Preface and problem statementI have played GW2 since beta and got hooked by your original game design philosophies. For years I was looking for MMO combat that didn't suck, and GW2 looked like it was going to deliver on it. I hyped up my guild, my friends -- anyone who would listen. GW2 was going to change MMOs. And you did. Mostly. From my perspective, I don't think the competitive state of GW2 (or lack there of) can be solved with numbers alone. I'm not going to assert to you that I'm a game designer or know better. While yes I try to think critically through problems and have a lot of experience in competitive games -- fighting games, MOBAs, MMOs, etc. -- I am no where near an "expert". My biggest gripe with this is the design pillars set out early on were never fully realized. Even from the early days of GW2, you always had to watch your UI quite a bit. Condi builds are the biggest offender of this, IMO. Conditions have always had a way to be bursty, but it has only ramped up over the years. Beyond that, power builds saw stealth nerfs from things getting stun breaks on every skill known to mankind. Pre-HOT you could run a stun build on Warrior and reliably bait both dodge rolls, maybe the one stun break they had, and go to town with Bull Charge + Hammer into something like Axe 5. As the game continues to chug along skills continue to get more powerful, more overloaded, and ultimately more polarizing. A lot of the recent balance changes are good, but that isn't addressing the cause of it. I made a really detailed post on reddit (sorry if I shouldn't link this here) some time ago about it. The key points I tried to make: Lots of visual noise and unclear mechanics (e.g. dying from conditions sucks, multiple fields down and use a finisher)Lack of mechanical counter play vs build counter play (e.g. you have to run condi removal)Conditions are just numbers, not control (think WildStar where a lot of conditions affect how you control your character, not just DOTsConditions as a first-class citizen for damage are a plague upon competitive play. The idea of rotting someone down is fine, but you should have to play a keep away game, rot them down, and "control" the situation -- not just hit a condition burst and win against newer players because they either: don't know what to look for, or don't run the correct build to solve it. This is not to assert that the new player in this case needing to learn something is bad. It's that they will look at their death recap and see "40k+ damage from bleeding, 20k+ from poison" etc and be left wondering "what the heck?" It's a really bad new player experience and something I've seen so many people leave the game over. Me pretending I'm a game designerIn my ideal world, we make systemic changes and not just number tweaks or skill reworks -- the current way GW2 thinks about itself is unsustainable. Originally it was said that the player should "watch their screen more than their UI" and that is definitely not the reality today. Mind you, I am not claiming to have all the answers, but I do believe a revamp of condis and visual clarity would go a long way. This is my "wish list" if I had one: Remove all passive condi procs in the game, specifically from traitsRemove traits that remove Burning/Chilled on dodge roll -- make that base lineTake away so many passive stun break or "every 30sec absorb one stun" things in the game -- you want action combat, not "passive procs once every 30sec" combatFinishers used in multiple fields should trigger every fieldThe big three conditions that I see as problematic: Burning -- Increase damage per tick. Reduce number of skills that apply and make them highly visual (think Guardian Torch). Dodging removes ALL STACKS of burning (Mechanical counter play, forcing dodge rolls, etc).Confusion -- This skill is great except for the lack of mechanical counter play. I would like every class to be able to use their first weapon ability without suffering damage, so that way you can still auto attack. Again, mechanical outplay -- You see purple on your character and it limits what you can do but doesn't force you into a condi cleanse build.Poison -- Reduce DOT. Increase healing reduction to 50-66%~. The idea is that you are a team targeter (think Pain Gun medic from Global Agenda). You can still rot someone out with this and the balance that should be over an EXTENDED encounter you rot them down. Not somehow applying 10384108 stacks of poison and bursting.Nit picky but IMO... Bleeding -- Leave largely alone. I don't think having a DOT is bad, but it's insane to me that someone can take so much bleeding for free. If this is the only source of "passive DOT damage", it's not that bad. You just get a feel for what builds do sustained damage (Sword/Sword Warrior) vs burst (Thief). An idea I would love to see if getting to full health removing all stacks of bleeding. Lets you counter play with your healing skill, but I feel like I'm already asking the world.Chilled -- IMO this is still largely fine. I would love dodge rolling to remove it and removing the damage element associated with this.Torment -- Remove damage while not moving. Increase damage while moving. Reduce duration. Moving increases duration or refreshes in some way. Visual effect is probably fine.Weakness -- Better visual queue.This is from another post on reddit that I made. And sorry if a lot of this is not helpful, but I desperately want to play GW2. Every time I log in I'm met with terrible PvB (player vs bag) of extrinsic rewards that I just don't care about, wade through all of that, then get into a match where I might die to someone just spamming the new meta condi build because I'm trying something new out that maybe lacks a bit of condi clear, or I'm not back up to speed on watching my debuffs. Mind you, I think it's hyperbolic how much you have to watch your UI -- and the better you get at the game the less you look at it. TL;DRI love GW2. I have loved this game from the first blog post I read about it before ever having played. Constant WvW, great combat, and incredibly risky stuff (living world season 1, destroying your main city, etc). When ArenaNet is at its best, it's untouchable and I will buy every product you ever make. But it's really disheartening to look back at the design philosophy and compare it to today. We used to have really challenging dungeons that gave unique rewards. Now the best skins are locked behind gems and vapid grinds out in the open world. All of the feedback I see on reddit/forums seems to be players being complacent in this. Want to farm a legendary? No no, don't go farm the T6 mat you need. Because there is no way to do that. Go turn your brain off and farm Silverwaste for the best gold value per hour, then translate that into materials (showing my GW2 age a bit). It's this kind of mind set that that has leaked into PvP. So many players want to turn their brain off and that is just unacceptable for WvW/PvP. If y'all want to cave to the farmers in PvE/Fractals/Open world, whatever. But if we have a ghost of a chance to take back competitive game modes, I would love to see that happen. I would easily play GW2 every day if the pvp was great again.
