downed state is bad for PVP
(edited by scerevisiae.1972)
I’d suggest thief, warrior or necro. Don’t listen to people who say thief is bad in a zerg – strong AOE, spammable blast, high mobility and on-demand burst.
downed state is bad for PVP
It’s a simple fix: add a LOS check, and it should have been fixed months ago.
That’s a horrible idea for a fix. Arrow carts shouldn’t need a line of sight since they are dropping out of the sky. You should be able to lob Arrows over a wall and pray you hit stuff from a defensive perspective.
If they add a LOS check then AC’s would be pointless because they would have to be placed to close to the front of the wall. Like trying to cast Ele Ground target AE’s. 1 Balista would just wipe out every AC placed on a wall.
By LOS I mean:
- a LOS check from camera position to ground target, combined with a slight elevation of camera from current, and
- a collision check with geometry on hit, so that AC fire can’t go through roofs.
downed state is bad for PVP
I wish the GVG scene here would evolve to be more like how it was in DAOC – roaming 5/10/15-man groups that took on whatever it encountered (except for fights in progress). That way regular WVWers and GVGers all get what they want.
downed state is bad for PVP
It’s a simple fix: add a LOS check, and it should have been fixed months ago.
downed state is bad for PVP
any class on an AC > all classes.
IMO the classes are pretty well-balanced in WVW.
Some think thieves are bad at zerging but it really isn’t true – great AOE, spammable blasts, spammable AOE poison & weakness, good utility.
downed state is bad for PVP
You were supposed to be amazing GW2… what the kitten went wrong?!!??
lots of design fails, basically, eg:
- no resource system (rewards spamming, simplified combat)
- shallow build system (fixed weapon skills, huge trait & skill imbalances, strongly linked systems, general lack of choice)
- single, uninteresting pvp mode
- downed state (not fun, numerous problems/imbalances)
- AOE cap of 5 (rewards zerging)
- slloooooowwww balancing (which turned out to be whack-a-mole anyway)
- excessive particle effects (game looks like a mess to casual observers)
- huge level of divergence from previous game
- unwillingness to incorporate feedback, generally contemptuous attitude to players
downed state is bad for PVP
Can we have a devs answer to why we don’t have free allocation of traits 1year after game’s release? Is it too much asking for choosing every single trait (minor and major)? Didn’t we have this the first couple of beta weekends? Why did it change? Why do you give use presets when it comes to traits AND amulets? I want to build my own character, not taking your presets.
Because they would rather run the game into the ground than listen to players? It’s obvious they still think their design is brilliant and it’s the players that don’t get it.
downed state is bad for PVP
At this point, GVG in WVW maps shows far more promise compared to anything stPVP has to offer.
downed state is bad for PVP
Honestly GW2 is pulling a Gears of War: Judgement. If the devs keep making “their” game, then they will be the only ones left to play it besides the people who payed to autoattack their way through just about the easiest PvE content imaginable.
Everyone has their opinions of course on why this game has failed to deliver on the PVP side but I think the above statement is pretty uncontestable. It’s been clear for a long time now that whoever makes the design decisions in Anet doesn’t rate player viewpoints very highly because the same ciriticisms of the game keep coming up again and again (lack of choice/weak traits/weak skills, downed state/rally, lack of WVW content/single pvp mode, slow/bad balance decisions) but nothing really changes, the game continues to lurch along on its own trajectory.
It’s not that surprising, if your customers have all paid up front & you’re not beholden to your customers for a subscription, then there’s no financial compulsion to listen to the demographic that isn’t doing the spending.
downed state is bad for PVP
DAOC’s Darkness Falls was a masterstroke on multiple levels.
GW1 had the same concept and, to put it lightly, it was a terrible idea and was shelved.
PvE’rs don’t want to have to wait/deal with PvP to do PvE.
PvP’rs don’t want PvE’rs clogging up queues to “get the leet dungeon!”.If you put anything of worth inside of said dungeon, you exasperate the problem (OS is bad enough with all the tears and q.q it produces over simple things like kites). Considering that GW1 is years younger than DAoC and existed amongst the modern generation of gamers… well, you get my point.
DAOC was released 4 years before GW1… In DAOC, DF was a massive success, no reason to think it would be any less successful in today’s market.
GW2 already has the foundation of a Darkness Falls – just extend the existing jumping puzzle instance.
downed state is bad for PVP
^ doesn’t explain the level of inaction over the past year. IMO the game designers simply think their game design is beyond reproach and that players just don’t “get it”. Meanwhile, in reality land, barely anyone does sPVP and players continue to complain about the same things.
downed state is bad for PVP
the entire trait system is in need of some serious revision
I agree with you there.
I also agree. The game would have been so much better with no trait tree and a pool of skills for each weapon from which players could choose.
Pooling all the 5/15/25 traits into 3 buckets from which you could choose would be a good first step towards giving players more meaningful build choices. Another obvious candidate for improvement would be allowing players to equip another utility in the elite slot as a lot of classes have really crappy elites and/or elites that don’t fit into builds at all.
Instead of being so conservative with changes at this point I’d say it would benefit the game a lot more if bolder changes and balance changes were made more regularly because let’s face it: the ultra slow approach is still producing huge metagame changes and tons of bugs/imbalances are slipping through.
downed state is bad for PVP
(edited by scerevisiae.1972)
I agree that the game play is different. I don’t agree that this game takes some kind of amazing skill to be good at. It’s actually one of the easiest MMORPGS I have ever played. As a matter of fact I grew bored of it after a few months. Same limited number of skills, same combos. Only thing that takes more skill is timing your dodges. I would argue other MMORPGS with 3 or 4 times the number of skills to use, as well as more CC possibilities to use or counter take much more skill.
No offense intended here, this game is fun. But don’t delude yourself into thinking this game takes huge amounts of skill. I say just the opposite. Just an opinion of someone with 16 years of MMORPG experience, and pretty much pvp’d extensively the last 10 years of that time. I grew so bored of this game’s mechanics so quickly. I’d rather play a good FPS competitively than this game – and I believe said FPS genre take more skill to be good at than GW2.
Pretty much exactly what I was going to say. Comparing this game to other games i’ve played competitively I’d say more than anything this game lacks diversity and depth — skills and classes are too similar and traits don’t really change enough to keep things interesting. Fixed weapon skills was a really poor idea, as was the greatly watered-down concept of elites relative to this game’s predecessor.
Compare this game to, say, TF2: TF2 has effectively 2 skills per class yet there is greater gameplay depth in TF2 and the classes play completely differently than each other. Another comparison from WOW: the 3 talent trees in that game drastically change how a class plays – not so with traits in this game.
Weak traits and lack of choice in skills are the problem. No amount of promotion can float a badly-designed game.
downed state is bad for PVP
(edited by scerevisiae.1972)
I’m not against having more PvE stuff in WvW, but it needs to be meaningful and relevant. If we have more mob generation it needs to be in response to something going on in WvW instead of just ‘there’. Now that there are far more unbalanced matchups with T1 servers steam rolling T6 servers, now might be a good time to add larger PvE encounters to give dominate servers something to do and struggling servers more of an edge outside of Siegerazer.
This is where something like DAOC’s Darkness Falls would be good. IT was essentially a PVE zone that was exclusively accessible to the “winning” side, and once lost, turned into a PVP free-for-all as the new owners of DF cleared the former owners of the dungeon out.
downed state is bad for PVP
WVW needs a Darkness Falls. That is all.
But why?
It doesn’t have to be Darkness Falls exactly, but a “mechanic” needs to be introduced to the stale state of WvW. I’m not saying it isn’t fun it can be, but I think it could be a whole lot more than one blob fighting the other spamming 1.
That’s more the crux of my question. I totally agree that we can and should add more to this part of the game, but I’m not convinced that Darkness Falls would do it. As a WvW player would you really be excited about a map that takes you out of WvW and does something else? Or would you rather have changes to WvW proper? I know how I feel.
Yes definitely! To me, a Darkness Falls-like dungeon would be an extension of WVW, like an underground borderland if you will. The great success of Darkness Falls in DAOC was how provided great PVE content while your side held it and then great PVP content when the ownership of DF switched sides. Not to mention: PVP in dungeons.
If WVW is lacking anything, it’s lacking a realm-level reward. Realm-exclusive access to a premium PVE-based zone that turns into a hectic PVP battlefield every ~6 hours? I can’t think of anything I’d like more.
downed state is bad for PVP
(edited by scerevisiae.1972)
I agree it’s too golem-faceroll/pay-to-win at the moment.
The simple solution:
- nerf the siege damage of golems
- nerf golem HP
Perhaps more interesting solutions:
- make golems appear on the world map and minimap when within 5K units of a tower, keep or sentry.
- buff oil HP, protection, and damage; make golems take increased damage from oil, and/or make oil debuff golem damage/attack speed.
downed state is bad for PVP
(edited by scerevisiae.1972)
WVW needs a Darkness Falls. That is all.
downed state is bad for PVP
Easy, increase AoE to hit 10 people instead of 5… Thus a group of 5 can stop a 50 man zerg, grats.
Anet has already explained that it’s not easy and reasons they won’t do that.
It is is easy to increase a cap from 5 to 10, they’re not being totally honest. Case in point: DAOC, a game > 10 years old, had no AOE cap and supported higher player density as well.
downed state is bad for PVP
i’d take Darkness Falls a hundred times over before i’d take DAOC relic raids. There is already plenty of mega-zerg action in GW2.
downed state is bad for PVP
they should add to the pool of existing skills for weapons, eg: add a couple of sword skills that can be slotted by any class able to use a sword (warr, ranger, guard, mesmer). And so on and so forth.
downed state is bad for PVP
Please just take a kittening page from DAoC and put something like Darkness Falls in for the server that has the most PPT. That was the best solution; it was figured out a while ago; there’s no reason to keep trying to do something different.
This.
For those who never played DAOC, Darkness Falls was a huge dungeon that connected all 3 realms, where the centre connecting area (“the diamond loop”) consisted of densely-packed hard mobs. Only 1 realm at a time could access it at one time, effectively the leading PVP realm. It contained a good portion of the hardest and most rewarding PVE content in the game.
DAOC’s Darkness Falls was a masterstroke on multiple levels.
- it provided a tangible reward for leading
- it drew people out of the winning side, thereby re-balancing the power level
- it effectively created a PVP “dynamic event”: the new owners of DF rush the spawn area of the former owners to clear them out of the instance. Some of my best memories of DAOC were of rushing the opposing side’s DF and cleaning up PVE groups deep in the dungeon.
- it offered, all in the one dungeon, low-level PVE, high-level PVE, as well as solo, group and zerg PVP.
downed state is bad for PVP
(edited by scerevisiae.1972)
There are some updates coming soon, quite soon even, that hopefully will dispel this. Say bye-bye to the Quaggan.
How about all that unused skritt/centaur territory?
Skritt/Centaur Mastery are next year’s content.
downed state is bad for PVP
Trying to decide between a racial elite and a non racial elite?
ALWAYS pick the non racial elite….. The racial elites are nowhere near as strong and usually have extremely long cooldowns. Now, if you’re strictly PvE and just want to use something to be different, go for it, but PvP wise, racials are pretty brutal.
Take Root, the sylvari racial elite, is quite a bit better than any of the Ele elites. 3 sec invulnerability and the 5 seed turrets do quite bit of damage. A great elite for solo or small group roaming.
downed state is bad for PVP
Condi Ele is awful unless you’re full bunker.
downed state is bad for PVP
Don’t use focus for starters.
downed state is bad for PVP
don’t bother, make a GS mesmer or warrior for PVE if you like damage.
If you absolutely insist on Ele, and don’t mind doing substantially less damage than an equivalent mesmer/warrior, go 30/30/10/0/0 with full zerker gear.
downed state is bad for PVP
Lucky for me, in WVW I can slot the sylvari racial elite (one of my favourite skills in the game actually) and pretend the crappy Ele elites don’t exist.
downed state is bad for PVP
I couldn’t care less about any of the living story stuff – it’s the exact opposite of what I want in the game.
All I want is more choice in skills and build depth. New weapon skills, the ability to select weapon skills from a pool of skills, and the ability to select a utility in the elite and heal slots if I so desire.
So as far as I am concerned, they get a 0/10 for player satisfaction for the last 12 months – disregarding bugfixes, there’s been nothing new added to the game I’ve played, wanted, or benefited from.
downed state is bad for PVP
(edited by scerevisiae.1972)
Personally I hope they make all traits purchasable, and make all skill slots a player choice, then add back the choice of a second profession.
So in a nutshell, you could spec Warrior/Guard GS and choose your 10 skills from either the warrior or guard GS skills, and you’d then purchase specific traits from a combined warrior/guardian trait list, where “good” traits cost something like 15-25 points and “bad” traits cost something like 5-10 points.
Whatever system they come up with, as long as you can choose/replace certain weapon skills it’ll be a great improvement.
downed state is bad for PVP
Reading this thread it’s easy to pick who did and didn’t play GW1.
The degree to which skills can interact/play off each other is much smaller in GW2 compared to GW1. WOW-style talents (traits) and combo fields don’t really cut it. This has the effect of making combat seem shallow.
The other things that kill depth in this game are fixed weapon skills & fixed trait lines, e.g.: want to use GS? you’re strongly obliged to trait the “GS line”, which grants you specific stats and obliges you to take specific utility types, both of which narrow your build choice even further.
Someone brought up Ele as an example of “depth”. To me, Ele is an excellent example of how GW2 lacks depth — each of the Ele’s 4 weaponsets strongly enforce a particular playstyle that you cannot deviate from: staff = ranged AOE & support. dagger = melee. sceptre = burst. focus = immobile. Cantrips required for survivability. 20+ arcane basically required to play, because the only viable playstyle involves frequent switching. 15+ water required for survivability.
downed state is bad for PVP
The game desperately needs more skillshots, not less. If anything, most other skills should be changed to not home in on their target.
Yes, very much so. More skillshots and fewer oneshots as well.
E.g. abilities like 100 blades, blurred frenzy, whirling wrath, zealot’s defense, etc – skills with really high damage that root in place, making them OP in PVE and (except BF) somewhat UP in PVP.
downed state is bad for PVP
Your suggestions are kinda OP IMO.
Things I agree on:
- dragon’s tooth requires changing, it’s pretty much designed to be frustrating to use in present incarnation. Designing for frustration is never a good strategy. Retune it to hit more reliably and reduce the damage as needed. Same with shatterstone.
- sceptre fire #1 and water #1 could be retuned a little as well.
- focus needs a fair amount of love. The fire field (fire #4) could for e.g. cause burning for 4+sec instead of 1, possibly cripple for 1sec as well. A fire field that causes 1sec of burning (~320dmg) is pretty kitten underpowered.
- focus air #4 (swirling winds) became useless when it stopped destroying siege projectiles (IMO a poor decision), especially when earth #4 is a reflect on short CD. Air #4 could perhaps cause 3-4x stacks of confusion, a condition otherwise unavailable to Eles, in addition to current effect. Might make some kind of ?/F condi Ele viable.
- Focus water #4 is also kinda underwhelming, a low dmg single target chill. IMO rework this skill entirely into a movement skill, e.g. a 600 range leap, like burning speed but with a chill trail effect. More than anything focus needs to provide a mobility option comparable to ride the lightning or dagger will almost always be the better option.
downed state is bad for PVP
(edited by scerevisiae.1972)
I wish Chain’s initial damage was significantly higher at least making it a decent single target option. Something like instead of 100-100-100 on the bounces, it would be 150-100-50. Of course, the overall damage done would still be weak but at least it would be a little more decent for single target.
Yes. An obvious and reasonable improvement.
Same for staff air #2 – drop the damage and make it instant just for the sake of usability. The opportunity cost isn’t quite there.
downed state is bad for PVP
The lack of confusion, poison and torment pretty much kills condi elementalist.
I’d probably go for healing stacks before i went for condi dmg stacks on an Ele. +power or +precision are generally the better choices.
I usually think of burning/bleeding more as cover condis for more important control condis like chill/immob/cripple rather than as a significant source of damage.
downed state is bad for PVP
blame the guilds that transferred to t1 cause they weren’t good enough to fight their way there.
If anything, Anet should decrease WVW instance caps and make it half-price/free to transfer to lower-ranked servers, since WVW is the dominant reason people transfer anyway.
downed state is bad for PVP
This thread could equally well have been about why sPVP gets so much more attention than WVW when hardly anyone does/cares about sPVP.
But yes, I really couldn’t care less about living story content – it’s not a living story at all, the only living story that matters is generated by players, not developers. Case in point: EVE.
I like the idea of them introducing new skills/traits, I just hope said skills are mindful of WVW dynamics so that the WVW meta can evolve beyond the prevailing AC/golem spam.
downed state is bad for PVP
Sorry I’m no good at photoshop but I believe I have deciphered DB’s secret tactics which they use to achieve success in the battlefield. Attached is my detailed analysis of top secret DB tactics used to emerge victorious in combat. Now that these stratagems have been exposed, I’m sure we will see this match-up become much more even as DB no longer has the advantage of superior tactical approach.
It’s true, the vast majority of DB are kittens that hide in towers until the half-naked SEA zerg logs on and blobs everything. Have yet to face an equal number DB force in open field and lose… not sure what’s up with that.
downed state is bad for PVP
I don’t agree with the overall sentiment of the OP but I do think there’s a point to be made about the overall direction of the game. It seems whimsical and totally divorced from player feedback.
I for one don’t regret buying the game, and still enjoy playing it to some degree, but I generally don’t recommend it to friends.
It’s not the PVP game we all hoped it would be. Combat has too many clunky elements, inflexible/badly-designed UI, not enough build depth & downed state in PVP is absurd.
downed state is bad for PVP
Just get rid of downed state altogether…
All the downed states have their pros and cons, get over it. The WXP thing is clearly a bug.
downed state is bad for PVP
It’s a bit silly, there’s plenty of us who use G+ only and don’t have a FB account.
downed state is bad for PVP
I remember wiping 100 people with 8 people in DAOC.
Know how those 100 people countered it, By not standing on top of one another like morons.
and yet this game encourages it. it baffles me too.
downed state is bad for PVP
I know of no other action MMORPG that scales as well as this game. There probably is one out there and I would like to hear about it. I know DAoC was close but even it would at best struggle mightily under the fast pace, near constant zerg on zerg fights GW2 offers.
Darkfall routinely has sieges with >1K players in the same area, more than all 4 WVW instances combined. In the same area. Also, it’s an MMOFPS, faster-paced than GW2.
Also, planetside1 & 2, savage 1 and 2… there are quite a few games with faster gameplay and higher player density.
downed state is bad for PVP
Not necessarily. You could design a text-based game with more gameplay elements that would consume more server bandwidth/cpu cycles than GW2. Point being, the graphical demands of the client are largely independent of the demands of the server.
And yet people tend to lag less when they lower their settings (and I am talking about actual lag rather than FPS drops which some people seems to assume are the same).
network lag is a totally different beast than graphics lag.
downed state is bad for PVP
graphics has absolutely zero to do with server calculations.
It does however effect performance.
A text-based game does require WAY LESS server power and calculations than a graphical game.
Not necessarily. You could design a text-based game with more gameplay elements that would consume more server bandwidth/cpu cycles than GW2. Point being, the graphical demands of the client are largely independent of the demands of the server.
downed state is bad for PVP
Those anonymous posts teaching other people’s job are always delicious. It really is a trend in our society, in computer science especially : everybody thinks that they’re experts in everyting and that their uneducated opinions are interesting.
Dev said that it’s a technical limitation of the engine. Thread closed, until they eventually change the engine or find a workaround.
More than just IT, just look at all the self-appointed authorities on climate change, science/religion, GM food, etc.
That said, some people who play GW2 actually are server programmers for one of the world’s top gaming companies.
downed state is bad for PVP
Let me tell you how I would do it.
My necro uses Carrion Leggionaire Staff of Corruption…lets assume there is less than 65536 different weapons in GW2…I would give that staff a 2-byte code, and send only those 2 bytes over network…I would then render it completely on client side…same in GW2 as in DAOC…same for each of 6 different armor parts, I really doubt theres more than 65536 parts of any of 6 armor positions. Now, why would GW2 need 400 bytes instead 2?Each bit of data sent has to incorporate and cover all: skin, stats, and sigils for weapons, and skin, several dye channels, stats, and runes/orbs for armor, and stats/jewels for jewerly. There are ~4 weapon slots (none is also a data value), 6 armor slots, and 6 accessories. Each string of data has to cover, therefore, 16 locations with an average of three to four possible value combinations per slot, ie 48 to 64 units, merely for appearance. Now, each character also has a specific coordinate string, data values that are updated on a 1/4 second tick for conditions and boons and any other buffs like food/oil, this alone is probably more units than appearance, and damage and healing.
This is merely all that you see for a single character.
Easily < 64 bytes per character for all of the above. 100 characters enter your player’s area of interest, that’s <64KB (assuming no caching, which of course there would be).
That’s within a factor of 2 of MMOs made 10+ years ago. Point being the amount of traffic per character hasn’t changed much since the first MMOs.
downed state is bad for PVP
If only you’d bothered to read anything else you’d know that I wasn’t talking about the servers at all but alas… you didn’t bother.
Then you’re in the wrong thread. This one’s about the AOE cap & technical implications thereof.
The reason is that the computationally complex part of the calculation (ordering entities by distance to avatar) has already been done in order to calculate the 5 targets, so the only impact of bumping 5 targets to e.g. 8 is a network cost (as dmg packets need to be sent to more players), not a CPU cost. The computational cost of calculating dmg for a few extra players per AOE cast is miniscule.
Except that is incorrect. Each of those new 3 targets have to have everything calculated for them as well (ie. condition/boon/etc modifiers) but you seem to be ignoring any and all such details to talk about distance based calculations.
See highlighted sentence. Geometry calculations are the bulk of the computational cost of the server. Case in point, player stat calculations such as those you describe are often done in script (python, boo, lua, unrealscript, etc) not C++.
downed state is bad for PVP
Simple question. Why is there an aoe cap? And no, please do not come up with that “technical limitation” lie. There has been thousands games before this with massive pvp and no aoe cap, why would your engine be somehow so infernior to that of these older games?
What you seem to be missing is that technical limitations are not about the fact that a solution somewhere may have existed for some other thing. Our game is using an engine that has these technical limitations. We could, for instance, display everything as text, which would solve the problem quite nicely, however we’ve found that our graphics offer something a text-based MMO couldn’t quite deliver. The point is, it is very much a limitation of our engine. The load on the server CPU would be quite simply unsustainable if we were to increase the AoE cap as the more players hit by skills the more calculations it has to do and it actually starts increasing exponentially, rather than sequentially. We continue to seek out ways to squeeze more performance out of our game and our servers, but it is highly unlikely we would ever make a change to the AoE limits on player skills.
With respect, capping the number of AOE targets is not a technical limitation. I’m quite sure your server team are not the ones telling you this. If you were talking unlimited target AOE then sure, you have a point, but capping at 5 or capping at 8-12 (what most here are advocating) is not a technical limitation.
The reason is that the computationally complex part of the calculation (ordering entities by distance to avatar) has already been done in order to calculate the 5 targets, so the only impact of bumping 5 targets to e.g. 8 is a network cost (as dmg packets need to be sent to more players), not a CPU cost. The computational cost of calculating dmg for a few extra players per AOE cast is miniscule.
The comparison to DAOC is a fair one as WVW is indeed a very similar to DAOC’s RVR in terms of server requirements. Granted you have true projectiles in GW2, and you have additional projectile/player-volume collision (blasts/leaps etc), but then server hardware is a few orders of magnitude more powerful.
Ultimately it all comes down to server bandwidth. You guys are making good money, time to bump up your outgoing cap.
downed state is bad for PVP
(edited by scerevisiae.1972)
And how much more data is sent? I mean, it still has to send 6 pieces of armor per pesron, and color of each piece, same as in DAOC…it doesn’t have to send each pixel so that increased resolution would mean difference…same with color of armor…try to explain WHAT is that additional 199 times more data needed to be sent, because I really can’t figure it out
Here’s a basic one, make all files 1600×1200 for normalcy:
Make a .jpg file and use one color and save that file.
Make a .jpg file and use 256 colors all at the same time and save it.Make a .jpg file and have a pixel density of 2^4.
Make a .jpg file and have a pixel density of 2^8.Compare file sizes. I hope you don’t think the linear mesh of DAoC that is wrapped around a character to form the skin has the same file size as that of a GW2 mesh.
The server sends only itemIds to clients, eg: player id 3455 wears items 1234, 2345, 3456 etc. All the models, textures etc are loaded from disk on the client. Graphical complexity has zero impact on server performance. The only thing that comes close is the complexity of the collision scene (ie: world geometry) and whether player collision is done as a single cylinder/box or multiple (GW2 does only single).
downed state is bad for PVP