Alright pubs and scrubs, the topic this time is:
Skill cues and you; why skill activation bars should be implemented
First we begin with what I feel is an often overlooked reason that warriors are a weak class overall. Conditions, right? Not this time, dirtbag. Warriors are the only class where each skill has an easily recognizable animation. If you add the fact that warriors only have direct approaches with their skills then you have the only class where you know exactly what they’re doing at all times. Commonly people say that 100b wasn’t a very strong build because it was easily dodgeable, in my opinion, this is why. Of course, people could still land combos because they would have to have some degree of tact when it came to baiting dodges and stun breaks.
Let’s move on to another example of easily identified skill cues: the hammer guardian. If you were put against a guardian you’d know exactly when to use your dodges to avoid being kicked around or immobilized. I know that when I was first playing the game I had a good feeling when I fought hammer guardians because it felt like I was actually playing the game. It sounds strange, I know, but it was the first time I felt like I understood what was going on and my success was directly related to acting on that information correctly. It felt good, man.
Dodging is 100% damage prevention. It’s a cool mechanic and I like the feeling I get when I used it well, but using it well is directly related to how well a player can tell what’s going on. It’s actually amazing how much ease of interpretation impacts the strength of certain weapon and classes as a whole when they have key skills which need to be dodged. I might not be a top tier player, but it’s certainly difficult to argue against the fact that most animations are both flashy/distracting and not particularly informative (which isn’t even including stealth). Have you ever had an ele blind you by riding lightning into your face while an Asura guardian golfed your sorry self off of a building? Feels bad, man.
Ok, hopefully some of you are still on board with what I’m saying, but what’s next? Well, we need to make combat easier to read, but how? Perhaps we could redesign all the skill animations? Even if we could/would it wouldn’t solve the Asura problem. For those of you who played gw1 you remember the progress bar that would appear under the portrait of a selected enemy while they were using a skill, that’s exactly what I had in mind for gw2.
I’m sure someone will post a list of skills which are easily identified. Just remember that you can’t ignore the fact that you also have skill animations which can obscure what your opponent is doing.
Combat is difficult to read. There are:
I don’t think there’s point to fixing any other problems the game has apart from being allowed to veto skyhammer.
Oh, and classes don’t have any defined roles which means that you can’t balance anything based on the effect it has in game since all classes do everything. For example: “we’re having a problem with condi classes” “like….? all of them?”
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And so the list of reasons why there should be a -1 button grew longer still.
What I don’t understand most is how they could get PvP so wrong this time around…
I see lots of comments like this, and my thought is always “you seriously don’t understand?”
Gw1 was built on a series of pvp principles; things like simple gear, small numbers, and a concept of build making which was an mmo analog to mtg.
What’s changed? Aw jeez, everything? We have big numbers in every category, poorly streamlined condition categories, no concept of energy management, hardly any concept of team build making and no ally healing other than downed state. No ally healing changes response types. The closest thing we have to gvg in gw2 is foefire map, in which the lord pit is so lethal that you can send any one character to get in there and hold off 2 or 3 characters – there’s one response and it’s the exact same every time. OH! AND ELITE SKILLS! Yeah man, in gw1 elite skills just offered a tool or a refinement of playstyle, obviously that had to go because without having a button so strong that you receive a herculean surge in power pvers wouldn’t feel like big boys. The concept of effective skill use, as it was in gw1, is neutered. Sure, you might have a combo or some kind of burst potential with stuns/blowouts/knockdowns/redundant status, but there is no energy to be careful with.
Why did these changes occur? For pvers, if I hadn’t made that hypothesis clear already. Pvers in gw1 would constantly complain about how a max damage sword had stats which were like 12-21 or something. That does not make a pver feel like a cool kid! You also didn’t have huge aoe on every single class, very uncool! People were really elitist about what builds to run in gw1, so obviously the devs had to take matters into their own hands and choose the first 5 skills for people then give them 1 functioning elite and mostly bad utilities. Oh yeah, that previous sentence? Same reason energy was removed, because if the devs are making the builds you can’t punish players for the devs making bad builds.
For the record; I really want to like gw2 and I’m not anti change – it being inevitable and all. The fact that gw2 is not gw1 is used both as a complaint and a justification, which is messed up because a lot of good changes were made in gw1 and the knowledge from that just doesn’t seem to be present too often. Problem is that the engagements are so schizophrenic that the combat alternates between toughness-vitality nonsense and instant death. If Jon Peters thought that gw1 pvp was too hardcore ( http://www.guildmag.com/pvp-interview-with-jon-peters ) then what he helped build is so focused on deciphering non-distinctive skill animations, dodging, and twitch-like reflexes that it has to be way more hardcore than gw1 pvp ever was. At least the controls in gw1 didn’t represent a barrier to entry for pvp.
Remember to bump this thread when it gets moved into page 3 of the suggestions forum.
Daily is 3 times longer
Reward is just as bad
Devs are too focused on balance.
The interesting thing is that GW1 gave a lot of leeway in terms of balance because it was self balancing to some degree.
Look at: http://www.gw-memorial.net/builds/mAT/2009/August/356/ (when you hover over the skills it shows how they are currently, so you need to look a bit lower on the page to see how they were pre-nerf)
That ranger bar was the silliest nonsense. Everyone was running it. It was stupid. It moved fast, it attacked fast, it died slow. But look at that necromancer bar and that mesmer bar; those guys has buttons which are good against that overpowered ranger bar. Both teams knew this, and whichever team was better prepared for the mirror match won. Yes, this was a meta which was HEAVILY impacted by the presence of a grossly overpowered build.
In gw2, builds are made by the devs. Players have very little to do as far as being creative goes. Players have the task of figuring out how each weapon loadout is meant to be played and what gear / utility / traits maximizes that role (which normally comes down to maximizing damage in some way or another).
By giving the players few options, the burden of balance falls to the devs. Ironic, in a way.
We already know about an alternate gamemode that works and isn’t TDM. Its called GvG and ArenaNet INVENTED it.
And how exactly would you transition gvg into gw2? All I can see is diminishing the game mode.
Gw1:
-make hard decisions about what skills to bring
-who brings heal skills for the team?
-who brings support skills?
-who brings resurrection skills? (Since death put you on a 2 minute timer)
-who runs flags? what skills do they bring for running flags?
-who defends base against a particular character?
-who responds when there’s multiple attackers in your base? Defensive response? Offensive?
-can your team run split tactics or do you have to fight honorable 8v8?
-can your team fight honorable 8v8 or do you have to run split tactics?
-running a team spike build? What kind of spike? Physical? Magic?
-running a team pressure build? What type of pressure? Hexes? Conditions? Edenial?
-running a cheesy build? What kind of cheese? Kappa spike? Bspike? SFway? Lord all in?
-what map are you running for your build?
-how do you change your build to be more flexible on many maps?
Gw2:
There isn’t the variety of skill options or responses, and as such most builds feel the same. You have a bunch of relatively self sustaining characters fighting a bunch of other relatively self sustaining characters. None of those characters can heal, so the only response option is offensive while also not changing the dynamic of the rest of your team. In gw1 if you respond offensively to someone in your base, that means your main team has less damage and has to play defensively. If you respond defensively then that means you have less support and you need to be killing stuff. That dynamic is gone.
The only capacity in which gw2 needs gvg is nominally.
Guys, you can get legendaries from the weapons vendor. They’re called steady weapons and they have legendary status, probably because if you ever beat anyone with them you’re a legend.
Real talk:
I am conflicted when it comes to having legendaries in pvp.
On the one hand; supercool rewards are unattainable in pvp.
On the other hand; flash legendary animations would just make combat harder to read
Assuming that I am firmly against pvp legendaries – thus making legendaries exclusive to pve – what should pvpers get as an exclusive reward?
I am also assuming that the pvp exclusive rewards would come from winning the monthly/yearly/a real tournament.
Should we get exclusive dye that makes your armor look like the stars? Should we get dye that gives you fancy footprints? Should we get exclusive armor? Zodiac armor? Tormented armor? Should the winning team get a chance to design armor with anet?
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Don’t forget Anet, designed it to have minimal choice. So that their job could be easier.
Seems like they had a easier time with GW1.
Because in gw2 the burden of balance falls entirely upon the developer, meanwhile gw1 was a somewhat self regulating system.
Less choice is actually better in the case of balance.
No.
Stop it.
Tell your friends to stop it.
When you restrict player choices it means that the balance team has to perfectly balance the game on their own. When players have more options then the devteam has much more leeway with balance because the meta will regulate itself within some acceptable margin.
I’d love to quote& paste one of my other comments, but I’ve already posted it 10 times and it doesn’t seem to make a bit of difference since you people don’t read it.
“People in the low tiers will always have trouble with something.”
Sure, but we still need to consider how the new player experience is going to be. Particularly when it comes to Thieves.
Sure, how about meaningful skill cues or a skill activation bar on the enemy you have selected? That way everyone will know what’s going on. Even if an Asura is casting something.
The most frustrating thing for new players is not knowing what killed them. The death recap is a reasonable attempt at this, but it isn’t all that informative. You can say that you’ll improve the death recap, but that doesn’t really change the fact that teamfight combat is shrouded in aoe effects and it’s hard to decipher a visual skill cue in that environment.
Looking at the ladder, it looks like it’s more about the number of matches played, not quality.
But I’m no expert.
It’s worth noting that while ladder ranking is affected purely by the number of matches played, mmr is not. However, that was not the question. If you could be so kind as to forcibly remove your kitten from your kittenhole, that`d be great.
in tPvP, communication is critical!
I’m honestly suspicious when I see people say this. It has been my experience that this quote is closely followed by a flurry of useless information through voip.
Strategy in this game honestly isn’t that hard since it’s just applied arithmetic.
you really have an argument for paying $60 for an unfinished game?
every single heart of the mist except anvil rock (still pretty empty) is dead – so why not merge them? Then, since our population is so low – why not just make hotm free to play
Nobody is happy about the state of pvp except for empathic fighter and that other guy that’s constantly saying nice things about anet. We all wanted the game to be a success in pvp, but anet doesn’t and we’re all sour about that. You know what? It’s completely reasonable to be sour about this nonsense because a respectable number of the complaints we’re making are things that were learned by the gw1 devteam and it’s not intuitive to anyone why those lessons were just lost in the wind.
I think everyone’s in favor of making hotm free to play and consolidated into the district system from gw1. In fact, I think most zones should be done in a district system (it would certainly stop a lot of pve complaints about dragon events).
I do not think that posting this stuff over and over will make this stuff happen. It’s been posted 100 times before, it’ll be posted 100 times again, but it’s not like on the millionth post the devs will finally be like “OMG! WE SHOULD MAKE HOTM FREE!” It’s obviously not up to them and we shouldn’t hold our breath for it happening.
We’re on the same team here, I just don’t want to see these threads anymore because it clearly doesn’t make a difference and it’s just used as some kind of way for the community to vent frustrations onto itself. It’s stupid. Purringly stupid. Meowingly kitten.
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why? because they’ve no idea what to do with game.
they need to disable 3 round tournies, and schedule them at pre-set times with higher rewards.
i’ve no idea who’s idea it was to leave them in the game.
Yet another GW1 idea to be imported:
Automated Tournaments
JQ is the best mode for transfer.
FA is similar to the PvDoor gameplay of wvw, and gvg cannot be done in gw2 without changing the npcs significantly.
making SPvP servers into what Anet has announced as their ‘custom arenas’, ironically, I see as, more likely than not, a bad thing for the game.
2k gems for low latency server
1.8k gems for medium latency server
1.79k gems for high latency server
As it is now, because of how obtrusive the environment design is, the only way to know where people are is to have 5 people on voip that have a loose grasp on what useful communication is. From many approaches you won’t have information on a point until it’s directly in line of sight – which for some maps is a challenge.
Maybe some of you can sympathize with the following far fetched and outlandish scenario: you’re solo queuing.
You see a capture point on the map.
Is it a free cap? You don’t know.
Maybe a friendly is on it; is your ally currently free capping it? You don’t know.
Is he fighting 1v3? You don’t know.
Are they zerging the point? You don’t know.
Are they getting reinforcements after you’ve engaged the enemy? You don’t know.
For the record; I have my camera rotation speed on max, and I look around so many times while running from place to place that it would make most people dizzy – I even adjust the angles to see over rocks. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind having the maps adjusted so that I could actually have vision of things, but I think that the maps were designed this way on purpose – especially the forest map.
My vote is in favor of a radar. Obviously being able to zoom in and out of the radar would have to be removed – same with panning.
Edit: You should probably post this on the PvE forums and say it’s ruining events or something like that. Then, you’ll get a fix in around 20 minutes.
And lo, a champion arose from the pvp forum.
I never get tired of these squeaky threads. They are always well written and useful.
(then give those us us who payed 60$ cash shop gems for custom arena pls)
This is like going to a grocery store, buying an avocado so hard it could kill a horse, then telling the store to give you a ripe avocado. The claim has always been that pvp will be finished one day, just like your avocado will ripen, and anet really doesn`t have a reason to hurry that process up.
Anet is under no obligation to cater to the pvp community because it won`t satisfy any particular fiscal report. Even if the game was subscription based, the pvp population is so tiny that they wouldn`t even notice if we all quit. As it is now, we paid upfront and they just lose money on us by hiring pvp devs, programmers, and running servers.
Now some of you big boys might talk about how you spent money on the gem store (I think one guy around here said he spent 3x the game`s value in additional gems) but if pvpers were a demographic which spent disproportionately more than pvers and wvwrs then we wouldn`t be in our current neglected state, or at least it wouldn’t be quite so bad.
I`m all for asking more of the company, but these posts are always completely tactless and antagonizing. Not to mention the fact that half of the opinions are still in the fetal stage by the time they are prematurely birthed onto these forums.
Tangentially related: I am currently unable to connect to the login server, or the server was unable to authenticate my gameplay privileges. Anyone else?
I guess they could reduce the damage taken from frenzy and make 100b cast a little faster on its own.
This is why there should be a -1 button.
It looks like people want gw2 to be an e-sport, which is fine and dandy, but I don’t understand how. Below is a flurry of rant-like questions, to which I would like to hear answers from you.
I might edit it later if people want me to.
Can a game become an e-sport so far after release with such a small player-base?
If the game became perfect tomorrow, how would you give the game enough life to become an e-sport?
Would the return of all the players who quit attract new players? What percentage of gw2 population has even set foot in the heart of the mists?
Is pvp viewer friendly? probably the most important question
Does watching a match between strong players excite bad players? Does it excite good players? How obvious are big plays? Is there enough action? Is there too much action (would viewers feel lost, overwhelmed, or like they’re missing action if they don’t have 5 monitors)?
What about potential sponsors who monitored the game after release and decided against investing? Will those sponsors still be interested? Will their lack of initial interest repel other potential moneybags? Does it even matter if there are sponsors (probably need to build a viewership first anyway)?
Do they have to say “soon” or can “sooner” also win, because generally things are expected to occur sooner than we think (probably because most people have their bets on never)
Anet you dont need discover wheel, just look back what you already made. In GW1.
I like this part of what you said because some of gw1’s superior features didn’t exist on release. Observer mode didn’t exist for the first few months and features like build templates and glory sinks also came with time. Of course, the mmr formula was known to players and was available with a ladder. By the time gw1 was as old as gw2 is right now there had been a world championships.
I hope it wasn’t the level of graphic fidelity that caused this disparity between the two games, because I’d trade ultra settings for more people working on gameplay in a heartbeat.
HoN had a system where you could thumbs up/thumbs down certain options, specifically an option for “fairer matches” which resulted in longer queues and a closer mmr gap between teams.
If I don’t care who I play against, I don’t have to thumbs up fairer matches.
Everyone wins?
When you say that you got crushed by the team do you mean that it isn’t possible for the match to have gone to time?
In gw1 there was a problem with not having anything to spend Balthazar faction points on (glory).
The solution they came up with was http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Zaishen_Chest
Keys used to open this chest were in demand by pvers because it gave a title (and, more importantly, an emote) and the chance for some exclusive loot.
People want a way to get pve money and people also want a glory sink. The z-chest did exactly that.
Edit: Of course, this was back when you could get rewards which weren’t account bound (craziness).
cosmetic effects are not everything for dwayna’s sake
In PvP respect is essential, there’s no two ways about it.
We have no tournaments, the winners of which would have their names engraved on the wall of champions (why is that even there? is there some big beta tournament they forgot to tell us about?).
So, what’s left? How does a seasoned bear differentiate himself from some nobody rabbit? Cosmetic effects are the only remaining difference between bears and rabbits, and even that is diminished to some degree with the easy access to paid tournament tokens.
I think it’s good; it gives /rank a method of showing off because these ranks are not easily gained.
You don`t get it.
If there was a way to get massive glory via unquestionable demonstration of skill, then yes. As it is now, tournaments are commonly accepted as a better indicator of skill, but it gives far less glory than hotjoining. Praise your hotjoin farming overlords.
If Anet spent as much time contemplating Gw2, we’d have a completely different game.
Hindsight is 20/20, but yeah I would have killed to get into the game’s alpha testing.
I like you, but here’s a reality check.
In alpha there was a guy, Ensign, who has unparalleled insight into this game / everything. At minimum, he is at least as smart / insightful as you – though I would consider this to be an insultingly conservative estimate. He was a huge pvp figure in gw1, it was often joked that one of the top guilds was just him on 8 computers.
Ensign was in the alpha, well respected by all the players, and gave anet buckets upon buckets of great suggestions and analysis. Ensign was later kicked out of the alpha for being a negative influence since everyone agreed with what he wrote (you know, because it made sense). It wouldn’t matter if you were in alpha because the devs would never tell you anything more than “Yeah we’ll take that into consideration, cya”
As a player you have no influence over design, the best thing you can hope for is whatever our boy Grouch is doing behind the scenes to try and make things better.
This accurately portrays how I feel about their internal testing, and probably the only reason I’d want to see a public test server.
mhmm… maybe thats a hint that it’s already coming this month with the next PvP-Patch?
We already have our PvP Patch.
Dragon arena is way more viewer and noob friendly than spvp. It takes advantage of the fact that you can actually jump in this game, the map has good visibility, and all the classes are balanced. You can even make huge juke plays if your control is good enough to go for weird jumps, and there’s no invis.
The autoattack upgrade is a little too necessary, but it’s easily accessible so it’s probably not a huge issue.
Boom
Game fixed.
#Dragon Arena for WCG 2014
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The amount of arrogance is staggering….
It`s well deserved when your hotjoin superstars are always doing the tried and true 5-0-0 opening.
It is not a troll. I was really wondering what other people tend to do. It’s frustrating. How do others cope?
You clearly didn’t read my first reply particularly well.
When I am facing opponents who grossly outskill me I follow one of these two plans:
Step 1: find out where the enemy is
Step 2: don’t go there
or
Step 1: get demoralized because I thought I was playing kinda good and I just got blasted off the map.
Step 2: run into the enemy a couple times after respawn.
Step 3: regroup emotionally and execute the above plan.
Many elites in this game have fat cooldowns and cause such monumental surges in power that most players are too timid to use them, because they want to save it for “that time when they really need it.” Given the option, players can choose to have a more consistent level of power (and resulting style of play) as well as avoid being locked into a single underwater elite.
The idea of giving the player an entire degree of freedom can be scary. considering that for the most part you’re locked into 2/3 of your utility skills and choosing an elite is often a contest of deciphering which 2 skills are the least pickable.
I’m sure someone will want to reply to this by saying “I use <terrible elite> in pve and it works just fine!” News flash; everything works in pve, that’s what makes it casual. In terms of picking for optimization, it’s not a choice so much as a problem that needs solving.
While I’m here: it would also be nice to make NECRO STAFF NOISES QUIETER OH MY GOD I CAN’T HEAR A THING WHEN NECROS AND STAVES ARE IN THE SAME PLACE AT THE SAME TIME.
Thanks for reading.
How’s this for an idea:
Instead of having a matchmaker, have a matchmaking system in place. It’s cruel to have one person bear the responsibility of effectively making teams from people in queue, and when he goes for his smoke breaks we’re just left hanging. Come on, Anet.
Honestly though, this actually explains everything. When he feels pressured for time he just drags the top 5 mmr onto one team, and the next 5 onto another team. Sometimes he forgets to check if a player is still online which causes 4v5.
The man who created GW1 PvP hasn’t been with ANet for years. .
Such a shame though
I was actually surprised that the devs tried to bring up MTG when talking about how they envisioned gw2 pvp working.
Gw1 was MTG in motion.
Gw2 is like mtg where you can pick the sideboard for a few premade decks, except the guy making the decks is a kittycat meow meow purr.
Tpvp are about survivability and cooperation for me (and I hope that for a lot of us). It isn’t all only about doing the highest dmg, at least in tPvP not.
At 1:30 you are at full hp and are running to high ground. During this time your necro ally has feared a guardian – which you could have instantly killed. Instead you give the guardian a huge opportunity to survive by actually leaving the point and not looking at anything. More often than not, that extremely conservative decision kill meow your kittenbox into a purr purr purr. Doesn’t look like good teamwork to me.
My skill cannot show
Playing warrior is woe
I have to reroll
Precursors - Spark has reached 700g, The lover is almost 700g, Dawn/Dusk 600g, legend 700g. Why is there still no other option to acquiring these beyond pure luck.
Anet hired economists to consult.
These hacks are of the opinion that any expected reward must be account bound, so you can only trade things which come from chance.
Lack of features and infrastructure has been its undoing since day one, not balance.
I agree with this. My impression was always that between dodging and superior awareness/experience the better players tend to win. Of course this doesn’t apply when 10 good players are in the same match, but I’d imagine everyone with the aforementioned perception of balance hasn’t had too much / any experience with high tier premade vs high tier premade – let’s be honest, there aren’t that many high tier players.
That said, it’s obvious that pve and wvw considerations for pvp don’t make sense. The master nerd pvers still run 4 warriors and one guardian for their dungeon farms, does this mean that warriors will be nerfed further? Let’s hope not.
If nothing else, numbers can be changed for pvp only. Wvw already has consumables + ascended items which results in far greater stats than pvp already, so it really doesn’t make a difference. Maybe that approach doesn’t work for everything, but reducing things here and there can be bandaids for balance until they decide they’ve found a good rework. What would the big deal be in making frenzy deal slightly less damage and 100b casting slightly faster in pvp? Nobody would notice.
Dailies need to disappear from sPvP.
But that will make the pvers happy!
I do a lot of PvE too and I still think adding dailies to sPvP has to be one of the worst ideas ever.
Have you seen how asspained pvers get about pvp having any rewards? They cry about 3 mediocre armor skins being exclusive to pvp and feeling like they HAVE to do pvp dailies. There’s multiple daily threads on reddit about exactly that and it’s pretty sad to read. Moreover, you constantly have people talk about how they hope the new pvp game mode will use pve armor. Yep.
Main design speedbump: pvp is being developed in a way that pvers won’t be scared of new and exciting things when they fight for glory in the mist wars.
The conventional perception of pvp right now is that it needs a lot of changes which will make pvers have to read skills all over again when they get to the mists. Pvers not having all their rings / earrings / hair braids already caused mild freakouts, and that is something which anet wants to avoid – because the fundamental tenet of pvp design here is that it should have no learning curve (as far as skills / equipment goes) for pvers to transition.
So the next time you have a totally valid complaint / suggestion / whatever, consider the following:
Would a pver have to learn something new in order to play?
If the answer is yes, then assume that anet is trying every last possible option which involves the answer being “no”.
If nothing else, I felt like our team was better prepared this time. Karl was a little too fumbly / time wastey / stop telling me what professions do. Also; why does he not know if a skill is a blast finisher or not? Isn’t it…his…job?
You said more than things you thought were being done well and you emphasized what was important to you, which was reflective of the community’s concerns. I was really happy that right from the start Nero and Xeph challenged / inquired about the answers the devs gave instead of just accepting them.
Way to go team (all of you).
One thing I really was curious about was having player made maps, like the wc3 custom engine. I suspect it won’t be a reality, but it would’ve been nice for players to be able to answer a lot of their own balance questions / why isn’t this happening fast enough questions.
(edited by mbh.8301)
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