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What is the point of the agony mechanic?


FizCap.6573

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Just seems like a lazy way to have players grind for gold just so they don't get one shot by a boss. I wouldn't have a problem with it if all agony could be dodged, but some bosses force you into agony and you have no way to avoid it which is just stupid, people will say they like agony progression and all that weak argument shit, but in a game sense it literally makes no sense to have an agony system.

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I think agony is used mostly as a gear check sort of thing and to add difficulty to the fractals beyond the bosses and trash do more damage and have more health other than that I don't think it has much of a purpose. You can dodge some of the things from bosses that cause agony but not all of them.

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@SilentSam.1589 said:I think agony is used mostly as a gear check sort of thing and to add difficulty to the fractals beyond the bosses and trash do more damage and have more health other than that I don't think it has much of a purpose. You can dodge some of the things from bosses that cause agony but not all of them.

Gear check? Exotic and ascended only have a 3% difference, that is so minor.

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Its a filtering system against new players. Personally I don't want someone who just finished leveling their story suddenly going into T4. Sure, its not a perfect filtering system but its better than nothing. Without AR all LFG for fractals would ask for some kind of killproof or AP ranking.

@FizCap.6573 said:

@"SilentSam.1589" said:I think agony is used mostly as a gear check sort of thing and to add difficulty to the fractals beyond the bosses and trash do more damage and have more health other than that I don't think it has much of a purpose. You can dodge some of the things from bosses that cause agony but not all of them.

Gear check? Exotic and ascended only have a 3% difference, that is so minor.

This times five players in the party.

Also i have had situations where I survived with 100HP and party suceeded in killing the boss. As stupid as it sounds but small difference in vitality can be what saves your healer or support class in dangerous situations.

Also, in a game with so much emphasis on active defense agony is a refreshing aspect since you can't cleanse it or block it the same way you can other attacks.Personally, i think that agony resistance is one of the best things in terms of general PvE

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Agony resistance is ArenaNet's version of the gear treadmill. Now before people start crying, I think this is a good idea. It's a form of progression and it makes sure as someone said that new people first get to practice at lower levels first. As much as people didn't want gear progression at level 80, any MMO does need something like it. I think this is a pretty good version.

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@FizCap.6573 said:

@SilentSam.1589 said:I think agony is used mostly as a gear check sort of thing and to add difficulty to the fractals beyond the bosses and trash do more damage and have more health other than that I don't think it has much of a purpose. You can dodge some of the things from bosses that cause agony but not all of them.

Gear check? Exotic and ascended only have a 3% difference, that is so minor.Yes, the difference between Agony resistance of 0 and one high enough for the fractal tier you're in is definitely minor [/sarcasm](it's also more than 3%, but that's besides the main point).

It is anet's attempt at gear progression. They were originally saying it was just the first of similar mechanics planned for different content, so i'm really glad they abandoned that idea.

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The only problem I see with AR is how - in comparison - crafting ascended gear is extensively more expensive and takes extensively longer to get than exotic gear.

That alone shows how Anet tried to make up for the easy acquisition of exotic and lower gear.You would expect that from one tier to the next the upgrade will take proportionally longer, but instead you can get exotic gear just as fast as any of the lower tiers.

That - imo - is why ascended gear and AR is so grindy. Way more grindy than it would be if only exotic gear wasn't such a mess from the start.

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I've always thought that agony was there to put in a small check for healers in fractals. Encourage people to shuck and dive, instead of eating deathrays with their face.

But overall, it works as a gear treadmill/gold sink, and unique resource to make money from. It provides a good form of progression, since agony doesn't worm its way into other facets of the game. As a barrier to entry it ensures that the player either has enough experience in fractals to get that agony resistance, or has earned enough gold to buy all of the bits.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:I've always thought that agony was there to put in a small check for healers in fractals. Encourage people to shuck and dive, instead of eating deathrays with their face.

But overall, it works as a gear treadmill/gold sink, and unique resource to make money from. It provides a good form of progression, since agony doesn't worm its way into other facets of the game. As a barrier to entry it ensures that the player either has enough experience in fractals to get that agony resistance, or has earned enough gold to buy all of the bits.

Nah its just outdated and unfair mechanic. You dont need experiance to.get enough ar just gold

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@Clyan.1593 said:The only problem I see with AR is how - in comparison - crafting ascended gear is extensively more expensive and takes extensively longer to get than exotic gear.

That alone shows how Anet tried to make up for the easy acquisition of exotic and lower gear.You would expect that from one tier to the next the upgrade will take proportionally longer, but instead you can get exotic gear just as fast as any of the lower tiers.

That - imo - is why ascended gear and AR is so grindy. Way more grindy than it would be if only exotic gear wasn't such a mess from the start.

I opened my GW2 account February 2018, and I have 3 fully ascended geared characters, that latest one completed back in September. I only do T4's on one of those characters so the others have about 100-110 AR, but I have about 60 +7 Infusions in my bank ready to trade in for +9s if that should change.

Ascended gear is 'grindy' as far as GW2 is concerned, but a flat out joke in comparison to other MMO gear treadmills, and that's a good thing. GW2 doesn't use gear as the main driver for players, and one of its best strengths.

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@Turkeyspit.3965 said:

@Clyan.1593 said:The only problem I see with AR is how - in comparison - crafting ascended gear is extensively more expensive and takes extensively longer to get than exotic gear.

That alone shows how Anet tried to make up for the easy acquisition of exotic and lower gear.You would expect that from one tier to the next the upgrade will take proportionally longer, but instead you can get exotic gear just as fast as any of the lower tiers.

That - imo - is why ascended gear and AR is so grindy. Way more grindy than it would be if only exotic gear wasn't such a mess from the start.

I opened my GW2 account February 2018, and I have 3 fully ascended geared characters, that latest one completed back in September. I only do T4's on one of those characters so the others have about 100-110 AR, but I have about 60 +7 Infusions in my bank ready to trade in for +9s if that should change.

Ascended gear is 'grindy' as far as GW2 is concerned, but a flat out joke in comparison to other MMO gear treadmills, and that's a good thing. GW2 doesn't use gear as the main driver for players, and one of its best strengths.

First of all I didn't compare GW2 to any other MMO - so you are right but your argument isn't an answer to my statements.Secondly you ignore the cost factor which I, along with the time investment, did compare to exotic armor.

So yes, the time investment and cost investment for higher gear compared to other mmo games is very low, but that's not what I was talking about at all.I'm talking about these things within the boundaries of GW2 itself, nothing else. You could go on to explain how the cost investment is meaningless as a factor since it's up to the player if he wants to spend money or start farming and grinding or not - however not spending gold on the items will increase the time investment.

Now I opened my account when the game released and I have every class fully equipped with ascended gear - but that doesn't mean anything since no one knows how much time I actually spend playing the game. The same goes for you having stated you started in February 2018; that doesn't help me to validate the time or cost investment in ascended gear at all. And even if you did give us the needed information of how many hours per day you play, it's still a form of grind. Certain gear with stats like viper for example require items which are account bound and drop based on a chance, so that's another indication for grind.

But none of that matters for what I originally said: That in comparison TO exotic gear crafting ascended gear needs disproportionately more investment from the player and that this is the result of a design issue from ANet. Anyone who has been around since release knows that, it was a problem that the vast majority of the community did complain about, because in the beginning there was no ascended gear and after one week you already were fully equipped with max stats gear.

So just to be sure you understand what I say: You can get white, blue, green, yellow or orange gear with almost zero time or cost investment, while on the other hand ascended gear in COMPARISON is grindy and/or expensive as hell.

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What is the point of the agony mechanic?tl;dr it's a little bit like your pinky toe: it had an important purpose, it's not really essential to us any longer, but try to remove it and you'll encounter strong resistance (no one wants to suffer the agony of defeat).


Agony & Agony resistance, combined with the Personal Fractal Level was designed to gate the inexperienced from participating in the game's original "challenging group content." When the max fractal level was 50, it worked pretty well to do this: it was hard to progress without AR and hard to get AR without progressing. There were few sources of ascended gear, nearly all fractal oriented.

Over time, for good reasons, ANet has made it easier to get ascended and vastly increased the number of infusion slots, making it easier & cheaper than ever to hit AR150. An unintended consequence of those sensible changes is that anyone with ~150-250 gold can gear up for T4 fractals, without having a clue about how they work. That's great for the best players among us, great for people with alts, great for guilds that don't mind training/carrying guildies. It can be horrid for the merely "good" player trying to crawl their way up (especially T3).

ANet has spoken about this a couple of times: they cannot easily change the system. AR and the infusion system is a key element in the economic benefits of fractaling and of stat-boosting infusions. And it's built in as part of the newer reward of fractal titles.

So it's no longer close to the theoretically best way to gate challenging content nor to reward players, but it can't be disentangled to make it worth overhauling. At least, not soon.

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@Hesacon.8735 said:Agony is what makes fractals superior to raids. It's a reasonable barrier to entry that prevents people who aren't going to take it seriously from ruining your run.

At least, in theory.

Doesn't work in theory, there was times where I would have 80 agony resistance and I would be joining fractals that required 120-130 agony resistance and I succeeded.

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I think it comes to that once upon of time there was no agony and fractals only had 50 levels. People use to do it in exotic gear, uphill,15 miles, in the snow.So when ascended was introduced it wouldn't be enough to just buff bosses damage and HP as those people were already strong, could have run fractals with close eyes, barefoot.So agony was introduced as well as slots for infusions on new ascended gear.

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@FizCap.6573 said:

@Hesacon.8735 said:Agony is what makes fractals superior to raids. It's a reasonable barrier to entry that prevents people who aren't going to take it seriously from ruining your run.

At least, in theory.

Doesn't work in theory, there was times where I would have 80 agony resistance and I would be joining fractals that required 120-130 agony resistance and I succeeded.

You're an exception to that particular gate. The vast majority of players do not succeed in most fractals without the relevant AR.And in any case, it's the original theory; in practice, it's been years since insufficient AR was a consistently successful method to reduce the number of inexperienced players. It's simply too easy to get AR150 without having stepped foot in the dungeon.

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@phs.6089 said:I think it comes to that once upon of time there was no agony and fractals only had 50 levels. People use to do it in exotic gear, uphill,15 miles, in the snow.So when ascended was introduced it wouldn't be enough to just buff bosses damage and HP as those people were already strong, could have run fractals with close eyes, barefoot.So agony was introduced as well as slots for infusions on new ascended gear.

Not sure what game you're referring, but definitely not gw2. Agony (and agony reduction) was present since the first day of Fractals.

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Any fractal with Social Awkwardness would instantly kill you with a 40-50 difference in AR as soon as you proc the effect and it will proc at least once in any fractal, even worse if you have classes with auto-movement on skills. And SA used to be in every fractal after a certain personal level was reached.

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Agony mechanic is a remnant of way back when it got added in late 2013.

So to explain, back then the basic idea was:

  • fractal bosses would do agony damage with some of their attacks (similar to now but there was no guaranteed agony check, all attack were dodge-able)
  • agony resistance was meant as a possibility to make up for bad play but if a player was good enough, he could complete fractals with less than required agony resistance (even as low as 0, some people in my group back then ran with 0 AR on fractal 40+)
  • as a matter of fact, back then only rings and backpiece were available and the maximum AR per slot was 5 (so a total of 30 AR were possible with 2 infused rings and an infused backpiece) which required a player to dodge certain boss attacks or instant die (only bosses back then were Swamp, Dredge and Jade Maw and mostly different version from today) (no ascended armor or weapons too)
  • agony resistance was never intended as a hard gate on initial release but rather as an added possible defense (and you could not get agony resistance AND stats back the though most people opted for the AR)
  • fractal rank was per character and the first few months only the exact fractal level you were on would increase your rank, making gear less significant since almost no one played multiple characters up. You picked a character and stuck with it, period.

This all changed with multiple revamps to the fractal and agony system to what we have now, a hard gate with breakpoints making ascended armor required for T4.

At the same time a ton of quality of life upgrades more than make up for this annoyance while also preventing to easy gearing up of characters

TL;DR: agony resistance changed over the years and now fulfills a different role to what its original purpose was.

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The reason why agony was introduced was that people who just wanted to play WoW without paying a sub fee wanted to turn GW2 into WoW with no sub fee which a vast majority of people didn't want, they complained alot on the forums and such about the lack of gear progression, Anet mistook it as a majority opinion and introduced ascended stat items which received massive blowback after that happened.

I remembered this like it was yesterday. One of the worst additions to the game that completely destroyed a lot of the balance in the game, especially since abilities back in the day were balanced around Rare gear.

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@Gehenna.3625 said:Agony resistance is ArenaNet's version of the gear treadmill. Now before people start crying, I think this is a good idea. It's a form of progression and it makes sure as someone said that new people first get to practice at lower levels first. As much as people didn't want gear progression at level 80, any MMO does need something like it. I think this is a pretty good version.

Its not a gear treadmill, its progression past lvl 80. Gear treadmill would imply that u have to keep up to date and refarm ar which isnt the case.

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@IllegalChocolate.6938 said:The reason why agony was introduced was that people who just wanted to play WoW without paying a sub fee wanted to turn GW2 into WoW with no sub fee which a vast majority of people didn't want, they complained alot on the forums and such about the lack of gear progression, Anet mistook it as a majority opinion and introduced ascended stat items which received massive blowback after that happened.

I remembered this like it was yesterday. One of the worst additions to the game that completely destroyed a lot of the balance in the game, especially since abilities back in the day were balanced around Rare gear.

If ppl wanted gw2 to turn to wow the raids would bring a new gear tier each time.

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