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What is the point of the agony mechanic?


FizCap.6573

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Ascended gear was introduced to add more depth to gearing in this game. It hardly turned anything into WoW. There was literally nothing to do in PvE after we had acquired our first exotic sets in pretty much no time. There needs to be something people can work towards, especially right after the release, or they'll simply move on to the next game. They added new stats, infusions and other things but nothing else has been done in over six years as they seem to deem ascended gear to be quite sufficient as far as gearing and gear depth is concerned. Agony may have been a mistake, ascended gear certainly was not.

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@zealex.9410 said:

@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.

You do content to upgrade your gear so you can do the same content at a higher level, right?

To me that's a gear treadmill even though it's a more elegant one.

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@Cyninja.2954 said: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.

Fractals got introduced November 2012.

Agony resistance was intended as a hard gate.The last fractal was always Solid Ocean at even fractal levels (undodgeable agony at last island). You could circumvent it with rezz orbs and exploits but this was never intended.

Now it is just a form of progression through fractals.

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@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.

You do content to upgrade your gear so you can do the same content at a higher level, right?

To me that's a gear treadmill even though it's a more elegant one.

No it's not a gear threadmill. Gear treadmills get a higher values every patch so you are never really finished. It is just progression as you need to reach 150 agony resistance and you are done.

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@zealex.9410 said:

@"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.That was the original idea. Fractals were supposed to be infinite in levels, and Anet planned on adding new slots for ar every now and then in order to both slow down people from progressing through the levels, and make them regear every now and then. There were also supposed to be better infusion tiers originally (first ones were blue, greens with +11 to stats and AR were datamined at one point in a beta client).So yeah, very much Anet's idea of gear treadmill. Although they called that "item progression" then.

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@Miellyn.6847 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said: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.

Fractals got introduced November 2012.

My bad, I missplaced the dates from introduction and the first major revamp. You are correct, the initial release was 2012, 3 months after launch.

@Miellyn.6847 said:Agony resistance was intended as a hard gate.The last fractal was always Solid Ocean at even fractal levels (undodgeable agony at last island). You could circumvent it with rezz orbs and exploits but this was never intended.

Now it is just a form of progression through fractals.

I don't agree. Solid Ocean was not the only agony boss especially once revamped 1 year later. Mossman, Bloomhunger, the ice elemental and dredge boss in the underground facility applied agony too. All of these were avoidable and if played well completely dodge-able allowing skilled players to never get hit by agony.

Agony was never a hard gate for the first 2 iterations of the content. I had people with 0 agony resistance perfect dodge the fights and not die to instant death mechanics. Solid Ocean did not have an agony check on entry too, that all came later.

That is not getting into exploits and other creative ways around getting the intended maximum progression initially (necormancer, ranger pet ressurection, ressurection orbs, etc.). Agony was definitely not designed as a gate mechanic initially even if possibly intended to be one.

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@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.

You do content to upgrade your gear so you can do the same content at a higher level, right?

To me that's a gear treadmill even though it's a more elegant one.

No it's not a gear treadmill. Gear treadmills get a higher values every patch so you are never really finished. It is just progression as you need to reach 150 agony resistance and you are done.

Agreed, it's not a gear treadmill since there is no statistical advantage offered by agony. Also all gear available at higher tiers (fractals) is available through multiple other methods.

The fact that T4 fractals and above make acquisition of more equal statistical gear easier, is more en par with doing raids or difficult dungeons in other games without receiving better gear.

The agony mechanic is a multiplier and scaling mechanic for acquisition of in-game wealth (since running T4 fractals daily will yield significant return gold and wealth wise), that alone (since it does not allow unique game play advantages) is not a gear treadmill.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:Agony resistance was intended as a hard gate.The last fractal was always Solid Ocean at even fractal levels (undodgeable agony at last island). You could circumvent it with rezz orbs and exploits but this was never intended.

Now it is just a form of progression through fractals.

I don't agree. Solid Ocean was not the only agony boss especially once revamped 1 year later. Mossman, Bloomhunger, the ice elemental and dredge boss in the underground facility applied agony too. All of these were avoidable and if played well completely dodge-able allowing skilled players to never get hit by agony.Miellyn's not talking about attack-applied agony, but about the initial unblockable and undodgable pulse after entering the Jade Maw platform. Yes, you could circumvent it with using ress orbs, guardian tome heal spam and ranger search and rescue, but those ways were obviously never intended (and all have been in one way or another fixed by anet at some point, specifically to remove those ways of circumventing original design)

Agony was never a hard gate for the first 2 iterations of the content. I had people with 0 agony resistance perfect dodge the fights and not die to instant death mechanics. Solid Ocean did not have an agony check on entry too, that all came later.All the changes Anet did to stop people from crossing Agony thresholds show clearly they did not, in fact, ever expected players to bypass it. It
was
supposed to be a hard check.

That is not getting into exploits and other creative ways around getting the intended maximum progression initially (necormancer, ranger pet ressurection, ressurection orbs, etc.). Agony was definitely not designed as a gate mechanic initially even if possibly intended to be one.Oh, it
was
designed as a gate mechanic, it's just that design had some large holes initially that some players used to circumvent the restrictions. All those holes were at some point patched (although subsequent fractal reworks introduced new ones, by allowing players to skip the former end boss fractals, and thus again avoid the impassable agony gating mechanics. This however still required at least
some
players to be able to cross them). And of course nowadays they just no longer seem to really care about the issue anymore.

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@Henry.5713 said:Ascended gear was introduced to add more depth to gearing in this game. It hardly turned anything into WoW. There was literally nothing to do in PvE after we had acquired our first exotic sets in pretty much no time. There needs to be something people can work towards, especially right after the release, or they'll simply move on to the next game. They added new stats, infusions and other things but nothing else has been done in over six years as they seem to deem ascended gear to be quite sufficient as far as gearing and gear depth is concerned. Agony may have been a mistake, ascended gear certainly was not.

Ascended gear itself wasn't a mistake, the adding it after release was tho. As it drove quite a few people away.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:Agreed, it's not a gear treadmill since there is no statistical advantage offered by agony. Also all gear available at higher tiers (fractals) is available through multiple other methods.So damage reduction is not a statistical advantage to you, is it? Is that why there is an agony STAT on your character screen?

The whole point of a gear treadmill, and that's why it's called a treadmill, is that you need to keep getting gear that enables you to beat more difficult content. That is exactly what agony resistance is doing.

It certainly isn't the same approach to the traditional gear treadmills and certainly less involved but it certainly works on the exact same principle of improving stats to be able to beat harder content. You can't really deny that the function of AR is exactly that.

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@Gehenna.3625 said:The whole point of a gear treadmill, and that's why it's called a treadmill, is that you need to keep getting gear that enables you to beat more difficult content. That is exactly what agony resistance is doing.No, it's exactly the opposite of what agony resistance does. Treadmills are constant; AR is a one-time requirement.

It certainly isn't the same approach to the traditional gear treadmills and certainly less involved but it certainly works on the exact same principle of improving stats to be able to beat harder content. You can't really deny that the function of AR is exactly that.No one is denying that AR is required for fractals. The point is that it's not something you have to do with each expansion.

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@zealex.9410 said:

@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.

This was before they had the system in place to do 10 man instanced content. Had anet not received the massive blowback when ascended items were introduced to basically be another gear tier, raids would be doing this.

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@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:The whole point of a gear treadmill, and that's why it's called a treadmill, is that you need to keep getting gear that enables you to beat more difficult content. That is exactly what agony resistance is doing.No, it's exactly the opposite of what agony resistance does. Treadmills are constant; AR is a one-time requirement.Well treadmills by themselves are an exaggeration. Most of those games that do have level cap raises do so every few years. So that really doesn't qualify as a treadmill to begin with. Now I will say that I have lost track of what they do with AR nowadays, so I guess the endless levels idea is no more and so everything's pretty fixed then I guess.It certainly isn't the same approach to the traditional gear treadmills and certainly less involved but it certainly works on the exact same principle of improving stats to be able to beat harder content. You can't really deny that the function of AR is exactly that.No to me it sounded like the same principles that drove AR. It certainly wasn't the same approach in how they did that. That's why I call it a more elegant variation, but then I thought the idea was to add more AR and more difficult fractal tiers.No one is denying that AR is required for fractals. The point is that it's not something you have to do with each expansion.I thought there were tiers within fractals and that you need higher and higher AR for higher tiers. That sounds exactly like what I experienced in other games...on the principle, not the execution. It's just one stat you upgrade.

But hey, I might be wrong here, it just sounded to me like you need higher AR equipped on your gear for higher tiers of fractals. That part at least sounds a lot like the principle behind gear treadmills. But if they aren't adding higher difficulties to fractals then indeed it's not a treadmill even if it was intended to be initially.

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@"Gehenna.3625" said:

I thought there were tiers within fractals and that you need higher and higher AR for higher tiers. That sounds exactly like what I experienced in other games...on the principle, not the execution. It's just one stat you upgrade.

You need 150+ AR in total for maximum mitigration against agony ticks in fractal level 100 (which is currently Shattered Observatory T4). Truth is you can do it with lower AR, too: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Agony

You will lose more health per tick. My earlier statement about missing AR instantly killing you is, according to that table, not entirely correct but a difference of 40 AR means you take 48% of your max HP per tick which will kill you quickly.

Much in the same way, you need a minimum of AR for every fractal lower than level 100.https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists#Fractal_levels

The minimum numbers are:17 AR for all of T161 AR for all of T2106 AR for all of T3150 AR for all of T4

The biggest benefit of AR (besides reducing Agony damage) is in conjunction with the fractal masteryhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Central_Tyria_mastery_tracks#Fractal_Attunement

Fractal potions will now grant you 30% of your AR per stack in bonus stats.

with 150 AR that means 45 stat points per stack. Which in return translates to:225 bonus Precision225 bonus Concentration225 bonus Toughness

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@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:The whole point of a gear treadmill, and that's why it's called a treadmill, is that you need to keep getting gear that enables you to beat more difficult content. That is exactly what agony resistance is doing.No, it's exactly the opposite of what agony resistance does. Treadmills are constant; AR is a one-time requirement.That is now, when Agony's role is pretty much depreciated. It wasn't so when it was introduced however, and when there was no such thing as fractal level cap.So, yes, it's not a gear treadmill now, but it was definitely originally designed for exactly that role.

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@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:The whole point of a gear treadmill, and that's why it's called a treadmill, is that you need to keep getting gear that enables you to beat more difficult content. That is exactly what agony resistance is doing.No, it's exactly the opposite of what agony resistance does. Treadmills are constant; AR is a one-time requirement.

It certainly isn't the same approach to the traditional gear treadmills and certainly less involved but it certainly works on the exact same principle of improving stats to be able to beat harder content. You can't really deny that the function of AR is exactly that.No one is denying that AR is required for fractals. The point is that it's not something you have to do with each expansion.

This.

The term treadmill is quite visual and explanatory as to why and how such systems are designed, aka they keep spinning.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:The whole point of a gear treadmill, and that's why it's called a treadmill, is that you need to keep getting gear that enables you to beat more difficult content. That is exactly what agony resistance is doing.No, it's exactly the opposite of what agony resistance does. Treadmills are constant; AR is a one-time requirement.That is now, when Agony's role is pretty much depreciated. It wasn't so when it was introduced however, and when there was no such thing as fractal level cap.So, yes, it's not a gear treadmill now, but it was definitely originally designed for exactly that role.

A 1 time shortly after release item cap increase is hardly a treadmill, especially the way ascended was introduced over 2 years giving people a ton of time to prepare.

But it did come as quite a shock back then.

Me personally I was not thrilled when ascended was introduced, but was willing to give the game a try simply for 2 reasons:

  • exotic even at launch was way to easy to come by, this just multiplied over the years. I remember when having alternate character in full rare gear was already decent.
  • give Arenanet the possibility to stick to they word, so far 6 years in they have been true to it (mostly, some people might argue with new stat combinations and 4 stat combinations being a gear increase. The saving grace here is how these stat advantages are introduced and the introduction of the ascended stat changing)
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My biggest complaint is just how annoying it is to "prepare" for Fractals. What I mean by that is I go play WvW and use WvW infusions for the stat increase (you might find the difference trivial, but personally I care about every tiny stat increase and like to min/max), and then if I want to play Fractals I have to remove every single infusion and replace them with my +9 agony infusions. A lot of the time I just can't be bothered because it's an extra layer of messing about so I forego Fractals.

The solution for me, obviously, are Agony Stat infusions, but they're just too expensive for what they are. My options are inconvenience or break the bank.

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@"ProverbsofHell.2307" said:My biggest complaint is just how annoying it is to "prepare" for Fractals. What I mean by that is I go play WvW and use WvW infusions for the stat increase (you might find the difference trivial, but personally I care about every tiny stat increase and like to min/max), and then if I want to play Fractals I have to remove every single infusion and replace them with my +9 agony infusions. A lot of the time I just can't be bothered because it's an extra layer of messing about so I forego Fractals.

The solution for me, obviously, are Agony Stat infusions, but they're just too expensive for what they are. My options are inconvenience or break the bank.

WvW infusions are sort of meh. +1% damage to guards is helpful, but most people are playing the game to fight other players. I just use my AR infusions in wvw.

That being said, I did dump a depressing amount of money into the +5 stat AR infusions. Others have pointed out that this is a somewhat elegant solution to gear treadmills (stupid money for minor stats), but others have also pointed out that at a certain point there is no longer a use for gold. So it works out as something to strive for without being a barrier in itself.

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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.

Great ... sounds like your team carried you. They must have been excited to do so. This is clearly an exceptional case.

The bottom line is that Anet allows you to pay to skip the line if you like. You get choice ... you pay and buy infusions ... or you play and earn them as you get through the frac levels.

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  • 1 year later...

@"kasoki.5180" said:Its a filtering system against new players. Personally I don't want someone who just finished leveling their story suddenly going into T4.

Sure, but finishing leveling recently isnt defining the player as "without skills" and so AR should be removed. It may be an alt of someone more experienced than you, it should also be not apparent to you in any way how many fractals someone did. The game cant be insular and new players need access so they can become better.

The way to make sure to play with good people used to be 1) find them by trial and error 2) join their guild or add them as friend.And thats how it should be. All games that have any sort of point check system that people use to exclude fresh players is bad for the game. Guilds did that fine without points. That emphasis on grouping for content through social groups is what makes mmorpgs social and Guildwars, GUILDwars...

If you are going to be happy to turn your game into a "how efficiently can i grind for more and more useless loot" instead of "what kind of challenge can i attempt with my friends" you are going to maybe progress faster for a while but eventually the burnout comes, and it comes much faster for people with speedgrinders mindset. In the end the turtle wins the race and has more fun doing it...

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A reasonable number of players advocated for some kind of progression during the time of dungeons due to cosmetics not being enough at the time and the sense that they wanted to actually cover landmarks instead of being at the top stats right from the get-go.

Ascended gear was the compromise with its one extra tier of gear with marginally increased stats in relation to exotics, and also introduced the infusion slots. The first iteration of fractals was: go inside, get to a random fractal, complete it to go up a level in the fractal scaling, rinse and repeat until you hit the point where everything 1 shots you. Agony served the role of a hard cap at this time - as you were limited as to how much resistance you could make and eventually agony would wreck you regardless. So there's that, everything that came after was just an adaptation of a simple hard cap to what would be an endless spiraling progression of mini-dungeons before it became tiered and such.

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My only gripe about AR is you don't need it in the open world.

The only time you see the Agony debuff at all is on the Awakened during the portal events, and I think the game would've been better if it was more integrated since I think its actually an excellent mechanic and would've changed how some fights are approached by players, instead we have lots of similar mechanics like Nightmare Toxin and Frostbite that have no standardisation or defense.

Imagine if we had Agony at world bosses, during high-level metas or in elite dungeons..

@Cyninja.2954 said:This needed necroing why? @Corvus.2831Shrug, threads get necro'ed from time to time, I don't mind as long as they aren't something useless.

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@Hannelore.8153 said:My only gripe about AR is you don't need it in the open world.

The only time you see the Agony debuff at all is on the Awakened during the portal events, and I think the game would've been better if it was more integrated since I think its actually an excellent mechanic and would've changed how some fights are approached by players, instead we have lots of similar mechanics like Nightmare Toxin and Frostbite that have no standardisation or defense.

Imagine if we had Agony at world bosses, during high-level metas or in elite dungeons..We did imagine it then (in fact, this was a plan - Anet did mean to follow up with other uses for agony and other similar effects in other parts of the game). The general player response however, both to this (or to anything that would make ascended gear more needed in other parts of the game) was, for the most part, vastly negative. In the end, that idea got dropped.

Seriously, if we had agony mechanic at world bosses, it would mean people would be required to run ascended gear there. No, thank you.

Agony was only a cheap and unimaginative way of extending the content then, and it would be a cheap and unimaginative way of extending the content now. Nothing more.

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