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Svarty.8019

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Nice find Svarty and thanks for sharing.

Not to sound ungrateful or anything but what's big about it I'm having trouble seeing.

The only really big thing recently is that they hired CMC and let him work on relevant stuff because he always seems to stay on task, says the right things (or is on point when he talks), motivates and explains as well as being productive. He's been cutting alot of the red tape that hampered work on PvP or PvP balance in the past. Even in this weekly video there's a notable difference between how Cal and Ray talks.

I guess Ray can be excused though having worked on Alliances all by himself for so long B).

That no information is out about Alliances since the last year update, over the april roadmap to the august spectacle and up until christmas is a very big failure on ArenaNet's promise to be communicative part.

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@"Diku.2546" said:Our current Fixed 3-Way Fight Model will always end up being manipulated by smart veteran players that want to stack for the win.

World Linking or Alliance Linking...it's going to end up the same way. Manipulated by veteran players.

Players that desperately figure out How to Stack on the "better" team.

Players that fail to get on the "better" team...will need to chose between being a punching bag, or to quit playing until they can get on the "better" team.Well, yes, but that is what balancing and working on a PvP game mode is meant to deal with. It really isn't a major and niggling issue unless you completely forget about a game mode like ArenaNet have done. PvP modes requires less upkeep (sandbox vs. themepark) but they do require some minimum level of upkeep and attention that ArenaNet have always failed to deliver on. More and less do not equate to essentially everything and nothing.

Alliances are still favoured by those "manipulating veterans" because it is one step into addressing stacking, population imbalance and manipulating the system. That does not mean that people are going to stop finding advantages or game the system. Meta gaming is apart of playing the game. It is on ArenaNet to stay ontop of things even if they can't stay ahead of things. That onus is on them and it is on them not abandoning their mode and players.

 

The only real thing that I am afraid of with the introduction of alliances is that in the three years it will take them to implement even an unpolished version of the system a 500-player building block is going to be gigantic entity in the population. I know that they can resize things as the please and that flexibility was a target. However, I am unsure if they are aware of how impactful just a 50-man guild is to a server these days. So many guilds have been choked out of the game that singular guilds of relatively decent size carries entire servers more or less alone.

 

 

That part is also on the players. The whole "failing to get on the better team". The mode may not have lost a catastrophic amount of players yet. However, the underlying structures of player-organisation and the amount of organized players who create the content, the team, for players who just look to "get on a team" or consume said content has seen a dramatic loss. It is on the players to realize that with a new system that lets those old manipulating veterans more freely stack quality (even if it deals with stacking quantity better), the younger players need to step up, organize, create guilds and produce content for themselves. This can be an issue since too many players are used to getting carried around but it is a band-aid that needs to be ripped off because it is choking the content. Teams have to be made.

 

 

You can tie that argument into the problem with the puzzle piece sizing above. There have to be more midsized and large pieces made. If they keep pieces the size that was intended then yes some matchups are going to feel barren for some players. There are not enough guilds (or potential alliances) per amount of anonymous solo players these days. At the same time, if you make the pieces smaller and restrict them to 50 or 100 that better reflects the population, as it is today (as you seem to imply), you are stuck with the current problem of 50-100 organized players carrying everyone else, slowly choking the content out. The size of the pieces is as such a direct factor for how to address the issue with forcing players to create organisation or forcing players upon existing organisations. There is no way to escape that issue, that issue is also a balance issue between inclusion and taking things for granted. It would not have been as big of a problem as it may risk to become if they had not let the issue linger for so long, taking so much time to react to it, understand it and given it such a low priority to be solved (years).

 

 

Alliances will affect stacking for the better. Alliances alone is not enough. It is an MMO it needs continued development attention. It needs a dev team too, it needed a team when they had 400 employees and it needs a team when they have 200 employees. Look at how much smoother some updates have been when they finally pulled their heads out of their behinds and gave competetive control over competetive balance. They have done more in weeks than what was achieved in years. The comparison is jaw-dropping and it's still only some early iterative work.

 

We need a better Fight Model & not a better Team Creation Mechanic.

Well, yes. The answer is in my signature and has always been what's in my signature. The sooner other people comes to that realization, the sooner the "active" population balance can be solved and the results of stacking will be far less felt. That is the other aspect of ArenaNet and WvW (or perhaps in general) that they have wasted so much time and resources on being stubborn and wanting to do things in their own indirect ways. In the end, they will come to a conclusion similar to mine same as how they have done with TDM-mechanics for tournament PvP (and GvG). They have just been so wasteful kicking, screaming and ruining player rapport to get there.

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@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:I see it coming already: nerf to ele, and nothing happening to rangers, mesmers, thieves or revs.

they want to balance the mess? simple: first fix stealth or make players in stealth SLOW

Well tbh. Ele is insanely strong right now. At least in 1v1 and 1v2 situations.And for zergplay it never was really bad so....

But I'm completely with you. Those other classes need some serious nerfs

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@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:you (devs) think it is fun to be hit by 17k out of stealth? or balanced?

this bit should totally count in the "instant cast high damage" issue, because most of the time the receiving player has no way to see the incoming attack. Either make stealth slower than a player with swiftness, or add some visual cue so players have a chance to see the incoming attack. Or lower stealth duration for skills, or change thief stealth attacks to be utility oriented rather than pure damage. There are many potential ways to address the issue.

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@Nimon.7840 said:

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:I see it coming already: nerf to ele, and nothing happening to rangers, mesmers, thieves or revs.

they want to balance the mess? simple: first fix stealth or make players in stealth SLOW

Well tbh. Ele is insanely strong right now. At least in 1v1 and 1v2 situations.And for zergplay it never was really bad so....

But I'm completely with you. Those other classes need some serious nerfs

My mallyx renegade tends to destroy weaves and tempests.Some difficulty when its a decent player, but manageable.

Sometimes, must admit against weaver e feel a bit carried.

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@Skotlex.7580 said:

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:you (devs) think it is fun to be hit by 17k out of stealth? or balanced?

this bit should totally count in the "instant cast high damage" issue, because most of the time the receiving player has no way to see the incoming attack. Either make stealth slower than a player with swiftness, or add some visual cue so players have a chance to see the incoming attack. Or lower stealth duration for skills, or change thief stealth attacks to be utility oriented rather than pure damage. There are many potential ways to address the issue.

Stealth attacks could also be changed from high damage to high CC if the stealth classes are meant to have some specialist stealth attacks, creating the situation that Cal talks about in the stream - letting them set bigger attacks up but giving the attacked player the option to counter the big attacks with cooldowns, breaking the CC or blocking up through it.

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The whole system should be:Each build has these options and only access to 2 of them.Stealth, Mobility, Burst, Tankiness, Healing, Boons

So, if you pick stealth and mobility, you won't burst and your damage is mediocre, you can't heal much, you don't get boons without help, etc.If you pick mobility and burst, you have no access to stealth (except from group) and are not tanky, your heals are bad, you have no own access to boons, etc.

and so on. Without a change like this we will still have abominations like deadeye, scrapper, warrior, condi mirage, etc.

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@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:they want to balance the mess? simple: first fix stealth or make players in stealth SLOW

Agreed: stealth needs to be more risky. I personally like the “Bird of Prey” option where all attack skills are disabled when in stealth mode. That way stealth is only useful for positioning. Of course that would delete a class or two so it won’t happen...

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It's one thing to talk about this stuff and another to do it. It's sad that just having some random dev mention something on a stream qualifies as big news.

The bottom line is that someone decided Elite Specs would be a great way to sell power and after two rounds of that the combat in the game grew so untenable that WvW and PvP basically died. Now they're dropping hints that they're going to reverse course. Well, it's not so easy to unsell one's soul...I want to believe it, but I need to see it first.

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@Aeolus.3615 said:Remove stealth from Mesmer give them other mechanics :) huehuehue

Make them damage alies, swap keyboard that kind of stuff.

Stealth should be done by just a few builds, there’s to much of everything, stealth included.

I guess you quoted me first and then decided not to do it but it gave me a highlight to come look so I'll guess I'll use that to make some talking points.

I'm not sure if agree that stealth is such a major issue on a broad level. It is an issue but it is mostly an issue limited to one class. Most other stealth classes may have other issues but it is not necessarily tied to their ability to stealth or to other classes ability to counterplay their stealth. Thieves do present an issue with the amount of stealth. They have an overabundant amount without even resorting to using all their sources.

The other classes have a couple of sources but can rarely take them all and still be competetive as well as while they have some strong abilities those are easily counterplayed by somewhat equally competent opponents. Things like the gyro or MI are strong but if you reveal them they're gone and they have longer cooldowns than the reveals. The same goes for the corresponding abilities on Thieves where the issue is rather the energy system coupled with stealth tied to it (as well as the unique stealth of the DE but DE is a flawed concept for PvP in its entirety) than all the direct stealthing abilities.

I'll do some spoiler wrapping for the other points one by one again since I can't seem to keep myself short (and don't want to scare people or make the page take ages of scrolling).

 

If there are any problems with stealth on things like Mesmer, Engineer or Ranger it's mostly down to other mechanics or design (or how they interact with stealth) than the stealth itself. For the Mesmer it's the fine balance between how their burst line up and balancing that as well as how powerful conditions are on a mechanical level (ie., I'm not necessarily making the case that condi's are OP here, more so that there are balancing issues with condi and power scaling so differently over different stats as well as how condi and stealth combines weirdly) as well as how the core mechanics of Mesmers with clones and illussions tend to affect differently experienced players wildly different. Inexperienced players have massive issues dealing with the clones that experienced players do not. That's problematic design to be balanced. The stealths are easily counterplayed though, MI is big (and visible) while Veil is highly visible and the single stealths are 2-3 long with 30s cooldowns. They are easy enough to counterplay alone to not be a massive experience disparity.

 

 

For the Engineer, the stealth gyro and the pulse should just have been made the unique spec mechanic rather than function gyro. It always has been that anyway. So there it is certainly more of a design issue than a balance issue to be honest. People have played Scrapper for the stealth/reveal gameplay along with whatever traited bonuses have been added (heals, superspeed etc.). They could have easily made that a class mechanic and opened up so much more utility and flexibility in builds for Scrappers than the shoddy compromise the class has ended up in. Balance has always been great and pretty engaging though, in my oppinion (having mained Engineer in HoT and on occassion during PoF, though I've mostly spent spent PoF slacking and multiclassing). Like Mesmers, Engineer stealthing may be simple, big and impactful but is also so big and simple that it can be easily counterplayed with impactful results. That's balance.

 

 

The best group-stealther and class that actually have some stealth stacking that can be problematic is the Druid but considering how they have completely axed the Druid out of any broader usefulness that cheesy gimmick is all that it has left and it isn't very effectful either. It is also easily dealt with by changing the trapper rune. Overall, that would probably be a good change even if it takes some flavour out of the DH. The DH doesn't need trapper builds to be useful and for the Ranger and Thief that rune is mostly made to grind cheese. The Druid unlike the Scrapper got its stealth as a class mechanic (or, well, it involves a not-so-optional trait) but overall I kind of like the idea and mechanics with the single smoke field and the celestial stealth. The spec suffers more from so many other aspects of it being atrocious and made only for raids. The Staff has problematic mechanics (especially with energy management and access to celestial), the glyphs are total garbage still while quite alot of the utility is tied to traits that makes the unique mechanics or utility skill mechanics useful, same as on the Engineer.

 

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@"gebrechen.5643" said:Remove Stealth from Mesmer and give them nothing and they are still way better than many other professions. The goal has to be to bring classes in line with each other, not nerfing one and creating another kitten like "scrapper".

funny that someone with guard icone would complain about mesmer.FB right now is the strongest and the easiest build to play in EVERY SINGLE GAMEMODE.Its busted in pve fractals,dungeons raids, pvp and wvw. as both support,tank and dps.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:I’m gonna remain skeptical. TTK should go up, so I can roll with that...but these changes sound like bandaids and a false philosophy about actual balance.

I agree, it's nothing that they haven't said said before. I'll wait to see if they actually get anything positive done. Game doesn't need bandaid fixes.

Although, this dev actually sounds like they have a good idea what to do, and has been more specific then past devs who just promised changes were coming.

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@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@"gebrechen.5643" said:Remove Stealth from Mesmer and give them nothing and they are still way better than many other professions. The goal has to be to bring classes in line with each other, not nerfing one and creating another kitten like "scrapper".

funny that someone with guard icone would complain about mesmer.FB right now is the strongest and the easiest build to play in EVERY SINGLE GAMEMODE.Its busted in pve fractals,dungeons raids, pvp and wvw. as both support,tank and dps.

Yeah funny, because I switched to Guard from Necro most of the time. Have an idea why?

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@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@"gebrechen.5643" said:Remove Stealth from Mesmer and give them nothing and they are still way better than many other professions. The goal has to be to bring classes in line with each other, not nerfing one and creating another kitten like "scrapper".

funny that someone with guard icone would complain about mesmer.FB right now is the strongest and the easiest build to play in EVERY SINGLE GAMEMODE.Its busted in pve fractals,dungeons raids, pvp and wvw. as both support,tank and dps.

The player you quoted actually mains necro.

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Reduce damage, Reduce healing, so nothing will change at all, it will just take longer to do stuff, watch how many Arrow carts get built now, i can see it now, hahaha i kill 50 people with 1 AC because they cant out heal this damage.

Reducing damage and healing at the same time wont change WvW there are far greater issues, like i said previously, WvW in its current state is unsalvageable, every class needs every skill and trait stripped to the core and rebuilt for WvW only, anything that coverts over from PvE will make certain classes still over powered, are they going to be removing the perma invis instant kill classes/skills also???

All i see here is all talk no action, they have had years to fix these issues, and many devs have come and gone from WvW, the harsh reality is, is it worth Anets time to try and fix a game mode that what less than 1% of the playerbase plays now, if you honestly believe real change is coming to WvW i feel you will be disappointed, for the record its 3 1/2 months since the announcement where they said, we cant talk about alliances right now, but will talk to you soon, same story different day.

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@"Ok I Did It.2854" said:Reduce damage, Reduce healing, so nothing will change at all, it will just take longer to do stuffI think you underestimate how impactful on gameplay that it is. In a situation where you have a low impact of core stats you create a tug o' war where fights either end too quickly (burst) or too slow (heals) as well as alot of scalability issues because without the flat core stats the balance between damage and healing scales far differently. If you have less of both and make the flat core stats more notable you will normalize combat times far more per encounter but also per scale. It will also create more situations where at larger scale some people get dropped but things don't snowball the same way. Fights with alot of damage and healing that trumphs flat stats tend to play out in ways where one side implodes quickly or where a chunk of one sides explodes immidiately and making a comback from there is very difficult so if two sides clash and bomb or push each other current fights are decided in the first push whereas old fights had a back and forth over multiple pushes.

If you look at pirateship tactics today there are often "fake" pushes or feeling opponents out with small bombs and then people commit. Sometimes the small bombs decides the fights because if 5 odd players get caught and die the other side will immidiately snowball from it or the affected side will immidiately pull out and reset. Similar things can be seen among classes where some classes will burst or reset more than in the past (it has always been a thing, but less of a thing before) and there are far more situations today where eg., duels are fought to stand stills and ends undecided.

With flat stats taking a larger role fights will take long but something will always happen, gaining or losing ground, but it also snowballs less so winning ground means less tipping in your favour. As long as damage, healing, boons and control is high then winning ground means more of all of it. If flat stats matters more then that doesn't snowball out as much over multiple players as you, for example, just gain a comparatively larger collective HP pool to wittle.

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