Guild Wars 2

The problem is that what can they tell you?

They can’t tell you what they really think of something unless they can be sure that the PR guys agree with it, just like you can’t randomly represent the company you work for in the media without consent from PR.

They can’t tell you what they’re making, because as soon as they do that, the media takes their word for it and, it gets spread all over the internet, well you know what happens.

Just like every company, Anet is a business, and so they have to follow the procedures like every company out there.

If Anet doesn’t have a clue on what’s causing it, why don’t they just award the loot in a loot box like in world metaevents?

This is just getting ridiculous.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Then let me turn the question around to you. Let’s take the example of a DPS in a trinity game, what do I have to think about that make the game a lot more deep?

The tank needs to think about taking damage, but I don’t, all I need to think about is DPS.

Almost guaranteed he’s going to come back with knowing your rotation and hitting your procs accordingly. Which, to me, is rather brainless, but hey, to each his own.

Its not brainless, because you need to have built a good rotation to start with, but that build is just very linear since there’s really one variable to it: DPS.

And the thing about DPS builds in particular is that since they’re so simple you could pretty much just nab a FotM build anyways. Tank and Healer builds aren’t as simple but its still very linear.

Some of the best moments of build making I had was when the game moved off the trinity or I forced it to move off the trinity and had to consider a lot of different variable to input into a build. What came out are truely things of beauty.

In all honesty, I doubt most players actually did everything without a guide. I mean, if you wanted to, you still can. You can get a copy of the map of LA and pen down the locations of rubbles by yourself.

Naqaj.6219:

Xae Isareth.1364:

If you think about what loot was for in other MMOs, you get more loot to get stronger to get more loot, so, there really wasn’t much of a point either.

Well, in most previous MMOs, you needed the gear progression to get access to new content. That was the point of gear. That logic doesn’t translate to GW2 though (and I don’t miss it tbh.)

But after you hit the new content and got your gear from that. What was the point? People raided new raids everyday, there no content after that point.

For most MMOs, major expansions don’t come for up to years at a time.

Azreell.1568:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Azreell.1568:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Azreell.1568:

One thing I have learned from GW2 is that without a Trinity games end up lacking strategy and combat depth and become nothing more the zerg dps something down. Wildstars trinity is an interesting twist on something many of us have come to love. It brings a new perspective on an old ideal.

If you are a solo player Wildstar has content for you.
If you are a raider Wildstar has content for you.
If you are crafter Wildstar has content for you.
If you are into player housing wildstar has content for you.
If you are into exploring Wildstar has content for you.
If you are a PvPer Wildstar has content for you.

Games really don’t need a trinity. In fact, the trinity is detrimental to the depth of build making and combat.

If I’m the DPS and only the DPS I don’t need to consider the ability to take aggro or healing because that’s not my job. That forces my build to be very linear.

When I’m fighting as a DPS, my almost only focus is doing as much damage as possible, therefore there’s a limited amount of mechanics I can be exposed to, because otherwise it’d be throwing a curveball at me.

I like how the current LA event’s concept. There’s so much crud flying around and so many enemies you will take aggro and damage, whilst you need to kill enemies fast. I potentially have to consider quite a few things in my build, making it interesting. Now realistically it isn’t quite as interesting because the event has now moved away form actually trying to complete the events to basically zerging up and farming the heck out of it, but the idea is much more interesting than if I just had to go and spec for DPS.

On your second point, you could say that about any game that was designed to actually stay off life-support for a few years. Just because it has them doesn’t mean its going to be done well.

I could not disagree with you more.

And in fairness I think GW2 has proven the lack of a trinity – while , convenient for some is about as shallow as you can get.

Also the lack of a trinity means DPS is the only stat that matters which yields poor content design, poor gear choice selection, poor build selection and poor programmed AI.

All these things are apparent in GW2 at this time.

I’ll put it into a bit more context then. I went into LA first as my usual full zerk DPS Guardian. I got creamed. Way too much stuff to dodge to keep dodging them all, and way too many enemies (and dredge) to keep blind up on everything. DPS clearly wasn’t all that mattered because I’m not contributing when Im dead on the floor.

So I had to consider more things like mobility, ability to evade more with vigour, more healing capabilities all whilst still maintaining good damage, because a pure healtank isn’t very beneficial either.

(Do keep in mind this was when we actually still tried to do things like all 3 miasma events at once so, we weren’t all in 1 huge zerg to farm the crud out the the event, where only DPS really matters.)

Now, that’s more depth than a pure DPS build because simply it had more variables to input into it.

You can’t do that with the trinity because otherwise you are moving away from the trinity and throwing curveballs at people.

To put your argument into another perspective, in a trinity, you have an equal problem. For a DPS for example, does stats other than DPS matter? No, because otherwise the tank and healer must be just doing their jobs wrong. Does damage stats matter to a tank (beyond basic DPS to keep aggro in some games) or healer? No, because if they do, you should either grab a new DPS or think about how you’re maintaining aggro.

How would content or AI be better in a trinity? Lets take the Shadow Behemoth and stuff it into WoW for example, would that make that fight more interesting?

With all due respect that is a player issue problem. Not a design flaw or compliment.

I went in there with my zerk guardian as well and had zero issues. 20 25 0 0 25.

The point is in this game being trinityless the only stat that matters is dps.

The faster you kill something the better off you are as been proven for basically a year straight by all players.

Dodges, aegis, vigor, protection all these buffs enable it were everyone can be full zerk dps and have no issue what so ever.

The game combat is shallow due to the above comment.

Also – In reply to your thread I missed. Perhaps you should work at Anet – since they seem to be having issues designing content in which anything but DPS matters.

Then let me turn the question around to you. Let’s take the example of a DPS in a trinity game, what do I have to think about that make the game a lot more deep?

The tank needs to think about taking damage, but I don’t, all I need to think about is DPS.

Jski.6180:

SkiTz.4590:

Ingame sales will drop even more once the new set of MMOs release (upcoming wildstar, ESO, EQN, etc)

If anet doesnt fix this “no rewards for skilled gameplay” or any true viable endgame (most ppl just doing WvW for now but I have feeling those new set of MMOs will have far better mass scale pvp than zerg vs zerg fest that is infested in wvw

The thing is ESO (if you do not want super lag of cant attk at all and dieing 5 mins after getting hit) and Wildstar (40 players max) are smaller. No real info about the mmorpg part of EQN though.

I’m quite sure ESO can handle hundreds of players, but it was done at a price. They said they;ve made their characters such that hundreds of them can be on the screen at once, what that translated to was hideous character models and low graphical quality on characters. You just can’t have both… yet.

Azreell.1568:

Nage.1520:

Azreell.1568:

Nage.1520:

Azreell.1568:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Azreell.1568:

One thing I have learned from GW2 is that without a Trinity games end up lacking strategy and combat depth and become nothing more the zerg dps something down. Wildstars trinity is an interesting twist on something many of us have come to love. It brings a new perspective on an old ideal.

If you are a solo player Wildstar has content for you.
If you are a raider Wildstar has content for you.
If you are crafter Wildstar has content for you.
If you are into player housing wildstar has content for you.
If you are into exploring Wildstar has content for you.
If you are a PvPer Wildstar has content for you.

Games really don’t need a trinity. In fact, the trinity is detrimental to the depth of build making and combat.

If I’m the DPS and only the DPS I don’t need to consider the ability to take aggro or healing because that’s not my job. That forces my build to be very linear.

When I’m fighting as a DPS, my almost only focus is doing as much damage as possible, therefore there’s a limited amount of mechanics I can be exposed to, because otherwise it’d be throwing a curveball at me.

I like how the current LA event’s concept. There’s so much crud flying around and so many enemies you will take aggro and damage, whilst you need to kill enemies fast. I potentially have to consider quite a few things in my build, making it interesting. Now realistically it isn’t quite as interesting because the event has now moved away form actually trying to complete the events to basically zerging up and farming the heck out of it, but the idea is much more interesting than if I just had to go and spec for DPS.

On your second point, you could say that about any game that was designed to actually stay off life-support for a few years. Just because it has them doesn’t mean its going to be done well.

I could not disagree with you more.

And in fairness I think GW2 has proven the lack of a trinity – while , convenient for some is about as shallow as you can get.

Also the lack of a trinity means DPS is the only stat that matters which yields poor content design, poor gear choice selection, poor build selection and poor programmed AI.

All these things are apparent in GW2 at this time.

Do you remember how the trinity was in early games? It sucked. It was all tank and spank.

Guild Wars 2 is doing something relatively new. Until developers learn what can and can’t be done with that relatively new system, it will seem shallow.

The encounters ARE improving if you’ve paid attention. Most dungeons sort of suck but I’m pretty sure that dungeons like the new TA path are much better than the original ones.

Three, four years from now, the time it really takes devs to learn a new system, the stuff coming out will be much better.

Saying a new system not being very good is not working is probably a gross overstatement.

Did you ever read what you just posted?

You basically just agreed with everything I wrote.

GW2 doesn’t have 4 yrs to try and get this new system right – if they even could.

Also, Comparing old tank and spanks to current day mechanics in other games is a not viable. There are much much more complex encounters in most all other games with a trinity currently due to the ability of the trinity and scope at which you can design content when players have specific roles.

Also the new TA path is not much different and I have every achievement in that place so I am very familiar.

The point being as you put it current content “Sort of Sucks” – your words not mine.
The reason being in my opinion the total lack of depth of combat and the meta being dps only.

No, I didn’t agree with anything you wrote. I’m saying trying something new takes time to work out and it’s getting better even now.

At any rate, the trinity system is godawful no matter what they do to it and I won’t play another trinity game again EVER.

I don’t want to look for a healer. I don’t want to look for a tank. The trinity is contrived, annoying and dated. In another five years it’ll hopefully fade away completely.

Then you have no idea what you wrote in your prior response.

The trinity isn’t going anywhere.

By the looks of the new and up coming games it’s making a very large come back.

As YOU yourself have posted – GW2 in it’s current trinity less state “sort of sucks”.

Do you really need to say more or want me to quote your response again?

It making a comeback doesn’t mean it isn’t bad. Just because people still binge drink doesn’t mean it’s a good thing or isn’t costing national medicare systems hundreds of millions a year.

Azreell.1568:

Nage.1520:

Azreell.1568:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Azreell.1568:

One thing I have learned from GW2 is that without a Trinity games end up lacking strategy and combat depth and become nothing more the zerg dps something down. Wildstars trinity is an interesting twist on something many of us have come to love. It brings a new perspective on an old ideal.

If you are a solo player Wildstar has content for you.
If you are a raider Wildstar has content for you.
If you are crafter Wildstar has content for you.
If you are into player housing wildstar has content for you.
If you are into exploring Wildstar has content for you.
If you are a PvPer Wildstar has content for you.

Games really don’t need a trinity. In fact, the trinity is detrimental to the depth of build making and combat.

If I’m the DPS and only the DPS I don’t need to consider the ability to take aggro or healing because that’s not my job. That forces my build to be very linear.

When I’m fighting as a DPS, my almost only focus is doing as much damage as possible, therefore there’s a limited amount of mechanics I can be exposed to, because otherwise it’d be throwing a curveball at me.

I like how the current LA event’s concept. There’s so much crud flying around and so many enemies you will take aggro and damage, whilst you need to kill enemies fast. I potentially have to consider quite a few things in my build, making it interesting. Now realistically it isn’t quite as interesting because the event has now moved away form actually trying to complete the events to basically zerging up and farming the heck out of it, but the idea is much more interesting than if I just had to go and spec for DPS.

On your second point, you could say that about any game that was designed to actually stay off life-support for a few years. Just because it has them doesn’t mean its going to be done well.

I could not disagree with you more.

And in fairness I think GW2 has proven the lack of a trinity – while , convenient for some is about as shallow as you can get.

Also the lack of a trinity means DPS is the only stat that matters which yields poor content design, poor gear choice selection, poor build selection and poor programmed AI.

All these things are apparent in GW2 at this time.

Do you remember how the trinity was in early games? It sucked. It was all tank and spank.

Guild Wars 2 is doing something relatively new. Until developers learn what can and can’t be done with that relatively new system, it will seem shallow.

The encounters ARE improving if you’ve paid attention. Most dungeons sort of suck but I’m pretty sure that dungeons like the new TA path are much better than the original ones.

Three, four years from now, the time it really takes devs to learn a new system, the stuff coming out will be much better.

Saying a new system not being very good is not working is probably a gross overstatement.

Did you ever read what you just posted?

You basically just agreed with everything I wrote.

GW2 doesn’t have 4 yrs to try and get this new system right – if they even could.

Also, Comparing old tank and spanks to current day mechanics in other games is a not viable. There are much much more complex encounters in most all other games with a trinity currently due to the ability of the trinity and scope at which you can design content when players have specific roles.

Also the new TA path is not much different and I have every achievement in that place so I am very familiar.

The point being as you put it current content “Sort of Sucks” – your words not mine.
The reason being in my opinion the total lack of depth of combat and the meta being dps only.

Can you think of any mechanics from trinity-based games which can’t be translated into a non-trinity system?

I can;t think of any mechanics from MMOs I’ve played which can’t be translated into a non-trinity context and be made more interesting, and I’ve played MMOs for 10+ years.

Azreell.1568:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Azreell.1568:

One thing I have learned from GW2 is that without a Trinity games end up lacking strategy and combat depth and become nothing more the zerg dps something down. Wildstars trinity is an interesting twist on something many of us have come to love. It brings a new perspective on an old ideal.

If you are a solo player Wildstar has content for you.
If you are a raider Wildstar has content for you.
If you are crafter Wildstar has content for you.
If you are into player housing wildstar has content for you.
If you are into exploring Wildstar has content for you.
If you are a PvPer Wildstar has content for you.

Games really don’t need a trinity. In fact, the trinity is detrimental to the depth of build making and combat.

If I’m the DPS and only the DPS I don’t need to consider the ability to take aggro or healing because that’s not my job. That forces my build to be very linear.

When I’m fighting as a DPS, my almost only focus is doing as much damage as possible, therefore there’s a limited amount of mechanics I can be exposed to, because otherwise it’d be throwing a curveball at me.

I like how the current LA event’s concept. There’s so much crud flying around and so many enemies you will take aggro and damage, whilst you need to kill enemies fast. I potentially have to consider quite a few things in my build, making it interesting. Now realistically it isn’t quite as interesting because the event has now moved away form actually trying to complete the events to basically zerging up and farming the heck out of it, but the idea is much more interesting than if I just had to go and spec for DPS.

On your second point, you could say that about any game that was designed to actually stay off life-support for a few years. Just because it has them doesn’t mean its going to be done well.

I could not disagree with you more.

And in fairness I think GW2 has proven the lack of a trinity – while , convenient for some is about as shallow as you can get.

Also the lack of a trinity means DPS is the only stat that matters which yields poor content design, poor gear choice selection, poor build selection and poor programmed AI.

All these things are apparent in GW2 at this time.

I’ll put it into a bit more context then. I went into LA first as my usual full zerk DPS Guardian. I got creamed. Way too much stuff to dodge to keep dodging them all, and way too many enemies (and dredge) to keep blind up on everything. DPS clearly wasn’t all that mattered because I’m not contributing when Im dead on the floor.

So I had to consider more things like mobility, ability to evade more with vigour, more healing capabilities all whilst still maintaining good damage, because a pure healtank isn’t very beneficial either.

(Do keep in mind this was when we actually still tried to do things like all 3 miasma events at once so, we weren’t all in 1 huge zerg to farm the crud out the the event, where only DPS really matters.)

Now, that’s more depth than a pure DPS build because simply it had more variables to input into it.

You can’t do that with the trinity because otherwise you are moving away from the trinity and throwing curveballs at people.

To put your argument into another perspective, in a trinity, you have an equal problem. For a DPS for example, does stats other than DPS matter? No, because otherwise the tank and healer must be just doing their jobs wrong. Does damage stats matter to a tank (beyond basic DPS to keep aggro in some games) or healer? No, because if they do, you should either grab a new DPS or think about how you’re maintaining aggro.

How would content or AI be better in a trinity? Lets take the Shadow Behemoth and stuff it into WoW for example, would that make that fight more interesting?

Azreell.1568:

One thing I have learned from GW2 is that without a Trinity games end up lacking strategy and combat depth and become nothing more the zerg dps something down. Wildstars trinity is an interesting twist on something many of us have come to love. It brings a new perspective on an old ideal.

If you are a solo player Wildstar has content for you.
If you are a raider Wildstar has content for you.
If you are crafter Wildstar has content for you.
If you are into player housing wildstar has content for you.
If you are into exploring Wildstar has content for you.
If you are a PvPer Wildstar has content for you.

Games really don’t need a trinity. In fact, the trinity is detrimental to the depth of build making and combat.

If I’m the DPS and only the DPS I don’t need to consider the ability to take aggro or healing because that’s not my job. That forces my build to be very linear.

When I’m fighting as a DPS, my almost only focus is doing as much damage as possible, therefore there’s a limited amount of mechanics I can be exposed to, because otherwise it’d be throwing a curveball at me.

I like how the current LA event’s concept. There’s so much crud flying around and so many enemies you will take aggro and damage, whilst you need to kill enemies fast. I potentially have to consider quite a few things in my build, making it interesting. Now realistically it isn’t quite as interesting because the event has now moved away form actually trying to complete the events to basically zerging up and farming the heck out of it, but the idea is much more interesting than if I just had to go and spec for DPS.

On your second point, you could say that about any game that was designed to actually stay off life-support for a few years. Just because it has them doesn’t mean its going to be done well.

The problem I got with Wildstar is that it doesn;t have anything unique about it. It seems to be trying very hard to be like vanilla WoW. Aside from the fact that games that tried to compete with WoW on its own turf generally got torn apart historically, I question why I should play this when I got WoW, which has been around longer, has more budget behind it, and has a much more established lore to put all that content into context? I can’t, especially when this seems to be a case of literally trying to out-WoW WoW.

Sure, it has a few little extras like double-jumping but none of that is game changing, because none of those things really matter that much in the type of game WS is.

Nage.1520:

Nick.6972:

Would you work for the 1/4 of your current salary?
Even if you loved your job, sooner or later you would lose your motivation and move to a better paid job.

I exercise for free, all the time. No one pays me for it. I don’t get rewarded. I still exercise. Sometimes it feels like a job and I still do it.

If you’re not having fun, don’t play the game. If you’re playing the game just for rewards, that’s pretty bad anyway. People who play that way really can’t be satisfied.

If the reward is too easy to get, everyone gets it and everyone is rewarded. If the reward is too hard to get it’s a second job. But everyone has different levels of what is too hard, so no one can ever really be happy.

The problem is that MMOs have long become something more than a game to a lot of people. Its bordering on a literal second life. When that happens, you really start considering your effort-to-reward ratio just like in real life.

But I don’t think measuring everything on a basis of gold-per-hour is the way to solve the problem. Different content should have different, non-interchangeable rewards, because you can never balance out the gold-per-hour ratio, ever, there’s too many loopholes and possibilities.

For example, I don’t think Anet ever forsaw people abusing the spawn timer to farm champions.

They’ve sort of started on that path. Blade Shards for example, can’t be traded so if you want your sword wings, you need to do the LA event. At the same time, they are preserving the usefulness of gold by having some rewards tradable for gold and some stuff which requires it.

Naqaj.6219:

Xae Isareth.1364:

The problem is though, what would you call rewarding loot?

Personally I wouldn’t call loot rewarding at all, period. I don’t think you can make loot rewarding in the long term in this game due to how it is designed, because there’s just no real need to have it the way there used to be in previous MMOs.

That’s the big problem for Arenanet to solve. Players notice there’s something lacking to do once character progression is finished. They’ve learned in other MMOs that the the thing to do now is to get more loot, so that’s what they ask for. But do you really need it for anything? How satisfying is it really to get exotic drops for a character who is already halfway geared in ascendent? Yeah, you can always sell them, but for what? To get more gold to buy … what exactly?

All sorts of reasons. Buy cosmetics, work on legendaries, or even just hoarding gold for the sake of hoarding gold.

If you think about what loot was for in other MMOs, you get more loot to get stronger to get more loot, so, there really wasn’t much of a point either.

Personally I just like collecting gold. Its the same in every MMO I’ve played, I never really had anything I wanted in mind when I play and even if something catches my eye, I’d still make even more gold after I got that item.

Fenrina.2954:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Aetherblade Assassins will randomly spawn on players sometimes no matter where you are. They’ll be just normal mobs (ie, not vets or elites and doesn’t scale), so to any non-afking player, it won’t really matter at all since you’ll just kill it in seconds, but if you’re afk, of course it’ll kill you.

Spawning a bunch of assassins on top of a small group at Hooligan’s Route will likely be fatal. That place is nothing but Veterans and higher so adding unpredictable enemies to the mix is not going to end well.

Besides, the “problem” is people who afk for the entire event. It isn’t people who afk period. If a person heads to a safe spot and afks for a few minutes after saving 50 civilians, they don’t deserve to be randomly executed.

Well, there really isn’t a single solution without flaws. There’s very few places where 1 normal mob would be able to completely wreck everything.

There’s really no mechanical way to tell if someone’e actually AFK or just taking a break other than a very long AFK timer, which would kill the whole point of having a AFK timer because I can just pop back in every say, 20mins and move 1 square and go back to AFKing.

I’m quite sure you can overcome the AFK timer by say, auto-running into a wall.

Well, just look at The Grenth Hood scarf and imagine that on a Charr, but 3 times as long. Just think about how great that would look in terms of animation and try to not throw up.

Naqaj.6219:

Vol.7601:

GW2 needs to move from an RNG reward system to a token system + RNG systems.

So if you do lvl 50 fractals and want your greatsword, they can make it cost 30 tokens and reward you with 1 each successful run, while still maintaining a rare drop rate of greatswords.

That doesn’t really solve the problem that GW2 is a game where loot is unrewarding by design. It just means you get useless loot more reliably.

The problem is though, what would you call rewarding loot?

There’s things that can be changed (e.g add a wardrobe system, even if its through the gemstore), but fundamentally, without touching things in the realm of making more skills, loot comes in 2 types:

1. Statistical improvements.
2. Cosmetics.

I don’t think we want more of number 1, so its going to be cosmetics no matter what you do.

Unless you meant the whole 2 blues 1 green thing. Then think of this scenario: if instead of that you get 2 exotics and 1 ascended out of every metaevent. Would that be better?

@Siren I would be hard-pressed to assume that. ESO is already receiving bad word of mouth, that’s going to turn off a lot of players.

WS is like FF14 ARR. Its a good MMO but it isn’t going to blow your mind, there’s nothing really new there which will blow my socks off. There’s their adventures which seems new-ish but one single game mode which is difficult for the devs to create more of and thus probably won’t be updated too much isn’t going to attract new players.

Maybe Taimi is actually a baby Tengu :V

I mean, have you ever seen a baby Tengu?

On a serious note, why do people want the Tengu so badly?

1. The speed at which Anet delivers new armor skins is already at a snail’s pace, adding a whole new character model they have to fit around would make that even worse.

2. What would that add to the game? You can play as a new character model…. great. It’s not exactly like Tengus will play differently to any other character or there;s more things you can do. They may as well spend that time designing a whole new armor concept (different character model without me having to start a new character) or actual new content (more things to do).

I think a good solution would be to put a ressing timer instead of a AFK timer.

Aetherblade Assassins will randomly spawn on players sometimes no matter where you are. They’ll be just normal mobs (ie, not vets or elites and doesn’t scale), so to any non-afking player, it won’t really matter at all since you’ll just kill it in seconds, but if you’re afk, of course it’ll kill you.

If you don’t res within 2 minutes (for anyone), you get kicked out of LA. Timer resets if you receive healing within that time from someone trying to res you.

People might argue that what if you die in an event and are waiting to be resed? Well, if no one is trying to res you for 2 minutes, the chances are that they probably won’t res you at all until the event ends, so in other words, you should just WP.

Vol.7601:

GW2 needs to move from an RNG reward system to a token system + RNG systems.

So if you do lvl 50 fractals and want your greatsword, they can make it cost 30 tokens and reward you with 1 each successful run, while still maintaining a rare drop rate of greatswords.

The problem is that then you got people who wants RNG for whatever reason.

When I suggested that Tequatl should drop unique tokens to buy his skins and ascended boxes with, I got quite a few replies about how RNG makes the rewards exciting.

I guess across the MMO industry, the devs must be quite confused about this issue overall, because if everyone hates RNG that much, why do raids still operate ona RNG basis for drops in most MMOs?

On this topic, I think different fractals should give different rewards. I mean, Jade Maw is clearly not as difficult as the other boss fractals, and thus is illogical to have it give out the same rewards. Same applies to dredge, and etc.

Azreell.1568:

Jski.6180:

Beast Sos.1457:

Dahkeus.8243:

You must be new to video games…

Well this is more about MMO games, not games in general. I played a couple MMOs and whenever I wanted something in them I would be able to get it. It wasnt dependant on my luck but on my effort/time spent.

MMO even rpgs are just like that unless they are the super easy hit one button receive bacon type games. You just make of grown up with the free items games. GW2 is a very low grind game there are games out there that have a mob that only pops every 2hr has a .005% chase to drop an item AND can only be taged by one person and or one group. There even worst mobs that only pop. every 72hr with a chase to be a super version that only drop “good” items in that super version. You have no ideal what real RNG is or what real grind is.

Gw2 is not a very low grind game.

It borders on being one of the most grindy games on the market atm.

Think that idea has been proven in multiple threads below.

If you want to talk about low drop rates:

Player research into the chance of receiving a precursor when combining four exotic weapons of the same type estimates the probability at 0.79% with 2901 trials.

The chance to receive a precursor out of a bag/box is much lower.

It really depends on what you regard as grind. I tend to regard things as grind when its repetitive and boring, as well as necessary to progress in the game.

In the case of precursors, its not exactly repetitive since you directly get it by basically doing whatever you want until it just drops, and it certainly isn’t necessary to progress to anywhere in the game.

What it is is an ‘extra’. You don’t need it, but its there in case you want to get an item you can show off.

Plus, we’ll be able to craft them soon anyways.

I’d say there’s bigger priorities in terms of fixing legendaries than Kudzu. The Moot and Quip both need a complete redesign. A portable disco-ball and a party gun are about legendary as the legendary toilet paper.

xsquared.1926:

Xae Isareth.1364:

xsquared.1926:

Shinzan.2908:

They have to be because press 1 is all some people manage. Wouldn’t you hate dodging and doing everything right but still failing the event over and over because half the players you are doing it with can’t dodge?

Make events scale on the amount of alive players then. If they happen to die, the boss scales down. That way the baddies get filtered out.

Then:

1. What’s going to happen when I go res and come back to the fight then? Does it re-add HP onto it, and thus if people keep dying and resing, the boss can really never die? Or is it going to be a case of if everyone apart from 1 player dies, the boss will get nuked in half a second when the other 50 players res and rejoin the fight?

2. Even if it does somehow work out, why should I get back up if I’m bad at the fight? Currently, even if I suck at this game, I’m contributing but in your case, wouldn’t it be better for everyone else if I stay dead? Or rather, there’s going to be ‘if you lag or can’t fight properly, stay dead please’ shouted all over the map.

Well, it could work like the marionette. If you go down you will be excluded from the area. Give it portal acces just like the marionette has and make it close after X amount of health is drained from the boss. This would encourage players to stay alive and contribute the fight.

This is just a simple thought though, i’d have to flesh out this idea more.

But then I can’t join the fight in any way once it started, and that’s going to be a very small time margin where I can join without letting it basically be an open portal for most of the fight. It works for the Marionette (sort of) because its only a part of the mechanics of the fight, but we’re looking at entire encounters here.

We need to be able to really play the LS arc again, preferably made in such a way that I don’t need a group and presented in a better format so the plot doesn’t flow like blocked river.

You can’t ever fully appreciate a good game’s storyline or experience the same entertainment from that game by reading it on paper. If you can, then either/both the storyline sucks or the game is terrible.

I popped back recently after a few months of not playing GW2, and I don’t connect to that Asura girl at all (or really have a clue who she is) or know why Scarlet is attacking LA at all.

xsquared.1926:

Shinzan.2908:

They have to be because press 1 is all some people manage. Wouldn’t you hate dodging and doing everything right but still failing the event over and over because half the players you are doing it with can’t dodge?

Make events scale on the amount of alive players then. If they happen to die, the boss scales down. That way the baddies get filtered out.

Then:

1. What’s going to happen when I go res and come back to the fight then? Does it re-add HP onto it, and thus if people keep dying and resing, the boss can really never die? Or is it going to be a case of if everyone apart from 1 player dies, the boss will get nuked in half a second when the other 50 players res and rejoin the fight?

2. Even if it does somehow work out, why should I get back up if I’m bad at the fight? Currently, even if I suck at this game, I’m contributing but in your case, wouldn’t it be better for everyone else if I stay dead? Or rather, there’s going to be ‘if you lag or can’t fight properly, stay dead please’ shouted all over the map.

It does sound like OP just won’t like this game. A lot of things like level scaling have been specifically designed like that (e.g. getting your kitten handed to you by people who are further into the game than you in sPvP isn’t fun).

Overall though. I think GW2 is a great co-RPG, in fact, one of the best out there. However, it fails at being a MMO, mainly because there just isn’t a sense of progression. After you’ve done everything content-wise once, you really start questioning why should I play any of it again.

They’re fun. But despite the fact that I found Mario Galaxy to be a great game, I won’t play it over and over again. It doesn’t have to be the gear treadmill which has become mainstream in MMOs, more skills is an excellent start.

Cosmetics could have been a great incentive, but without a wardrobe function, it just isn’t viable to keep changing your character’s looks, and thus ultimately render that useless.

It just seems that the developers wanted to take the grind out of the game so much that they forgot that players will be playing things over and over because its a MMO, not a co-RPG.

The problem is that you can’t make hard stuff in the open world without it being frustrating.

You can’t kick people or block them from the open world, and the process of failing and learning from your failures doesn’t work because there’s always people at the encounter who are new and subject to failing.

Which means that you really have to create encounters which applies to at least the average denominator, otherwise we end up with Tequatl/Marionette/Wurm which get failed to the extent that it becomes disheartening to do.

Open world bosses should really be aimed at being fun as opposed to being hard. If they want to make hard content, instance them.

I tend to think that a lot of Guardians with staves aren’t using them because they think its actually a good DPS weapon, but because its one of the best mob-tagging weapons in the game.

I think due to how much the event fails, people are coming with the mentality that even if they play well, being 1 in 100, it won’t have any swing on the outcome of the event (ie, it fails anyways), so they’ll just tag as many mobs as they can and grab as much loot as possible before it fails.

The question I want to ask is, why would you want a new map.

Half the current maps in their current form are basically maps you explore for 5 mins and go, oh, that’s quite pretty, and then move on. They need purpose.

There’s no point in making more maps until the existing ones are actually fully fleshed out. You wouldn’t slap one stroke of paint on a canvas, call it a masterpiece and start on another painting, would you?

DiogoSilva.7089:

http://kekai-k.tumblr.com/post/75104279902/gw2-ascended-armor-concepts

The artist Kekai Kotaki has posted on his tumblr his concept art for Ascended Armor.

Nice opportunity to compare the artwork with the in-game models, or to see the initial dye colors envisioned for them.

Those actually look surprisingly bad for Kekai’s work. They just don;t have that flare his other work has. :I

Vayne.8563:

Beldin.5498:

Jim Hunter.6821:

I’m pretty sure the only ones that are against having both options are the people on the open world side because they’re afraid they won’t be able to find a big enough zerg to spam 1 with.

If you spam 1 constantly you should know that you can activate auto-attack with ctrl-leftclick.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Auto-attack

Don’t know how I missed this comment.

No Jim, that’s not true. I can beat instances, and I can raid. I do just fine in dungeons and fractals.

But I didn’t buy this game to play instances. I’ve always wanted an MMO that was more about the open world.

And if you think you can just spam 1 in open world fights and win, I invite you to try the new jungle wurm encounter.

Yes there is plenty of content where spamming 1 does work. There’s also some content where it doesn’t.

The problem is that the open world content they have made kind of just took what you find in raids, multiplied that by 10 and stuffed it straight into the open world.

It ended up being like a bus in the middle of a river: you can still cross the river with it but it sure is awkward as heck.

Nick.6972:

Why is everyone under assumption that Canthan people are doing bad and their Emperor is “evil”? They could have advanced more than Tyria under the isolation, back in GW1 Kaineng architecture was already more advanced than the Tyrian one.

I’m all for wiping Char, Asura, Silvari and Norn. #fortheemperor

The Emperor protects! Wait, wrong game.

It would just be like the real world then. Us westies are sitting around still thinking we’re the top of the world whilst the Asians create Gundams and whatever not.

Harper.4173:

Raine.1394:

Harper.4173:

Raine.1394:

TChalla.7146:

Raine.1394:

TChalla.7146:

Raine.1394:

TChalla.7146:

IndigoSundown.5419:

There is strategy in WoW raids. The “script” is the strategy. Following the script is the tactics. What WoW raids lack, once the optimal strategy is known, is discovery and spontaneity. Once you’ve successfully completed encounter X, you’ll likely be doing it that way until you stop doing it completely. That same criticism applies to most MMO’s. Once encounter mechanics are known, you’re following a script.

Not much in the way of strategy if it’s handed to you by someone else. Then it’s just script reading. The only skill necessary would be reading comprehension.

And if you consider any GW2 encounter is is exactly the same. There is something that you should be doing at any given time. You either know the script or not. GW2 combat is completely scripted. How would I know this? Just read any thread on how to kill X. That should be fairly straightforward.

And how would adding the trinity do anything to stop the scriptedness of the combat again?

By the way, talking about the fact that GW2 uses position to avoid combat by not aggroing is rather humorous, since that very same thing constantly happened in WoW dungeons. “Don’t go there… we don’t want the trash mobs right now. Go this way instead.” Same thing… trinity or not.

Adding the trinity would change nothing here as I’m sure IndigoSundown would agree. It’s just that the notion that there is anything superior or different in this regard in the GW2 conception of combat is just silly.

If that is what you’re arguing, then it’s not part of the original topic. The original topic is about what it would be like if GW2 had the trinity. My answer is still the same as what I posted before. It would suck.

I’m in agreement that GW2’s mode of dungeon play is lackluster. It’s a DPS fest with little strategy apart from stand here and do this until this happens. But I’ll take what GW2 has before I go back to the trinity system… if for no other reason than having to wait for a healer or tank. In GW2, everyone is DPS. No waiting time.

EDIT: And the dodge mechanic, which I happen to like, even if I suck at it.

Yes, my point is simply that GW2 is scripted to the same extent you would say that trinity combat is scripted. It offers nothing different or new in this regard.

But at least a no trinity system doesn’t hold you back waiting for another player to be able to play the game. At least you’re still self-sufficient.

My position here is that you are not held back. The LFM Tank stuff is an urban legend created by Anet to sell their product. I have never once spammed chat for a tank or healer. I use the LFG tool in WoW. The tool does all the work and the wait has never been problematic. So, the the issue of being held back simply doesn’t arise—except of course in the Anet marketing.

Except you never played GW1. That was the game.
LFG tank. LFG healer.
You needed those – and I’m rather fond of the situation in which i can do well by myself.

I stopped playing WoW ages ago. I’m playing TSW and FF14 at the moment however, and I’ve been tracking how long I’ve needed to wait as a DPS.

Average on TSW was about 30mins.
FF14 is about 20mins.

However, samples from 2 people really doesn’t form any conclusive evidence, and it also varies extremely between games.

For example, in TSW the difficulty scale wings very much unfavorably towards the tank’s side, and there’s some very interesting and creative ways to heal, so you get plenty of DPSs and healers, but very few tanks. So you can’t just use WoW as the all-games-are-like-this example.

Fernling.1729:

Vayne.8563:

Raine.1394:

laokoko.7403:

^ but many people don’t want instanced raid. That’s why it is much better to do private overflow instead! >

Many people do want this type of content instanced. The best thing for Anet to do is to apply critical thinking and make this content instanced. I’m fine if people want to call it a private overflow rather than an instance. GW2 has all manner of confusing terms and labels and one more won’t hurt anything.

If this becomes another raiding game, where people wait around in cities for their queues to pop, I know I won’t be very happy.

This hasn’t been true in the “raiding game” for over 4 years now. Dungeon finder can be queued from anywhere. The PvP browser, being either battlegrounds or arena can be queue from anywhere. The same goes for raid finder/scenarios/flex raid.
People keep bringing up this argument even though it hasn’t been relevant for years.

Besides, that’s really largely to blame on the trinity. Its not like people wont want to raid, its more like LF Healer/Tank all the time.

GW2 won’t really have that problem.

Sigils really need a rework as a whole. For a start, what’s the point of those enemy-specific sigils? It not like Im going to make weapons for each and every type of enemy I’m going to come across, so basically they’re pretty much useless compared to things like Force.

I don’t think it works very well. Good content needs to be designed to accommodate the targeted playerbase they’re designed for. The open world consists of anyone and everyone, from the elite Ascended-clad pro to the newbie in greens who just started the game 3 days ago.

That means you’re going to be designing content for the lowest denominator, as otherwise it just won’t work because you can’t kick the green-clad newbie out of the open world.

And thats exactly what’s happening here, we got content not designed for the lowest denominator being played by the lowest denominator. It just turns into a complete mess where the fail rate is so high that its depressing to play the content.

I know that Anet is trying to be inclusive of everyone but raids aren’t for everyone. Just like you don’t go challenging the Elite Four with your first pikachu, you don’t go raiding on the first week of playing the game with your greens and bare minimum knowledge of playing the game.

Also, I still don’t really understand how did they even do any sort of balancing with those world bosses. Each of them has a hard DPS check, but what is that DPS check balanced around? 80 people? 20 people? Greens? Exotics? Level 30s? Level 80s? You can’t make a DPS check around completely unknown parameters, which is why the old concept of world bosses having no timers or any DPS checks made sense, but now they have DPS checks, its just a mess of either the check being too low or too high.

Also, as far as I can see on Underworld (and I tend to think we’re a pretty big PvE server), this open-world content barely even gets done in the open world, but gets done through exploiting the overflows, which basically turns it into instanced raids with awkward waiting times of up to a hour.

I thought one visit to most PvE servers when Tequatl spawned would have made Anet rethink their ideas of open world raids, but I guess not, because they just made 2 more of them.

For me, the problem that I don’t play GW2 that much anymore isn’t because its not fun or a good game, its one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played. If this was a co-RPG or a sandbox world explorer: 10/10 at least in gameplay from me (the plot is a 3/10 at best, but I digress).

The problem is that is a MMO. It doesn’t have the one thing which makes MMOs tick: that sense of achievement and progress. You just don’t feel your character developing after around level 30-40, because you got most of the important skills unlocked and frankly, traits aren’t really a massive game-changing thing.

The instances and world events are great fun to do, but they don’t reward you with much. Felt awesome after beating Tequatl for the first time, but I instant asked myself ’where’s my loot?’.

I know that MMORPG just means a RPG with a lot of people playing at the same time. But a decade of design choices placed into most good MMOs has conditioned me to expect that sense of progression and achievement, and I can’t just change that expectation with a click of my fingers.

I would guess its because it just wouldn’t work very well.

I can guarantee you that anyone slightly competitive in the PvP scene at ESO will use the third person view. The devs even admitted themselves that people probably will to get a better sense of awareness of their surroundings.

Over in GW2, you’ll barely be able to function in first person view. How would you dodge AoE circles for a start? It would be fine for one or two of them, but for stuff like Lupi, it would be a nightmare. How would stuff like rolling and Whirling Wrath even work on a first person view?

It would just be really awkward because the game wasn’t made to be played in first person view.

^ the problem is what if I don’t like being a healer?

The fights really aren’t proper in a trinity based system to be honest, neither in the logical nor mechanical sense. If I was the enemy, I would go straight for the healer or at least wipe a few squishy DPS, not the guy in bulky metal armor which I can barely land a scratch on.

In a mechanical sense you are pigeonholed into doing this one role. resulting in simplistic fights which you only need to think of one aspect of it. I don’t care about keeping up my DPS as a tank, I don’t care about health management as a DPS, because if I am, it means the other people aren’t doing their jobs properly.

Also, because the system is there, you need to base any and all encounters on it. Because its so rigid, you end up massively restricting what you can make.

This added onto the infamous problem of sometimes waiting longer in a queue than actually playing the game, I would go as far as to say that the trinity is the plague of MMORPGs. GW2 hasn’t come up with a perfect system to replace it, but I can understand that, its the first AAA MMO I played which has tried, and personally for me, just it not being there is a great improvement already.

I really don’t understand the change either. Aside from making people do less damage, it doesn’t do anything at all.

The reason everyone who can uses zerker gear in PvE isn’t because zerker gear is so overpowered and amazing compared to other set-ups, its because there’s barely any point in using any other setup.

Most of the content is either too easy, so that you can just faceroll through it, so you may as well contribute everything to damage to get through it faster; or you just take so much damage that even in more defensive set-ups, you’ll drop like a fly if you screw up, so you may as well again contribute to everything to damage so that you have less opportunities to screw up.

I don’t mean to be hatin’, but is it just me who thinks having teasers in those poems make the game sound really childish and cheap?

The only time I’ve seen stuff like this being used well was in promotions of horror games involving children. Unless the next update is about Scarlet’s child (NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO)…..

No one reads the suggestions forum, AKA threads graveyard. The fact that the devs just binned it meant they didn’t get much out of it themselves.

I guess you can’t do level 50+ FotM w/o spending your wallet dry. That’s the only thing I cant think of that you can’t do.

Also, has anyone ever thought that part of the joy of having BiS gear is that not everyone has them? It was certainly one of the reasons why I chased after BiS in other MMOs. I was fine with cosmetics being the new ‘BiS’ gear, but apparently a lot of players weren’t.

Relocation complete!

@Mad Queen

Defiance is a kittene to solve. Rash gave a really nice idea for a solution though. My only concern with that is that perhaps some classes have skills which they use on a regular damage rotation which CCs, and since we can’t pick and choose weapon skills, that might be a problem.

Stability (no no KBing) is there really just so that you can’t knock him down or back, as that would majorly mess stuff up in the way that screws players over.

The idea of 25 stacks one one target is to make you watch your attacks (now with an audio cue), and use cleanses. At a maximum occurence of 50s on any one player, all classes should be able to deal with it.

The End of Days autowipe is to make CC a requirement for the boss. The idea is that a few players will need to run CC builds (which has no reason to exist in PvE at the moment) and have the role of dealing with the shades with help from other players. Shades won’t show up like they do on Subject 6 and turn the fight into a frustrating mess.

The final phase’s bows are there because its basically a hard DPS check. It tests a player’s ability to dodge and attack consistently, whilst watching out for the Void casts. The bow is there so that everyone is on equal terms in terms of damage and has 2000 range to be able to hit the boss, and no class is discriminated. Basically like Lupi on constant phase 2 projectile spam with no reflects.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512

Boss name:

Scourge of the Depths

A massive drake boss that rampages through various areas of an explorable, as part of an event chain. The players must protect the villages around a lake, and slow the boss down. The boss attacks 4 villages in a set order, and tries to deal as much damage to it as possible. It also summons minions, one of which (the enchanter) gives it a powerful stack of boons. The boss cannot be pulled too far from its target village, or he will head back and attack one of the buildings instead.

Basic concept

To have a boss battle that progresses to new areas, and gives boon removal and control skills a purpose.

Basic Attacks

Bite – Moderate single damage.

Tail swipe – Moderate damage cleave attack.

Flame Gust – Fast, short range, single target burning attack.
Special Abilities:

Drake Skin (Boon) – Grants the boss massive damage reduction and regeneration. Stacks, and can be removed with boon removal, or by killing the enchanter.

Anger (Monster buff) – Irremovable buff, that builds as the boss is hit by control skills. The boss slowly loses stacks naturally, or after doing a special attack. At 10 stacks, he does the following attack:

Maelstrom Spin – Control skills raise the anger level of the boss. At 10 stacks, he does this attack. The boss swirls around with energy around him, rendering him immune to control skills. Any launch/pull attacks now actually knock the users down, and pull them to him. And immobilize skills reflect back on the users. He follows this up with the following attack:

Maelstrom Swipe (Special Attack) – The boss swipes it’s tale around him, and everyone in close proximity to them suffers massive damage, and is knocked away. This always follows Maelstrom Spin. The boss loses all his anger after this attack.

Fire Breath – After a windup move, the boss breaths fire in a large cone in front of him, targeted at the player that dealt the most damage to him. Does massive damage, sets them on fire, and sets buildings on fire. Players can extinguish the fire with nearby water buckets to limit damage to the buildings.

Fire Burst – The boss spits fire 360 degrees around him. Does moderate damage, sets players on fire, along with buildings.

Roar – Fears enemies in close proximity, and summons smaller drake minions, including an enchanter. The enchanter enemy grants the boss massive damage reduction in the form of 25 stacks of the Drake Skin buff, while the enchanter runs away from the players. Killing him removes the buff, as does boon removal.

Phase 2 abilities (less than 50% HP)

Drake Charge – At less than 50% health, the boss gains the ability to do a powerful charge attack at a far away target. Much like the Flesh Golem charge, this attack knocks away any foes in it’s path, and it ends with a powerful bite attack. The boss is immune to control skills during this attack.

Blood Lust (Special Attack) – At 10 stacks of anger, the boss can also do this attack. The player that has dealt the most damage, gains a red skull above his/her head. The boss will now chase this player, and do a powerful shred attack if he catches the player. Control skills work to hold the boss back. The boss loses all his anger after this attack.
Burning Rage (Monster buff) – Sporadically at 50% or less health, the boss can shroud itself in 25 stacks of the Magical Flames buff (less so with lower numbers of players), which also gives him a speed boost. He starts chasing players, setting anyone nearby on fire. And the magical flames grant him a powerful form of retaliation. Players must cool him down with nearby items and weapons, since directly attacking him while he is shrouded in these flames, is very deadly. Any water buckets or water canons, along with boon removal and cold attacks, reduce his stacks and cool him down.

Phase 3 abilities (10% HP or less)

Fireball – Ranged attack. The boss gains the ability to occasionally fire a large ranged aoe attack that sets fire to a large distant area, and explodes on impact. Causes burning to players and buildings, and knocks players down.

Player abilities

During this battle, there are several items and placed weapons that the player can use, depending on how well they did earlier pre-events. Some catapults might be destroyed, or in one piece, depending on how well the pre-event went.
Buckets of water can be used to extinguish burning buildings, and cool down the boss during his Burning Rage phase.

Water canons can also be used to extinguish buildings, knock back the boss, or cool him down.

Frost Catapults can be used to freeze the boss, slowing and cooling him down. They can also be used to put out fires on buildings.

Saving a village

At various health stages, the boss moves on to the next village, regardless of how much damage he did to it. Players are awarded points based on how many buildings were saved from the flames.

Rash.6514

Boss name: Ingul, The Crazed (draft)

-> This is mostly a dodge/CC based boss fight. I didn’t want to include too many different mechanics at the same time for this guy. Different bosses, different mechanics.

Main characteristics (these are the same throughout the batlle)

Boss has no Defiant

Each time the boss is controlled (knocked down, feared, immobilized, stunned, blinded, dazed, confused, etc), he gains a stack of “madness”

At 10 stacks of madness he screams (he will perform a long, 1/2 to 1sec, breathing action before that) that applies an unremovable fear for 9 seconds and remove 11% of players max health per second (thus forcing players to heal themselves and avoid any damage before taking the decision to interrupt him the 10th time)

After madness, the boss will be exausted and completely open for attacks (like Jormag) for 7 seconds. (The surviving players will have to decide whether to heal themselves or to hit the boss at this time)

Phase 1 (until 75% HP)

Boss will slash all players in a 180º cone in front of him while walking around the room.
Boss walking speed matches a normal player’s speed.

Every 6 seconds, if a player is within melee range of the boss (this is shorter than the reach of his slashes), the boss will smash the floor down on this player, dealing massive damage and knocking all players in the area down for 5 seconds. The area will cover about 35% of the room.

Additionally, the area affected by the boss’ smash will be damaged making it harder to walk, thus applying a speed reduction to players in that area (this is not Cripple, so it can’t be removed with condition removals, the speed reduction is for players within the area only). The area will remain damaged for 30 seconds.

Phase 2 (until 40% HP)

Boss will not walk anymore, he will choose a preferred attacking location.

Every 5 seconds, the boss will stomp his foot on the ground twice, creating two shockwaves that are exactly two dodge rolls apart. Each shockwave will hit players for 50% HP and can be dodged, blocked, protected and retaliated. The shockwave will knock players down for 2 seconds and players with stability can avoid only the knockdown.

Every third shockwave attack (essentially every 15 seconds), the boss will stomp the ground 3 times, creating 3 shockwaves. Each shockwave will still be 1 dodge roll apart.
Concerning conditions (such as blind) and boons, the entire sockwave attack is one channeled action.

The boss will also randomly (i.e, no fixed time) charge in a random player’s direction, preferably in a direction where the boss can hit the most amount of players. This action will be audio cued with a deeper breath or a growl. The players hit by the boss will be knocked down for 5 seconds and take a 30% HP damage. This attack can also be blocked, protected, evaded, etc. The boss will return to his preferred attack location before resuming the slashing and shockwave attacks.

If the boss does not hit any player with his charge, he will crash into the room’s wall making a rock fall from the ceiling on a random’s player head.

The player will have 1 ¼ seconds between the circled red line indication and the rock hit. The area of effect is exactly 1 dodge roll centered on the player.

If the player is hit by the rock, he will receive a substantial damage, be knocked down for 7 seconds and confused and dazed for 15 seconds.

Phase 3 (last phase)

The boss will perform all previous attacks in random order, with no fixed times between them.

The boss will walk around the room again.

Players will get a tip whether it is the 3 or 2 shockwave attacks by looking at the boss’ effects.

Rash.6514

I like this, I really like this.

While I agree with Mad Queen with some of the problems, I like the innovation on boss battles. I like one-hit-kills but with alternatives to avoid it. I also don’t like forcing players into bringing a compulsory boon into battle like Aegis. It should be something the players need to do, independently of their classes, to avoid the damage. I like player skill. I like players that know how to play their classes, and are good at it. They must all have a chance. Plus, I like the audio cues. Hey, I might even write my own boss battle later.

One more thing, I like contributions, so evolving your idea would be nice.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512

(I can’t quote from archived threads….. bah)

I want to point out a few things that I think are problematic about this boss design, and things I like:

Xae Isareth.1364:
Passive abilities
-Defiance (we all know what this does)
I would like to see boss designs that start with something to replace Defiance. It is a terrible mechanic. But I see you’ve added a point where defiance disappears naturally in the battle. That is actually an interesting take on it.
Xae Isareth.1364:
-Stability
If the boss already has Defiance, he doesn’t really need stability. I think the boss would be better, if the boss had stability instead of defiance, so you can strip the boon off of him. But again, I also like the idea of the boss having moves where Defiance is always down.
Xae Isareth.1364:
-Gives 25 stacks of confusion unto random target, 25 sec CD and cannot target the same player twice
Why the max amount of stacks? Why not make it a targeted aoe, that adds more stacks of confusion if the player stays in the aoe? 25 seems a bit harsh, and not much fun.
Xae Isareth.1364:
-Into the Void (audio cue ‘Be consumed by the darkness!’): shadowsteps into the middle of the arena and starts a 5 second stationary channel. Gains unpurgable 1 stack of the ‘Void Calling’ boon every second, removes all buffs and debuffs from all players and enemies at 3 stacks, casts Into the Void at 5 stacks.
It would be interesting if this attack forced the players to either interrupt it, or to get as far away from the boss as possible. Maybe the boss is normally not affected by vulnerability, but during this channel attack he is. That would make it a trade of between abusing this moment of temporary weakness, and avoiding the attack itself. Make the attack deal massive damage on top of that, to encourage the players to do something.
Xae Isareth.1364:
2400 radius single hit PBAoE, unblockable by normal means, cannot be evaded, can only be blocked by Aegis.
This is terrible. Not everyone has Aegis, and it should never be a requirement.
Xae Isareth.1364:
-Shadow Surge (audio cue ‘Burn to ashes!’): infinite stationary channel, effects of Defiance not active during channel. Targets 1 random player and channels a low-moderate damage channeled attack at target until target is dead.
This is a good idea. A moment when Defiance is down, and a clear audio cue.
Xae Isareth.1364:
-Summons shades from sides of arena. Gives boss a stack of ‘End of Days’ boon if allowed to reach boss. Kills all players at 30 stacks.
-Randomly switches the positions of 2 players
I don’t think any attack should be an insta kill, and certainly not a complete wipe.
Xae Isareth.1364:
-Gives all players a 10 second uncleansible Shadowflame condition, causing a slow-moving 300 radius AoE to follow the player. AoE will do heavy damage on all players it touches, disappears on removal of condition.
This would be interesting.
Xae Isareth.1364:
Bow of Light environmental weapon will drop at player’s feet. Bow of Light has 2 skills:
This seems a bit random. Where does this bow come from?
Overall I like how you’ve included clear audio cues for a lot of the moves. This is one of the things missing from GW2’s boss battles right now.

Mechanics

At the start of the phase, boss will lose all stacks of ‘End of Days’ and summon a Shadow Stalker on top of every player, and aggro the remaining player, aggro on remaining player will persist throughout the phase until that player is dead. If targeted player downs, the boss will target another player (that player’s Shadow Stalker dies).

A single light well will appear in a random spot in the room, and will be consumed by boss when boss touches it, reappearing in another spot.

Shadow Stalkers have 10m HP and moves at 50% speed. Each stalker will target a player and aggro them until they are downed, at which point the stalker will suicide. Will respawn on top of a player if a player resurrects. Gains 1 stack of unpurgable Entropy boon per second on spawn.

Both boss and stalkers will have the Spewing Filth passive. Boss will have Entropy as well, starting to gain stacks at beginning of phase transition.

At 5 stacks of Entropy, boss/stalker will do an instant cast 200 radius PBAoE which instantly downs any player hit if any player approaches this range.

If the target goes outside of 900 range of stalkers, stalker will pull player into melee range (and cast Entropy).

Final Phase (starts at 20k HP)

Will start by shadowstepping into the middle of the arena, loses Dark Aegis and start to chanting audio cue:

‘Eternal darkness, I call upon thee. Infinite shadows, gather to me. Endless void, infuse me with your strength!’

After chant ends, boss will start to gain 1 stack of End of Days every second. Boss will have a One with the Darkness passive which makes him undamaged by any normal attack.

Bow of Light environmental weapon will drop at player’s feet. Bow of Light has 2 skills:

1. does a fixed 400 damage per hit to boss. Damage not affected by any boons or conditions.
2. applies user with 20 second Aegis (coodown 7 seconds)

Boss will cast a lot of Dark Crashes around the Arena, and will cast Into the Void every 10 seconds. Void Calling will now remove all boons/conditions at 1 stack and cast at 3 stacks. Boss will not cast any other skill.

Edit: changed stuff based on suggestions and because stupid.

Kanis, Banisher of Light

Stage: a 2000 radius circular arena

Persistent throughout the encounter apart from final phase

Passive abilities
-Defiance (we all know what this does)
-Cannot be knocked back. Can be crippled.

Skills
-Swipe: 200 range frontal melee attack, does moderate damage, cleaves
-Shadowbolt: moderate damage single projectile aimed at random player
-Dark Crash: multiple AoE circles appear around the arena, exploding 1.5 seconds in a shadow pillar, dealing high damage to anyone caught within
-Shadow Lance: 8000 range column attack aimed at random player, leaves a 3 second persisting AoE behind
-Gives self 30s protection and retaliation
-Gives 25 stacks of confusion unto random target, 25 sec CD and cannot target the same player twice. (Audio cue ‘The shadows warp your mind!’)

-Into the Void (audio cue ‘Be consumed by the darkness!’): shadowsteps into the middle of the arena and starts a 6 second stationary channel. Gains unpurgable 1 stack of the ‘Void Calling’ boon every second, removes all buffs and debuffs from all players and enemies at 3 stacks, casts Into the Void at 6 stacks.

Pillars of divine light appears around the arena, step into one to consume it and gain 5 second Aegis.

2400 radius single hit PBAoE, unblockable by normal means, cannot be evaded, can only be blocked by Aegis.

-Shadow Surge (audio cue ‘Burn to ashes!’): infinite stationary channel, effects of Defiance not active during channel. Targets 1 random player and channels a low-moderate damage channeled attack at target until target is dead.

Phase 1

Passives
-Dark Aegis: invulnerable to all damage unless the target has 15 more more stacks of vulnerability.

Skills
-Summons a small number shades from sides of arena. Gives boss a stack of ‘End of Days’ boon if allowed to reach boss. Kills all players at 30 stacks.
-Randomly switches the positions of 2 players
-Life-ending Light: boss will aim the attack, shown by a faint ray of light and fire it after 1 second. A 3 second continuous beam which does moderate damage to anyone it hits, boss will rotate beam in either direction and keep rotating in that direction throughout cast. Can only cast and will keep casting during Shadow Beam.

-Gives all players a 10 second uncleansible Shadowflame condition, causing a slow-moving 300 radius AoE to follow the player. AoE will do heavy damage on all players it touches, disappears on removal of condition.

-Shadow Beam (audio cue ‘Embrace the corruption!’, casted 2 times during phase1): shadowsteps into the middle of the arena at start of each cast. Shadow Beam links boss to a player with a beam, does heavy damage to anyone hit by the beam, cannot be evaded. Players will not receive damage from own beam but will be damaged by other players’ beams. Kills all shades at the beginning of cast. Laser lasts for 12 seconds.

1st cast: gives 3 random players 1 stack of the uncleansible Targeted condition every second. Channels Shadow Beam at 5 stacks.

Players with 5 stacks of Targeted takes constant moderate damage if within 1700 range of the boss. Also leaves behind trails of darkness, doing heavy damage to anyone stepping on them.

2nd cast: places a 300 radius PBAoE peristing throughout the cash. Stacks players with either Targeted or Linked conditions. Both conditions have same effects as above except that Linked takes damage if outside of 800 range instead.

Phase 2 (audio cue ‘Your kind swims in the darkness. See? Your own shadow haunts you!’)

Passive abilities and skills
-Slowed: movement speed reduced by 50%
-Spewing Filth: leaves behind trails of moderate damage filth. Filth puddles last 10 seconds.
-Shadow Barrier: prevents all damage. Removed for 10 seconds when boss hits a light well.
-Boss can gain a purgable boon which gives him 50% more speed.

(continued next post)

Reposted from the (now deceased) suggestions forum. Not quite sure where to put this because a lot of things in the game has bosses.

Design a boss encounter. You can do whatever you want as long as the fight is actually possible to beat by humans. It can be a dungeon boss, a fractal boss, a world boss encounter or for the sadists out there, make a ‘boss’ JP!

Give your boss a name, tell us the mechanics involved and maybe inject a bit of life into it with some lore.

Also free feel to comment on other people’s creations.

Maybe Anet will even take some ideas from here