Resource mechanics need to go and competitive gameplay will be better for it

[UNOwen.7132]

@Swagger.1459 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:@UNOwen.7132 'Maybe you missed this too...

And just a reminder...

“lowers gameplay diversity”"you lose a lot of diversity and design space for absolutely no good reason at all"“You have yet to bring up a single, solitary game that supports your point”...

https://massivelyop.com/2019/03/28/massively-overthinking-thoughts-on-the-holy-trinity-in-mmos/

“ Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): Fun fact: I still remember when “holy trinity” meant tank, healer, and mezzer – the DPS players were a given, the warm bodies that filled out the rest of the group, and not part of the trinity back in the early pre-WoW days of MMO group content. The fact that this shifted over time really says all you need to know about how MMO class and combat design have changed, and not necessarily for the better.

Don’t mistake me; I no longer believe we need or must respect a trinity of either type. But what I truly resent is the loss of class variation and combat flow that naturally accompanied the demise of the classic trinity, specifically the fact that crowd control, buffing, and debuffing classes have all but disappeared in the modern rush to make nearly everyone a damage-dealer, even the healers and tanks.

As an example, I can still think of none better than City of Heroes, which offered all of the old trinity and new trinity class types (and then some) but made none of them actually mandatory to clear content. Yes, tanks and healers and CCers and buffers and debuffers and damage dealers all existed, but it was completely possible to get through the game with no healers, or all healers. With a scrapper tanking ahead of a fleet of corruptors. With a stalker and four controllers. With three bubblers and three tankers. Whatever. I don’t want to see strict trinity MMOs, but I’m even grumpier about the “everyone deeps” MMOs even more, especially when the end result is kitten combat where nobody ever has control over the fight. It didn’t have to be that way, but modernish devs keep reinventing the wheel, convinced they can do better. Maybe someday, they will, but so far, nah.”

Holy wall of text. Well, Im not gonna read all of it, mainly because that is too much effort, and I remember CoH anyway. Yes, CoH had less gameplay diversity. Having many different sets of numbers didnt change the fact that the moment to moment gameplay boiled down to the same basic concept for (almost) all characters. And of course, the design space was much,

much

narrower. Thats why so many skills were just variations of the same basic concept (or even just the same skill with different damage values).

So what we know... You edited out where you agreed about the issue with Necro. There are indeed examples of games that have common core designs. We learned that recharge timers are not “resources. And we also learned that there are games that use a common class foundation, but offer way more unique play styles, more unique roles and more unique skills than in GW2.

And you can try to deny those above facts with misinformation, spin doctoring and editing, but it won’t make what I brought up as incorrect... Only makes you look like you are here to argue for the sake of arguing because you don’t have a good grasp of things.

Except as you might be able to tell by the fact have that little message saying "edited X:XX AM/PM", I never edited that out, because I never even said it. There are games that have one shared common resource with no secondary resource to distinguish them, but they are in the vast minority, and generally not example of great design. Cooldowns

are

resources. Ironically theyre actually more relevant resources than most resources, given that in just about every game that has mana, its merely a formality youre not going to run out of in any normal gameplay scenario. And no, thats just what you want to believe, but fact is City of Heroes, while having great

build

diversity, had very low

gameplay

diversity. The playstyles were very same-y. The same cant be said for GW2.

I can deny those "facts" by pointing out theyre not facts in the first place. Theyre, at best, your opinion. And it seems that your opinion is not shared by many people. Not here, not in other games, not even in the game industry as a whole. The biggest, most popular and even the most well designed games all follow a paradigm similiar to, if not identical to GW2s. Whereas the only example you gave was a niche game that eventually failed.

Lying about a comment you made, and edited out, that acknowledged the issues isn't helping you here...

Learn the differences before we continue...

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Recharge

"Recharge , alternatively cooldown or CD, is the interval of time (in seconds) after a skill or ability has been used before it can be used again."

Main wording... "interval of time"

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Energy

"Energy functions similarly to the thief's initiative mechanic, although many of the revenant's skills still have a recharge time. Most skills (except auto-attacks) have an energy cost, ranging from 4 to 50. While out of combat, energy cannot go over 50%, and any energy over 50% is lost immediately upon leaving combat. While in combat, energy is able to drop to 0% and increase to 100%.

Energy is replenished over time as indicated by the arrows to the left and right of the energy indicator. Each arrow indicates how many percentage units are gained or lost per second. When swapping to a new legend, the energy pool is instantly reset to 50%. As this is the only way to regain energy other than natural replenishment (or by using Ancient Echo), players will often swap legends when they have depleted their energy."

Main wording "an energy cost".

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Initiative

"Initiative is a skill cost mechanic unique to the thief profession. It replaces recharge on the thief's weapon skills with a pool of twelve points which are spent when the skills are used and gradually returns over time. Using initiative the thief is able to tactically attack an opponent with their own chains and bursts of damage until they run out of the resource."

Main wording... "a skill cost" and " resource"

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Life_force

"Life force is the necromancer's resource that fuels Death Shroud and Reaper's Shroud. Life force is gained when players or NPCs die nearby (providing 10% life force per death, approximately within a range of 1,200 units) and through certain skills.[1] Death Shroud depletes life force and ends when it reaches zero."

Main wording... "resource that fuels"

Again, to be helpful... Recharge is an "interval of time" and... Resources are "an energy cost", "a skill cost" and "resource that fuels".

And for this... "fact is City of Heroes, while having great

build

diversity, had very low

gameplay

diversity. The playstyles were very same-y. The same cant be said for GW2."... Nice of you to acknowledge that a game (launched in 2004) with a common resource had greater diversity than GW2 after saying "you lose a lot of diversity and design space". But again, you don't know what you are talking about here... " The playstyles were very same-y"... As if a stalker and tanker playstyles were "same-y", or a mastermind and controller were "same-y" or a defender and a dominator were "same-y"... yeah...

The only one lying here is you. Again, if I had edited a comment like youre claiming, why is it that none of my comments show that little "edited X:XX AM/PM" bit, huh? Are you trying to say that I hacked into the forums, somehow altered the code so that the edit would not be visible, all to then later try ot claim I didnt edit it? Yeah not thats stupid, you know its stupid, yet you continue to lie about it. Do try to realize when its time to quit the lie, yes?

Semantics dont help your point. Fact is, cooldowns are a resource. You dont have a cooldown cost, but hey, if it was that easy, then you could just redefine any bar as the inverse (like say, Holosmiths heat bar which gets increased by any of the skills you use, and once you hit 100 youre locked out), and boom. They all suddenly arent resources anymore. Of course, thats silly. Because the original point is silly.

Greater

build

diversity. Which is a very different thing from

gameplay

diversity. Its easy to have large build diversity, just have minor variations of the same skill 100 times and boom, you have thousands upon thousands of builds (ironically, this isnt too far off from what CoH did so). But gameplay diversity is harder. You need to have the classes feel distinct to play. Something CoH failed to accomplish. And yes, the classes felt same-y. Different animations, slightly different things they did, but you wouldnt be able to tell from playing them because boy you played them basically the same way. CoH was a minmaxers dream. But for regular players, the fact that everything felt the same was boring. So it failed.

You deleted your original post and made a new one then. I read it and didn't have time to respond. You can attempt to lie to readers on the forums, but you can't lie to me or yourself.

It's unfortunate that you seem to think a recharge timer is a resource, really puts things into perspective, to put mildly, on the topic.

Is that a joke with the "gameplay diversity"? Build diversity adds to "gameplay diversity"... Tank roles, melee roles, ranged roles, healer roles, buffer roles, debuffer roles, cc roles, hybrid roles... al using the 1 common resource for classes... You seem to know zero about CoH compared to GW2, and completely ignoring the fact that Massively OP's writers disagree with you. And judging by your understanding of a skill recharge timer as a "resource", I guess I can understand where you level of thought is.

Cute theory, but no. I never deleted or edited a post. Either you mistook me for someone else, or you made the whole thing up. Dont know, and frankly, dont particularly care.

It doesnt. Build diversity is easy to make. Again, just have hundreds of skills that are

very

slightly different. You have millions of distinct builds, so insane build diversity, but, well, they all play the same. Great build diversity, and no gameplay diversity. Also, why would I care what some writers think, especially given that they seem to specifically lament the absence of build, but not gameplay diversity. And mate, I dont care if you dont like it, but cooldowns are a resource. Thats just game design 101.

Actually, you did.

You use terms like "gameplay diversity" as an empty talking point and can't articulate what it means.

You don't understand game design then, nor simple gaming terminology, even when provided quotes from the game.

And btw, I can now understand why you are worried about initiative being changed.

Im not going to repeat myself any more with that, so lets set the record straight, once and for all. I did neither edit nor delete a comment. Either you mistook me for someone else, you imagined it, or youre lying out your teeth. I assume its the third one, but I dont know. There, that should be clear enough.

Of course I can. Gameplay diversity is a pretty simple concept, is when there are multiple different styles of active gameplay, operating under different paradigms. Usually that means a different approach to movement, to damage avoidance, to damage dealing, to range manipulation, or all of the above. For example, take thief and lets say Revenant. Specifically Power Shiro sword revenant. Conceptually, theyre quite similiar, both are high damage relatively low survivability high damage builds involving active evades, and high mobility.

However, they play quite differently. Due to the way cooldowns work, the Revenant is encouraged to frontload the burst, then either clean up with autoattacks, or (more likely) swap to the alternate weapon and start burning through cooldowns there. Meanwhile the thief, due to his lack of cooldowns, but his limitation through initiative, instead is encouraged to space out his skills, and in fact is discouraged from swapping weapons mid-combat (thereby making thieves second weapon a utility choice rather than a damage dealing choice like it is for the other classes). The revenant goes in deep, hits hard and stays there, while the thief weaves in and out of range (or combat even) and instead aims to wear you down.

Now in City of Heroes? That kinda difference doesnt really exist. Every build, while a different coat of paint was on them, and different numbers were at work behind the scenes, played more or less the same. You stood still, went through your rotation, and the enemies died.

[UNOwen.7132]

@Sobx.1758 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:@UNOwen.7132 'Maybe you missed this too...

And just a reminder...

“lowers gameplay diversity”"you lose a lot of diversity and design space for absolutely no good reason at all"“You have yet to bring up a single, solitary game that supports your point”...

https://massivelyop.com/2019/03/28/massively-overthinking-thoughts-on-the-holy-trinity-in-mmos/

“ Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): Fun fact: I still remember when “holy trinity” meant tank, healer, and mezzer – the DPS players were a given, the warm bodies that filled out the rest of the group, and not part of the trinity back in the early pre-WoW days of MMO group content. The fact that this shifted over time really says all you need to know about how MMO class and combat design have changed, and not necessarily for the better.

Don’t mistake me; I no longer believe we need or must respect a trinity of either type. But what I truly resent is the loss of class variation and combat flow that naturally accompanied the demise of the classic trinity, specifically the fact that crowd control, buffing, and debuffing classes have all but disappeared in the modern rush to make nearly everyone a damage-dealer, even the healers and tanks.

As an example, I can still think of none better than City of Heroes, which offered all of the old trinity and new trinity class types (and then some) but made none of them actually mandatory to clear content. Yes, tanks and healers and CCers and buffers and debuffers and damage dealers all existed, but it was completely possible to get through the game with no healers, or all healers. With a scrapper tanking ahead of a fleet of corruptors. With a stalker and four controllers. With three bubblers and three tankers. Whatever. I don’t want to see strict trinity MMOs, but I’m even grumpier about the “everyone deeps” MMOs even more, especially when the end result is kitten combat where nobody ever has control over the fight. It didn’t have to be that way, but modernish devs keep reinventing the wheel, convinced they can do better. Maybe someday, they will, but so far, nah.”

Holy wall of text. Well, Im not gonna read all of it, mainly because that is too much effort, and I remember CoH anyway. Yes, CoH had less gameplay diversity. Having many different sets of numbers didnt change the fact that the moment to moment gameplay boiled down to the same basic concept for (almost) all characters. And of course, the design space was much,

much

narrower. Thats why so many skills were just variations of the same basic concept (or even just the same skill with different damage values).

So what we know... You edited out where you agreed about the issue with Necro. There are indeed examples of games that have common core designs. We learned that recharge timers are not “resources. And we also learned that there are games that use a common class foundation, but offer way more unique play styles, more unique roles and more unique skills than in GW2.

And you can try to deny those above facts with misinformation, spin doctoring and editing, but it won’t make what I brought up as incorrect... Only makes you look like you are here to argue for the sake of arguing because you don’t have a good grasp of things.

Except as you might be able to tell by the fact have that little message saying "edited X:XX AM/PM", I never edited that out, because I never even said it. There are games that have one shared common resource with no secondary resource to distinguish them, but they are in the vast minority, and generally not example of great design. Cooldowns

are

resources. Ironically theyre actually more relevant resources than most resources, given that in just about every game that has mana, its merely a formality youre not going to run out of in any normal gameplay scenario. And no, thats just what you want to believe, but fact is City of Heroes, while having great

build

diversity, had very low

gameplay

diversity. The playstyles were very same-y. The same cant be said for GW2.

I can deny those "facts" by pointing out theyre not facts in the first place. Theyre, at best, your opinion. And it seems that your opinion is not shared by many people. Not here, not in other games, not even in the game industry as a whole. The biggest, most popular and even the most well designed games all follow a paradigm similiar to, if not identical to GW2s. Whereas the only example you gave was a niche game that eventually failed.

Lying about a comment you made, and edited out, that acknowledged the issues isn't helping you here...

Learn the differences before we continue...

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Recharge

"Recharge , alternatively cooldown or CD, is the interval of time (in seconds) after a skill or ability has been used before it can be used again."

Main wording... "interval of time"

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Energy

"Energy functions similarly to the thief's initiative mechanic, although many of the revenant's skills still have a recharge time. Most skills (except auto-attacks) have an energy cost, ranging from 4 to 50. While out of combat, energy cannot go over 50%, and any energy over 50% is lost immediately upon leaving combat. While in combat, energy is able to drop to 0% and increase to 100%.

Energy is replenished over time as indicated by the arrows to the left and right of the energy indicator. Each arrow indicates how many percentage units are gained or lost per second. When swapping to a new legend, the energy pool is instantly reset to 50%. As this is the only way to regain energy other than natural replenishment (or by using Ancient Echo), players will often swap legends when they have depleted their energy."

Main wording "an energy cost".

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Initiative

"Initiative is a skill cost mechanic unique to the thief profession. It replaces recharge on the thief's weapon skills with a pool of twelve points which are spent when the skills are used and gradually returns over time. Using initiative the thief is able to tactically attack an opponent with their own chains and bursts of damage until they run out of the resource."

Main wording... "a skill cost" and " resource"

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Life_force

"Life force is the necromancer's resource that fuels Death Shroud and Reaper's Shroud. Life force is gained when players or NPCs die nearby (providing 10% life force per death, approximately within a range of 1,200 units) and through certain skills.[1] Death Shroud depletes life force and ends when it reaches zero."

Main wording... "resource that fuels"

Again, to be helpful... Recharge is an "interval of time" and... Resources are "an energy cost", "a skill cost" and "resource that fuels".

And for this... "fact is City of Heroes, while having great

build

diversity, had very low

gameplay

diversity. The playstyles were very same-y. The same cant be said for GW2."... Nice of you to acknowledge that a game (launched in 2004) with a common resource had greater diversity than GW2 after saying "you lose a lot of diversity and design space". But again, you don't know what you are talking about here... " The playstyles were very same-y"... As if a stalker and tanker playstyles were "same-y", or a mastermind and controller were "same-y" or a defender and a dominator were "same-y"... yeah...

The only one lying here is you. Again, if I had edited a comment like youre claiming, why is it that none of my comments show that little "edited X:XX AM/PM" bit, huh? Are you trying to say that I hacked into the forums, somehow altered the code so that the edit would not be visible, all to then later try ot claim I didnt edit it? Yeah not thats stupid, you know its stupid, yet you continue to lie about it. Do try to realize when its time to quit the lie, yes?

Semantics dont help your point. Fact is, cooldowns are a resource. You dont have a cooldown cost, but hey, if it was that easy, then you could just redefine any bar as the inverse (like say, Holosmiths heat bar which gets increased by any of the skills you use, and once you hit 100 youre locked out), and boom. They all suddenly arent resources anymore. Of course, thats silly. Because the original point is silly.

Greater

build

diversity. Which is a very different thing from

gameplay

diversity. Its easy to have large build diversity, just have minor variations of the same skill 100 times and boom, you have thousands upon thousands of builds (ironically, this isnt too far off from what CoH did so). But gameplay diversity is harder. You need to have the classes feel distinct to play. Something CoH failed to accomplish. And yes, the classes felt same-y. Different animations, slightly different things they did, but you wouldnt be able to tell from playing them because boy you played them basically the same way. CoH was a minmaxers dream. But for regular players, the fact that everything felt the same was boring. So it failed.

You deleted your original post and made a new one then. I read it and didn't have time to respond. You can attempt to lie to readers on the forums, but you can't lie to me or yourself.

How exactly did he delete his own post?tbh it's hilarious you insisted he edited his post, but when proven wrong, you start claiming he must have deleted it and rewrote it altogether. wtkitten, that's a new one :lol:

Oh yeah, I just realized, you cant actually delete your own post on these forums, can you?

[GDchiaScrub.3241]

@Sobx.1758 said:

@GDchiaScrub.3241 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:

@GDchiaScrub.3241 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:

@GDchiaScrub.3241 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:

@GDchiaScrub.3241 said:

@"JugglemonkeySoHeCanStopBeingSpammed.8741" said:

@GDchiaScrub.3241 said:

@"JugglemonkeySoHeCanStopBeingSpammed.8741" said:

@GDchiaScrub.3241 said:I will say that chill needs to affect thieve's initiative skills in some way. It seems an oversight that they're the least impacted by that conditional effect of recharge-time slowing. Unless I'm not noticing something...

D:Just addressing this point, you're correct in that chill affects thieves the least because of initiative, but by the same token quickness also affects thieves the least because it does not affect initiative gain. If you want chill to affect initiative gain negatively there's no good reason to not have quickness affect it positively, and given how easy it is to cleanse chill on thief I'm pretty sure you'll dislike that scenario more than the current one.

You mean alacrity?

D:

Either or. My point is that maybe chill, quickness and alacrity not affecting ini regen is actually a good thing.Keep in mind from inception Thief was designed in a time Alacrity wasn't even a concept (it came with Chrono in HoT) while chilled was there in the beginning.

Ok, everyone's keeping this in mind. How is this important here?

Because when they were designing thief's initiative resource the condition

chilled

existed with its cooldown debuff. Alacrity wasn't present until HoT, so it couldn't have been possible to consider Alacrity in the beginning. I don't really see how that's hard to understand. Clearly they chose to stay the course and ignore cooldown related things when it came to thieve's initiative based skills with the inclusion of Alacrity.

It's hard to understand because you seemed to be claiming something along the lines of "

chilled could be an oversight because it existed since the beginning

" while at the same time claiming "

alacrity could be an oversight because it didn't exist since the beginning

". Also 2 things being designed at the similar time in no way implies an oversight, so that chilling conclusion is "a bit" random in the first place. Hence me saying I can't connect the dots, because I still don't see the line between that statement and the conclusion.If it was an oversight -which I doubt- they could easly fix it at the very least when they introduced the alacrity. You seem to understand that fact based on what you're saying

now

(as opposed to "

Both Alacrity, and Chilled's cooldown-effect can be oversights

" from previous post), so I'm still not sure why you'd try to claim chill is/was an oversight.Overally I don't understand the point you're trying to make here and my confusion comes exactly from you contradicting yourself even after you made your weirdly disconnected conclusions.

No. This is not my intention at all. I didn't view chill in a vacuum completely disconnected from everything else with only it's mere existence in the beginning as the sole argument. That is too much simplification. I viewed it as connected to thief's design philosophy of initiative

[skills]

. If they were designed in parallel, then it was reasonable for me to assume ANET considered how the class would interact with the conditions present (chill in this case). If they didn't care that half the effect of chill played no role on initiative

[skills]

then technically no. They could have chose to ignore it in their own design, and thus it's not an "oversight" since I can't read minds. It was the inconsistency that made me perceive it as an "oversight." "It

seems

an oversight that they're the least impacted." - Me

I didn't say anything about vacuum, at which point I simplified anything here? Unless you mean you're the one that simplified your own thoughts here, at which point I'm not sure why you were so surprised about someone else misunderstanding what you're trying to say. Because what you actually said didn't make much sense.And there was/is no inconsistency about how it works -actually it IS more consistent this way.

Should have said

initiative skills

this whole time, and not just the word initiative. RIP.

Doesn't make much of a difference here tbh. Current version is still more consistent than what you're suggesting.

Needed to state it so the edit in the quote couldn't be misconstrued as a trick.

Which is why I stated it as an oversight. Thank you finding another one in Alacrity.

What kind of logic is this? How do you go from "chilled was there in the beginning" to "which is why I stated it was oversight"? Even moreso when you suggest the opposite makes sense too when it comes to alacrity. I can't connect the dots here.

I'm starting to think this is turning into a semantics issue only to derail the topic. Forget the term oversight. I also never said quickness should affect quickness, so we can forget that boon too.

Which is why I bring up semantics. It was more accurate to give my opinion below instead of sticking to "it's an oversight." While true I used "stated" like "I said," but my perception of "Oversight" is not factual. Still can't read ANET's mind. "Oversight" was probably hyperbolic that only aided in your confusion.

Ok, makes sense. But then if you don't explain exactly what you think then don't act surprised about someone taking your simplification and saying it doesn't make much sense when it doesn't. :x

What is agreed is that both Alacrity, and Chilled cooldown debuff affect Thief's initiative the least. My opinion is I don't like boons/conditions affecting a classes unequally unless the game revolved around it more heavily (GW2 doesn't). I don't care if thief can clear chilled (if they spec for it which isn't hard) nor do I care that they lack Alacrity application anyway (which is hard to spec for). The OP wants to upend the Thief's initiative system with the goal to reduce it's perceived spam (and a lot of other game "balance"). If spam was truly the problem with thief then the easiest solution is to raise initiative costs on select skills, or a function change like turning a duel attack into two skills. Easiest doesn't necessarily mean best of course.

Yes, they affect it the least, they're pretty much the opposite of each other and it's fine to have a mechanic that's unaffected by both. You don't like it and you're free to do so, there's not much to argue about here, because you either like something or you don't. If "I don't like it" is all you want to say here, then there's nothing to talk about. It's just that your claim that about chill and alacrity being an oversight didn't make much sense.

Opposite? Technically Alacrity would need a movement speed increase a well. Not really for buffing Alacrity with speed.

Yup, "PRETTY MUCH" opposite in the context we're talking about in addition to the other part of chill actually affecting thief, so not sure why we'd talk about the slow here -it's irrelevant and works the same as for other classes. If alacrity gave the speed to be LITERALLY the opposite of chill, thief would be affected by it as well, so it would still be irrelevant.Bottom line, I know what they do, so no worries here.

Regardless of nitpicking, ANET is allowed to do whatever they feel fit, just as you are also allowed to like/dislike it. The forums are place to share opinions, and many dislike/like ANET's balance yet they come to "discuss" it here anyway. If you feel me calling it an oversight is hyperbolic that's fine too.

Sure, didn't I literally say that if you just came to say that "you dislike it", then there's not much to talk about here? I'm not trying to change your opinion, what I said was that your

simplified/hyperbolic statement

that tried to serve as a justification didn't make much sense -because it didn't. Still free to dislike the mechanic.

I should have made a longer post that was riddled with sarcasm and snark as my first post hoping it'd get the attention of the OP so I could then get in a long thread war with them simply to say, "I dislike their ideas, and those ideas wouldn't work." Live by your example, no?

Ah yes, because you're the one to talk down about using sarcasm in posts, whatever you say. :DAnd since you asked -as far as I'm concerned about it, use whatever amount of sarcasm you need as long as you make sense. Why would I care?

Where would the internet be without snark? You aren't obligated to care. I chuckled thinking back on your sarcastic post that pursued the nebulous "balance" every time you mentioned "If you came to say you dislike it then there isn't much to talk about..." Ironic really, because we keep going despite any dislike of ideas whether it be our own or the OP's.

Since you were confused I will give a shot by shot remake:

1. OP wants to change up Anet's balance (resource mechanics in this case).
2. I wasn't fully on board with OP, but I did say there was a small inconsistency in chill affecting cooldowns/resources for some classes .
3. OP felt thief was particularly spammy, so I said thief (although some rev utility stuff doesn't have a "cooldown" either, but they aren't necessarily effective if "spammed")
4. Alacrity was also brought up as a inconsistency in regards to cooldowns on classes that might not have them.
5. I stated thief was created in an environment where Chilled already existed, but Alacrity did not thus leaning me towards mentioning Chilled first. This mention didn't exclude the existence of Alacrity being in a similar vein.
6. Confusion was created because I presumed everyone would know the long thought process that also required knowledge of the game from the beginning..
7. I need to remember that people can't read minds, and might require more than a Twitter Post's length.
8. Still not on board with upending a system, but I guess giving my opinion on Chilled is too much. Want to know what I think of Weakness?

Thanks for the recap clearing up previous posts, remembering about people not reading minds seems to be important :p aaaaaand I still think that a skill that slows down cd recharge time not affecting skills without said cooldown is more consistent than inconsistent, but I guess we'll need to agree to disagree on that one, w/e.

Yes, the math is correct. A skill without cooldown wouldn't be affected by chilled/alacrity. Imagine if our 1 spam farm was hindered? Oh dear oh my the posts we'd see here. Obviously, not all skills without "cooldown" are auto attack skills. Rather, it's the idea that half of the thieves kit (the weapon skills) becomes immune because their "cooldown" (metaphorically speaking) is in their initiative, and not the standard per ability cooldown. A pew pew soulbeast weapon set is affected in contrast. I don't want to do what the OP wishes by scrapping the mechanical idea of

mana

, I mean initiative. ANET has already decided on this by keeping it so far. I doubt my dislike is going to change that. Furthermore, my original post was mostly about combo fields and the chill was the last thought. I even left open what that change to chill could be with the, "

in some way

." Others want things to stay the same, of course. Changing it's description to fit the special use cases of no-cooldown abilities would be irritating and inconsistent.

Soo... uh, now we agree that it's more consistent in the current form than it would be with your proposed change? I'm not even touching the autoattack issue, that wasn't my point at all. But if the skills without cooldown exist, because they're using a different resource, then them not being affected by CD-altering buffs/debuffs simply make sense. Rangers pewpew being affected is obvious, there's no reason why it shouldn't be.The thing is your main argument here is still "because I don't like it", which -again- is fine. But stop trying to claim it's somehow inconsistent when it's not or that it was an oversight when there's literally no reason to assume it was.It's like OP claiming that discarding different resource mechanics is a great way to balance the game. No, it's not, not even close. He just doesn't like those mechanics, there's no need to dress that opinion up in something it's not.

I'm guessing you wanted an example for these cooldown related boon/condis. There are three paths that can be taken, but theory crafting specifics will be beyond this topic (oh how far we have driven off course).:

! 1. Do Nothing.

The most practical thing ANET can do, and requires no money that they probably don't have to waste on addressing this. Remember they did have to lay people off...

! 2. Remove cooldown related boon/condi effects.

The most dramatic thing, and risky because Alacrity is a feature for Chronos/Dat one Rev Build, and would make Chill another kitten snare that would need to be altered. Hindsight is 20/20 after seeing that Alacrity is such a spam inducing mess. To think they even tried nerfing the kitten out of mesmer! Shame.

! 3. Alter functionality of Chilled and/or Alacrity.

Similar results on changing Alacrity if people relied on its cooldown reducing benefits.

!! Because I live in reality. I would choose option 1 given the practical circumstances like money, and the age of the game. Making a fiddly change wouldn't guarantee increased profit either. Pity. At best it'd need to be paired with a meaningful content update.

To conclude. I don't like chilled, but now I really-really-really don't like Alacrity. I somewhat support anyone's effort on reducing spam, but I don't think re-classing will be possible any time

Soon

™. Thanks team.

Ok.I, on the other hand, would pick 1 not because of money or possibilities, but because I think there's no reason to change it -I think additional mechanics in the game have easly their place in this game and there's no reason to suddenly eradicate them or alter the buffs affecting/not affecting them. But obviously that's also just my opinion.

Don't get me wrong. Arenanet has changed conditions in the past, and did add boons/conditions (I think only torment). Mainly so they'd stack on pve mobs. Yay burn guards? Only once have I seen them ever upend a class, but that was Dervish in their previous game. Given this, I did reason there was a greater chance they'd fiddle with conditions than remove "resources" from classes. I wouldn't want them to willy-nilly change chill even if they have the money now, unless it was linked with a class or two. Or content?LOLJK. They did do this method with Alacrity back in the days when it wasn't really a boon. The practicality of today outweighed these ideas however, as such a change would be somewhat meta changing. Maybe less so than Alacrity? Unless people wanted a meta shift? I can safely say the OP's ideas would be more drastic...

D:

Does this emote has any purpose in your posts?

Yes.

D:

What purpose exactly is it? :blush:

To make the pretty people blush. What is more attractive than a bad guy? Because I'm bad at everything bebe.

D:

:astonished:

Now I see. I needed to reword what I meant by "inconsistent." It is not the math used that I feel is inconsistent. It's the implied game design I dislike (cus I still can't read dere minds). If the intent was to increase cooldown times, then it is mathematically correct that skills without a cooldown would be unaffected by using a percentage based formula to achieve their assumed goal. Here I go perceiving again, so watch out. Thereby I concluded it felt "inconsistent" or more accurately...I dislike their formula because their assumed intent appears unevenly applied to skills with vs. without recharge timers, (due to that percentage math).

Then of course we enter Alacrity being unable to buff said cooldownless skills, while still increasing the rate of spam on the other abilities. Mind you Alacrity wouldn't have existed at all if I was the forumarmchair game dev, because I felt there was enough spam already in WvW back then. So that boon was only digging the whole deeper from my biased anti-spam perspective. But hey! I have such fond memories of turtle boon sharing gvgs every 30 minute round with mercy runes...this is sarcasm.

Assuming we intend for chill to have some form of cooldown debuff, an alternative is something linear (like +x sec after skill use) whose impact would be greater on the smaller cooldown abilities vs. longer recharges. Where we once again have a discrepancy. To be clear, the "after skill use" is not how the current debuff works. Or you could make it OP, and do both current chill, and +x second after use. Or you could give a class some enhanced chill effect instead of applying to ALL chills (like reaper). That's where the change to things "in some way" leaves it open. Although I think the necro who loves posting polls would want a necro buff. Oof. Nevermind better nurf Mesmer instead.

D:

[Swagger.1459]

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:@UNOwen.7132 'Maybe you missed this too...

And just a reminder...

“lowers gameplay diversity”"you lose a lot of diversity and design space for absolutely no good reason at all"“You have yet to bring up a single, solitary game that supports your point”...

https://massivelyop.com/2019/03/28/massively-overthinking-thoughts-on-the-holy-trinity-in-mmos/

“ Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): Fun fact: I still remember when “holy trinity” meant tank, healer, and mezzer – the DPS players were a given, the warm bodies that filled out the rest of the group, and not part of the trinity back in the early pre-WoW days of MMO group content. The fact that this shifted over time really says all you need to know about how MMO class and combat design have changed, and not necessarily for the better.

Don’t mistake me; I no longer believe we need or must respect a trinity of either type. But what I truly resent is the loss of class variation and combat flow that naturally accompanied the demise of the classic trinity, specifically the fact that crowd control, buffing, and debuffing classes have all but disappeared in the modern rush to make nearly everyone a damage-dealer, even the healers and tanks.

As an example, I can still think of none better than City of Heroes, which offered all of the old trinity and new trinity class types (and then some) but made none of them actually mandatory to clear content. Yes, tanks and healers and CCers and buffers and debuffers and damage dealers all existed, but it was completely possible to get through the game with no healers, or all healers. With a scrapper tanking ahead of a fleet of corruptors. With a stalker and four controllers. With three bubblers and three tankers. Whatever. I don’t want to see strict trinity MMOs, but I’m even grumpier about the “everyone deeps” MMOs even more, especially when the end result is kitten combat where nobody ever has control over the fight. It didn’t have to be that way, but modernish devs keep reinventing the wheel, convinced they can do better. Maybe someday, they will, but so far, nah.”

Holy wall of text. Well, Im not gonna read all of it, mainly because that is too much effort, and I remember CoH anyway. Yes, CoH had less gameplay diversity. Having many different sets of numbers didnt change the fact that the moment to moment gameplay boiled down to the same basic concept for (almost) all characters. And of course, the design space was much,

much

narrower. Thats why so many skills were just variations of the same basic concept (or even just the same skill with different damage values).

So what we know... You edited out where you agreed about the issue with Necro. There are indeed examples of games that have common core designs. We learned that recharge timers are not “resources. And we also learned that there are games that use a common class foundation, but offer way more unique play styles, more unique roles and more unique skills than in GW2.

And you can try to deny those above facts with misinformation, spin doctoring and editing, but it won’t make what I brought up as incorrect... Only makes you look like you are here to argue for the sake of arguing because you don’t have a good grasp of things.

Except as you might be able to tell by the fact have that little message saying "edited X:XX AM/PM", I never edited that out, because I never even said it. There are games that have one shared common resource with no secondary resource to distinguish them, but they are in the vast minority, and generally not example of great design. Cooldowns

are

resources. Ironically theyre actually more relevant resources than most resources, given that in just about every game that has mana, its merely a formality youre not going to run out of in any normal gameplay scenario. And no, thats just what you want to believe, but fact is City of Heroes, while having great

build

diversity, had very low

gameplay

diversity. The playstyles were very same-y. The same cant be said for GW2.

I can deny those "facts" by pointing out theyre not facts in the first place. Theyre, at best, your opinion. And it seems that your opinion is not shared by many people. Not here, not in other games, not even in the game industry as a whole. The biggest, most popular and even the most well designed games all follow a paradigm similiar to, if not identical to GW2s. Whereas the only example you gave was a niche game that eventually failed.

Lying about a comment you made, and edited out, that acknowledged the issues isn't helping you here...

Learn the differences before we continue...

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Recharge

"Recharge , alternatively cooldown or CD, is the interval of time (in seconds) after a skill or ability has been used before it can be used again."

Main wording... "interval of time"

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Energy

"Energy functions similarly to the thief's initiative mechanic, although many of the revenant's skills still have a recharge time. Most skills (except auto-attacks) have an energy cost, ranging from 4 to 50. While out of combat, energy cannot go over 50%, and any energy over 50% is lost immediately upon leaving combat. While in combat, energy is able to drop to 0% and increase to 100%.

Energy is replenished over time as indicated by the arrows to the left and right of the energy indicator. Each arrow indicates how many percentage units are gained or lost per second. When swapping to a new legend, the energy pool is instantly reset to 50%. As this is the only way to regain energy other than natural replenishment (or by using Ancient Echo), players will often swap legends when they have depleted their energy."

Main wording "an energy cost".

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Initiative

"Initiative is a skill cost mechanic unique to the thief profession. It replaces recharge on the thief's weapon skills with a pool of twelve points which are spent when the skills are used and gradually returns over time. Using initiative the thief is able to tactically attack an opponent with their own chains and bursts of damage until they run out of the resource."

Main wording... "a skill cost" and " resource"

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Life_force

"Life force is the necromancer's resource that fuels Death Shroud and Reaper's Shroud. Life force is gained when players or NPCs die nearby (providing 10% life force per death, approximately within a range of 1,200 units) and through certain skills.[1] Death Shroud depletes life force and ends when it reaches zero."

Main wording... "resource that fuels"

Again, to be helpful... Recharge is an "interval of time" and... Resources are "an energy cost", "a skill cost" and "resource that fuels".

And for this... "fact is City of Heroes, while having great

build

diversity, had very low

gameplay

diversity. The playstyles were very same-y. The same cant be said for GW2."... Nice of you to acknowledge that a game (launched in 2004) with a common resource had greater diversity than GW2 after saying "you lose a lot of diversity and design space". But again, you don't know what you are talking about here... " The playstyles were very same-y"... As if a stalker and tanker playstyles were "same-y", or a mastermind and controller were "same-y" or a defender and a dominator were "same-y"... yeah...

The only one lying here is you. Again, if I had edited a comment like youre claiming, why is it that none of my comments show that little "edited X:XX AM/PM" bit, huh? Are you trying to say that I hacked into the forums, somehow altered the code so that the edit would not be visible, all to then later try ot claim I didnt edit it? Yeah not thats stupid, you know its stupid, yet you continue to lie about it. Do try to realize when its time to quit the lie, yes?

Semantics dont help your point. Fact is, cooldowns are a resource. You dont have a cooldown cost, but hey, if it was that easy, then you could just redefine any bar as the inverse (like say, Holosmiths heat bar which gets increased by any of the skills you use, and once you hit 100 youre locked out), and boom. They all suddenly arent resources anymore. Of course, thats silly. Because the original point is silly.

Greater

build

diversity. Which is a very different thing from

gameplay

diversity. Its easy to have large build diversity, just have minor variations of the same skill 100 times and boom, you have thousands upon thousands of builds (ironically, this isnt too far off from what CoH did so). But gameplay diversity is harder. You need to have the classes feel distinct to play. Something CoH failed to accomplish. And yes, the classes felt same-y. Different animations, slightly different things they did, but you wouldnt be able to tell from playing them because boy you played them basically the same way. CoH was a minmaxers dream. But for regular players, the fact that everything felt the same was boring. So it failed.

You deleted your original post and made a new one then. I read it and didn't have time to respond. You can attempt to lie to readers on the forums, but you can't lie to me or yourself.

It's unfortunate that you seem to think a recharge timer is a resource, really puts things into perspective, to put mildly, on the topic.

Is that a joke with the "gameplay diversity"? Build diversity adds to "gameplay diversity"... Tank roles, melee roles, ranged roles, healer roles, buffer roles, debuffer roles, cc roles, hybrid roles... al using the 1 common resource for classes... You seem to know zero about CoH compared to GW2, and completely ignoring the fact that Massively OP's writers disagree with you. And judging by your understanding of a skill recharge timer as a "resource", I guess I can understand where you level of thought is.

Cute theory, but no. I never deleted or edited a post. Either you mistook me for someone else, or you made the whole thing up. Dont know, and frankly, dont particularly care.

It doesnt. Build diversity is easy to make. Again, just have hundreds of skills that are

very

slightly different. You have millions of distinct builds, so insane build diversity, but, well, they all play the same. Great build diversity, and no gameplay diversity. Also, why would I care what some writers think, especially given that they seem to specifically lament the absence of build, but not gameplay diversity. And mate, I dont care if you dont like it, but cooldowns are a resource. Thats just game design 101.

Actually, you did.

You use terms like "gameplay diversity" as an empty talking point and can't articulate what it means.

You don't understand game design then, nor simple gaming terminology, even when provided quotes from the game.

And btw, I can now understand why you are worried about initiative being changed.

Im not going to repeat myself any more with that, so lets set the record straight, once and for all. I did neither edit nor delete a comment. Either you mistook me for someone else, you imagined it, or youre lying out your teeth. I assume its the third one, but I dont know. There, that should be clear enough.

Of course I can. Gameplay diversity is a pretty simple concept, is when there are multiple different styles of active gameplay, operating under different paradigms. Usually that means a different approach to movement, to damage avoidance, to damage dealing, to range manipulation, or all of the above. For example, take thief and lets say Revenant. Specifically Power Shiro sword revenant. Conceptually, theyre quite similiar, both are high damage relatively low survivability high damage builds involving active evades, and high mobility.

However, they play quite differently. Due to the way cooldowns work, the Revenant is encouraged to frontload the burst, then either clean up with autoattacks, or (more likely) swap to the alternate weapon and start burning through cooldowns there. Meanwhile the thief, due to his lack of cooldowns, but his limitation through initiative, instead is encouraged to space out his skills, and in fact is discouraged from swapping weapons mid-combat (thereby making thieves second weapon a utility choice rather than a damage dealing choice like it is for the other classes). The revenant goes in deep, hits hard and stays there, while the thief weaves in and out of range (or combat even) and instead aims to wear you down.

Now in City of Heroes? That kinda difference doesnt really exist. Every build, while a different coat of paint was on them, and different numbers were at work behind the scenes, played more or less the same. You stood still, went through your rotation, and the enemies died.

And that right there tells me you know nothing of the game. You don’t even have a basic understanding of what a cooldown is vs a skill cost resource.

Having said everything else I wanted to say, I can understand your points about this resource topic considering you feel thief is a weak combatant and needs to run from most fights.