icds, or skill design creates lose-lose situations such as choosing to stand in an AoE or avoid it and lose the point or the prevalence of setup skills which either consume defensive resources or lead perfectly into a burst. Then there is also limited interaction with your own team. There is little form in the combat in terms of a front line vs back line which is a scenario that exists when players are put at honest risk based on where they choose to stand. A lot of the risk comes from a team being able to support each other within a limited range among well a number of other pretty self-explanatory reasons. But Gw2 has nearly no support outside of point blank which often falls into a lose-lose situation with all the aoe.

Now in terms of game mode I would agree, if I was designing a new game mode it would be a progression based push/pull mode. Not quite the general interpretation of a moba, more akin to natural selection with more dynamic zone control. One intention of this would be to keep things dynamic as the game progresses so there are moments where a team should group for a fight or split up for smaller skirmishes. This allows commentators to focus more on either map wide tactics or combat execution depending on the phase.

Though I also wouldn’t write off conquest. It is mostly Anet’s execution that holds it back. Generally the points are set way too small and how classes are designed interacts poorly with conquest. Conquest places a high reward on defense which in terms of Gw2’s customization can be taken to the extreme and a viable defensive extreme is almost never fun. For larger points to work in Gw2 some tweaks so bunkers repeatedly running at a point would not work. Simple enough, add conditions targeted more against bunkers so they are not nearly as self-sufficient and give kills more incentive.

It is more complicated than that. It is not about those mechanics existing, it is about the accessibility of those mechanics relative to the cast time and number of high impact skills. At least in regards to block, blind and dodging. This ratio is seriously F’d up on both sides which devolves the game into spamming.

Stealth I agree, Gw2 has the worst iteration of stealth I have ever seen.

Hopefully this idea gets a bit more support from the community. Something similar to this being done is about the only way I could take Gw2 seriously as a competitive game again. It really has to fall on the community to make our own regulations for how we want the game to play. Anet doesn’t have the capability to create a competitive game and can’t be relied on.

Here is a couple rough builds that should require more skill to achieve results on than what we are currently seeing while dropping the overall power level. To get this organized I would first create a representative group that understands the issues at hand who then collaboratively creates 10 or so builds per profession. After it should be opened up to the community to vote on 3 of those 10 they would like to see allowed. Then over time increasing the number of builds in smaller increments.

Warrior
Sword + board
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-sFw70;0RKVP0f4JL-60;9;4JT-J-21-38B;107;2UNF6;2sV2DsV2D5kj

Axe + hammer
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-s7Bt;1RKFM0e4ZL-60;9;4EEJ-J4;01;029;258-5JF7;2TsW6TsW65gh

Greatsword + mace
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-sBxg;1VK-Q0e4oL-60;9;5TJ-J;146914;257-CRH6;2CoF2CoF24BY

Mesmer
Watered down shatter
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-NFcg;1VPV1187JV-71;9;4JJ;0T03-39;537AUs-5;2TsW6TsW65cb

Boon mesmer
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-NFFZ;1k2031S7BWV71;9;6TT9;447A25A1;0SRF6;2CoF2CoF26BK

Condi roamer
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-N3lFR;0VPV1127gW-71;9;4JE-JE48-3;336-4;0TNH64;16Rk06Rk07cs

This is a great idea. Should probably start with a list of banned traits/utilities that can’t be used in any build. I’d also say the power aimed for should be set much much lower than current.

The trinity is a structure to determine class architypes and is not a requirement to achieve the gameplay that i believe most of us miss. Its mostly about having a degree of the defence coming from an external resource. No one said a classes singular role has to be to contribute to this external resource, though it is a trend to make a game simpler.

Now an external resource helps to shape positioning and lines as this also means you have to be within range of certain allies to benefit (current positioning structure of Gw2 needs WAY more than this to work). It also creates more dynamic targeting of foes as you have to adapt to where this resources is being spent.

Now an enfeebler is a class architype as opposed to a trinity. The trinity is a gradient that naturally exists consisting of offense, personal defence, and ally support most prominently in the form of defence. The relative portion of each of these components can vary and there is no need to lock yourself into 3 distributions.

Guy Stop. There is no way to get the warrior to where it should be in under 5 changes.

Take a look at the traits alone, there is too high of a discrepancy. How I would rate most of the traits would be a number of new S/S+ tier traits followed by a lot of C tier with the odd A/B tier traits mixed in but often not enough to fill out certain trait lines for a given weapon set.

So what would probably be more useful for the devs would be collaborating to create tier lists for the traits and then promoting more widespread changes.

The functional changes to the thief seem quite well thought out. The only issue I think people are running into is some of the specific numbers. Which honestly is more Arena nets fault.

There really doesn’t seem to be a reasonable reference point in the game anymore. In this sense how is it possible to suggest exact changes when imo there are 8 different reference points, all of which are undesirable. People can argue based on preference but that doesn’t seem like it is going anywhere.

Really Anet needs to create a new reference point, created outside the context of Gw2 and within the context of a competitive game. From there suggestions can be targeted around that reference point which has to be in a pretty kitten good place to get the support of most players. And really middle finger to anything that uses the current game as a reference.