Just fix the res/rally mechanics. They give too much survival to larger groups and make it nearly impossible for a smaller more skilled/coordinated team to chip away and eventually defeat a much larger group.
^^ This would solve a good chunk of the problems. Removing them both all together however would practically solve it. We’d see a much different look in the standings if this were the case.
I highly doubt they would remove it since it’s a big “feature” of this game.
They could make it far more limited/reasonable in WvW though. No in combat ressing of fully dead players, DR on the healing some one gets when downed (I can get people up from downed while being hit by ac’s etc far too easily), 1:1 ratio for rallies on kills (the current rally system is why random people get told to go away from hardcore guild groups), etc.
^Not new ideas. No clue why they haven’t been explored more either.
Yep the 2 biggest problems with WVW wrt zergs are due to:
AOE cap
downed state/rallying
Anet claims they can’t remove the AOE cap for tech reasons (even though DAOC, a 10 year-old game, handled more players per chunk and it did it without any AOE cap…).
Downed state/rallying is something they could and should do something about though.
Another positive change would be better base defenses for towers/keeps, eg: spawned ACs.
Interesting list. I agree with three of them, but I disagree that the downed state adds nothing to the game. A lot of times, I actually used the downed state as part of my strategy. I know I’m going to go down at a certain point and I position myself in such a way where I can rally. I find fighting back from the brink more exciting than just dying.
I find fighting back from a sliver of health left to be far far more exciting and rewarding than rallying because someone tagged with AOE died 900m away. In games without downed state, you would still try to die in a position where your teammates could rez you, there just wouldn’t be these farcical rallies.
I guess you don’t solo as much as I do. There are times, living in Australia, when there is no team. It’s me out in the world. Rallying, at that point, becomes a life saver. Running back from a way point is pointless and annoying.
There’s not always going to be someone to rez you.
I should have qualified that my inclusion of DS as a design mistake pertains solely to PVP/WVW. I think DS is fantastic in PVE. I should have said i’m a WVW-only player, apologies.
Interesting list. I agree with three of them, but I disagree that the downed state adds nothing to the game. A lot of times, I actually used the downed state as part of my strategy. I know I’m going to go down at a certain point and I position myself in such a way where I can rally. I find fighting back from the brink more exciting than just dying.
I find fighting back from a sliver of health left to be far far more exciting and rewarding than rallying because someone tagged with AOE died 900m away. In games without downed state, you would still try to die in a position where your teammates could rez you, there just wouldn’t be these farcical rallies.
Also, skill capturing was annoying, one of the reasons that Anet sold skill unlock packs. Not everyone liked running around the world to get a skill
I agree – it would have been a good thing to monetise. I really miss the way mobs would use player skills on you when fighting, it made earning the skill so much more rewarding.
I don’t think there’d be many (any?) people who played GW1 who don’t feel that a number of design mistakes were made in GW2.
My list:
Downed state in PVP zones. Adds nothing to the game but detracts a lot. It’s annoying, disrupts the flow of combat, introduces imbalance and farcical rally situations.
Fixed weapon skills. Far too restrictive for me, pigeonholes weapons into roles & can causes whole weapons to be ruined because of just 1 bad skill.
No resource system. Has caused GW2 combat to be all about spamming skills/dodges.
Removal of skill capturing (signet of capture). One of the best & debatably most game-defining features of the first game, I cannot fathom the logic of why it was elided from GW2.
Addition of ascended gear after release. Massive PR blunder. Pushed the game into a grind corner it has yet to escape from.
Elemental Atunement … probably should be baseline.
Yes this is the only thing that makes sense, EA is a class-defining trait.
Their goal was to decrease the dependence of Eles on water and arcane but all they’re doing to making 20+ water 20+ arcane the bare minimum instead of 15+ water 20+arcane, the exact opposite of their intended goal. It’s kittening kittened.
Bringing the game closer together is something we’re actively working on accomplishing. We’ll be able to spill the beans on everything early next month. (I feel like a broken record at this point.)
When will you guys learn that dumping a big set of changes into the game without any kind of vetting or review process involving player feedback is the surest way to deliver bad content and kitten players off.
Edit: As a note, it’s reassuring to see some of the things we’re working on included in the lists.
Aligning development with existing players is of course important, but IMO your main focus should be on making sPVP appealing to non-players, and IMO rewards/handouts and small tweaks aren’t going to cut it, you need to make serious, systemic changes, and Anet’s history on making systemic changes is a long way from great.
The changes planned at the Dec 10th update do not make the Ele better (see discussions about Elemental Attunement, Renewing Stamina & especially Cleasning Wave on the Ele forums), it could even be the cause for more Water & Arcana heavy builds.
Requoting for the absurdity of it – moving the best & most required traits in water and arcane higher in water and arcane to reduce the need to spec high water and arcane, clearly a brilliant strategy…
Ele suffers from the same problem it has always suffered from since launch:
staff totally pidgeonholed into support and bunkering
focus significantly weaker than O/H dagger
stupidly-designed skills on sceptre: fire auto, dragon’s tooth, water auto, shatterstone
requirement to spec in arcane for class to be minimally playable
horrible utility balance: glyphs, signets, conjures all useless
horrible trait balance: fire & earth lines useless
numerous joke traits throughout all trees (all classes suffer this, but Ele most of all)
consequently, virtually no build diversity: fresh air GC gimmick build or high water/arcane, those are your choices
new issues created since launch:
D/D roaming killed, nerfed in 5 consecutive (un)balancing patches
increased requirement to spec in 20+ water/20+ arcane due to moving the 2 most required/class-defining traits to master level.
It’s pretty clear what Anet has to do in order to avoid bs from this season. Firstly, don’t do seasons at all. Secondly, no rewards what’s so ever. Thirdly, don’t publish the kitten schedule. Forthly, freeze all server transfers. Fifty, stop all player to player gold and item trading. This will ensure that WvW will get the proper and respectful fights.
The real problem is the business model Anet has employed. Bots have abused it, TP speculators have abused it, and now regular WvW are abusing it.
Don’t be so naive… a large chunk of why the league was even created was specifically to increase income from server transfers.
downed state is amazing. people who are complaining about it are just too lazy to find ways to deal with it.
way to miss the point… “dealing with it” is not the problem…. for anyone.
the problem is most people hate it or recognise that its inclusion results has far more negative effects than positive.
when a “feature” is widely disliked and mechanically detracts from the gameplay more than it adds, why keep it? especially when sPVP has had plenty of high-profile features thrown at it and it’s still regarded so poorly.
All this hate on downed state… personally I think it adds depth to the combat, in how you handle the various classes downed states.
As I said, it introduces a host of balance issues without really adding anything to the combat.
It reduces depth because of the requirement to stop fighting in order to stomp, the need to devote at least 1 utility and/or trait slot to a stability/blind/stealth skill in order to stomp, and then there’s the ludicrous rally mechanics, which only serves to kitten people right off.
Downed state is an anti-feature — it adds nothing to PVP but detracts from it in numerous ways. It creates new balance problems, breaks the natural flow of combat, and just looks and feels wrong.
It is no exaggeration to say it’s the worst PVP “feature” I’ve experienced in 20+ years of PVP gaming.
removing downed state/rallying (or making it optional in CAs) is the single biggest improvement possible IMO
conquest is not a good game mode for PVP (patently obvious for some time now…)
open up a test server and trial stuff earlier with players before ramming it down our throats in a finished/final state (and then failing spectacularly because it misses the mark)
lack of skill choice/build diversity/trait balance is still pretty appalling after 12months
still way too much RNG
still way too many auto-aimed attacks
gameplay still way too spammy (probably unfixable due to no resource system)
The most concerning thing for me is the complete lack of willingness to change in the face of 12 months of continued & abject failure to gain any traction for sPVP with players.
100b is like the charge-up attacks you find in fighting games. It’s very difficult to land it, but if you do, your target is in for a world of pain.
It’s one of the few skills in the game which I think has a good risk to reward ratio.
Couldn’t disagree more – 100b is a terribly-designed skill. Any channelled melee dmg skill that roots its caster IMO is anathema to the kind of fluid, reactive gameplay you want in a game like GW2.
the devs want this trait to be versatile, and it WILL be versatile, imagine this- Youre a full glass s/d ele and you ahve 30 air 30 earth. you have diamond skin. for your opener, NO WEAKNESS, NO BLIND, NO IMMOB/crip/chill!!!!!!! thats amazing! the -25% would not make this happen!
1 stray arrow/projectile or melee auto and this 30 point trait becomes 100% useless.
It will be OP vs condi specs and totally useless in any engagement of 3+.
IMO the only thing axe needs is +300 range added to the Axe Traiting trait (ie: 900 range when traited).
the scaling on the auto is maybe a little low but IMO the rest is fine, the biggest issue with axe is that it’s not sufficiently differentiated from dagger M/H. The traited range buff addresses that.
The key thing to understand here is that every character in GW1 had 2 professions simultaneously, ie: Ele/* as well as */Ele, so the range of potential builds and playstyles was orders of magnitude more diverse than GW2.
I think conquest is a terrible gametype, and I think if they had consulted/tested more widely before launching with it, PVP might not be in the sorry state it’s in.
I think the challenge for the PVP team is to be a lot more open & experimental with game mode testing to find out what works, and not to be too dogmatic and dismissive of unconventional/untested ideas that go against the grain.
Case in point: the entire MOBA genre, Team Fortress 2, CS (among others) were all game modes created by players not professional game designers per se.
Anet even already have support for trial modes in the form of Custom Arenas, which to date have been another failed experiment IMO primarily because the options are so limited.
I agree 100% regarding CTF. Push is far superior than pull. Rift had a CTF map and I had repeated to them that they needed to change the format from capture the flag to push the flag.
The analogy I used is this: how much fun would it be if, in football, the ball was snapped to the quarterback and he ran away from the line of scrimmage to score?
Hah! We use the same analogy internally….because in american football, you have to take the ball THROUGH the other team, you don’t run away from them.
The problem with “push” (PTF) vs “pull” (CTF) is that push is inevitably zergy, and no amount of secondary objective mechanics can change that.
Multiple, independent (or loosely-coupled) “flags” would work better in this game (IMHO). The best candidate here (again IMHO) are enhanced versions of regular player weapons, eg artefact weapons, that have to be brought to an objective in unison, eg: 4 artefact weapons spawned, 3 brought to inside scoring area to score.
With 8 players per side, 4/3 objectives gives 2-3 players per objective per side on average, a good number for GW2 IMO.
The main points here are:
multiple push objectives
using “enhanced” versions of regular weapons as the push objectives
If you want AOE CC, bring a hammer. If you want burst or DPS, bring an axe or a greatsword.
then, clearly, you should:
improve axe to not suffer so much at range (eg: better gap closing or better ranged attack or better at pinning target, eg: halve the dmg on evis but double the leap range and add a daze).
stop 100b from self-rooting and tune down the damage to compensate. 100b instagibs (or any other kind of instagib ability for that matter) are a bad idea in a competitive game anyway.
I was excited until I realised I’ll still have to spec 20+ arcane (for Ele Attunement) and 20+ water (for Cleansing Water) in every Ele build worth a kitten . The proposed changes achieve the exact opposite of their intended purpose – before I only needed 20+ arcane/15+ water.
I think it’s a real mistake to make Elemental Attunement master level – it’s a class-defining trait and IMO entirely nullifies the point of the changes which is ostensibly to make Ele’s less dependent on arcane.
Personally I think Ele attunement buffs should be baseline, but not AOE, then reintroduce the AOE Ele attunement functionality via a master-level trait.
CTF variant idea using uniquely GW2-style powerups: special artefact weapons that grant the wielder the usual skills for that weapon but with a twist, eg:
a greatsword that grants +20% regular dmg for 5sec on taking damage
a longbow that grants a burst of +50% speed every 10sec
a staff with a heal aura and converts a condition->boon every 10sec
a dagger that randomly procs 2sec stealth and smoke fields
and so on. Lots of potential ideas here.
Only classes that can natively use a given weapon can pick it up, eg: GS -> warrior/guardian/mesmer/ranger, dagger -> ele/necro/thief/ranger.
Game type I am thinking of is a CTF/moba hybrid in which 4 of these artefact weapons (randomly selected) are set around the map, protected and wielded by mobs (pacing). Players have to bring 3 of these weapons to a (largeish) central area to score a point. Being killed with an artefact weapon drops the weapon to be picked up by any class that can wield that weapon, or the weapon respawns elsewhere if not picked up within 10sec.
Players spawn in an armoury and can freely select & switch weapons prior to leaving spawn. To pick up an artefact weapon, players must be wielding the same kind of weapon.
I really feel particle effects being over the top are holding back viewers.
Many of us have the same opinion, though I’m not sure which team has that as a work item, and at what priority.
IMO, it’s downed state. Downed state is IMO game-breakingly bad on numerous levels, not least of which being that it’s a complete departure from PVP norms & adds nothing to the game but problems.
DS has spawned hundreds of hate threads since BWE1, sure the frequency has died down a lot but very clearly it’s a major PVP turnoff. It’s still the main reason I won’t touch sPVP in this game with a barge pole.
The general lack of player choices/build diversity is bad but it’s secondary to a PVP mechanic that I truly hate.
Right now I am thinking 85% on diamond skin as high health eles could break this at 80% imo.
There is another alternative:
instead of 100% immunity go for something along the lines of: 75% condition duration reduction while above 75% health
Personally I’d still prefer to see GM traits be actives not passives, eg: reflect a condition on attuning to earth, earth attunement is recharged when afflicted by a condition when not in earth attunement, 6sec CD
If you think about it, 90%/ 85% health makes the trait very active, because it demands from the elementalist to actively prevent as much damage and heal as often as possible to maintain it.
Yes I don’t mind it… the things I dislike is that it’s a powerful effect (unmitigated 100% immunity) which is mostly passive. It has zero effect below 85% health.
In short, it will be OP versus strong condi specs 1v1 and virtually useless in anything bigger than 3v3, definitely not a good way to go IMO.
My suggestion is a similar theme, more active than passive, scales well with skill, and encounter size, and adds more arcane dependence in the style of fresh air.
Right now I am thinking 85% on diamond skin as high health eles could break this at 80% imo.
There is another alternative:
instead of 100% immunity go for something along the lines of: 75% condition duration reduction while above 75% health
Personally I’d still prefer to see GM traits be actives not passives, eg: Reflect 1 condition on attuning to earth, earth attunement is recharged when afflicted by a condition when not in earth attunement, 6sec CD
Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits.
Thing is, if Elemental Attunement is master level, a very large proportion of Eles will feel compelled to spec 20+ arcane, and if you’re 20 into arcane, you might as well get Evasive Arcana as well, and we’re back where we are now.
A better solution IMO would be either:
make a caster-only version of Elemental Attunement baseline to all Eles, and make an AOE trait for it in its place.
to redistribute Elemental Attunement’s bonuses among all 4 elements, replacing or combining with the existing 5pt traits.
I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier
Sure, but IMO Ele is not Ele without Elemental Attunement and refactoring/rethinking that change is the single most important thing in all the proposals after the switch timer reduction.
There actually is counter play to [Diamond skin] unlike some other similar mechanics. The goal of the elementalist with this trait is to stay above 90% hit points while the counter play is to do a bit of physical damage to the elementalist to drop them below this threshold in order to get the conditions rolling on them, which will in turn help keep them below that threshold.
In SPvP an elementalist can reach a maximum of around 20,000-21,000 hit points. This means that 2100 would be the most damage you would need to do to an elementalist to break through this trait and in most cases it would be a lower amount than that. That is not very much damage needed to do in order to start applying conditions. This still leaves room for the elementalist using healing traits/skills and kiting to try to stay above that threshold to increase their survivability vs conditions.
We have been doing internal testing and it feels like it in a good place for a tier 3 trait. That being said though and as a reminder, none of these changes are set in stone yet and are subject to change.
Bear in mind that your proposed Diamond Skin is, by definition, useless 90% of the time.. at least a fair number of players will see it that way.
I can’t see relying on staying at 90+% health as a reliable strategy for condi control as in practise, Eles spend most if not all of a fight <90% health, under which circumstances this trait does nothing.
Not a good trait at the GM level IMO. GM traits IMO should be spec-defining, and this trait certainly doesn’t do that.
Water V – Cleansing Wave: It’s one of the very few condition removals an elementalist has. And for it to be effective he still has to put a lot of points into arcana for it to be good. Even after the buff to the elemental cooldown it would mean you can only remove 1 condition every 13 seconds. Which is not extremly great for a master tier trait.
Arcane V – Elemental Attunement and Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina: Yes 1 should be moved to a master tier but not both, each one of those traits are almost an essence to have on an elementalist. My suggestion would be to put Arcane VI into the master trait, that way elementalists still have the choice to pick between a slightly less effective endurance regen traits such as Arcane VII ( vigorous scepter ) if they would only put 10 points into arcana.
Earth VII: I would honestly put this into the adept trait tier. Elementalist has very little ways to deal condition damage, for it to work they have to stack into toughness for it to be effective, meaning they would lack a lot into vitality and other departments. There are a lot of better traits to take into earth and personally I would never take that trait, not even if it was in the adept trait line.
The above is IMO pretty spot on.
Arcane V/VI
Reducing arcane dependence vis a vis attunement CD is very needed, but you can’t move both Arcane V and VI to master tier because most (PVP-oriented) Eles will then once again be forced to spec 20 Arcane because they are such important PVP traits. Once you have 20 Arcane, you might as well spec 30 for EA and we’re back where we started. Move one but not the other.
Fire III – Ember’s Might “The effect of this trait has been changed to Burns you apply last longer. 25%”
Not a great change IMO because Ele can already maintain close to 100% burning uptime solely with signet of fire with +duration%. What kills condi Ele is lack of frequency of application, not condi length per se, therefore a better change IMO would be: “Reduces the CD of all skills that apply burning by 25%”
Earth XI – Diamond Skin This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%
IMO not great, Eles spend too much time below 90% for this to be worth considering. IMO rethink entirely. eg: Attuning to earth grants a buff that reflects the next condition. Recharges earth attunement when afflicted by a damaging condition when not in earth attunement. 6sec CD.
I don’t think the LOD levels are strong enough – even on the lowest LOD, I still find there is far too much effects noise. Combined with inflexible UI, specifically miniscule condition/buff icons I can’t relocate or scale, I find the game UI one of the worst I’ve played, especially for PVP.
I think dividing skills between weapons was a failure, personally, and weapon switching and other such bar-swapping mechanics feel more clunky than complex and engaging. So many classes have weapons I only really want to use one or two skills in, and with only five per weapon set up, even if there’s only one dud it bothers me having that wasted skill sitting there. Plus, traits often focus your build on certain weapons making the secondary feel like something you’re “stuck” in until you swap back to your “main” weapon considering there’s a CD on weapon swapping.
The one thing that is nice about it, is having some versatility when it comes to range, but I don’t feel that makes up for the flaws. I’m not against multiple weapon sets if they could fix it up though, but the way they implemented it hasn’t panned out IMO.
There are too many CDs as well, every class but thief feels too similar due to this. Class choice becomes a matter of power/practicality or aesthetics/theme, and sadly some of the classes I like the latter of don’t cut it when it comes to the former. Having only one auto-attack/no-CD attack with the rest being CDs of often considerable length was a really poor idea. If a weapon has a fail auto-attack it can really ruin the rest of the weapon considering you know, everything else is on CD – making it more of a utility stick that you swap out of ASAP after popping the useful CDs on it.
Then there are utilities which vary, the short CDs can add a lot to a class giving them less time sitting on auto-attack or forcing them to switch weapons to keep doing decent damage or whatever. But some classes are really locked into a passive or two which again, with only 5, even having one that just sits there being a boon most of the time reduces complexity dramatically. And some are just excessively long, I’d take all 40 seconds or lower CDs for utility if I had decent options for such on every class if I could.
And last but not least, too many skills are quick and easy. . Building up power and/or creating opportunity to use more powerful abilities is mostly absent from GW2 and it feels spammy. Combos only go so far and many classes can’t smoothly/efficiently create them without weapon swapping – and even then some aren’t worth bothering with. Very little high risk high reward feeling. While a few classes w/certain weapons/traits are better than others when it comes to this admittedly, because of how quick and easy most other classes’ abilities are some of the high risk high reward skills just feel like extra work for the same result.
Overall, the combat just feels shallow and a significant part of that is of course the skill system and many of the individual skills across the classes. I’m sure almost everyone has skills they dislike using or don’t use for various reasons, but are stuck having on their bar because of the weapon system.
I think this is pretty accurate. MMO skills need to have a cerebral aspect to them and for me that’s where GW2 falls down hard. The theorycrafting aspect just isn’t there, which is pretty kitten disappointing given that that was the strongest feature of the first game.
The other thing I think that’s really missing is choice – I completely agree, fixed weapon skills were a really bad idea. Traits don’t really cut it because they’re either too ineffectual and/or too narrowly-defined to feel like they expand the range of choice and bizarrely, if anything, feel like they reduce the amount of choice.
Well, they said it’s because they didn’t want whack a mole balancing, but IMO this game has just as much whack a mole balancing except the rate of balancing is far slower.
Please allow us to move the minimap to the left of the map (so I can have chat and minimap to the left). I am blind on the right and it makes navigating very difficult.
I don’t know how much more I have to ask. T_T The UI was modular in GW1 and that made it one of the most accessible games that I’ve played. All I’m asking for is to move the minimap to the opposite corner.
Quoting because it deserves to be read. The ability to customise game UIs is critical.
couldn’t disagree more. Auto-attacks are terrible design, and one of the key reasons why this game is so spammy and unappealing to watch.
The game needs more aimed abilities/skill shots if anything… too much stuff is auto-aimed.
well, you cant remove autoattack completely and this is one of the solutions how to make them less spammy, easier to avoid their main dmg and overall make them less valuable
well, there’s no technical reason they couldn’t turn off auto-attack completely as various other MMOs have done it, to great success, eg: Rift.
Still yet to find anything as effective as 0/10/0/30/30 with 3x cantrips and the sylvari racial Take Root. Tune your attack/defense stats to your own comfort level and away you go.
If you’re looking for evenly matched fights in a smaller environment without NPCs or structures in your way, I’ve got good news for you: that already exists, and it’s called sPvP.
except for the fact that sPVP sucks, and WVW small man roaming is far more fun and challenging.
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