Guild Wars 2

The game is possible to balance to a respectable degree. However I don’t get the impression the people who make the final choice are willing to allow through the changes that would be necessary to do that. Also can’t say I trust in the balance team’s (if there is a team?) ability either.

Get someone in there who knows what they are doing and has some decent control and I am sure things could be put into a nice spot.

Zoid.2568:

EU. I’m rank 22.

I find it is queue time. Not everyone is going to leave Gw2 open for the 8 mins it takes to find a game. Then they have no system in place that makes sure that after those 8 mins the player is still there.

Qaelyn.7612:

When I’m not making videogame builds just to ruin the experience for others, I like to torture small furry animals.

The devs hold more of the responsibility for making sure the possible builds are fun for all players involved. One area of this is the effort/reward ratio. They must have been sick that day. Or more likely the process of finding a good effort/reward ratio would disrupt the PvE side of things.

Your missing the point. Yes you have to watch your opponent from a defensive standpoint, every build in the entire game has to, to some degree. Though I would argue with the amount of stealth available to PU this is to a lesser degree. Now there is a second side to this, the offensive standpoint. This is where you are keeping track of your opponents ability to interact with your damage.

Now a spec like phantasm/condi the damage is fairly constant. There isn’t a large variation in damage output that you have direct control over. As such the necessity of paying attention to an opponents defensive state is almost non-existent. This is a large portion of the game that isn’t represented in those types of builds. And conversely from your opponents point of view also hurts their ability to interact with what you are doing, which hurts their enjoyment of the game. Especially when you can cast phantasms from stealth.

Qaelyn.7612:

This “legitimacy” is a construct of your imagination / desire to be seen as superior in some arbitrary way.

A build is good if it works, and it works if it wins. The rest is nonsense.

In this case legitimacy means for something to be fair and reasonable which is obviously a subjective matter so you are right there.

However, even in this thread most people share the opinion that shatter is fair while phantasm and and PU are not as the effort/reward ratio is way off.

If you want to prove this opinion wrong show me how those two builds are interactive with an opponent, promote quick reaction and require complex thought to execute.

Whether something wins or not isn’t a factor in a build taking a legitimate amount of effort to preform.

Shatter = most legit build. However it has a lack of flexibility so it has troubles adapting to different metas.

Personally the class mechanic should be emphasized. There should never be a build where using shatters is almost always detrimental. The class definitely needs some massive refinement as it opens up too many cheese options.

So the direction I believe the mesmer should go is:
1) Nerf shatter traits + buff base shatter effects
2) Bring down phantasm damage/traits, make phantasms a .75s cast, casting a phantasm from stealth reveals + if a phantasm is shattered add a multiplier to the shatter effect.
3) Change up the shatter animation. Personally I think illusions creating a projectile would be better as terrain would be less of an issue, projectiles land closer to the same time allowing one dodge to negate more, allows a buffer time for point blank shatters so they can be reacted to.
4) Reanalyze viability of builds and tweak them accordingly.

The Pvp in wildstar doesn’t seem very impressive. From the skills I have seen they seem pretty bland, visibility also is very poor. Also Pvp seems to be one of their lower priorities.

Only thing I would say wildstar has over Gw2 is a more functional reward system in place but definitely not a game for pvp players.

Now I see two ways to manage spam.

1) A resource system. Not just cooldowns but a system that allows you to prioritize certain abilities under the pressure of a limiting factor. For example this can allow for a change from an offensive allocation to a defensive allocation of energy based on the situation. Thus how a kit is used is influenced by the situation while also giving the developers a tool that can be tweaked to control the games passing.

As a side note I believe Gw2 avoided resources because they felt it wasn’t fun for PvE players to have to wait between fights. To me this seems a bit silly and doesn’t look to understand the issue. Sure its true if you have a traditional mana system where it is a slow and gradual decrease in mana where after a couple discrete fights you need to stop to replenish. That is a system that doesn’t play a role of molding ability usage until running into a raid boss and generally slows down the rate at which normal mobs can be encountered. But there are other resource systems like energy from league of legends. This type of resource is much more dynamic, it rewards successful play such as kennen’s energy return on stun and really when compared to Gw2’s pure cooldown system I would imagine the time it takes to get everything fully ready is still about the same.

2) Skills that can be optimized given certain situations. Skills with longer cast times can fall under this category along with ones that increase in effectiveness based on positioning. CC I would also include, however this depends on if it plays a tactical role in how other skills are used, such as the opponent having important skills that can be interacted with. Generally there needs to be a couple layers in place to prevent a skill from being spammed.

Now I find Gw2 undermines these two points. Obviously there is no resource system aside from endurance. However with the mess it is currently in it isn’t a resource that can be interacted with very well. But really that is another long topic, relating heavily to how telegraphed abilities are vs how much active defense is necessary. Obviously a complete mess with evades occurring more frequently then every 3.5s and skills that can’t be identified until they show up in the chat log.

The presence of identifiable, large attacks also acts as a limiting factor towards how CC and active defense skills can be optimized as these are skills based heavily on that recognition. So as much as I would classify active defense and cc as skills worth holding onto the skill visibility limits this. Then many of the other weapon skills function as stand alone skills with discrete effects. There is no real range to their effectiveness based on how well a player set up the encounter. I just don’t see much of a push/pull interaction between players in creating setups for their damage.

For example lets take warrior axe #2 and change it so it adds to point 2). The direction I see this skill going is as a setup attack to amplify damage against heavily armor targets. Now it should take some effort to land itself so a heavily armored target has the option of increasing their prioritizing of stopping this skill. So I would say something like this:

3/4s cast, 8s recharge, your next 3 attacks against struck targets ignore 30% of their armor above baseline. Sadly there is no real condition in this game that fills this role and how the leveling system was done creates a requirement for a baseline clause.

Actually I am sure the necro heal is really good. Only against world bosses.

Application = PvE where balance matters.

I don’t want that at all. I find build focusing a bad thing. Flexibility is much nicer. If a focused build took a dominant spot in the meta like spirit rangers it takes away a players ability choose utilities around their own playstyle.

Zedd.8239:

I couldn’t disagree more. I mainly play as a guardian (in every area of the game) so I’ll use a guardian example. The 3 non-racial guardian healing skills are: Healing Breeze, Shelter, and Signet of Resolve. Your choice of healing skill has a tremendous impact on how you play the class. It can change how you position yourself, when you move out of combat, etc. Playing using Shelter has completely different ramifications than playing using Signet of Resolve or Healing Breeze.

Shelter is both a healing skill and a means to completely mitigate all incoming damage that can be blocked for 2 seconds. You can use this skill to survive tons of stuff you wouldn’t normally be able to withstand. Strategically use it to heal or get past certain control effects. Signet of Resolve has the highest burst heal of any guardian healing skill when activated. It has the bonus of removing conditions every 10 seconds when in passive mode. And Healing Breeze allows you to directly heal allies in addition to healing yourself.

Perhaps it’s a bit much to say that people would create builds around just these skills but there are traits that can have a large impact on them (e.g., Might of the Protector in the Valor trait line grants you might whenever you block — combine this with Shelter when under heavy fire and you can gain 25 stacks of might in 2 seconds simply by healing yourself) and those can be a game changer depending on what you choose.

I acknowledge that not all classes have quite the same play style options surrounding their choice of healing skills. In those cases, I think those classes need to see some changes to those skills to make them more viable in different situations.

Exactly, healing skills do have a role in how a class plays and this can be used to counter certain weaknesses depending on the meta. Shelter is great against burst while the signet is good against condi’s and pressure. Doesn’t exactly change the build but allows guardians more coverage in what metas they can deal with. Now I believe good coverage can be achieved with between 3-4 healing skills per profession if those skills are well designed. Some classes already have good coverage, others are lacking.

Ultimately though heals are very interchangeable between builds. A bit of a necessity with only 3 healing skills available. Like you said, a new heal is not going to make an underused weapon set viable. Now it could help make an entire profession viable in a meta they are currently unsuitable for. A good example would be mesmer not having a strong healing skill that can handle conditions, thus they are lacking coverage and can get shoved out of a condi heavy meta. A guardian on the other hand already has good coverage and a new healing skill would end up targeting a more niche area.

Now they could make the new heals synergize with traits that target a specific utility group. But… I always found that a silly approach because it takes away flexibility and isn’t that the role of utilities? Personally I would classify builds that rely heavily on these synergies while cutting themselves out of important mechanisms gimmicks. Like venom thieves or spirit rangers. The synergy leaves obvious holes in what they can handle. Now what if you could grab a single venom, have it still be on par with other utilities without the large investment and still have room to pick up a stunbreak? Of course you can kinda do this but it isn’t the ideal. Then utilities are more a way of refining your preferred playstyle.

I really doubt adding new healing skills will have the largest impact on build diversity. Healing skills tend to be the least build defining aspect on the bar as they don’t carry much synergy.

Now more healing skills will add a bit of reach to what situations can be dealt with so basically help classes build more around a certain meta. Could be quite useful for the mesmer who has a number of vulnerabilities. But ultimately the healing slot is very interchangeable. We might see classes that had difficulty in a certain meta showing up but hardly new builds within the classes.

JonPeters.5630:

Snip

Personally the not fun part of it I find falls into having to deal with random dodges. To me that is the much larger issue. The combat itself necessitates keeping track of endurance due to the potential it has in changing the outcome of a fight. People will naturally allocate their skill to what will create the best outcome. If they are unable to do so at a high level then they just get matched up against people at a similar skill. Now as a designer if you are finding dodging taking too large of a focus while not contributing well enough to the enjoyment of the game you need to take some emphasis away from it. This is not saying dodging should remain a hidden mechanic though.

I also am not clear on your point on keeping track of hidden stuff, its no longer hidden at that point. I am going to guess your referring to modifiers for endurance regen? Now personally I think if the game evolves competitively there needs to be a loading screen or picking phase that does a better job at highlighting what players are bringing to the table. Also a number of these modifiers I see as unnecessary in the first place and are the larger culprit to this complaint. Boons are in the game for a reason, to standardize, keep things concise and visible. They can be made better use of when it comes to endurance.

Now to me endurance is one of the highest priority mechanics to be shown. This is because currently dodging is a one way interaction. The only way for it to become two-ways is to be able to keep track of an opponents dodge resource. Now comparatively to skill usage, it is much easier to keep track of what has been used and skills generally offer two way interaction with a delay in their effects.

Also the execution of how endurance would be displayed does not have to be done in the same meter fashion. If I were designing the ui it would instead just be a counter system only displaying full integers. Gw2 combat is very fast passed that the need to keep track of fractions is less important and adds more clutter and system load.

For the first question the answer is simplicity. The system with variable amounts of stats tied to each piece of armor wouldn’t work well in PvP as it should be possible to look at someone’s build in a couple seconds requiring as little real-estate as possible. When it comes to competitive play you need to know at least the frame work your opponent is bringing to the table. Now Gw2 has yet to actually add that to the score board, but it becomes feasible when the framework can be summarized with an amulet and weapon sets.

Now in all honesty how Gw2 executed this came at the cost of diversity which isn’t completely necessary. Something like +60%/20%/60%/0/0 is basically as simple to view as berserker’s amulet + berserker’s jewel. So I believe the other reason for this approach comes down to controlling balance. This allows them to control certain stat combinations such as forcing berserker’s to take some amount of vitality instead of more offense. Though I do question how they chose to layout the stats on some of their amulets like clerics so I am not sure if this choice has been made proper use of.

Now with your second question about game modes it seems to be resource issues and how the classes were designed. The PvP team seems really small and I doubt they are given a very high priority when it comes to implementing balance changes. So given those restrictions their rational seems to be focus on one thing and do it well, with that one thing being something that somewhat meshes with how the PvE classes were designed.

The problem I have with condition is not exactly related to their power level but how they are applied.

Following my view of how conditions should play out in an ideal is they should interact intelligently with condition removal. This implies they cannot be spammed as throwing up well, an absolutely ridiculous amount of junk conditions ruins that interaction. Or conversely causes the need for condition removal to reach the same level ultimately leading to a decrease in level of interaction because of how passive things have to become for a player to keep up.

So imo, remove all condition on hit procs, remove all conditions on autoattacks unless it is only on the 3rd chain. Then cut back on the availability of removal and increase the effectiveness of conditions on skills while making sure those skills can also be reacted to normally. This is obviously a very basic description of what needs to be done. Ultimately all the skills would need to be reevaluated with proper principals in mind.

Result, well we are no longer playing Gw2. We are instead on our way to a competitive game which obviously can’t be synonymous to Gw2.

Overall a good change. Still needs a bit of refinement though.

I strongly disagree with the suggestions that it decreases team queue skill though. Really how hard is it to tell people who you are fighting? Removing this need reduces the noise clutter allowing other things to be coordinated instead. There is a definitive limit to how much information can be sent over voice chat. Now we have information of enemy positions + increased ability to coordinate skills and discuss strategy = more information available for a player to make use of → Higher skill cap. People just need time to adjust and for the game to have more skills that rewards coordination.

Now with Mesmers it could use more refinement. Eg. Depending on the number of mesmer clones summoned the size of the icon shrinks. Should make it much easier to discern number of players without giving away the mesmers position.

I really don’t think Gw2 has a chance at E-sports at this point or much of a competitive scene either. I think a lot of other game companies have noticed where Gw2 has gone wrong and will be out doing them far before Gw2 is at a level to start attracting a crowd back.

Release hurt. A lot. So many features weren’t done. Tons of players quit.

Its not just that the features weren’t there its that Arena net had shown them that they were not a priority. Features showing up in a couple years time won’t bring them back because they know the culture of the company still isn’t behind them.

Yes you have a PvP team that tries to promote it, but its the ratio of how small it is compared to what is being done elsewhere. They can try but it still doesn’t reflect on what the people who get the final say think. Like the Dev panel at pax, they didn’t understand Pvp, anything PvP related was a generic hash of the same thing. Then there was the ticket system which was a complete failure to monetize PvP at the players expense.

The culture for esports has to also come from the company. Players need to know their time invested is valuable and they can trust the company to look after issues that come up. Only if that is met can the players start building up a community and honestly the players that leave first are usually the ones looking to build that community as they get burned out first.

Wouldn’t say it is the genre holding Gw2 back. E-sports is hardly genre specific. As long as a game’s PvP aspect is done well enough it can break into the scene over time.

Now with MMO’s well PvP tends to be the lowest priority. For Gw2 this also seems to be the case so I can hardly say the PvP is living up to its potential.

Lighter.5631:

@Fourth

How do you increase access to adrenaline through cleansing ire?

Before the patch, hammer can already perm lock down someone to death, even easier with frenzy, we had 7 second burst too when they combined those two traits.
Why hammer was never that good? because warrior had no sustain, they need mobility to engage and disengage fast, or they melt, so hammer was not the better choice.

(just by the way, there were unsuspected foe, hammer/gs with switch weapon 100% crit sigil build too when warriors were free kill tier. similar to mace/gs now, but instead of single target, you aoe stun(since mace was 2 sec same as hammer) and switch to gs for 100% crit hundred blade.)

Cleansing ire used to not provide any condition removal, the adrenaline gain was still there but it was a very underused trait. After the patch everyone took it which grants 3% adrenaline when hit, the same amount as hitting a target. Similarly berserker’s stance became meta along with the new burst mastery trait. That is a lot of adrenaline gain that started to show up, independent of weapon set choice.

I agree the added sustain also had a large role in warriors current strength, but this was in an area warriors were generally seen to be lacking in which went against the role they were designed for. I do think the sustain is a bit too strong and more so too passive but the biggest issue that creates bad gameplay while increasing the warriors strength is having burst skills become spammy even on slow weapon sets.

Well for any build using hammer the biggest two changes that transitioned warriors to their current state is the change to brawn for cd reduction and the increased access to adrenaline through cleansing ire, burst mastery and berserker’s stance. Then you have the added sustain for healing signet.

Before the patch if hammer was one of your weapon sets you had a very hard time using both burst skills on cd. Now we are honestly able to do so fairly reliably on a 7.25s cd as opposed to 10s unreliably. With this adrenaline influx burst skills become ‘cheap’ and no longer require precise timing to make sure they land. Basically negating what was once the draw back to hammer.

Now post patch we are losing burst mastery and some cd reduction in order to get the 50% crit chance. This will help the spamming issue a bit but hardly make the hammer play how it used to. Personally brawn giving cd reduction needs to be axe’d in favor of something else and adrenaline gain sources needs to be reworked across the board. That, along with healing signet and longbow use has dumbed down the class.

Right now I find warriors in the higher tiers of skill slightly too strong while at lower tiers being extremely over the top. So the objective should be to have a slight net nerf while adjusting the skill floor.

This topic seems to hit on the issue at a very superficial level.

Now lets rephrase the question. What qualities are sought out in a person in regards to their ability to give feedback?

I am sure arena net already has an answer to this question which isn’t just limited to player skill. I’ll let you guys provide your answers first before I provide my own along with a system which would help with making the process of collecting feedback more efficient.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Snip

Personally I found warriors fine before the buffs functioning mostly in a role to punish classes that failed to take stun breakers. This means they had a very niche function and buffs should have been targeted to specifically help them in other matchups. Instead we got more global buffs that help with all match ups and things spiraled out of control.

Now the gameplay just feels bad with how simple a lot of things have become. Pre patch I would have to watch for number of dodges and really time important skills to make sure they land. Now with the threat density just spam skills and you’ll completely overload an opponents active defense and from there just chain whats left together. So what I am aiming for is to get rid of the bad gameplay while maintaining a similar power. ie. longbow changes, healing signet changes, brawn changes which may also incorporate small net nerfs.

Now with your arguments I don’t think you full understood what some of those changes were intended to do. Knee jerk reaction to what seems like a heavy warrior nerf on the surface?

2) With brawn, yes anything changed to it is a large buff and that was needed but the devil is in the details. Cd reduction + cleansing ire being nearly mandatory rewards skill spam as opposed to tactical play. In this case we want to see brawn still as viable as it currently is, but in a way that rewards tactical play. Armor pen has the added benefit of specifically targeting an area warriors had troubles with.

3) The difference here is a cd reduction functions better than a duration increase, putting more control on the warrior as opposed to the opponent. The duration becomes less important because opponents should start playing around the skill when they notice it. Now being able to use it more often increases the amount of time an opponent will be caught off guard by its use. Really ideally the power level should be very close to signet of stamina. Here it is a bit of opinion but if the signet cd was dropped by 5s I believe it and berserkers with these changes would be very close.

4) Ever played hammer and mace without the adrenaline on hit? It doesn’t work because the attack frequency is too low. Honestly cleansing ire is way over half the adrenaline gain for those builds. Personally before even the condi removal was added I found adrenaline on hit op compared to the other adrenaline gain options. Sure felt like it broke what should have been the innate weakness of some of the weapon sets that you know have recently started to crop up and cause problems.

5) Umm… is this talking about cleansing ire again? Reducing the passive healing on signet of healing say to ~340, cast time to 1, have it give 50% endurance and increase active healing by ~600 would definitely have an impact on the bad gameplay it creates.

6) longbow #5. The idea is it should not land consistently. It is a very high impact skill that should need to be timed appropriately for it to land because of how well it sets up the rest of the kit. Count dodges, make sure the chance it lands is high, play smart. Oh and with animations making up for cast bars means they have to be recognizable within ~0.1s of the skill being used. The arrow particles being unique is not good enough when the bow animation is the same for 4/5 skills.

Alright, the misinformation on both sides needs to stop.

Warrior, yes they are on the strong side of things. Also some things on the warrior are too forgiving.

So how do we adjust this to keep both sides happy? First lets remove some of the forgiving mechanics.

1) Burst skills – Always lose adrenaline on use
2) Brawn – Remake it again. Cd reduction doesn’t fit, it creates problems with threat frequency vs dodge frequency. Armor pen makes more sense, pre patch weren’t we looking for a way to help warriors deal with bunkers specifically whereas cd reduction helps other matchups as well which we don’t want.
3) Berserker’s stance – Drop duration to 5s and cd to 50s which is a 25% reduction in uptime.
4) healing signet – Reduce hps but make the active give endurance on use.
5) Cleansing Ire – Reduce adrenaline gain on hit from 3% to 2%.

So what has happened here? Active mechanics are more emphasized and power has been shifted away from skill spam with more value place on an individual skill. I think this is a good amount of ‘shaving’ or as I prefer walking up to the dart board and directly placing it in the center.

Now lets look at specific weapon sets and how they are interacted with. Ideally shifting power as opposed to changing power.

Longbow – #5 lets increase the reaction time available while slightly reducing the cd. Might as well reduce those bleed stacks while were at it. So numerically lets roughly put this into context:
- #5 cast time increased from 0.25s to 0.5
Travel velocity decreased by 20%
decrease recharge to 20s
Bleed stacks decreased to 4
- #2 Could use its cast time increased from 0.25s to 0.5s
- #1 Now lets put some power back on. Increase damage by 20%. For context axe autos have 3x higher dps.
- #4 Could use a bit extra utility, like weakness or vuln

Mace needs a similar approach, increase how readable the important skills are while moving some of that power to less appreciated skills.

I wouldn’t say you need top players to help with design which I find to be the larger issue here. So things like game mode, skill set flow, risk/reward and profession roles. Those are things I don’t expect to be correlated to a persons skill with the game.

Now top players can help with tweaking things from a balance perspective but it takes a designer to get it into the ball park, which I don’t feel has been done successfully yet. The problem for me is beyond number tweaks, its the out of the box thinking the game needs.

Say if the game was still in early stages of development, for myself it would be completely redesigned the very role of guardians and thieves. Then retooling ranger, necro, mesmer and engi with counterplay in mind. Engi could use a more refined role too but doesn’t need to throw away what it currently has. Warrior needs some pretty extensive balance changes but the foundation is much closer. Eles a bit like the warrior but less extensive.

So for my standards players can help with warrior and ele but the rest of the classes falls on the devs to still retool and give us an acceptable ball park figure. Now my standards are probably much higher than the average developer so I definitely don’t expect large fundamental changes to guardian or thief. But for the game to have a chance at least some retooling of skill sets is necessary to get away from all the rotation spamming and create some real player interaction.

Now when it comes to warrior and ele, where player feedback can be valuable, yep I would definitely say there is a lot of listening to the wrong people based on recent changes. The hard about providing this feedback is finding a standard to use kitten much still needs work.

There still needs to be a healthy blend between fair fights and uneven ones. But when the game fails to give you the information necessary to have a chance, well it allows for things to seem dirty. I consider something dirty if there is no reasonable response available with the information at your disposal. Getting 1v2’d there just isn’t a reasonable response. Only thing is hope your team wins harder somewhere else and just delay.

This has a lot to do with having no ‘safe zone’ or designated area to make use of. Now lets take a look at Gw1 gametype. You have NPCs you can fall back while also having a frequent unguarded objective. Falling back will have a delayed impact later in the game but also gives a fighting chance.

In Gw2 can try to run to another point where your team is but your coming into that point low with 2 healthy opponents trailing. Also tends to be a further distance to run to get support than in Gw1. Point is probably neutralized too and now getting into a fight that is marginally better than a 1v2. Sadly best choice is probably to die on point and try and delay a bit.

Now there is still more to it for why this happens so frequently mostly because of the UI and mobility discrepancies but going over those gets quite specific.

Loud speaker please.

Now This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.

Context. Where are the problems?

Are they balance related?
Yeah, but more of a minor component.

Are they game play related?
Hell yes. This is the larger component that of course has quite a bit of cross over in regards to balance. This is making sure what is going on is clear to the players and providing ample opportunity to interact with.

What does this mean?
Who cares about specific match ups at this point. The game isn’t ready to be looked at, at this level. To address the gameplay issue is to destroy all the preconceived knowledge you may have about a specific matchup.

Step one.
Create base skills/traits that have depth and are within a range that allow interaction and counterplay on all fronts. So things that can be counter played only with x mechanic which not everyone has are a no go.

Step two
Reevaluate specific balance matchups. Tweaking numbers where appropriate but only in ways that won’t negatively effect interaction.

Eg. Case of Berserker’s stance. 8s duration is too long to play around. It is not reasonable to hold onto your conditions for 8s and still be able to win the fight afterwards. So duration is not the parameter to be adjusted. I would estimate 4 to 5 s would allow it to be played around. So what else can you work with? Cooldown. If it isn’t viable in the 4s range drop the cooldown slightly.

Now onto the purpose of this thread. Identifying things that promote poor gameplay. Once again lets put balance aside for a moment as that is step 2.

When looked at in this context Lordrosicky has a number of fair points. Obviously a some of them may negatively effect balance in the short term but after the second step would result in a better game. Though some of the ways of going about these issues I would disagree with.

I’ll just go over some things that fall outside of cast time or animation issues. This is the area that makes up the vast majority of issues. Its not something that is difficult to notice but it takes quite a bit of resources to fix so I’ll leave that to the devs.

Automated response – yeah that needs to be axe’d. Or rather adjusted in such a way it can be played around more. A good starting point would be setting limits. I don’t believe combined sources of passive condition reduction should go above 50% at any one instance. So if engi’s absolutely must have passive condition reduction it should be something like 50% reduction below 33% hp and it can’t be stacked with melandru’s.

Dodging – I like the concept of dodging. Though how it is currently limits the potential viability of what I would consider healthy changes. It is a strange interaction. Basically there is enough dodges available to blanket all major threats though a lot of major threats are paced at a speed that can’t be reacted to. This makes it so not all dodges are functional and end up being anticipatory. Now if all the major threats are paced such that they can all be reacted to more dodges become functional and a lot less things land. So this needs to be coupled with a reduction in dodge availability. Bye Bye sigil of energy. Bye Bye single traits that give 100% vigor uptime.

Bugged Refuge – Yeah I can’t imagine the initial concept of the skill was for the stealth to persist after it expired. It just was a bug that was kept to make up for when they added the revealed debuff. It is an aoe vs dodge check. Have enough AoE to kill the thief in 4s? Good you win. Don’t? Too bad he got away. Definitely needs some tweaks.

But they do lack reasonable counterplay.

I would prefer something like gives aegis at the start and end of the cast and reduce the cd to 25s. In that case it is at least possible for classes outside the necro to interrupt it.

I’ll take John’s side as well, at least in regards to the comment he posted.

I haven’t noticed very many specific solutions being recommended. Mostly the suggestions made are quite vague. “Animations are a problem”. “There is too much ai”. Well great, that is about a C- level of answer.

Here is a brief example of what I would call decent feedback for animations for the warrior and mesmer, though still quite lazy.

Warrior:
Skull crack – Difficult visibility + effect vs reaction time
Pin down – Difficult visibility + effect vs reaction time
Hammer – aftershock and backbreaker have the same starting animation just at different speeds.
Flurry – initial immobilize activates too quickly.

Mesmer:
Signet of domination – effect vs reaction time
Magic bullet – effect vs reaction time
Into the void – effect vs reaction time
Mirror blade + illusionary wave – early animation unclear, weapon glow should be consistent with #3
Phantasmal warlock – Uses similar projectile to staff autoattack

The two big principles here to follow are skills need to be immediately distinguishable and the cast time needs to be proportional to the effect of the skill. There is no cast bars so even if a skill is 3/4s cast time if the skill isn’t obvious until after 1/2s people still will have difficulty with it. Immediate.

Then there is another category of animations that I would call ‘obstructive’ which limit the visibility of other skills. The biggest factor is obviously asura. Seriously can we get a toggle to change everyone to human? Too many particle effects linger a bit too long after being used. Others are just too large.

Mesmer and warrior are actually both quite fine in this regard aside from the whole clone thing but that is in part the intention. One thing I have noticed is the mesmer gs autoattack can continue into other animations which can be obstructive. Now other classes have much more widespread issues in this regard.

Now honestly this isn’t difficult. I think the devs should be more self sufficient in identifying solutions as they better understand the limitations imposed on them by the company. Now balance on the other hand, requires player input.

Ostricheggs.3742:

Well, they revived the competitive scene from literally not a single team out there to something far better.

They balance the entire game around us.

The released spectator mode and made live casted tournaments possible.

They continually balance the game and keep it going in a good direction (it’s always a work in progress, this takes a lot of time to do properly)

They’re sponsoring a full 10k prize pool LIVE tournament…

Perma-finishers

While most of these things are geared for high-end competitive players, it’s kinda hard to ask for much else.

What I’d expect to see in the future:

Duo/trio/quad queues somehow made possible
Improved UI
Improved rewards (I’m 90% sure this will be coming, it’s been asked for too much for it NOT to come)
MUCH better balance
New (competitive) maps
More things to improve the new player’s experience

I honestly cannot believe they’ve done so much for us considering how small of a segment of the population that we are. Asking for MORE than what we’ve got is insane… I’m not too sure what else could be on the wishlist of a current player outside of a new game-mode (not gonna happen ladies).

Balance isn’t perfect, but they know what’s wrong as well as we do and it’ll get there.

Have to disagree on a number of points. The game started out with a much higher competitive following which quickly tanked in the following months with a lack of features. There were a lot of teams looking for an esports title but that wasn’t delivered on release which obviously followed with them leaving.

Spectator mode was a poor early focus. It still isn’t in a position to really be a viewable game. There are many other factors that need to be addressed before spectating will work. Animations need an absolutely massive clean. UI is still lacking to give a better sense of what is happening and where and a stats report for casters and players to look at. It is still a long ways off being functional.

Balance, well maybe better than when block bug was rampant and svanir runes were widely used to cause random rallies. The rest of the balance improvement I can’t vouch for, in fact I have seen mistakes being done repeatedly. Big thing is counter play needs a much larger focus than what it has been given. Didn’t they even say they don’t have a team for balance and just leave the meta up to us?

One thing, did the PvP population start as such a low group of players or did that just occur because of lack of support? I wonder. They marketed themselves as a PvP game but at the same time assumed the PvP player base would be smaller and offered less resources to that side of the game. Seems a bit like self fulfilled prophecy to me.

I think in part you are right, the sustained based gameplay is built for conquest where it is all about a timer. This naturally hurts the potential for other game modes which could be more enjoyable. Honestly most of this stems from PvE design with the intent to get away from the artificial need to stop to recover.

However numerically healing is not the largest culprit preventing attrition based gameplay. In a 30s window it is more than possible to stack on more damage than what can be healed. However much of this potential damage can be mitigated and often with very minimal cost. Many weapon skills are full of blind, blocks, evades and have very little opportunity cost and end up contributing much more to the defensive sustain a player is capable of. The frequency of these active defense cooldowns ends up amplifying the sustain effect of healing. It is really how these two factors line up.

There doesn’t seem to be much attention to this interaction on the devs part. If a class has more active defense they should have less hps to achieve a similar time to kill. However the role of certain classes is designed in such a way that time to kill isn’t meant to be kept within specific bounds. I don’t think this is entirely a bad thing, within reason. There should still be some factors in place that allow fights to resolve and just more of a motivating factor to aim to end a fight. Throwing conquest out the window, I don’t think any fight with any class in a 1v1 should go longer than 2 minutes. That it is conquest makes it a bit more difficult as someone needs to be able to take the AoE spam from a number of players and still stay on a point for a respectable period of time.

This ends up getting more into attribute extremes a class can take advantage of. I am not a fan of being able to spec into a purely defensive build. Amulets stat choices in part could help prevent this by forcing players to get further away from defensive extremes. I consider cleric builds to be cheese myself unless the class is designed to have a high degree of team support. Otherwise the purpose of the build is just survive which, well is cheese if your not surviving for the purpose of winning the fight.

Now I would definitely like to see a game with some attention to attrition without a game mode based around time. I definitely want to know fights with other classes will resolve and there is an explicit goal to kill the other player. Or at least play offensively in some manor.

Now compared to Gw2 I would like to see more of a focus on tactical usage of active defense cooldowns with time to kill being maintained in an acceptable range by having a bit higher heal pools. A higher health bar in comparison to what is being healed gives a better sense of progression.

Now for tactical use of active defense I wonder if a resource system would be better. In a competitive game a resource system can have 2 purposes. First allowing flexibility in skill choice as the resource acts as the limiting factor as opposed to skill cooldowns, a singular resource as opposed to spit individual resources. This allows cooldowns to be lower and allows the player to decide where they wish to allocate their focus. Now flexibility is not good for conquest as there is too high of a motivation to play defensively.

Second the resource system acts to create periods of relief and reorganization. Whether ammo systems or mana pretty much all competitive games make use of this. If a player can win by conserving resources they are left in a better position. Having to restock also helps to prevent snowballing as if a team is not in a position to close the game they need to take a step back. Conquest again doesn’t allow for this.

I remember the devs mentioning how random effects are skillful because a player must then follow up on what happened. Never been sold on that, especially not in the way random effects are handled in gw2. Chaos storm triggering an aegis? Well I am already mid swing so I don’t exactly have the opportunity to correct my play. Random procs have to have a delayed effect as opposed to immediate to allow for adjustment. Not a principle I have seen upheld.

Even in recent changes I feel they are going further and further away from what I would consider proper gameplay. Warrior was closer before to being well designed. Sure now they can compete but they are doing so through cheese. 8s condi immunity is too much. 5s would be more reasonable. Mace on a 3s stun? Longbow 4x, 12s bleed on 0.5 s cast? Healing signet, all functionality is put into its passive, there is no skilled play.

Mesmer signet of domination 3s stun on 0.25s cast? Remember, fast casting cc should be designed as skills used for interrupts, long duration cc should give the opportunity to be reacted to.

How about this instead for signet of domination:
1s stun duration
cd reduced to 30s.
If a skill is interrupted the cd is reduced by 50%.
Punish them spammers.

Another thing. There isn’t a single weapon set in this game that is designed to my own standards. Sword mh on mesmer feels the closest though I am not the biggest fan of the use of an immob over a higher intensity cripple. Would prefer something like swap reduces targets endurance by 25% and apply 4s cripple. Now some of the other weapon sets require…. massive changes.

For eles to be what you described, having high versatility and able to focus on a single attunement would require a global resource system. Right now with the resource only being cooldowns, it is not shared between attunements, thus the best way to play is to rapidly cycle to maximize the resources available.

Thief is too extreme with no cooldowns but having lower cooldowns in favor a an energy resource would allow each set to stand on their own better and allow more choice over which skills to focus on.

Mixing up PvE with PvP definitely hurts what can be done on the PvP side of things. I think for a game to really succeed in the PvP department it needs to be made solely for PvP. Right now we are seeing so many roadblocks because of the PvE side of the game. The channels for communication become convoluted, slowing down processes for balance changes. Resources are split between two areas which are not equally relevant to a single player. Monetization strategies becomes less efficient as it takes a larger investment to consistently target both populations. It just doesn’t work.

Most of the players on the PvP side of things see at least some potential. But many of us know with the current chain of events this potential will never be realized. Now what if a new game came out with similar combat but refined for pvp? Personally if what I have in mind was done, it would easily compete with league or other e-sports titles. A game with a campaign that gets peoples feet wet with the mechanics and objectives similar to sc2 then focuses on sPvP and realm vs realm. Though I would implement the realm vs realm substantially different than what has been done before. Something somewhat similar to alliance battles with more instanced missions that determine control of a territory.

With a number of questions or concerns people bring up I don’t think they really have answers that wouldn’t lead to further disappointment. That or the channels to determine what would be ok to say are quite convoluted with the multiple different ‘teams’ they have working on different areas of the game.

In so many responses I hear my team is not responsible for that area so I cannot reply about that. I guess not all teams have a representative that can share information or at least funnel information towards a single resource? Just seems very convoluted with employees not being on the same page.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Ultimately, we know most of the things you mentioned are in the works, or planned, or were commented by Anet. It might take some time, but it is nice.

What we don’t have any to no confirmation, though, is about the animations and the “spammy” nature of skills. We have no idea what is Anet’s opinions on that (or do we?), nor if they’re planning to do something about it.

The second part is what I worry about. In the first beta the number one complaint was clutter and particle effects obstructing what was happening. These shouldn’t be recent ideas for the developers. There was a choice to have the game being animation based as opposed to cast bars, obviously animations should be a huge priority. But even recently I don’t see the developers really showing an understanding for what this means.

It seems they address some of the larger issues brought up by players but really the issue is more wide spread. When it comes to animations, players just don’t have the knowledge. Most can tell if something feels awkward or has balance implications but that isn’t enough to go on to making a great game. The expertise has to come from the developers and I just haven’t seen it.

The other changes I mentioned as well, it is quite easy to say you get it and are working on them but it is a whole other issue to properly implement them. There was the whole issue with the old tournament system, good intention, poor execution. With the track record I really have to see the execution before I can have any faith.

I believe leaving doesn’t register as a loss until you complete another solo queue game. So it can be quite delayed in displaying but does still count as a loss.

It needs to be coupled with other changes but overall would be good for the game.

I think most people can agree the whole interaction of opportunity cost/effectiveness + dodging is quite off base, along with a number of other issues. This leads to the game lacking much of the tactical gameplay that was present in the original. Tactical play here is mostly centered around rotations which I am not a fan of as the combat should be the more indepth aspect.

Now I want to ask is what does everyone think of the games potential if it received the overhaul it needed? If it had proper risk reward, visibility, counterplay options and more team oriented effects that require coordination. Also if a better game mode was employed that was less static with progression and gave an individual player more reach. Then if the pvp side was given a sustainable monetization system and better rewarded a players achievements as well as of course more refinement of all the systems that support e-sports. If all that was done do you think the game could compete with genres such as League of legends as an esport?

Sampo.9678:

Turn off Post processing in your graphics options to remove the blind effect

Now that is exactly what I needed to know. Disabled that stupid blind then beat her the first try afterwards. Taking away players ability to react is just artificial difficulty anyways.

Yes, warriors do beat spirit rangers, strictly in a 1v1 situation, at least with hammer/axe. Zerkers stance protects from the initial set of spirits out, then the lack of stun breaks will do the rest. The only way a spirit ranger could win is a well timed elite res. Even when that happens I have found it mostly just delays the fight.

The only thing is warriors don’t carry the same level of group utility. Their stuns are nice but they really have to isolate targets so they don’t get shut down by all the aoe cc going on. I would say warriors are one of the best 1v1 classes but still behind others when it comes to team fights so they have limited application.

Release is really make or break. Once you have lost those initial players it is really hard to get them back. Timing of changes is also very important. Releasing solo queue as valuable as it is, was done during a poor meta. Some players will return to try the solo queue and see the meta and then they are gone for good.

zhi.3918:

ArenaNet’s development doesn’t work that way. Sorry that your day to day and life can’t be made to work efficiently.

Being able to recognize how to increase work flow and productivity isn’t easy, suggesting it is diminishes the value of thoughtful organization and development. Companies pay people quite a bit of money to improve their organization and development times not to mention optimize their groups dynamics, raise morale and of course find the right people to hire in the first place.

No one said it was easy. The process Sharp described is quite broken, they should do something about that. They should of done something about this years ago.

Who said anything about a whim?
It is seems to me their process is hindering the games design instead of assisting it. This is costing them hundreds of thousands or millions on labor costs alone, not to mention lost profits of having a better product. So we are talking about millions and millions of dollars by not reworking the company to give the designers a reasonable development process.

Their process now is utter chaos, I speak of improving it. Months of planning to release a patch completely destroys someone’s ability to design around feedback they are getting on their recent one. Some designers are quit capable of understanding the systemic effect of their changes and can account for emergent behavior. The PvP team (and maybe other teams) for whatever reason has not been able to do so, so they need to find out why and fix it. If you don’t believe it can be done or don’t know how to do it they wouldn’t be hiring you to assist them with it anyway.

That is actually part of what I do as an ergonomist. There are definitely a lot of possible changes often overlooked in designing a process. It is kind of like the medical system, the traditional model for return to work programs is slow to say the least, where each person involved acts independently while the others are just waiting for them to pass on their results before they can begin their part. The system Anet seems to follow reminds me of this model. Newer models though can have people back to work the next day because the communication processes is that much more streamlined.

Now if I was organizing their teams it would be more ad hock with the team being based around a goal so there is readily available animators, designers, QA, programers etc as part of a single team. With the content of the team being based on the project being undertaken. Now this type of approach is highly skill based and requires everyone to be quite well rounded in each of their jobs. I am willing to bet this is the approach league of legends uses as well.

But it is quite inefficient to say all the animators belong to their own team and all the pvp developers are their own team. Just creates inefficient communication between groups and unnecessary steps. But can’t say I know exactly how they have things organized or what they have available so I could make realistic suggestions.

I don’t think it is as large of a problem as you make it out to be. Now shadow refuge has always seemed bugged to me but I get the feeling thief players QQ’d and it ended up staying that way. I really don’t like anything about that skill, it ends up being an AoE check which there is already too many of. If you don’t have the aoe to take down the thief in shadow refuge they are gone and you don’t even have any information on where they went, if they died, nothing. It just has so much versatility for a kitten cd.

Personally just fix the bug where the thief remains stealthed after it expires then drop the cd to 40s. Maybe increase the duration to 5s but don’t try and satisfy thief players at the expense of game play. Oh and reduce the portion of the screen its animation takes up, just more unnecessary clutter.

The other thing they should do is change it so if you use a skill, whether it hits something or not you are revealed. Its not cool for thieves to use teleports while stealthed or their stealth attacks to have multiple opportunities to land.

I would see playing a bunker guardian having a high win rate, especially if you can swap to necro when needed.

But really the gamemode means one player doesn’t have a large effect on the outcome and a lot of it will come down to luck. There is no scaling factor based on personal success and objectives never condense to a single place. Without scaling the points earned are static and doesn’t necessarily predispose future success, this gives a single player a direct contribution of 1/5th. Now with scaling the potential contribution of a single player increases beyond the fraction of the roster they make up as small skill advantages procure larger benefits.

Also there is no progression towards a condensed area. A player is never put directly in the path of the outcome, only a piece of the outcome and as such may never play a part in some of the critical fights.

The message really isn’t that necro and thief are overpowered, it is the type of gameplay they promote. Neither is the problem completely isolated to these classes. It is a gradient of bad gameplay with necro, thief and ranger sitting at the top. Warrior also has some poor gameplay mechanics but is still much better than the rest.

It is the gameplay, not so much the balance. It is in such a bad place I could probably develop a competitive game that would completely outshine Gw2. And that’s coming from a ergonomics background with no game design experience.

The real direction the game should go is to rework all the instances of mismatched risk reward ratio and counter play. Doing this properly would hit everything balance wise. It really has two steps, establish proper gameplay then focus on the balance implications of those changes and readjust. All this bickering about which team is on the top because of class balance shouldn’t really be the goal nor does it seem the intention of Xeph.

The real question is can Anet overhaul the game to such a degree? From what I have seen in recent changes they are sacrificing good gameplay for quick balance and they aren’t even achieving balance with this approach. Not sure if they have the vision for this sort of project.

I question the point that game is better designed for teamwork than 1v1.

There are huge mobility discrepancies between classes leading to plenty of 2v1 ‘rotations’. I don’t really consider having a build that runs faster to go around and find a numerical advantage great gameplay or entirely balanced.

Then there are bunker team comps that are just annoying. Somewhat balanced in the sense that if they don’t have a point capped to sit on they aren’t making great use of their build. But it just forces poor gameplay on both sides, switching the game from mechanical to tactical dependance when I really don’t feel the UI supports tactical gameplay, especially for soloque.

Then there is the downed state and rally mechanic. Who likes close fights snowballing based on one finish? Who likes winning a 1v1 to have someone come along and shadow refuge the downed player? Then there are huge discrepancies between what is required to finish a player. I’ll pass on all that downstate gameplay.

What about all that AoE and the overabundance of particle effects? Is all the truly fine tuned?

Now most of these problems come down to gamemode choice. Teamplay has the potential to be quite good, but not in a conquest setting. This is also hardly an exhaustive list of problems with conquest.

The way I see it is vitality is a better defense stat for glass cannons while healing and toughness is better for basically everyone else.

Vitality is static and gains nothing from the time spent alive. Its valuable in preventing situations of getting 100-0’d but if your already past that critical point where you have the ability to react it isn’t very valuable. Aside from the basic vitality from berserkers any additional vitality taken is at the cost of damage which isn’t really the direction most dps want to go.

Healing is increasingly effective the more cooldowns you reach and scales with time. Toughness is similar as it acts as a multiplier to any health gained. Just superior if your plan is to survive for any lengthy period of time.

Against conditions I don’t see having a bit of extra hp really meaning much. More offense is a better defense than vitality. 800 power almost doubles physical dps, 8k hp won’t be even 50% more survivability when taking into account how much health a person gains over a fight.

Going to have to agree with Exedore. Too many of those changes aren’t really realistic and have potentially other implications. A large problem with the warrior class isn’t the warrior itself but what it is up against. Warrior is designed to be a melee oriented class with large animations. Throw that against classes with dodges every 3.5s + evade weapon skills + cripples and snares and there is your problem. Many other classes are simply built with the tools that are disproportionately effective against warriors. But then there are specs that don’t have widespread access to these tools and warriors do well against them. It is a polar situation.

Attempting to equalize the warriors strength against these effects causes the warrior to then become too strong when these effects aren’t available.

So lets adjust the warrior from both ends of the spectrum. Which are the opposing specs that just carry too many counters to the warrior? Take those specs reduce those counters, monitor how that effects the class and then potentially buff them in other ways that aren’t as specific against warriors.

Then from the other end give warriors some tools that are specific against what counters it. Most weapon sets for warrior do have a number of underpreforming skills that could instead be tailored more in this way.

Or even more simply adding another burst skill that is shared across all weapon sets that acts similar to berserker’s stance, maybe with a small heal attached.