Guild Wars 2

Raine.1394:

Who wants to debate a random war?=

I have no particular love for the trinity and obviously am not arguing for it. My issue is simply with the lack of meaningful combat roles.

And, if you were paying attention the GW2 battle “system” is pretty bad. That’s why we have all these threads. Debate a random war? Whatever does that mean?

you are conflating battle system with battle.
Basketball doesnt have a flawed system just because i play at the kiddie park.

the flaw in the system is that enemies, and encounters are designed too simply to make good use of the combat system.
The proof of this is by looking at the most difficult encounters, and looking at PVP that shows you what the battle system is capable of. And yes there are roles, and people play them based on what type of roles they want to play/be good at, and who they expect to be playing with.

What type of roles are you looking for?

I am honestly surprised this system got as far as it did, coming up with the answers it comes up with.
destroy dynamism, destroy shared world, destroy communities, destroy options
to gain?
more people on a map
server effeciency

now, i can see that maybe behind the scenes server effeciency is a big deal, however i think you have to design solutions that work with your product, not solutions that destroy your product in the process.

Im guessing you guys are really commited to this idea, so i suggest you start taking a look at some out of the box ideas to actually make systems that work and reinforce this system. And yeah It wont be simple solutions, but that makes sense, because you are introducing a pretty complex system.

Raine.1394:

1. Never suggested I spoke for every human. Just me and a very small group at that.

2. People grouping ad hoc in various ways is not what we are talking about. In combat we talk about major roles like infantry, artillery, air power, etc. This is obvious in our experience and doesn’t really need to be defended.

3. So no, I’m not wrong as you have not demonstrated any way in which I am wrong. But thank you for the opportunity to continue this conversation.

4. In a battle of elite soldiers? How about an actual battle as I described with the initiation of the battle with Iraq. It was a battle described by roles because that’s the way we conceptualize combat. Obviously.

Not sure exactly what your contribution to the discussion is, but thank you for it!

Ok, let me take it back to the OP because debating random wars, doesnt seem that relevant in this case

Not everyone likes, or needs a trinity system or a required role system to solve battle problems. Not everyone wants to play those types of games, or feels like combat should always be about that. There are many ways players can work together.

Guild wars battle system is actually pretty good, and they should expand on its strengths instead of turning it into something else. Enemy design and encounters are a different issue.

lordkrall.7241:

phys.7689:

no not really, most WvW guilds expect you to be there and participating at the allotted time, many may kick you if your ignoring that time frame to do other things in game. Which does make a kind of sense, because they need people there to actually matter in WvW.

Its a conflict of interest.

But why would you be interested in Tequatl in the first place if you were in such a hardcore WvW-guild?

why wouldnt you be interested in tequatl? i dont really see any connection, i know a lot of people who enjoy multiple facets of the game. As it is, they can work a lot of other things in because they arent on set schedules.

Essentially, its a problem, not just WvW. but now guilds are competing more for full rep.
You got your general guild needing it so they can do the guild focused events, like puzzles, and maintain buffs
you got your WvW guild needing rep for WvW bonuses
you got your small guild with the people you actually like hanging out with, who probably need rep the most if they will ever progress
you have now added your World boss guild which needs rep just to build as many consumables as possible, but will need massive influence to grind up the point they can actually build anything

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the schedule:

• It is not written in stone. We will adjust it as necessary.
• There’s lots of ways to go about this, but the current thinking is that it would be more convenient to plan for specific daily times rather than have a “sliding” rotation. We felt this was particularly necessary for larger events like the Triple Wurm and Tequatl.
• Although the old system had certain advantages, it had some major disadvantages as well:
  • Although non-scheduled events are more dynamic, you have a low chance of encountering events with long cooldown periods. Although it was originally thought that big events would be happenstance and rare opportunities that players would stumble on and become immersed in, we found that many players enjoy this type of content as a mainstay of their GW2 experience. When they can’t access that content regularly, we have a problem.
  • On the other hand, you may be aware of the external event tracking sites and have been using them play on regularly basis. This is a good approach in concept, but there’s some major pitfalls if you miss an opportunity to play because of a new build or encounter an overflow server.
• The intent of the schedule is to:
  • consistently provide access to large scale content for players who want to play it
  • deliver that content in such a way that players can plan and organize to prepare for it
  • help ensure that there are always enough participants in the content
  • help ensure that there is always enough server capacity to for all of the participants regardless of overflows, megaservers, etc
• There are still and will always be a large number of meta-events and bosses that are not on the schedule.

At some point, we would also like to introduce a messaging system in-game so that it’s always clear what world event content you participate in without having to utilize a resource outside of the game. I have no guarantee or ETA of when we might actually see this though.

the strengths outweighed the weaknesses, and worked better within the concept of a changing world.

Any solution that involves timed events is going to be problematic, like sliding events where you may have to wait weeks to get the events you want in a certain time frame, and more difficulty in scheduling.

I dunno, seems like the solutions yall are thinking of are too rigid to go with the type of world people loved in this game. You are reducing the variety in experience, and ability to participate in many things. Dynamism and feelings that events/what you do matters. Its a hefty price to pay, for something that doesnt seem to gain much as a player.
Instead of having 5 people in a zone ill have 40 guys who i have no connection to as well. Spread far apart, and having differing objectives. In exchange give up a dynamic world where what players do matters, and access to many different events, as well as any type of permanence.

The question is, how does this benefit the players game other than more people on a map? So far is see no other benefit, but a great many other things lost. What type of long term interesting events and world will you be able to create within this non permanent system?

weskay.9217:

As the saying goes: “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”

I don’t see how our current system is really broken. If you take a look at the other forums regarding this massive server, I believe the negatives outweigh the positives. I see why they would like to do this but after reading numerous forum posts, this does not seem to be what the majority of the public wants – myself included. I’m not going to go into full detail about this anymore but I think Anet is going down the wrong path for this.

I can see people that are upset about this eventually leaving. Combining this with the way the Living World has been running, people will be scrambling for a seat on a lifeboat while this ship goes down.

yeah essentially, unfortunately this system as currently planned to be implemented creates more problems than it solves. While i think the server unification is a great mechanic for having people in the world, and could theoretically allow them to not be afraid of building new content, It doesnt work with many of the systems present, without also reworking many of these systems drastically (doing it with simple easy changes mess up the world, like boss schedules) they are looking at essentially breaking almost everything the system comes in contact with, with nothing good to replace whats broken.

I dont think they should make this change until they have a much better way to handle dynamic events and create a semblance of permanism in conjuction with players some how effecting what happens. I also think scaling back the boss spawns based on timers is bad, in fact i dont even think TEQ and WURM should have been on timers, but rather announced, in game in some fashion, and mostly started via chain/or conditions being met.

Honestly this is a big change, and i dont think it will be a good idea until you come up with some very sound, well thought out systems for handling it without destroying so many other things that were built.

The very dynamic system would need to change to be something more along the lines of
random skirmishes which just happen, and area specific progression events (these arent linked on all Shards)
Large Every shard events that happen based on outcomes and momentum of the skirmishes and overall world state. For example special event which triggers when throughout the maps overall you build up momentum against the enemies, or the enemies build up momentum.
World state: Based on overall performance over time, the map changes events and even a little bit of design. Towns are little more developed, different main enemies spawn (for example kryta is about centaurs versus humans, but when the world has beat back the centaurs greatly, queensdale has to deal more with bandits, and other different types of enemies)

now all of this stuff is rather big and overarching, would require a lot of work, but you need to come up with solutions on this level to mesh well with a totally new world and player structure that you are presenting, without sacrificing many of the things that made GW2 interesting.

Essentially you have to come up with a new agreed upon world between players that is true not just for a server, but for all players, since you are creating an all player pve open world. At the same time, in keeping with the world design and some of the reasons people bought and play this game, you have to create a dynamic system that allows players to feel like they can in some respects change the world

You have to come up with a means of disseminating a lot of these changes to people throughout the world.

Or you can use the system you have in mind, and destroy the entire premise of permanance in the world, and reduce the potential of dynamic events and a dynamic world to almost nil.

grimnal.2796:

Feelm.1938:

Blaeys.3102:

Enzo.3906:

I absolutely hate now that I’m forced to do these metaevents events on a schedule. I understand why you guys did it, but I really hate it.

Actually, they are taking the schedule away and giving control to us – through the guild event system.

Im hoping this is just the beginning for this kind of system. I LOVE this idea.

And for those of us who are not in big guilds? Or those of us not in guilds at all?

Do we simply not matter?

You people amaze me with your complaining. Its not like you can actually take out Tequatl without the help of a large guild.

the problem is the biggest guilds for this content were cross server, and didnt require REPRESENT, which a lot of other guilds expect you to REP most of the time.

So a lot of guilds that actually organized to do these events, will not be able to do it, without becoming a different type of guild and decreasing player choice for different guilds for different content.

lordkrall.7241:

Kasteros.9847:

Question: What about players that can’t participate in any Tequall event etc.? due to sleep time, job or even WvW raids. For example Tequatll appear at 6 am.(standing up to get into work), 3:30 pm(still in work), 9 pm(raiding @ WvW). So tell my how to the hell i can make any Tequatll? And don’t answer like: u have sunday or satuday, cos i’m off at weekends for whole days.

ps. Those are hours in my country’s time zone(UTC + 2)

Well if you really want to do Tequatl it if fully possible to not have WvW raids every single day at that exact time, is it not?

no not really, most WvW guilds expect you to be there and participating at the allotted time, many may kick you if your ignoring that time frame to do other things in game. Which does make a kind of sense, because they need people there to actually matter in WvW.

Its a conflict of interest.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Mathzz.7501:

So does this mean that a guild could in theory do a world boss train? Meaning they can just spawn the bosses whenever they are done with the previous one and move on to the next one?
If that’s the case, at least make a long CD on the activation so they can’t be spammed.

It is only for the big 3 bosses, not the others. additionally it takes merits to activate which are limited to 5(?) a week and have an overall cap for 250, so that will limit the amount they can spam.

max merits per week is 110, dont know if defeating the guys will award merits or how much merits it will reward.
we also dont know how much it will cost.
TTS though has like uhh 4 guilds though so, they could theoretically spam it. The problem comes though that it takes like 2 or 3 months to unlock everything.
This can be circumvented via massive influence, but with influence counting on main world, not sure how this will work out.

The other method for circumventing is massive gold spending, which might not be too bad for a TTS like guild, but then your going to get into the politics that GW was trying to avoid where its like, how much did you contribute to this guild etc.

Yeah, this is, for the world as a whole, a really bad change.

• Schedules suck for a dynamic world
• Map state will be diminished (always starting from Zero) therefor major events will exist outside of map state.
• Schedules put certain bosses in certain time zones
• No permanence or a known shared experience for players. You guys said you had problems with phasing, because it lead to two players seeing different things, but now this is the case for every map.
• A lot of the systems that need to be in place to make this system work well arent in place yet. Like shared Guild influence. There will be ways to work the new system, but they will be cumbersome, and somewhat anti community

I mean im missing some right now, but this is a big change, and it doesnt play well with any of the existing systems. Not only does it not play well, but even in the design solutions, the solutions actually make the world a lot worse. I think you guys need to consider where you see the world actually going in the future regarding dynamic events, and a persistent world ( which you appear to be throwing out)

Overall i think the problem boils down to this. You wanted to create a system that better groups you with your various circles, smart. But in doing so you are severely limiting what you can do with the world that they are supposed to play in when they meet.

One of my big problems with EOTM which is a similar system in terms of what its trying to solve, is nothing in EOTM matters at all, Keep in mind you created a persistent world RPG, you are taking out the persistence here, and diminishing the rp systems ( i dont mean just for RPers, i mean a world that changes with the actions of the players)

As i feared, the big minus HUGE minus in this system will be the dynamic event systems limitations.
World and map state are going to be minimized.

So essentially doing dynamic events will matter even less than they do now. Whereas people talked about systems where the entire state of the map shifts as people play through it, this is less likely with so many random shards up all the time. So for content that they want people to play they will have to use slow timers.

The guild spawning is nice, but the whole thing is kind of EHHHH from a design standpoint and from a standpoint of what you guys said you wanted to achieve for dynamic events.

The idea that the world may change and new and different things may happen based on what the players do, is essentially out the window. I know that for many maps you never realized this goal, but i was hoping you might get more into this as the game/world evolved.

This is a good functional change, but i feel like its going to limit dynamic event/world design even further. Looks like EQnext may carry the torch that you guys started on that tip, then again its pretty early and maybe no one can pull it off. Sad to see that one of your strongest features will never get evolved.

To be clear under this system pre events and chains are things of the past for any big content. The permanence is gone. No more people in a city zone saying hey guys, we re gonna do dwayna now.

And i cant really think of any benefits from a design standpoint to the world, or the event system with this change, Other than getting more people in low end maps. I think the problem here is your engineers came up with a cool engineering feature, but its not a good world design feature.

I ll try to make a post for possible solutions to these issues under the new system

skullmount.1758:

Take the wurm for example. One random can entirely mess up the whole attempt (cobalt specifically on first phase, and any of the three on the second).

Its not so much randoms that I personally have a problem with, its the kitten time limits. Without the time limits (or even doubling some, teq/wurms anyways) would probably go a long way in making it more casual/randoms friendly.

is it mostly communication? – Yes, Anet has pretty much required us to use external communication tools since they are faster than typing
is it gear? – Not so much. I know my builds aren’t optimized.
is it that they dont listen even when communicated? – Kind of. When randoms are told several times by different people to do something specific and still don’t listen, yes it makes me not want to play with randoms.
Is it that what is required is above and beyond the average players skill set? – Not usually. Most of the times the mechanics aren’t hard to do, at least in my mind for the average player.

This is all for open world boss events, mind you. I’ve only ever done dungeons with pugs/randoms and have done all with not too many problems (except Arah, haven’t attempted that at all yet).

Nar.8327:

Advent Leader.1083:

Digressing, but when he means wurm try he possibly means a large, highly coordinated try where most of the participants have a strict set of conditions in play (voice chat, trait control geared and optimized, with food and nourishment, as well as attack pattern synced up).

Which is, currently, the only way the event actually gets completed. When an event is designed such that a small handful of people who don’t know what they are doing or don’t listen to instructions can muck it up, it becomes necessary to find ways to only allow people trusted not to be one of those into the encounter.

Pretty much how I feel, in different words (better explained). Most processes/loopholes/working solutions are all because players have had to due to Anet’s decisions on certain things.

so it sounds like possibly they could make Commanders get access to a one way voice commander channel. players could join this channel and they would be able to hear what the commander is advising(if the commander enables this). The commander used in this case, would probably not be so much the leader, as much as a communications leader, relaying the info to the ground troops.

time limits, hmmm i think time limits are good, when built to be more adaptive. For example i think the time limit in the marrionette event was really well thought out, it was influenced by the actions of the people. At the end of the day there is a maximum amount of time for the event, but its based more on what the group is doing and focusing on, as well as how many times the group failed.

I think having creative interactive changeable time limits like that may allieve some of the issues.

1 person failing the event, this is kinda bad, because its tricky, if you make the event so that people cant make mistakes, it loses its challenge, but if 1 person can fail a whole event thats a problem.

lot of things to think about

Jocksy.3415:

mrauls.6519:

To be honest if confusion was toned down I’d be happy. That’s the ONLY thing making condi spamming professions so ridiculous right now. If they didn’t have access to crazy amounts of confusion it’d be an even playing field

Confusion was already toned down, and a lot…

yeah honestly confusion really isnt that powerful, it has a .075 per stack condi dmg modifier. Its just that condi in general has a lot of issues, and confusion is the one people hate because they kill themselves.

bleeds go on easier, and last longer, poison kills your heals, burning hits like a truck. Confusion is actually a pretty small part of anyones problems. The fact that you can get like 5 conditions on someone repeatedly fairly easily, with few tells is the problem.

BlackDevil.9268:

phys.7689:

the problem with mesmer for spvp, is you get no points for annoying other people.

Can a mesmer survive and hold points better than a tanky build on other classes? no
(even the type of tricks that annoy you, people learn how to defeat)

Can a mesmer place more conditions faster than another class? no. Mesmer actually has a pretty low rate of condition application, and against better players, their condition application actually lowers (dodging clone explosions is a pretty big tell)

Can a mesmer roam? haha no, slowest out of combat speed on the map

Can a mesmer Burst a target down? nope

Can a mesmer support a party nope

Can a mesmer control the enemy better than other control builds, sadly no. They dont have as many CC per minute as warrior or engie id have to check ele.

can a mesmer deny area?
nope

So yeah though a mesmer kittened you off, and you cant deal with his tricks, he aint really doing nothing except killing you slowly. Imagine once you know his tricks, then he wont be able to do anything to you at all.

Not 100% true, but most things are true yes. Mesmer can roam, most potential teleporter around the map with portal, blink and phase retreat. Just gotta learn how to use them.

Mesmer can burst someone down. Maybe not from 100-0 in 2 seconds, but sure they can burst some 50-60% hp in seconds. Again, just gotta learn how.

Mesmer can support a party with chaotic interruption. Coordinated immobilizes are very powerful.

i dont mean they are physically incapable of doing it, i mean they arent that good at it.
blink is a 30 second cool down skill that gives you 900
phase retreat requires use of staff, which is a very specific playstyle only, and not generally that mobile other than phase retreat.

now this isnt useless, but compared to theives with a standard 25% movement speed, swiftness for casting steal, various leaps and shadow steps, it isnt going to cover the distance.
just one example, but almost every other class has better access to swiftness/ or a 25% movement speed skill IN ADDITION to the type of skills you mention on mesmer, Which means overall roaming from point to point, mesmer will be slower.

likewise on bursting someone down, if it takes awhile it isnt called burst, its called sustained damage.

Once again im not saying mesmer is a Zero in every category, im saying they arent particularly strong in any of those roles. In some they are very bad, imo, like movement out of combat.

skullmount.1758:

Dinks.2478:

Sariel V.7024:

skullmount.1758:

Yes I read the article, and that you can still right click join, but how are we going to make sure only TTS members get in (and not their friends/others) before we let other players in (like we do with overflows, especially for the Wurms)?

My guess is you won’t. Moreover, you shouldn’t be able to in the first place, the worthiness of your goals be kitten ed. You don’t own the instance, no matter how many people you put on it. Other players have a right to be there too.

The only way to do these absurd world events is to get as many non-randoms in that will actually follow instructions… So anet can either nerf the events to be casual friendly or allow tools that allow people to get players that actually want to/are capable of doing them to do it together.

Pretty much this. True we don’t ‘own’ the overflow currently, but its pretty kitten near important we have as few non random in it as Dinks said. Its not necessarily that we don’t want randoms, it that Anets has made it so we have to try to force as many non randoms out (unless they get on external communications like the guild uses, ie. teamspeak), otherwise our likelihood of actually completing the event drops to kitten near zero.

what exactly is your issue with randoms.
this is not to start an argument, its more like tell me exactly why you think most randoms dont work
is it mostly communication?
is it gear?
is it that they dont listen even when communicated?
Is it that what is required is above and beyond the average players skill set?

Mostly i think this problem needs to be solved, but i think first we have to understand the problems.

Conncept.7638:

MRA.4758:

Conncept.7638:

bri.2359:

These events, particularly Wurm, requires a very high level of organisation that the average and / or casual player are simple incapable of or not willing to do.

Bahahaha, ‘organization’, that’s a good one! You have any comedy routines I could see? :P

From this I take you don’t ever have participated in a serious wurm try?

~MRA

You know what they say about those who *ass*ume?

Yes, I did, which is how I came to that conclusion. Dropped in with a bunch of ‘randoms’, we complied perfectly with the event mechanics, had groups clearing mobs quickly and efficiently, had a group constantly DPSing. Hardly anybody going down. Event ended before we even got him below 50%, it’s a mindless DPS check, you could see if you weren’t blinded by your imagined ‘leetness’.

~Idon’tcareaboutyourcrapshootguildtag

perhaps your server attempt wasnt as organized and skilled at doing the event as you would like to believe.

milo.6942:

It’s so like them to over engineer a solution that was previously solved more simply in gw1

the problem is that GW1 had at its basis, a very different system. Nothing was persistant, all the maps that used districts were exactly the same. The idea for GW2 was to actually have dynamic systems where different things were going on. Now, its possible they have thrown out this idea, which makes a district like system more viable

Ellie.5203:

Sarie.1630:

Izaya.2906:

even finding open CoF+CoE maps might be a pain in the kitten

Is it a bad thing if people have to do the event to open it? Bearly anyone does the event any more, and even though you can guest onto a server where it is open currently noone ever wants to so lazily types “opener needed” into LFG.

.

Yes it’s bad… I actually think Pre-events to gain entrance to a dungeon are a stupid idea in the first place.. You have some limited spare time, you want to run COF.. Oh no.. have to waste 15 minutes on a pre-event (that can fail, that you do not want to do in the first place an event that is totally and utterly pointless (loot/Karma/ Yes Yes, can be gained alot faster elsewhere than a dungeon pre-event) before you can even enter.. NO! just NO! Please remove Pre-events from dungeon entrances all together… hate them. always have.. always will.. lol

They just limit your play, Me & friends often make Party and be like “Hey lets do some dungeons” COE/COF Contested ok lets go HOTW instead then, And just dont bother with the other 2 unless they by some miracle happen to be opened by someone else

I dont really agree with destroying dungeon opening, even though i some times find it annoying, because of what that type of thinking means for the game.
essentially means that dynamic events shouldnt effect anything, and no dungeon should be based on player participation in the world, which i think is bad.

However, with the new system, id imagine dynamic event system is going to HAVE to take a really large hit in terms of game design/importance/overall world design. I dont think we will be seeing any of the potential of the dynamic event system realized or expanded with the megaserver system. So you may in fact get what you want.

After all, the biggest sacrifice for the megaserver system is permanence and open world progressions, I dont think they can really do any sort of dynamic events mattering and effecting the world thing, when there will be no agreed upon consistent world. This may in fact be the biggest mistake with the system. Its a pretty big blow to the persistent world.

Naz.2607:

I specifically paid rl money to xfer to the server that I am on SOLELY for the community.

I am an officer in a wvw guild that was established in beta & I do NOT want to potentially share cities/pve world with my wvw enemies OR a bunch of new trolls that my server works particularly hard at getting rid of on a constant basis to maintain the serenity of our pleasant community.

a lot of valid concerns here, perhaps WvW needs its own hub City now, And some more side development overall. WvW is actually one of the main functional cores of the server system. Not considering WvW, they could probably alter the entire system drastically. It might even work out better for WvW.

going back to the issue at hand, and the mega server system.
Perhaps they need a few new organizational units. Perhaps they need to create a new category, lets call it “Community” this filters people together based on a community idea.
Lets say there is a RP community, the RPers join this “community” and get filtered into this community first and foremost.
You could have other communities like Dynamic Event communiity Megaboss Community, Casual communities etc.
they should also allow people to change the order of importance for their filtering.
Some times people want to be grouped with friends most importantly, some times guilds, sometimes communities, etc.

They should also have a join friends system, and they should probably stop adding people to new shards at say 2/3rd of map max. The remaining 1/3 should be reserved for friends. It would be good if this tech allowed them to up the amount of max people on a map, so that they could do something like1/2 full instead. This way there is a lot of spots for say guilds/friends etc to join.

Getting back to the WvW server system. Servers would eventually become primarily WvW focused. This could allow for some better balancing of populations,

But yeah this whole thing is going to be a rocky road, not even sure if it will work out in the end. i suppose we shall see.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

It seems to me that server mergers + underflow servers would have been an easy and better solution without nearly so many issues. My guess is that the Execs and Marketing guys wouldn’t ok mergers since it sends a bad message, so we get this instead.

I guess we will have to wait and see what the next two days of details are, but this seems like an overly complicated way of just merging servers.

server mergers arent a better system. Servers are inherently flawed. The problem is, server system takes say 10000 people, says they are a server, and hopes that those 10k people distribute themselves in ways that make sense. but often that doesnt happen.

So what anet is hoping to achieve, is a system that makes more sense by putting people together based on need. It could in theory solve a whole host of problems. Likle anet is always afraid of spreading players out with new content maps, etc, this system could potentially solve this, meaning no matter how many maps you have, new or old, people are always filtered into ones. Less waste of resources on useless maps.

HOWEVER
there is going to be a lot of problems with this plan, finding people is going to be a huge problem, One of your friends getting filtered out, and having to try to get to him. Communities that need a bit more stability, like RP. The fact that this kind of works against events, dynamic, guild and otherwise.

I mean i can see this being worth it, but it seems like its really going to be in its infancy, and will hurt a lot until they make it better. It also probably will use a fair amount of programmer resources which seems to be at a premium for anet.

Its interesting, but we are essentially going to be playing it by ear for a long time, and in the end it may not work out for this game at all. Well, while its interesting, long as it doesnt get in my way, i dont mind (and this should be anets goal, dont get in the way of playing the game) but id rather see content. Martial Artist class, new zones and new weapons, new overarching quests/story (think personal story, but not a lot better in all respects)

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Sazukikrah.5036:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Sazukikrah.5036:

My query is : "Will we be able to add skin from medium or cloth armor to Heavy armor?
So my Warrior would have Heavy armor on but have skins of medium armor.

No, you’re still limited to only the armor in your type.

Aww… so technically all they really did is add the PVP locker to your inventory / Bank slots now.. It’s still good idea though. Would’ve been cool have my warrior in cloth armor.

Essentially. Yes, it’s just a skin locker that once you unlock a skin you have it permanently now, and it’s shared between pve and pvp. It’s also supposed to have all of the gear skins from across the game. I look forward to filling it… grin

just to clear up this, for those who may not understand what you said.
It unlocks the appearance if you obtain one of the items, which you can pay charges to change into every and any time you make costume change

(just to clearify that you cannot actually use the appearances you unlock without paying a transmutation charge each time)

SkylightMoon.1980:

Jski.6180:

No.
Your more or less asking for ppl to play the way you want and not let them have the freedom to chose how they play.

The philosophy behind play the way you want is really poor tbh because it is a game design that is secretly behind a lot of problems in gw2. Boss encounters cannot be too difficult because then it may force certain players in a group to spec differently to beat them.

Anet can’t make really cool looking skins feel rewarding because they want people to obtain them through playing the game the way they want aka pve/wvw/spvp. How do you do that? Well you make these skins obtainable through a universal currency that underlies each of the gameplay styles(pve/wvw/spvp) and that is gold or crafting materials.

If you combined those two points, you’ll realize that Anet can’t make the average pve content even remotely difficulty because there is no trinity or incentive for players to change their style, and then even if there was, Anet can’t make the rewards super good cuz if they were like a series of unique skins, then spvp/wvw people would complain cuz then they can’t get that skin without playing the game in a way thats out of their playstyle. So you have to make skins obtainable through gold or crafting materials which leads to grind, which then leads to people finding the best possible way to get gold/materials which is through grinding which currently sits at speed running dungeons that are already easy enough, or champ farming for 8 hours.

you are connecting two issues that are not related, boss encounters not being hard has nothing to do with the trinity. You can make hard boss encounters no matter what systems you use.

There are some issues because they have decided to try and have most rewards attainable by any means, and by any plastyle, but that has little to do with trinity.

yep kirito, as a consolation, based on the amount it seems like they are making it available in spvp, its possible they will introduce more ways to obtain charges.

This will make it a lot better for people who just want to change looks once inawhile, but it wont change that much for people who like to change a lot, or RP. It also wont make anet much money if they provide it fairly easily ingame.

So yeah unlock still probably best solution, but if the game hands out transmutation charges fairly easily, at least people will make use of the system, and hunt skins more.

Draknar.5748:

Morrigan.2809:

Draknar.5748:

I think OP doesn’t realize that you get skill points you can use to unlock things starting at level 2.

That should satisfy your “put points into things” fix.

Play a Mesmer sometime and then come back and tell me what you think of no traits until 30 and no grandmaster traits until 80.

I have a Mesmer, I don’t know what you are referring to. I forgot to even put points into her traits while leveling up. I don’t play her competitively I guess, I much prefer Guard or Ele.

you may have forgot, but mesmer gets a lot of power from traits, its like night and day

DiogoSilva.7089:

Justin ODell.9517:

I can totally see why our designers would want the most influential thing (stats) to be locked down.

I can understand that.

However, I also hope that the designers are carefully considering the risks that this change brings/ the problems that this change puts to a clearer light, and are carefully considering a solution for the future.

I don’t mind the lack of jewels, I understand the importance of streamlining, but I don’t want build diversity to decrease due to some stats being in excess/ wasted, while lacking some much-needed others.

This game’s pvp has four means to build stats: traits, runes, amulets and jewels. With this new change, thar number will be reduced to three. Does GW2 needs that many (four) sources for stat building? I agree that it doesn’t. So are jewels really needed? I agree that they aren’t really needed. However, the game should make better use of the three other means for stat building. Because with so many means still remaining, the stat customisation could potentially be higher than what in practice it really is currently.

this patch also lowered the stat distribution from runes. Now there is no stat mixing in runes, you always use all 6 runes. so really they reduced it quite a bit. I also feel the system is still kind of overly complex, in that now when you want to mix stats, you have to do it with your gear selection, but that comes in threes, so for a lot of people its hard to deal with.

If they really wanted to simplify complexity for new users, they would just have stats options be selectable, with some preselected options for you that you can choose to customize. However that would be a totally new system, and not be similar to what people are used to in the game. Also they would probably fear the level of customization from a balance perspective.

Maybe this is what spvp people want so they can get a tighter balance. I really hope none of this type of simplification ever comes anywhere near pve though. I really find it oppressive.

haviz.1340:

phys.7689:

cheesy tactics equal cheesy tactics, i think we can stop pretending we dont know when a fight has become cheesy.
If they design an encounter where kiting is the cheesy tactic than thats a just as much a mistake as if they design an encounter where standing in a corner wins you the fight.

The key is no matter what tactic is used, it should be engaging and require skill to pull off. The NPC should be trying to beat you, not dying to a simple tactic without even trying to change it up.

Almost every encounter can be kited thus cheese’d.

i did not say kiting=cheese
I said kiting can be cheesy if the mechanics make it so.

Draknar.5748:

I like how stacking and DPSing is cheesy, kiting is cheesy, but one character standing still tanking a monster while everyone else DPSs and healer spam heals tank isn’t cheesy, it’s amazing trinity-rich gameplay…

It’s all cheesy guys. All of it.

i agree that trinity is cheesy. I find it amusing that people who love trinity are talking about stacking, when trinity games basically are often about everyone standing in a specific spot for most the fight, and only moving for obvious are you at the keyboard tells, for many encounters.

to make it clear, i dont think stacking is cheesy as a short term tactic, i think that stacking in a corner for the entire fight and only considering optimal DPS is cheesy
I think you should be encouraged to stack at times in some fights.

I think kiting is cheesy when its actually cheesy, not when you have to actively and carefully manage the boss and deal with him trying to screw over your kiting.

I am not making any sweeping statements, like there should never be kiting, and never be stacking. Im saying that the whole fight shouldnt be made comparitively easy, by using comparitively easy tactics.

If this was a fighting game, i would say you shouldnt be able to beat the whole game by doing foot sweeps, or throwing projectiles, not that foot sweeps and projectiles should not exist or work.

Zefiris.8297:

No trinity isn’t boring, it’s the best thing this game did, design wise. Trinity is what is boring.

The mere fact people are still around with this little additional difficult content proves this.

In a trinity statgrind game, people would have gotten utterly bored at this point…and left. It keeps the fights still SOMEWHAT fresh compared to a trinity game.

I sure had to work harder at dungeon fights in this game than in endgame WoW. Trinity isn’t something that makes fight complicated, it’s something that dumbs them down.

(That said, skipping mobs is something that should be fixed. Simple way, have all pre-boss mobs aggro once you aggro the boss)

i think skipping should be allowed, but should be discouraged more by reward, They need to create some bonuses for vanquishing dunegeons, or add some good random drops. They can also give rewards for minimal kills (aka only killing whats absolutely neccessary)

first of all pistol whip USED to be equal to dps on theif, because they were considering how much you can do pistol whip with how long you have to wait for initiative. This is no longer the case. Second of all pistol whip is superior to AA dps on boss fights BECAUSE it gives invulnerability frames. you time it and you can do damage instead of dodging which is more effecient. The point is the thief doesnt want to use pistol whip for CC, he wants to use it for damage/evasion however he cant IF the party is actually trying to CC a specific attack.

you are having a large disconnect here because you are looking at things from only your perspective.

How hard it is to solo Arah is not an indicator of ANYTHING for how the game works for a team. This thread, is mostly about how the game works/can work as a team. Some people are oversimplifying by saying stack and win, but the reality is pugs who know nothing often stack to win, and when it doesnt win, they blame the other players/group comp and join another team, until they successfully stack to win

Pugs stack all the time, i have pugged many times, and the rule of thumb is stack. They stack to beat every boss even when imo its not necessary/effecient. So for MOST of the game, stacking is braindead. Its not just highend speedclears

And you are right they dont stack on kholer, they walk right by him.

Even if Arah and level 49-50 fractals are difficult, that highlights that most of the encounters in the game are not difficult.

Now, you get kittened at me, but i am not disagreeing with you on your overall beliefs, that GW2 has complexity, in some cases. I dont think trinity is the answer. But i dont think the encounter/npc/level design is good where it is at throught the game.

heres where i think we agree
GW2 most the fights are easy, not because the system sucks but because most players run from hard content, and content that they cant cheese.

Teamwork is useful and deep in GW2, but you dont see it in the average PVE meta.

where we disagree is:

I think they need to raise the level of NPC behaviours or level/encounter design to create more interesting fights, like you might see in arah or fractals, and even beyond those two in mechanics, and npc behaviour.

I think the current CC system is flawed and is lowering their options to make fights interesting(for teams), and have people using CC more effectively in high end content .

Afya.5842:

In pve, non- trinity would only work if all classes get the same amount of tools to deal with the enemy.

Anet knows this and hence we have 2 dodges for every single one.

HOWEVER, they also gave certain class vigor, block, reflect, aegis while some classes have none.

That’s fine because the other classes are better in other role. Like debuffing, ccing.

But when more than 1 person is controlling one monster, it would be too OP. So let’s give bosses unshakable & defiant.

Since control now becomes crap, Anet has to address it. How? Certainly not fixing the boss itself but let’s take some IQ of the AI and make them just face tank player’s attack.

But then it would be too easy for players, wouldn’kitten Mobs just stand there and eat AOE. Lets make their attack so high that full tanky armor can’t take more than 2 hits. Also buff their hp to lengthen the fight.

There you have it. The non-trinity system.

what you describe is not the non trinity system.
first of all your premise is incorrect.
A) “In pve, non- trinity would only work if all classes get the same amount of tools to deal with the enemy.”
the non trinity exists in many games, and you dont need to give people the same tools, simply not true.
B) more than one person controlling the mob is not necessarilly OP. Its OP with the current CC design/resistance/encounter design

Im not saying the problems you descrive dont exist, im saying that it lack of trinity has nothing to do with those problems.
They still have to consider everyone CCing the boss in trinity games, because if i could lockdown the boss with 5 CC players, i wouldnt need a healer or dps

haviz.1340:

Cheesy tactics = kiting? Cause at range bosses don’t use most of their abilities.

cheesy tactics equal cheesy tactics, i think we can stop pretending we dont know when a fight has become cheesy.
If they design an encounter where kiting is the cheesy tactic than thats a just as much a mistake as if they design an encounter where standing in a corner wins you the fight.

The key is no matter what tactic is used, it should be engaging and require skill to pull off. The NPC should be trying to beat you, not dying to a simple tactic without even trying to change it up.

Justin ODell.9517:

I think the big reason we need to streamline things and make it easy to pickup is NOT because newbies are dumb or incapable of figuring it out, but rather because PvP is very, very intimidating. Reduction in apparent complexity helps PvP be more approachable and less intimidating.

Also, I can’t undersell the benefits of reducing conceptual complexity for assisting designers achieve balance. We are finite creatures, us humans, and can only hold so many things in our mind at one time. We can create tools to help work around this, but anything that helps make balance easier gets my vote.

problem is, by simplifying the solution, you lessen your ability to solve problems, and accentuate the weaknesses of whatever solution you chose. you lose adaptability.

Essentially you are now requiring even tighter balance by the devs, since there are less options, all of them must be better. Also if there is something wrong/missing the devs now have to add it.
Say it turns out berserker is too glassy due to the new meta, no one uses it at all. its completely wasted till the team can go in there and fix berserker, not to mention since you have already formalized minor/major stat distribution. You really can only change the meta, or create a totally new necklace with more diverse stats.

So in the short term you have bad stat combos that trap unknowing players, less options for players who are familiar with the bad options, and no one can adapt the system until the Devs fix either the meta, or add new necklaces.
In the long term you have devs having to work really hard to balance the meta around available stat combos or having to introduce new necklaces all the time, which creates further option shock, and bad options.

Sometimes making something simpler makes it more complex in the long term, because it isnt very adaptable. It remains to be seen how much of an effect this will have, but i think its a bad idea/trend to try to simplify things all the time, sometimes its great, but sometimes you end up creating more problems that are harder to solve because you have more unchangeable parts.

hendo.1940:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Serenity.6149:

Dual.8953:

I think I’ll restate my point. What these players want is not necessarily trinity. They want to do things like like run support traits in Shadow Arts on a Thief and be considered an asset instead of a burden for it. They also likely despise the fact that the optimal way to play PvE in GW2 is to stack in a “safe” spot, as Dalanor’s videos demonstrate. They crave Active, Dynamic and Frantic combat and the game gives them the tools for it, unfortunately the enemies are too stupid to provide the challenge necessary.

^

This. Every fight boils down to stack on a point and dodge. The game has very high potential combat mechanics, but the fight design has been terrible. The sad thing is too many people still have trouble with the current fight design so I do not foresee the community reacting well to actual challenging content. Right now, even fights like Tequatl and Triple Wurm are not actually difficult; they’re just artificially difficult due to not being able to control who is (or isn’t) participating.

I think a lot of that is due to how exploitable the AI is. AC Spider for example. Before people found out about the AI exploit (idk why this isn’t fixed) it was a very challenging and fun fight.

In fact, the whole if AC is basically done by AI exploits these days.

Would you also say that attacking Lupicus at range in phase 1 is an exploit since he doesn’t kick?

You can’t exploit Kholer, you can’t exploit the graveling bosses at the end, you can’t exploit a single boss fight in AC.

most of the bosses get trivialized, lets be honest here. To get the level of control people get against bosses by stacking, you should have had to actually do something to the boss. It would be fine if via timed use of CC, you could keep a boss in an disadvantageous position, but its kind of lame for bosses to sit there forever till they die.

Now, even though we debate some issues, i dont think we disagree that GW2 battle system provides a decent amount of depth. Most of the fight encounters are currently trivialized though by cheesy tactics.

needs better NPC script algorythyms and better level/encounter design.

Dalanor.5387:

phys.7689:

the problem is that some skills, like pistol whip need to serve many functions

its DPS its also evasion, and its also a stun. So if im asking a theif not to use it, im decreasing his survivability and dps. So a theif is going to say, is your 1/2 second CC worth my dps/survival? and most cases the answer is probably no.

Are you alright mate? You lost your sense.
You even mention the evade in it … You don’t need to sacrficice anything. You won’t be hit, you deal a skrittload of damage and it strips defiant. Win-win-win.

other problem skills are
hilt bash (lose pet damage +50% on next hit)
Chaos storm (random effects)
spectral wall (protection for team)
overcharge shot(dps combined with stability)
counterattack (defensive and DPS skill)
explosive rockets (dps burst)
big old bomb (blast finisher and DPS)
steal when traited for duration decrease (less mug, less hp renewel less other benefits

Try to see the overall picture. Why would you use a GS on ranger? Defensive dps weapon. Thats right. Evade on auto attack, a mobility skill, a block that can be used for an extended time if you are further from the enemy to not attack back and the hilt bash which has it’s uses. Control AND damage. It’s not just one of them. Both. What’s your problem?

Chaos storm is random, that’s the skills problem, not their defensive nature. However as a mesmer you need defense from stealth and clones and Chaos storm does neither.

Spectral wall is a pvp skill, it has multiple uses. You pop it before 2 zerg classes to give protection to the frontliners or force stability on the enemy at choke points or outright fear them everywhere. And its an ethereal field yay!

Overcharge shot CC’s yourself so it’s have issues already.

Now we talk about PvE or not? Rocket turret is non-viable there nor others.

Big ol’ bomb is better for pre-stacking, due to it’s knockdown, but IF you need it, it can be used to remove Defiant mid fight if you stack might again, since the mob won’t move away from the effect.

Still, we talk about PvE, you won’t trait for steal, except with that 5 pt minor in Trickery.

not to mention any trait that benefits from stuns interupts dazes etc is like at best 20% less effective on bosses.

Essentially the system makes you sacrifice utility/damage/defense in exchange for small CC effects.

Its a bad solution imo. That isnt to say there is no teamwork or play involved with using it, its just not a good way of dealing with boss mechanics.

Do we have traits like that?
See above, you get more, than loss usually.
You can’t deal with it in pugs. Got it. Neither of us can, because of random spamming.

edit: Oh i remember, warriors got a Master trait for extra hammer damage on CC’d enemies, but if you dare to use a hammer for dps …

ahh you are missing my point here. The point is in order to properly deal with defiant in a team setting, it requires everyone to either not use their CC causing skills or use them ONLY when the team needs CC removed.

A common practice for example is to remove all stacks, then dont use CC at all until you want to stop an important skill/attack.

So lets say enemy has 5 stacks of defiant your team does 5 CCs which do nothing, then you wait, not using any CC skills. (so you can land the one that matters)
If you were a theif, this means, for the team you CANT use pistol whip until they CC his big skill.
so thief is giving up his best and safest DPS for this fight, so that people can CC the boss every once in awhile. Its not a good trade, and its why 95% of the time no one bothers with actually trying to CC the boss in order to control it.

Dindin.2378:

To add. There is little to look forward to. In other games you always look forward for the next level or levels because you know you will unlock something cool – often skills.

though i think its a bad idea, thats why they are going to lock traits till 30. and make traits all end leveling heavy. And yeah the traits are sometimes even bigger than skills.

When they add weapons(if they add them) they said it would probably be post level 80 unlocks

chemiclord.3978:

You really have a strange idea on how publisher/developer arrangements work.

There IS no “standing their ground.” If NCSoft said, “This is insulting, start over” then Arena.net either starts over, or their games NEVER GET PUBLISHED.

You don’t “stand your ground” with your publisher. You do what they say. Period. They hold ALL the power if they choose to wield it.

not exactly true, but they arent just the publisher, they also own the company

Dalanor.5387:

phys.7689:

also, anet combined CC and DPS skills, which makes many classes use CC or makes them lower DPS to allow some CC.

Can you help me out what do you mean? Only ability came to my mind is Pistol whip, due to the daze it cause, which is actually isn’t bad dps.

the problem is that some skills, like pistol whip need to serve many functions

its DPS its also evasion, and its also a stun. So if im asking a theif not to use it, im decreasing his survivability and dps. So a theif is going to say, is your 1/2 second CC worth my dps/survival? and most cases the answer is probably no.

other problem skills are
hilt bash (lose pet damage +50% on next hit)
Chaos storm (random effects)
spectral wall (protection for team)
overcharge shot(dps combined with stability)
counterattack (defensive and DPS skill)
explosive rockets (dps burst)
big old bomb (blast finisher and DPS)
steal when traited for duration decrease (less mug, less hp renewel less other benefits)

not to mention any trait that benefits from stuns interupts dazes etc is like at best 20% less effective on bosses.

Essentially the system makes you sacrifice utility/damage/defense in exchange for small CC effects.

Its a bad solution imo. That isnt to say there is no teamwork or play involved with using it, its just not a good way of dealing with boss mechanics.

hendo.1940:

It’s possible, even likely, that if every class had some sort of ‘control’ weapon that allowed them to strip defiance off relatively quickly to get a crowd control effect in (in much the same way that multiple controllers in CoH could CC anything; it just wasn’t always easy or for long) then perhaps it would be less of an issue, but right now it’s very chaotic and zergish.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwyRh95-oLA

It’s almost as if GW2 rewards you for intelligently using CC skills and not just spamming them. Defiant doesn’t need to be changed, people need to learn to co-ordinate their CC if they actually want to use control in this game, instead whenever I try doing it in PUG groups you get the ranger point blanking, the engi using big ’ol bomb, the necro just spamming fears over and over again and the guardian using binding blade and pulling for no good reason.

I do use traits. But traits often feel like a DPS who’s specialized their spec in such a way that they can provide minor support or minor whatever else.

It’s not minor support at all. The 10/25/0/5/25 + 5 guardian build isn’t maximum DPS, it’s close to maximum DPS while taking advantage of the spades and spades of support from the virtues line. You get faster cooldown on consecrations, remove three conditions on using your second virtue, longer spirit weapon duration (relevant vs. imbued shaman + alphard), unscathed contender, 3 seconds of stability on using your third virtue and you get 3x might for using f1, regeneration for f2 and protection for f3. Then you’ve got the empowered allies warrior build which takes rending strikes and empowered allies for basically passive buffing and debuffing.

So you basically wind up with a Damage-orientated character with support and control add-ons. Rarely do you feel that Support and Control is the main focus of a character.

Classes like mesmers and guardians are basically taken exclusively for their utility (as in, support and control). If you don’t need them, speed clear groups don’t take them because if you wanted damage you’d just take a thief or ele. So no, I do feel for some classes that support and control are the main features. Mesmer DPS is abysmal but the sheer strength of their reflect skills is why they’re so solid in Arah.

TL’DR pressing 2 buttons doesn’t counts as “Skill”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwyRh95-oLA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X8th4zIVGo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeXr0S3Cdfo

Now lets see your solos? I mean all I’m doing is pressing two buttons, it should be easy to show us yours.

its still a pretty lame concept that treats all CC as equal.
For example, thief can remove more stacks than anyone else, because the game treats a .25 second daze the same as a 3 second daze.

also, anet combined CC and DPS skills, which makes many classes use CC or makes them lower DPS to allow some CC. Its just not a really good adaptive system. Its something they came up with fairly close to release to deal with CC locking of bosses. Its not deep, it doesnt consider class mechanics that well. And its not balanced.

King of Boss CC would be thief, with an ability to remove one stack per 3-4 seconds on demand. And in doing so, every other player has to sit on some of his few skills.

Its not that i dont understand the current CC, its that i realize that in its current incarnation, its benefits are outweighed by its limitations for 95% of boss fights. And even when it is beneficial, a random pistol offhand thief is better at dealing with it than people with full trait lines, runes, and 4 interupt skills on their bar.

also, while i agree there is depth in GW2, i dont think showing solo videos shows how the trinity isnt needed for teamwork.

Wonderly.1324:

Chase.8415:

It was in the ready up video here:

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/3968869

I watched the entire video twice (some parts more) but still missed the part where they specifically said that the skins currently available only through PvP mystic forge crafting will be obtainable in the new rewards system. Would you be willing to refer me to the specific time in the video that lead you to believe this to be the case?

looking at the video, it looks like they wont be aviailable, doesnt look like they have designed them into the gear tracks.

they mentioned that they could add them back via pvp tracks, but not that they currently had them.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Justin had the crux of the reasoning correct – it’s a small tweak to your build that a lot of players could do without. It’s a very small stat change in exchange for another aspect of a PvP build. By removing it, it’s one less thing a new player needs to learn. With runes, sigils, amulets, weapon skills, slotted skills, minor traits and major traits, making a build is a pretty hefty process. Jewels were a very, VERY small % of that overall build.

Trust me, doing focus tests and watching new players play the game, our builds can be very overwhelming. You guys are experts by now, but you have to keep in mind that other players are not as advanced as you are, and removing pieces to the builds allows us to slightly lower the barrier to entry.

Heres the thing about new players, and option shock, its new. they dont know stuff. Thats fine. I understand you guys love of simplification, but its highly overated. Interesting things are complex. If you want to gate newbs, gate newbs, but dont remove options. Now of course, you could say, hey no good players really used these builds, but its not all about the top end meta, thats what some people missed in the thread. Top end players only care about the top end meta, they run fairly similar stat and build combos. But this is not all of your players.

Simplification is old hat, the future lies in creating highly adaptable systems. While you guys are making it easier for new guys, you are making it less free for old hats.

Most people would create a standard system for newbs, and and deeper customization for those who are more experienced, or enjoy that type of thing. Its a bad trend to shove simplification down everyones throat.

Thats why people jail break their iphones, and buy PCs, not everyone want simple options. And it is often these guys who investigate options who evolve games metas/techniques.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

I find that the combat here is really, really, shallow. There’s no point in releasing more dungeons, because given the current combat mechanics, it’ll just be the same old thing with different scenery slapped onto it.

There’s no strategy or tactics here, other than stack in a corner, go zerker, and press dodge once in a while. The mechanics don’t allow for that, so they resort to one shot mechanics, defiant, etc. And you want to know why the current meta is zerker or die? Because it’s the most efficient. If I’m doing one of a handful of dungeons for the 50th time, I want to be in and out as fast as possible. Special snowflake builds just hold that entire process up.

what you are talking about is due to encounter design, not battle mechanics.
enemies swing once every like 4 seconds
Enemies stay in the same place
Unshakable defiant requires 5 CCs for one CC effect.

The combat mechanics are extremely deep, there are 10 ways to skin a cat, and multiple possible ways to deal with any situation.

Encounters are just designed in a way that people exploit simple AI scripts

and lets be honest, as much as people complain, thats essentially what they are asking for with a return to trinity.

Stacking is used as a way to make defense versus damage versus recovery back into a simple equation that people can solve by following optimal rotations and stats.

heres why people stack
Stacking first of all is a control mechanic, like taunting it keeps the enemy in a single controllable place, It makes his damage predictable and consistent, yes you dodge, but you will still take some dmg.

Now that we can control the enemies movements we can once again use recovery
Stacking allows people to “heal” aka ressurect players, and make better use of AOE buffs which reduce dmg on the tank(which is now the whole party)

and DPS, the goal is to kill it before it can overcome your defense/mitigation and recovery.

Stacking is the way in which the trinity is reintroduced. The only difference between stacking and trinity play currently, is that DPS is stronger in the equation. Its still about tanking and recovery, but less so. HOWEVER the lowered max burst DPS drastically, while increasing effecitiveness of healing, which means healing goes up in the stacking formula.

Basically if you want trinity, celebrate stacking because its game style brings the old trinity back to the forefront, at that point they just have to slightly tweak numbers and your trinity will be back.

I will not celebrate it though, because its boring and stupid gameplay. I miss the times before stacking when people would actually move in and out of combat, actively avoid bad techniques. have to adapt to who the enemy was targeting. I hope for bosses to start reacting differently when they are being stacked, react differently to line of sight situations, and use minions to pressure players and force more interesting fights.

But yeah, trinity? crap, just like its bastid child, stacking

MotherKitten.6795:

Things in MMOs have to be hard enough to give you satisfaction when you succeed and easy enough that you don’t get frustrated or feel like its a job you do when your real job is over for the day. I know the pain of waiting an hour for a healer so the squad can start from other games. But there has to be a little challenge in everything to get satisfaction from it. Getting a good squad together, getting a good friends list, getting into a good helpful guild that can help you finish your quests, these can all be satisfying challenges if the difficulty is at the right level.

There is also the issue of choosing a class that gives you an identity. If having an identity is not important than why have so many races and professions. Lots of ppl like being the helpful healer, others like being the tough guy tank who protects everyone. And teenage boys want to be glassy DDers. The trinity helps with having an identity in the game. With GW2 your only choice of identity is furry vs human.

Not once in this game have I heard someone say something like “OMG your such a Mesmer!”. People in other games will remark about how your perfect for a class or how they could tell you play that class from your personality. No one in GW2 says that. No one associates personality with any of the classes. No one talks about certain classes having ppl in them that are different from the ppl playing other classes.

I understand the benefits of not having a trinity. GW2 is also my favorite game. But I honestly think I would like it more with a moderate trinity.

I seen people like that in fractals
Front line tank getting in peoples way
ele running across the room to remove condi or heal someone
peoples personalities come out if they are strongly associated with certain roles. But you know in this game when you see that its because its really who they are, not because its what the game told them to be to get into parties.

also, the ways you go about doing it well, feel a little more interesting. like running for the person to throw a water field, or in WvW jumping into your theif friends shadow refuge. The Dps warrior who uses GS to dodge while doing damage instead of just rolling.

I dunno at its highest levels it feels a lot more interesting. I still think the biggest issue is the game doesnt really require any of that to succeed, so people dont learn it

i dont even sPVP much and ill tell you sPVP NEEDS unique skins, they just dealt a pretty hefty blow to the overall pvp cosmetic system by letting PVE players come in with fancy looks.
They should probably release some PVP only weapon colors (blue/purple flame incinerator maybe?)
as well as a few pvp only remakes of old skins (obviously more than colors, but maybe not major changes to the skins)
Pvp is competitive, and not much way to show your off your experience and rank now.

IndigoSundown.5419:

It’s amazing to me that people can be so out of touch with what can actually happen in GW2 group content with good players who understand their profession and the game’s combat. Hendo gets it. Others seem embedded in the old paradigm where roles were dictated by choice of class/profession and gear. GW2 roles are flexible, change from encounter to encounter and are not bound to gear (which is why gear that increases damage is seen as superior). Do people really think that a change in paradigm could be accomplished without changing the way roles worked?

What is boring about GW2 is that the group content has been around for 19 months, with the exception of one TA path (months old now), a few additions to FotM and a revamped AC that is “only” 14 months old. That is not due to lack of trinity, it is due to ANet’s focus on herd encounters in the persistent world, which has its own problems.

this is the real truth. Battles in GW2 could be super deep, the mechanics and synergies are actually stronger than most trinity games. However the encounters are still pretty basic, and they dont fail you.

As Nike mentioned its more a matter of how long rather than can you.

And to be honest people hate can you win, they expect to always win.

The best part of the trinity was it was fairly simple for each player, but made them feel like they were awesome. At the end of the day it was really just an equation that could be predetermined by gear, but people felt like they were winners who just did something really complex.

jihm.2315:

Ansau.7326:

jihm.2315:

yes because i have played for a year it would be different after 5 seconds of fighting with a mesmer around , torment, stacks of bleed, confusion and daze, seems legit..

If you come with these arguments, don’t expect people to take you seriously.

Every profession has its strengths and its weaknesses, just learn to deal with them. Mesmers are not harder than any other profession.

PD: Thank god you didn’t start playing at game release. Back then, mesmers were stronger than now.

what exactly is the weakness of mesmer in spvp?

the problem with mesmer for spvp, is you get no points for annoying other people.

Can a mesmer survive and hold points better than a tanky build on other classes? no
(even the type of tricks that annoy you, people learn how to defeat)

Can a mesmer place more conditions faster than another class? no. Mesmer actually has a pretty low rate of condition application, and against better players, their condition application actually lowers (dodging clone explosions is a pretty big tell)

Can a mesmer roam? haha no, slowest out of combat speed on the map

Can a mesmer Burst a target down? nope

Can a mesmer support a party nope

Can a mesmer control the enemy better than other control builds, sadly no. They dont have as many CC per minute as warrior or engie id have to check ele.

can a mesmer deny area?
nope

So yeah though a mesmer kittened you off, and you cant deal with his tricks, he aint really doing nothing except killing you slowly. Imagine once you know his tricks, then he wont be able to do anything to you at all.

Narthexia.1836:

One thing I don’t get is.. people keep saying the game is all about customization and design. But it isn’t, it’s very very limited. Endless repeats of armor looks, repeats for multiple levels. Very small amount of unique items you have to do unique things to get. Why is all the temple armor cosmetically the same regardless of which temple? Everything is different name, different stats, same looks.

And of course the trench coats..

The only customization GW2 gives that exceeds other games is the dye system, which is lovely.

there is actually a fair amount of looks, unfortunately medium is one of the most repetive in overall looks. looks like each weight class has approximately 44 different armor sets

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Human_female_medium_armor

some of them few people like, some of them no one knows exists. People generally only opt for one best look because of cost of changing.

I wouldnt hold my breath, Their pvp tech reduced stats and combinations, supposedly so there is less data, so from a basic data stance, they seem to be no closer.
Of course that maybe marketing speak, but thats what they said.

Not only that but pvp apparently uses a different info for stats. Our actual stats arent considered.

the major issue with build templates, they havent tackled, is the equipment factor. Ideally a template system should also swap gear (since build is heavily gear based in this game) but a gear swap system would kind of needs equipment to be stored in seperate inventory, or have stats as unlocks. Either system seems like its not something they have considered yet, and neither works perfectly with transmutation system, though they could kinda fit in.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Badger.8015:

I have a question that has probably been answered, but I have yet to find an answer :P

Scenario: I am an RPer, so during an ‘RP session’ I may change outfits multiple times. Starting with 1 outfit, going to a 2nd, then maybe going back to the first outfit.

So, in this scenario, am I paying charges twice (for the 2 separate outfits) or three times (for each change)?

If its charge-per-change, I will be extremely angry lol

edit: All my armour currently has the same stats.. So they are currently all interchangeable in the current system.

So, I presume you now have multiple armours in your bags, who all have different looks? Nothing will change. Your armours will still be in your bags, all with their own looks.

The difference will be when you buy a new armour set and want to transmute it to a different look. Instead of buying a second armour set with the looks and then use a tranmsutation stone/crystal to exchange the looks, you’ll go to the wardrobe and add the look there. In short, you’ll save money/karma because you don’t need to buy a second set just for the looks.

you still have to buy the armor for the looks to unlock it. Its only after you have gotten the item at least once that you can use the wardrobe to transmute to it.

lordkrall.7241:

Osculim.2983:

Looks like only people who pvp gets rewarded. First you get free charges acording to your rank and now unique skins aswell if this is gonna be true. This seems a bit unfair to people who don’t like to pvp.

You mean just like how PvE:ers get free charges for completing maps?

we dont really know if this will continue to be the case. Time will tell