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EoD expansion should have new RAID


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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Vilin.8056 said:Sure let's spent several hours on in one path of Arah or CM and call it a casual experience.Here's your problem, you expect all casual players willing to spent countless time and effort and repetitive wipings to brute force each area, when most casuals don't have either and only expect for a relatively relaxed run.Same principle still applies, most casuals don't stay in the group over two wipes, neither over 1 hours on one path of dungeon, your experience apparently apply to a few selective tries.I don't
expect
anything. I was relating my actual
past
experiences. And, according to those, casuals were far more willing to spend a lot of time to have a pleasant (pleasand in this case means not rushed by someone that was in a hurry, or thought the run was talking 2 minutes too long) laid back dungeon run that you gave them credit for. The impatience was mostly the domain of would-be speedrunners.Staying one dungeon path wiping for hour or hours isn't a pleasant experience for casuals, no matter how friendly the party can be. And if a casual is willing to endure countless Boss resets to find a way to defeat it, and is willing to repeat the experience, they are progressing into the hardcore territory.Same principle applies to Raid which requires the same investment.I also speak from experience, and clearly I have invested more runs back then to observe the community reaction in dungeons by staying to the last at the time frequent of rage quits.

And no, i wasn't talking about just a few runs. I was farming the achievements and armor sets then, and after i got those, i was running dungeons because i liked it. Which means i did a
lot
of runs.With the same hourly long method in each path? Then you know that's not sustainable for farming achievements.Since most viewers on this discussion are veteran of how LFG works, they can also be the judge of that.

But, as i said before, you can disbelieve all you want. It still doesn't change a thing. Even if it doesn't fit your worldview.Or your worldview, sadly the reality of now is that the Casual community are against the investment of time and effort onto challenging contents, which counters your idealism.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:Maybe, but this would mean that in all cases of possible adjustments:
  • during vanilla when traits were reworked the first time
  • during the rework of the stats and itemization
  • during vanilla when traits were reworked a second time in preparation of HoT and in fact the entire trait system was redone
  • with the introduction of HoT and the change to certain boons, introduction of new boons, new mechanics and system update (gliding and retroactive addition of gliding to vanilla)
  • with the introduction of again new mechanics with PoF

The developers never saw the necessity to rework the system.No, all those changes you speak of were mostly superficial. In order to remove the core issues they'd have to redo the whole system from ground up.

No they would not have to.

The core issue which leads to a huge performance difference is in fact very easily identified:the ability to stack multiplicative effects to reach multiplicative increases in output.

It has NOTHING to do with nonviable choices or bad traits. All of those contribute to the underlying issue but are not the cause for the performance disparity in players. The same goes for execution and knowledge of how to achieve high performance. Players here are making use of this possibility but are not the underlying reason as to WHY this is possible in the first place.

That is NOT something hard to change. Here is a simply solution: cap the maximum multiplier, thus limiting a free-form open ended multiplication of damage. This in turn would allow for multiple ways to achieve this capped value even within the current system without rewarding perfect stacking of many multipliers. In fact it would likely even open up a ton of additional gearing options because full berserker would not be required any longer for maximizing damage output, even less so in experienced players hands who would be able to stack multipliers from where every they choose.

The "changes I speak of" were literally complete reworks of ALL the traits, damage calculations and skills. In some cases multiple times.

Come to think of it, and given the insane speed records, the developers could probably change the maximum multiplier right now, adjust down some boss hitpoint values, and not change a single thing beyond this and this would work out perfectly. Speedrunners and pro players would still clear in record time, the performance disparity towards the bottom would remain the same, yet at the bottom end ever players impact would increase. IF this were the goal.

@Astralporing.1957 said:Neither the changes to the trait system, nor the ones made to stats changed anything deeper about it. Most of the changes to trait systems were about UI (or stuff like obtaining/unlocking traits - so, again, UI), without changing the underlying system. Same with changes to stats - these were some tweaks and adjustments, but the overall stat/gear system remained completely unchanged.

Yes, and that is because this change was not desired by the developers. Again with full reworks and changes to damage formulas, if desired this could have been achieved easily.

@Astralporing.1957 said:Notice, btw, that the changes to the trait system, while mostly done to the ui and the way traits are selectable, all ended up with making the system simpler and the amount of choices/combinations smaller. It's just, as i said, they were mostly superficial, so couldn't have too big of an impact.

Basically, the only time they did something a bit bigger was the condition damage rework. And even that was still something that was simply changing the way condition damage was using the underlying system, without changing anything about the core system itself.

The changes made the visual representation simpler and easier to understand. There was no change to the fundamental interactions of traits, which if desired COULD have been altered the same way condition damage was reworked.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:Thus the claim this is due to heritage of GW1 seems a bit far fetched. The combat system in this game has less in common with GW1 than with other action MMORPGs. The developers have had ample opportunity to adjust this games combat system, if they so desired.I'm speaking about the general idea of a freeform system with a ton of options that offers practically a separate minigame to all the people that like to look for their own combinations in hope of finding some that will be overpowered compared to the rest due to their incredible synergy. And one where most available combinations are just plain bad.

Which many MMORPGs in the past have had. I don't see how this originated in GW1.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:Which give this game a continued Unique Selling Proposition. Why should this not be utilized? If this games combat was a lot more similar to WoW or FF, it could very well go the way of the Dodo, or SWToR or similar copy cats.Problem is, the combination of build/gear system and the action combat is aimed mainly at a very small, hardcore crowd - but the rest of the game clearly points to the devs intending for the target group for this game to be way, way bigger than that. It's a severe inconsistency in the design.

They should have either done a game with a much simpler system, with much smaller discrepancies between skill levels, or they should have left the system as it is, but made a game that would be completely made around HC content, and practically ignored casuals. In the end, they ended up with the game filled mostly with casuals, with content mostly for casuals, but the core build/combat system
not
made with casuals in mind. This system is simply not designed for a game that tries to succesfully cater to groups of players with multiple wildly different gameplay styles.

I would disagree. How hardcore or casual a payers is means little to how he/she experiences the system. Most players who stick to only story and open world without the intent of improving past beginner, yet enjoying the game, are taking advantage of a very free and fun system. Meanwhile the content designed is simplistic and easy enough to not require more than that.

For any who want more, the system is deep enough to provide this option.

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@"Cyninja.2954" said:Here is a simply solution: cap the maximum multiplier, thus limiting a free-form open ended multiplication of damage. This in turn would allow for multiple ways to achieve this capped value even within the current system without rewarding perfect stacking of many multipliers. In fact it would likely even open up a ton of additional gearing options because full berserker would not be required any longer for maximizing damage output, even less so in experienced players hands who would be able to stack multipliers from where every they choose.Seriously? And where exactly would you put that cap in the damage formula? Would it be a "multiplication cap" somehow (how?), or a hard cap to damage? How would it interact with the whole system? How would it impact the current gaps resulting just from gear alone (are you planning to change the gear, or just plain making stats on it mostly irrelevent)? Would boons suddenly stop working for people in zerker gear? Would +damage % effects stop working too? Or the bonuses from skills? How about crits? Do you intend to remove ferocity completely, make a separate cap on it, or just make it invisibly irrelevant? Etc, etc, etc.This idea of yours, as usually goes with simple solutions, would end up either not simple, or not a solution.

The "changes I speak of" were literally complete reworks of ALL the traits, damage calculations and skills. In some cases multiple times.Sure, but they did nothing to the very system those were built on.

Come to think of it, and given the insane speed records, the developers could probably change the maximum multiplier right now, adjust down some boss hitpoint values, and not change a single thing beyond this and this would work out perfectly. Speedrunners and pro players would still clear in record time, the performance disparity towards the bottom would remain the same, yet at the bottom end ever players impact would increase. IF this were the goal.Again, how they could do that? Currently the damage calculations do not support doing anything like that (there is no "maximum multiplier" to adjust, and no place to put it).

@Astralporing.1957 said:Neither the changes to the trait system, nor the ones made to stats changed anything deeper about it. Most of the changes to trait systems were about UI (or stuff like obtaining/unlocking traits - so, again, UI), without changing the underlying system. Same with changes to stats - these were some tweaks and adjustments, but the overall stat/gear system remained completely unchanged.

Yes, and that is because this change was not desired by the developers. Again with full reworks and changes to damage formulas, if desired this could have been achieved easily.That full rework would take way, way lot more resources though. You are severely underestimating the amount of work required.

@Astralporing.1957 said:Notice, btw, that the changes to the trait system, while mostly done to the ui and the way traits are selectable, all ended up with making the system simpler and the amount of choices/combinations smaller. It's just, as i said, they were mostly superficial, so couldn't have too big of an impact.

Basically, the only time they did something a bit bigger was the condition damage rework. And even that was still something that was simply changing the way condition damage was using the underlying system, without changing anything about the core system itself.

The changes made the visual representation simpler and easier to understand. There was no change to the fundamental interactions of traits, which if desired COULD have been altered the same way condition damage was reworked.Again, they'd have to start tearing the whole system apart, instead of just changing the paint on it. That would require way more work.

Which many MMORPGs in the past have had. I don't see how this originated in GW1.I did not say it originated in GW1 - i said devs
brought
the general idea of it from GW1. They added some adjustments to it that (according to what they were taslking during game development) were there to make it easier for them to balance stuff in the future (but didn't really turn out that way). Then they added some stuff for completely other reasons that had unintentional consequences further in the line - i.e. they decided to add stats to gear at some point, because MMORPGers like stats on gear. They probably didn't consider, though, how the sheer variability of offered stats would impact the mentioned by you multiplicative nature of the damage calculation (and not only damage calculation). Then, there was the whole stat system itself, with its inbuilt multiplicative effect to damage. And the active and very dynamic combat system on top of it added another, completely separate complication that in a way was also "multiplicative" with the problems mentioned before - because to be good at combat you now had to be good at two things, instead of one (well, actually far more than two things, but you get my point).Then there was lack of inbuilt roles and trinity. I mean, i'm not a great supporter of the trinity system, seeing it for what it is - a system to intentionally dumb down combat so it will be easier for players to deal with - but exactly because it's what it is it is also a crutch for worse players. And (which is far more important) something that makes creation of working queue systems possible. In a system with inbuilt roles, you can join a queue, and be assured that you will end up in a group with all roles covered. And not in one with 4 dps, no tank or healer, and 6 people with builds that can't be easily classified because they are mostly random and lack coherence.

I would disagree. How hardcore or casual a payers is means little to how he/she experiences the system. Most players who stick to only story and open world without the intent of improving past beginner, yet enjoying the game, are taking advantage of a very free and fun system.No, those players generally don't really care about that system. For the most part they would have been as happy with a much simpler ones.Remember, that one dev mention about how much people never even visited the traits page once they set them for the first time during leveling? Was that a third or a half of the playerbase? (I dont remember exactly, but i do remember that the percentage mentioned was shockingly high). I sincerely doubt, that, even with all the changes to the traits ui, the situation has changed all that much between then and now.

Meanwhile the content designed is simplistic and easy enough to not require more than that.

For any who want more, the system is deep enough to provide this option.That's one of the points - the gap between those that understand the system and can take good use of it, and those that use it only as a form of entertainment (or completely ignore it) is so big, that the content has to either be extremely simple and easy, so the latter group can manage, or, if designed for former players, prohibitively hard for the latter. There's simply no real place for anything in between. The system does _not _offer a possibility of gradual increase of skill. You either get it, or you don't. If you don't get it, you either know where to get the information (and are willing to use it), or, again, you don't. It's completely binary.

That's why, for example, the whole idea of "stepping stones to raid" was bound to be a failure from the very beginning. The players that make use of the system do not need stepping stones, they can already go to the top floor. At the same time those players that do not make use of the system are only able to play at the difficulty levels where their lack of understanding of the system is not yet an issue. Once they cross the line beyond which it matters (which is placed rather low), they will just stop, unable to go up further. Or, they will suddenly learn and jump from that point straigt to the top, making the existence of steps above that line pretty much irrelevant.

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@radda.8920 said:I don't understand all the criticisms on this subjectraids and fractals are the best thing that happened to gw2 by far

Finally, a content that allows you to think, adapt your build, really play WITH your team by coordinating, improve your reflexes ... the rest of the game boils down to hitting your head on the keyboard while drinking a coffee, raids and fractals gave the game a real breath of fresh air

The only reason for their failure is that they arrived much too late, they should have been launched in the first 2 years to consolidate a large number of HM players.

By only throwing open content (spam 1 mode) for years, the majority of hm players fled and did not return for the raids. this is what explains this failure.

I still hope to see urgoz and kanaxai raid version again in EoD .For me if there is no pve HM content with real difficulty on this expansion, it will be a major failure.

This is basically my argument and the entire point of the thread but like I said, hijacked by trolls with no arguments claiming raids have failed and that they do not provide money...tbh arena net should get their stuff together because that's how they get money, by giving us content to play...and for everyone, auto attacking on Drizzlewood only catters to a few, not to all of us.

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@yukarishura.4790 said:

@radda.8920 said:I don't understand all the criticisms on this subjectraids and fractals are the best thing that happened to gw2 by far

Finally, a content that allows you to think, adapt your build, really play WITH your team by coordinating, improve your reflexes ... the rest of the game boils down to hitting your head on the keyboard while drinking a coffee, raids and fractals gave the game a real breath of fresh air

The only reason for their failure is that they arrived much too late, they should have been launched in the first 2 years to consolidate a large number of HM players.

By only throwing open content (spam 1 mode) for years, the majority of hm players fled and did not return for the raids. this is what explains this failure.

I still hope to see urgoz and kanaxai raid version again in EoD .For me if there is no pve HM content with real difficulty on this expansion, it will be a major failure.

This is basically my argument and the entire point of the thread but like I said, hijacked by trolls with no arguments claiming raids have failed and that they do not provide money...tbh arena net should get their stuff together because that's how they get money, by giving us content to play...and for everyone, auto attacking on Drizzlewood only catters to a few, not to all of us.

Nya we are here in a forum. I don't know how long you've been reading here. I personally haven't been reading here for long and have already realized that in the end the same ones always start to discuss in circles only to come to no common conclusion anyway(because everyone thinks he is right).But as was said before, many seem to find this amusing :''D.

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@"Astralporing.1957" said:That's why, for example, the whole idea of "stepping stones to raid" was bound to be a failure from the very beginning.

The whole idea of "stepping stones to raid" was truly gonna be a failure and the whole thing was simple marketing talk. They wanted to justify their new content, and instead of marketing it as something entirely new and great, they had to tie it in with Raids.

At the same time those players that do not make use of the system are only able to play at the difficulty levels where their lack of understanding of the system is not yet an issue.

What Strike Missions can easily teach the developers though, is exactly those "break points", the difficulty at which players start quiting. How much of the more intricate mechanics does a player need to know/understand to succeed in content A,B,C, and the rather large disparity in Strike Mission difficulty works for that very well. And also, how many of this game's audience is even remotely interested in instanced content in the first place.

So although the idea of "stepping stones" was always gonna be a failure, there are valuable lessons learned from Strike Missions.Shiverpeak Pass can be seen as the "stepping stone to instanced content", as it's the absolute lowest this game will go. Yes it's supposed to be 10-man content and we have 5-man instanced content, but it's perfectly doable in 5 (or even less) and it's considerably easier than most 5-man instanced content. It's also the stepping stone for Fraenir.Fraenir is the stepping stone for Voice and Claw, and so on.

Other games use something like a gear score to tell players they aren't ready for specific content. Maybe Guild Wars 2 needs a "skill score" instead, although that would be much much harder to calculate.

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@"maddoctor.2738" said:The whole idea of "stepping stones to raid" was truly gonna be a failure and the whole thing was simple marketing talk.Pretty much this.The content was clearly made to a address a gap in the difficulty of the content. It wasn't onboarding people into raids it was as if they had made Core without Brisban, Diessa and Snowden and gone back to address that later with a 15-25 zone.

Unfortunately Mike Z happened. While pandering to the toxic casuals (who believe that all activities should be inherently made for them and them alone) he used divisive language and oversold the content.He could have said "We are making content to fill a gap we feel exists in that there aren't as many intermediate activities as we would like."But instead he tried to tell the greedy low-effort complainers on this forum that it would onboard them into content that was never made for them because he mistakenly thought that this was where the game's revenue was generated.It was the second most damaging thing he did to this game, on a long list.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:That's why, for example, the whole idea of "stepping stones to raid" was bound to be a failure from the very beginning.

The whole idea of "stepping stones to raid" was truly gonna be a failure and the whole thing was simple marketing talk. They wanted to justify their new content, and instead of marketing it as something entirely new and great, they had to tie it in with Raids.

At the same time those players that do not make use of the system are only able to play at the difficulty levels where their lack of understanding of the system is not yet an issue.

What Strike Missions can easily teach the developers though, is exactly those "break points", the difficulty at which players start quiting. How much of the more intricate mechanics does a player need to know/understand to succeed in content A,B,C, and the rather large disparity in Strike Mission difficulty works for that very well. And also, how many of this game's audience is even remotely interested in instanced content in the first place.

So although the idea of "stepping stones" was always gonna be a failure, there are valuable lessons learned from Strike Missions.Shiverpeak Pass can be seen as the "stepping stone to instanced content", as it's the absolute lowest this game will go. Yes it's supposed to be 10-man content and we have 5-man instanced content, but it's perfectly doable in 5 (or even less) and it's considerably easier than most 5-man instanced content. It's also the stepping stone for Fraenir.Fraenir is the stepping stone for Voice and Claw, and so on.

Other games use something like a gear score to tell players they aren't ready for specific content. Maybe Guild Wars 2 needs a "skill score" instead, although that would be much much harder to calculate.

I think strikes as a learning instanced content was a great idea, many people I recently spoke to got into raids after

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:That's why, for example, the whole idea of "stepping stones to raid" was bound to be a failure from the very beginning.

The whole idea of "stepping stones to raid" was truly gonna be a failure and the whole thing was simple marketing talk. They wanted to justify their new content, and instead of marketing it as something entirely new and great, they had to tie it in with Raids.That idea was first mentioned shortly after Raids were introduced to the game. It's not something that was brought up for Strikes alone. Although you're right that mentioning that in the context of Strikes included a lot of PR damage control over abandoning raids.

What Strike Missions can easily teach the developers though, is exactly those "break points", the difficulty at which players start quiting. How much of the more intricate mechanics does a player need to know/understand to succeed in content A,B,C, and the rather large disparity in Strike Mission difficulty works for that very well. And also, how many of this game's audience is even remotely interested in instanced content in the first place.

So although the idea of "stepping stones" was always gonna be a failure, there are valuable lessons learned from Strike Missions.Yes. Fully agreed with that. In fact, i was pointing that out already when Strikes were first introduced. I just think making a whole type of content like strikes and putting all that effort into it just to get that statistical data was not i'd call an efficient use of resources.

Other games use something like a gear score to tell players they aren't ready for specific content. Maybe Guild Wars 2 needs a "skill score" instead, although that would be much much harder to calculate.The difference is, that gear score is something that can be improved by any player. Better players can do it faster, worse players may need to wait longer, but improving gear is something that everyone does in those MMORPGs. "skill score" however would be something much more static. It definitely would not solve any problem the game currently has to deal with.

@"yukarishura.4790" said:I think strikes as a learning instanced content was a great idea, many people I recently spoke to got into raids afterNo player that used strikes as a "learning content" actually needed that to get into raids. Every single player that got into raids that way could have just went there directly. There's nothing in Strikes to learn you could not learn in raids equally easily.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:Here is a simply solution: cap the maximum multiplier, thus limiting a free-form open ended multiplication of damage. This in turn would allow for multiple ways to achieve this capped value even within the current system without rewarding perfect stacking of many multipliers. In fact it would likely even open up a ton of additional gearing options because full berserker would not be required any longer for maximizing damage output, even less so in experienced players hands who would be able to stack multipliers from where every they choose.Seriously? And where exactly would you put that cap in the damage formula? Would it be a "multiplication cap" somehow (how?), or a hard cap to damage? How would it interact with the whole system?

Not hard to figure out, especially for a developer with all the data in the world. Currently all multiplicative effects add up. You simply cap the maximum amount this multiplier can go to.

As to where to put it? That could easily be deduced mathematically based on how high the difference between top tier possible performance is supposed to be and where bottom tier performance is at. That and where the developers feel comfortable with output should be at the top end. The most difficult part here would be to decide how much to reduce enemy hitpoints and balancing for PvP and WvW.

@Astralporing.1957 said:How would it impact the current gaps resulting just from gear alone (are you planning to change the gear, or just plain making stats on it mostly irrelevent)? Would boons suddenly stop working for people in zerker gear? Would +damage % effects stop working too? Or the bonuses from skills? How about crits? Do you intend to remove ferocity completely, make a separate cap on it, or just make it invisibly irrelevant? Etc, etc, etc.This idea of yours, as usually goes with simple solutions, would end up either not simple, or not a solution.

Simple solution here too: stat soft caps. Nothing revolutionary and widely used in the industry. Not even needed though if damage multipliers are shaved and capped.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:The "changes I speak of" were literally complete reworks of ALL the traits, damage calculations and skills. In some cases multiple times.Sure, but they did nothing to the very system those were built on.

As mentioned: because they did not feel the need to do so. They showed that they are capable of changing the damage calculations without effort.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:Come to think of it, and given the insane speed records, the developers could probably change the maximum multiplier right now, adjust down some boss hitpoint values, and not change a single thing beyond this and this would work out perfectly. Speedrunners and pro players would still clear in record time, the performance disparity towards the bottom would remain the same, yet at the bottom end ever players impact would increase. IF this were the goal.Again,
how
they could do that? Currently the damage calculations do not support doing anything like that (there is no "maximum multiplier" to adjust, and no place to put it).

A maximum multiplier is literally 1 variable added to the equation. That's exactly the same as adding condition duration in the past. That too was only 1 variable added.

@Astralporing.1957 said:Neither the changes to the trait system, nor the ones made to stats changed anything deeper about it. Most of the changes to trait systems were about UI (or stuff like obtaining/unlocking traits - so, again, UI), without changing the underlying system. Same with changes to stats - these were some tweaks and adjustments, but the overall stat/gear system remained completely unchanged.

Yes, and that is because this change was not desired by the developers. Again with full reworks and changes to damage formulas, if desired this could have been achieved easily.That full rework would take way, way lot more resources though. You are severely underestimating the amount of work required.

I'm not saying it wouldn't take work. I'm claiming that this work was put in in the past and this was not altered.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:Notice, btw, that the changes to the trait system, while mostly done to the ui and the way traits are selectable, all ended up with making the system simpler and the amount of choices/combinations smaller. It's just, as i said, they were mostly superficial, so couldn't have too big of an impact.

Basically, the only time they did something a bit bigger was the condition damage rework. And even that was still something that was simply changing the way condition damage was using the underlying system, without changing anything about the core system itself.

The changes made the visual representation simpler and easier to understand. There was no change to the fundamental interactions of traits, which if desired COULD have been altered the same way condition damage was reworked.Again, they'd have to start tearing the whole system apart, instead of just changing the paint on it. That would require way more work.

and I'm saying you are incorrect. The system is already very flexible given we have level scaling and stat adjustments. The entire game is designed with already a lot of flexibility at its core.

The developers could change how the damage formulas work and most players would not notice a single thing if done right. Why? Because at the bottom end almost no synergies were being used while at the top end the reduced effectiveness is remedied with reduction of hitpoints of enemies.

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@"yukarishura.4790" said:I think strikes as a learning instanced content was a great idea, many people I recently spoke to got into raids afterNo player that used strikes as a "learning content" actually needed that to get into raids. Every single player that got into raids that way could have just went there directly. There's nothing in Strikes to learn you could not learn in raids equally easily.

wrong, plenty enough to learn, especially 10 squad comps

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@"Astralporing.1957" said:Yes. Fully agreed with that. In fact, i was pointing that out already when Strikes were first introduced. I just think making a whole type of content like strikes and putting all that effort into it just to get that statistical data was not i'd call an efficient use of resources.

You mean the rewards for Strike Missions aren't good enough? Well they do have to compare with big open world meta farms, the other content the players they are aimed at will do, so I don't see an easy solution there.

The difference is, that gear score is something that can be improved by any player. Better players can do it faster, worse players may need to wait longer, but improving gear is something that everyone does in those MMORPGs. "skill score" however would be something much more static. It definitely would not solve any problem the game currently has to deal with.

The game always strived to increase the "skill level" of its players. Comparing Cursed Shore (the highest level zone in the game) with the Mad King's Lab, Southsun Cove, the Molten Alliance mobs, the Toxic Alliance mobs, and so on shows that Cursed Shore is just too easy, compared to what was added afterwards. Same goes for example with Season 2 and Heart of Thorns, a lot of Season 2 foes used to be (pre nerf) much more challenging than a lot of those seen the expansion.

The game already was increasing the skill level and telling players to "get good", if they wanted to continue playing. But I think that whole "get good or else" concept got lost to a lot of players. I mean we have players that never run a Fractal, that are having extreme difficulty playing in expansion zones (open world) that are debating about raiding and how hard raids are. There is a learning process involved and should be encouraged

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@Cyninja.2954 said:Because at the bottom end almost no synergies were being used while at the top end the reduced effectiveness is remedied with reduction of hitpoints of enemies.

I remember in the old days of Druid+Chrono+BS+2 DPS Raid meta the team was outputing triple damage due to all the stacking modifiers and abilities, This meant, that team would do more damage than what 5x DPS characters would do, showing that the game does have a huge stacking power problem. (Some of the problems were fixed, like Grace of the Land but still). That's what makes optimal team and average team damage output completely different. And to a lesser extend the rotation, but the rotations don't play as much of role as stacking modifiers.

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@"yukarishura.4790" said:

No player that used strikes as a "learning content" actually needed that to get into raids. Every single player that got into raids that way could have just went there directly. There's nothing in Strikes to learn you could not learn in raids equally easily.

wrong, plenty enough to learn, especially 10 squad compsLike i said, it's nothing you could not learn by going into raids directly. Strikes do not make it any easier to learn those things.

@"maddoctor.2738" said:The game always strived to increase the "skill level" of its players.No. It might have increased the "required skill level", but did nothing to increase it in
players
. The same concept as with "stepping stones" and strikes. And it did nothing, because it could not. The whole concept of the core build system is done about you improving completely on your own, with no help from the game. If game was to guide you, it would invalidate the whole reason for the system.

The game already was increasing the skill level and telling players to "get good", if they wanted to continue playing. But I think that whole "get good or else" concept got lost to a lot of players.No, it didn't get lost. The problem was, that players, faced with the choice, for the most part decided to pick the second option. Which was
not
something Anet wanted to see.

As i mentioned, the learning process in this game is not gradual. You get to the limit, and either stop, or break it and shoot straight to the top. There are no small steps here.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:Here is a simply solution: cap the maximum multiplier, thus limiting a free-form open ended multiplication of damage. This in turn would allow for multiple ways to achieve this capped value even within the current system without rewarding perfect stacking of many multipliers. In fact it would likely even open up a ton of additional gearing options because full berserker would not be required any longer for maximizing damage output, even less so in experienced players hands who would be able to stack multipliers from where every they choose.Seriously? And where exactly would you put that cap in the damage formula? Would it be a "multiplication cap" somehow (how?), or a hard cap to damage? How would it interact with the whole system? How would it impact the current gaps resulting just from gear alone (are you planning to change the gear, or just plain making stats on it mostly irrelevent)? Would boons suddenly stop working for people in zerker gear? Would +damage % effects stop working too? Or the bonuses from skills? How about crits? Do you intend to remove ferocity completely, make a separate cap on it, or just make it invisibly irrelevant? Etc, etc, etc.This idea of yours, as usually goes with simple solutions, would end up either not simple, or not a solution.

I think the idea was just to display and cap the multiplication value in the Hero panel, just like Expertise, Concentration and Precision are Capped.Boons like Fury, Traits, Skills, Gear Stats, Runes and Sigils increasing your condition duration, boon duration or crit chance don't "suddenly" stop working, it would be equally as, or ideally better, telegraphed as those - just like other modifiers could have been, as plenty other games do.

Now personally I'm glad GW2 didn't go down that hamfisted/overly controlling way and that the build system actually properly rewards diving into it and getting most out of it (since build crafting is half a game for me in RPG's). The problem then was though that the staggering vast majority of content in the game not even remotely required engaging with those systems.

If you have a fantastic and comparatively unrestricted and complex build crafting and combat system, which imo is one of the, if not the biggest, draws of GW2, but just ~1% of the games content actually requires even just moderate familiarity with it, ofc the majority is going to struggle with it at those pressure points.

You think, iirc, that primarily the system is flawed, while I think the system to be fine and see the flaw with the content at large not at all utilising it, leading to players hitting walls when it rarely does.GW2, at it's core in terms of combat systems was designed to be a fairly hardcore experience, but it's content and QoL systems were designed to be an incredibly casual experience. That stark difference is the root of the conflict and tribal community.

Are the current combat/build craft systems fantastic for hardcore play and content and would the game have been better off with more of that? Yes.Could they have just as well instead simplified the combat/build craft systems relatively easily and it would have been better/more fitting for the vast majority of content actually released? Yes.Could they have mostly kept the complex systems and simple content and worked on slowly merging them in a compromise (which tbf, they were and somewhat are trying to do, they just never stuck with it consistently, never went to the required depth, or most importantly always gave players an easy way out to not have to learn and improve and granting them success anyway*)? Yes.

As it is though, the community divide is just a representation of the confused and equally divided game design.But that ability of game design to actually influence player behavior and community expression is exactly why I think any solution (be it dumbing down the combat to match the content, elevating the content slowly to match the systems, or a compromise of both) could have all worked, if executed well. Players, and the community at large, would adapt.

But I know we had this discussion before, and imo all sides for this are equally valid and largely depend on personal preference. It's just that Anet kind of chose both either for one part of the game and or for another, without a compromise between them, ending up with a fairly hardcore combat system to play largely hyper casual content with.

*Quick Tangent on that note: Dear ArenaNet, if you want to teach players for example how to break breakbars/CC, do not give them a special action key to do it for them. Yes, they may not have weapons or utilities with CC equipped and fail, maybe have to grab some stuff and redo the instance, etc. It sucks in the moment, but it's a memorable learning experience that will benefit them and everyone around them for potentially thousands of hours to come. Giving them an easy way out robs them and everybody playing along side them of that benefit.Giving players easy fail safe ways to succeed like a Special Action key teaches them nothing other than to press Special Actions keys when they appear.Stop being so afraid of giving players moments of growth, just because they are a minor, very temporary, inconvenience.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:Seriously? And where exactly would you put that cap in the damage formula? Would it be a "multiplication cap" somehow (how?), or a hard cap to damage? How would it interact with the whole system?

Not hard to figure out, especially for a developer with all the data in the world. Currently all multiplicative effects add up. You simply cap the maximum amount this multiplier can go to.It's not that simple.Let's analyze this (and let's stick to only power dps for now)There's the base damage - from base, ungeared stats (so, 1000 Power), weapon damage and and skill coefficient.Then, there's the damage increase from Power stat from gear.Then there's damage increase from upping crit chance from Precision stat on gearThen there's damage increase from upping crit damage from Ferocity stat on gearThen there's damage increase from traits that give you extra Power, precision or ferocityThen there are direct +%damage multipliers from traitsThen, there are skills that do one of those things (either increase stats, or offer damage multipliers)Then, there are stat bonuses from foodThen, there are traits that increase your dps in other ways (i.e. by reducing cooldowns or triggering some damage effects)Then there are boons:some (might, banner of strength) increase statssome (spirit of frost) offer direct dps % bonuses.some (quickness, alacrity) increase dps indirectly, but as surely.(and i probably still missed something)Edit: ah, yeah, how could i forget runes and sigils...

So, how exactly are you going to deal with all that with a single cap? Without instantly obsoleting most of those things?

Simple solution here too: stat soft caps. Nothing revolutionary and widely used in the industry. Not even needed though if damage multipliers are shaved and capped.That's in addition to the only one cap that was supposed to be enough, right?

As mentioned: because they did not feel the need to do so. They showed that they are capable of changing the damage calculations without effort.They never changed base damage calculation formula at all. It's still exactly the same as on the day of launch. They may have tweaked some of the modifiers, but that formula always allowed for adding/removing those modifiers. What you speak of is completely different however.

A maximum multiplier is literally 1 variable added to the equation. That's exactly the same as adding condition duration in the past. That too was only 1 variable added.Condition duration existed from the very beginning. There may have been no stat for it, but it was always there. Again, no change to the basic damage calculation at all.

And as for "literally 1 variable", see above.

I'm not saying it wouldn't take work. I'm claiming that this work was put in in the past and this was not altered.And i am pointing out to you that no, you significantly underestimating the difference in amount of work required between what they did in the past, and what they'd have to do to introduce changes necessary to truly affect the problems i originally mentioned.

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I think there are many ppl that want to raid, so the raid community can get bigger. BUT the raiding community asks too much, i am trying to get dhuum helm and its a struggle to get it. i got boosted, but now i need gaeting crystals. the loot is very very very very bad, i got another run in a raid which drops gaeting crystals but ofc i didn't get an ascended or a mini so nothing bonus. and at the dhuum boost i also got nothing. this is very bad to me.

finding a group is very hard, raiders asks too much kp, there are nearly no wing 5 groups.

raiding can be better if there where addons like in WoW, so it will be nicer to new players coming in. these days it's difficult to even get into a group if you are not in a raiding guild. 50% in lfg are raid sellers.

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@"Asum.4960" said:You think, iirc, that primarily the system is flawed, while I think the system to be fine and see the flaw with the content at large not at all utilising it, leading to players hitting walls when it rarely does.I don;t think the system is flawed. I think it's fantastic. For a hardcore-focused game, that is. The problem lies in the fact that ultimately, for one reason or another, GW2 turned out to not be such a game (and almost certainly was never meant to be one).

GW2, at it's core in terms of combat systems was designed to be a fairly hardcore experience, but it's content and QoL systems were designed to be an incredibly casual experience. That stark difference is the root of the conflict and tribal community.Indeed. That's exactly the problem i am pointing out. The game design elements are flat out contradicting each others.

Are the current combat/build craft systems fantastic for hardcore play and content and would the game have been better off with more of that? Yes.For hardcore players, definitely. Not so much for casuals, though.

Could they have just as well instead simplified the combat/build craft systems relatively easily and it would have been better/more fitting for the vast majority of content actually released? Yes.It's something they should have done in a game targeted primarly towards casuals, or for a mixed audience. Although it would probably end up with some hardcores being disappointed.

Could they have mostly kept the complex systems and simple content and worked on slowly merging them in a compromise (which tbf, they were and somewhat are trying to do, they just never stuck with it consistently, never went to the required depth, or most importantly always gave players an easy way out to not have to learn and improve and granting them success anyway)? Yes.Unfortunately, not so much. You simply cannot mix this system with population as casual as GW2 one is. The "compromise" you speak of would require getting rid of that part of the community.Basically, given the option "improve or gtfo" in a game that can force players to improve, but cannot help them to do so, most players would pick the second option, not the first one.

But I know we had this discussion before, and imo all sides for this are equally valid and largely depend on personal preference. It's just that Anet kind of chose both either for one part of the game and or for another, without a compromise between them, ending up with a fairly hardcore combat system to play largely hyper casual content with.Yes. And that's a combination that simply doesn't work all that well, and only creates constant tension between different parts of the community (and between those parts of the community and the devs).

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@"Astralporing.1957" said:No. It might have increased the "required skill level", but did nothing to increase it in players.

Well since they've been increasing it for 8 years, there is something wrong with your assessment. After all, if players weren't improving and instead left the game, they would've done something about it. So I find it more likely that you are simply blowing this out of proportions. For starters, there have never been any release in the game (maybe with the exception of Ember Bay) that was in any way close to Core Tyria levels of mechanical difficulty.

As i mentioned, the learning process in this game is not gradual. You get to the limit, and either stop, or break it and shoot straight to the top. There are no small steps here.

Already showed the "steps" in this game, it's the entire release cycle. The main problem with the learning process is all the skipping. I mean how many times have I read about the game not teaching you new things as they come, while it does give you notices every time you level up about new things, along with some gear or items to help illustrate that point. And then we have those that complain about things that Arenanet does, even when it's not the company that did it in the first place (like the recent thread about the raid event "organized" by Arenanet). This community/playerbase just shows how "illeterate" they are, I'm not sure making the game suitable for these types of players is worth the effort. It's a game after all, not a movie, like what those types want to.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Asum.4960" said:You think, iirc, that primarily the system is flawed, while I think the system to be fine and see the flaw with the content at large not at all utilising it, leading to players hitting walls when it rarely does.I don;t think the system is flawed. I think it's fantastic. For a hardcore-focused game, that is. The problem lies in the fact that ultimately, for one reason or another, GW2 turned out to
not
be such a game (and almost certainly was never meant to be one).

GW2, at it's core in terms of combat systems was designed to be a fairly hardcore experience, but it's content and QoL systems were designed to be an incredibly casual experience. That stark difference is the root of the conflict and tribal community.Indeed. That's exactly the problem i am pointing out. The game design elements are flat out contradicting each others.

Are the current combat/build craft systems fantastic for hardcore play and content and would the game have been better off with more of that? Yes.For hardcore players, definitely. Not so much for casuals, though.

Could they have just as well instead simplified the combat/build craft systems relatively easily and it would have been better/more fitting for the vast majority of content actually released? Yes.It's something they should have done in a game targeted primarly towards casuals, or for a mixed audience. Although it would probably end up with some hardcores being disappointed.

Could they have mostly kept the complex systems and simple content and worked on slowly merging them in a compromise (which tbf, they were and somewhat are trying to do, they just never stuck with it consistently, never went to the required depth, or most importantly always gave players an easy way out to not have to learn and improve and granting them success anyway)? Yes.Unfortunately, not so much. You simply cannot mix this system with population as casual as GW2 one is. The "compromise" you speak of would require
getting rid of that part of the community
.Basically, given the option "improve or gtfo" in a game that can force players to improve, but cannot
help
them to do so, most players would pick the second option, not the first one.

But I know we had this discussion before, and imo all sides for this are equally valid and largely depend on personal preference. It's just that Anet kind of chose
both
either
for one part of the game and
or
for another, without a compromise between them, ending up with a fairly hardcore combat system to play largely hyper casual content with.Yes. And that's a combination that simply doesn't work all that well, and only creates constant tension between different parts of the community (and between those parts of the community and the devs).

Agreed, except for the part where design either has to be the game going "here is a small loan of a million dollars, you can't fail - the world is your oyster," levels of casual, which in my opinion creates toxic entitlement, and the game going "git gud or gtfo" levels of hardcore, which imo creates toxic elitism.I know there is a (imo most healthy) middleground, as well as that design can influence players and transform player behavior.

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@"Asum.4960" said:Agreed, except for the part where design either has to be the game going "here is a small loan of a million dollars, you can't fail - the world is your oyster," levels of casual, which in my opinion creates toxic entitlement, and the game going "git gud or gtfo" levels of hardcore, which imo creates toxic elitism.I know there is a (imo most healthy) middleground, as well as that design can influence players and transform player behavior.Yes, but (and here is the key part) not with this system.It's the combination of this game's build/combat system that creates such a wide gap.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Asum.4960" said:Agreed, except for the part where design either has to be the game going "here is a small loan of a million dollars, you can't fail - the world is your oyster," levels of casual, which in my opinion creates toxic entitlement, and the game going "git gud or gtfo" levels of hardcore, which imo creates toxic elitism.I know there is a (imo most healthy) middleground, as well as that design can influence players and transform player behavior.Yes, but (and here is the key part)
not with this system
.It's the combination of this game's build/combat system that creates such a wide gap.

And I suppose that's the point of disagreement we repeatedly reached.You think the system failed, I think the content failed.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:No. It might have increased the "required skill level", but did nothing to increase it in
players
.

Well since they've been increasing it for 8 years, there is something wrong with your assessment. After all, if players weren't improving and instead left the game, they would've done something about it. So I find it more likely that you are simply blowing this out of proportions. For starters, there have never been any release in the game (maybe with the exception of Ember Bay) that was in any way close to Core Tyria levels of mechanical difficulty.

As i mentioned, the learning process in this game is not gradual. You get to the limit, and either stop, or break it and shoot straight to the top. There are no small steps here.

Already showed the "steps" in this game, it's the entire release cycle. The main problem with the learning process is all the skipping. I mean how many times have I read about the game not teaching you new things as they come, while it does give you notices every time you level up about new things, along with some gear or items to help illustrate that point. And then we have those that complain about things that Arenanet does, even when it's not the company that did it in the first place (like the recent thread about the raid event "organized" by Arenanet). This community/playerbase just shows how "illeterate" they are, I'm not sure making the game suitable for these types of players is worth the effort. It's a game after all, not a movie, like what those types want to.

I'm actually going to disagree with you both here, imo the game, adjusted for power creep, did for the most part not get gradually and consistently more difficult, did not increase the required skill, and that's exactly where the content failed to utilize and teach the systems in place.

The game occasionally tells people, rather than consistently shows. Learning by doing, in repetition, is how the majority learns.

As I stated in my added tangent in an earlier post:

Dear ArenaNet, if you want to teach players for example how to break breakbars/CC, do not give them a special action key to do it for them. Yes, they may not have weapons or utilities with CC equipped and fail, maybe have to grab some stuff and redo the instance, etc. It sucks in the moment, but it's a memorable learning experience that will benefit them and everyone around them for potentially thousands of hours to come. Giving them an easy way out robs them and everybody playing along side them of that benefit.Giving players easy fail safe ways to succeed like a Special Action key (or making the threshold for success so low that random off CD button pressing will generally do it) teaches them nothing other than to press Special Actions keys when they appear.Stop being so afraid of giving players moments of growth, just because they are a minor, very temporary, inconvenience.

Every time Anet tells people how to do something, or expects them to do it, they at the same time are so afraid of the potential of failure (and with that learning), that they show a way around having to actually engage with the systems.The systems aren't the primary issue, the content just utterly fails at conveying how to work them, to the detriment of the casual/average player.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:Seriously? And where exactly would you put that cap in the damage formula? Would it be a "multiplication cap" somehow (how?), or a hard cap to damage? How would it interact with the whole system?

Not hard to figure out, especially for a developer with all the data in the world. Currently all multiplicative effects add up. You simply cap the maximum amount this multiplier can go to.It's not that simple.Let's analyze this (and let's stick to only power dps for now)There's the base damage - from base, ungeared stats (so, 1000 Power), weapon damage and and skill coefficient.Then, there's the damage increase from Power stat from gear.Then there's damage increase from upping crit chance from Precision stat on gearThen there's damage increase from upping crit damage from Ferocity stat on gearThen there's damage increase from traits that give you extra Power, precision or ferocityThen there are direct +%damage multipliers from traitsThen, there are skills that do one of those things (either increase stats, or offer damage multipliers)Then, there are stat bonuses from foodThen, there are traits that increase your dps in other ways (i.e. by reducing cooldowns or triggering some damage effects)Then there are boons:some (might, banner of strength) increase statssome (spirit of frost) offer direct dps % bonuses.some (quickness, alacrity) increase dps indirectly, but as surely.(and i probably still missed something)Edit: ah, yeah, how could i forget runes and sigils...

So, how exactly are you going to deal with all that with a single cap? Without instantly obsoleting most of those things?

You are not obsoleting them but making them side grades.

Stats can be soft capped. Literally deals with all boon related issues as well, if desired. This is not something new. It is being done by a LOT of games.

Then multipliers, easy to cap at say 30% instead of allowing 80-90% as is now (and more). HOW that multiplication cap is achieved is then up to each player individually. Are you taking the traits which increase your modifier, or are you using a sigil of force? Are you using a proc from one of your traits, or not?

The only issue would be traits and procs from those, but last I checked, none of those make up a majority of the damage and all of those effects would again scale with the aforementioned changes.

You are counting down a lot of different contributing factors without just going strait to the underlying issue: damage multiplication. The fact this comes from different sources is only significant if there are huge issues in addressing the source. I'm saying it is not. It's 2 things in this case:

  • stat stacking
  • multiplier stacking

Because that's literally what the damage formula is if you break it down.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:Simple solution here too: stat soft caps. Nothing revolutionary and widely used in the industry. Not even needed though if damage multipliers are shaved and capped.That's in addition to the only one cap that was supposed to be enough, right?

No, that's IF stats need to be capped or adjusted as additional possibility to FURTHER reduce the performance difference. Capping the damage multiplier would already have the mentioned effect I was talking about.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:As mentioned: because they did not feel the need to do so. They showed that they are capable of changing the damage calculations without effort.They never changed base damage calculation formula at all. It's still exactly the same as on the day of launch. They may have tweaked some of the modifiers, but that formula always allowed for adding/removing those modifiers. What you speak of is completely different however.

They literally added a modifier for condition damage duration which was not present at release. They can just as easily add a line of code which checks if a damage modifier exceeds a tolerance value.

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