JusticeRetroHunter.7684

I did the math on this stuff several years ago now. I summarize some of it here : Can just read the whole thread and clicking on links for deeper context, but essentially 1) Lower target cap has a mathematical bias towards bigger groupings through dispersal of damage packets. This is a non-trivial advantage for groups of larger size 2) target caps are the one of the primary causes of balance issues in the game, in a very general sense. The limitations and bad design of skills due to the existence of the caps prevent skills from scaling invariantly with the scale of the fight, and this has major consequences on how much damage and healing skills are designed to do. 3) unleashing target cap for damage but not for healing is a big mistake, because of the nature of how this scaling in fights work. When target caps are dropped for all skill, You will receive more packets of damage and more packets of healing where health generally stays the same so the fight simply increases in volatility (more drastic changes in increasing and decreasing health pool during a fight). So you get rid of the number of players bias, without effecting deeply how damage and healing interface with each other in the game. Greater volatility also means more attentiveness, meaning you need a faster reaction time to respond to attacks. If you tip the balance in any direction, your dropping a nuclear warhead level of imbalance since this volatility is operating on way high scales. For instance if you have 1 player doing 1000 damage per second, to 50 players, they are doing 50,000 dps. If you are healing 1,000 heals per second to 5 players, your doing 5000 heals per second. increase the damage and healing of each player by 4000 (a general increase in player skill). Then the damage player 1 is doing 5000 damage per second for 50 players = 250,000 damage per second. The healer is doing 5000 x 5 players = 25,000 healing per second. That is a 200k+ increase in disparity when the dps and healing increase as a function of skill. That’s just for 1 player…you can imagine a group of 50 players…and you can imagine players doing 10k dps or more…the disparity between the healing and damage diverges really hard, really fast if target caps are not just the same for everyone. So no…no bias is needed for target cap. Just it’s removal. 4) mentioned in that link, anet has a very logical reason for not wanting to increase target caps…I have my own opinion about this problem…but it seems unlikely we will ever see a change to this stuff and therefor the game will always have these kind of balance problems. 5) I explain in detail how target cap functions in this game and how skills that can bypass target caps work across these threads with hyperlinks…mostly because I’m a theory-crafter (I model theory’s of the games mechanics) and not just some funky build crafter that just like “bro this build so sick dude look at this damage bro”, but actually doing high level scientific modeling and analysis on the mechanics in this game, deriving principles, doing experiments and formulating strong mathematical proofs. The proofs for target cap bias is one of induction: where you can show for n number of players (all cases) that there exists a bias for how much damage gets dispersed simply as a function of the number of players that exist in a radius. For an infinite number of players, hitting the same target again has a 0% probability…meaning that if you want to asymptotically approach becoming invulnerable to damage you simply stack more and more players. TLDR: Long story short I’m saying that basically the intuition of your thread is correct (it’s been formally proven). The only issue with the thread is that if you get rid of target cap you got to get rid of it for all players not this 50 for damage 5 for healers thing. finally I highly doubt Anet will change anything about target cap since their excuse deals with optimization and computational complexity of the problem. Computational complexity is hard limit type of stuff which describes the solvability of certain problems.

Hello. Listen, I have zero attachment to this guild aura but… but to think guild aura is responsible for kills in WvW… is a stretch. There’s certain “copers” that believe in that but it is 100% cope. Those people will continue to get rolled over in WvW the same way they’ve been getting rolled over, and they’ll continue to blame some other thing Anyway I came here to say that…I think the guild aura nerf was just lazy anet deving as usual. It would have been a great opportunity for anet to inject interesting and useful mechanics into the game by just replacing the aura with something else’s (and reevaluate other less used tactics) instead it is just this boring thing still…it’s always been a boring thing that adds nothing nuanced or clever into the game mode, along with the other tactics and…it’s still gonna be that way so no problem actually got solved. im pretty tired of the constant number changes that only end up making X into a useless thing rather than taking the time to just replace the mechanic so that the game remains interesting and not a watered down And diluted “+1%” mmo

Sounds like a good idea. I think to solve a lot of problems brought up in the thread, the servers just have to be selectable and people can go on into the instances map, so that it’s not completely random. By and large it’s already like this (under the server system) but with a number of clunky restrictions like waiting a week and paying 400 gold. my view is that if they (servers) were more like instances, where maps open and close, you won’t have a bandwagon effect because instances close and would probably do so quiete often….finding out how to band wagon would be too much of a hassle across several different guilds to stack. to solve the scoring and points system…that’s a different story. I think maybe worth a discussion is getting rid of server worlds and just narrow it down to blue, red or green world. If you decide to select red world today that’s the side your gonna fight for and gain points for. If you check up with green world tomorrow, that’s the side your gonna fight for and gain points for that day. Points will still be meaningless as they are now…but I don’t think its an issue related to server system. Also wanted to mention that with instance selection, showing the number of players in the instance would greatly help guild groups get into the instance with their group probably.

By definition no, builds are not part of the game, in that they aren’t an element that the game ships with. What exists in the game are just skills (the choices you listed are just generally classified as the games skills) and the ability to assemble them. Players create builds which is arguably the point of playing this game, a game that offers you many choices of elements to select from and assemble into many different ways, for many different reasons and purposes. Likewise rotations don’t exist in the game either, it’s a player creation…again, it’s our part as the players to create them as a function of our purpose in playing this game. So yes you should include the definition of rotation in with builds, as player created constructs.

Builds are not part of the game. Skills are. Players are the ones that create builds which is the purpose of us players playing it. You can run any allowed combination of skills you want in this game, nobody is holding a gun to your head to use hammer 3. good example : on staff daredevil, the rotation as per snowcrows is to spam staff 2. It is the highest dps rotation to spam it on cooldown. However this skill locks you into the animation, and ironically can easily get you killed. When analyzing other components of the build I found that just auto attacking on staff 1 is about a 1-2k dps decrease (30k dps at the time which was like 3 years ago) to by an exponentially easier comfort level to use the build. guess what…turns out dying zero times is a dps increase than dying several times in a fight.

Thing is that snow crows is not part of the game. That’s a “metagame” which means you are playing a “game outside of the game” by definition…your complaining about the wrong thing. it’s like this: if you are told to play some build by some build-crafter, that in reality tends to get you killed in combat, then the build-crafter of that build did a poor job assessing the usability of the build in a practical setting. That tends to happen with build-crafters that fail to take into account, playability aspects of builds and how it feels to play it.

I wouldn’t mind going full heal power on my supports. I think the idea is kinda cool but maybe a bit too niche… stats rely a bit to heavily on other stats to be effective so makes it kinda tough to sign onto

None of those are transformations. but if you do change the way prof mechanics behave so they fall into transform classification sure…that would make it not the worst suggestion ever. But +300 vitality is still a boring effect. Whoever suggested the other three in that quote block are all (somewhat) better designed than a +x stat relic.

As if you need 3000 more health in a transform which already gives 30000 health? Lol. not to mention this effect is very boring. I vote to make this the worse suggestion ever suggested.

Ya. And to be honest If we kept mounts in the game mode, then i think like in other war games, it could/should be something you would have to work for or invest in almost like an upgrade... and there should be viable counters to choosing to have that ability. Like if you invest in the airplane to fly over everyone? Then the enemy can invest in anti-aircraft tech... If you invest in tanks? The enemy can go anti-artillery. So if you chose mounts, then the enemy should be able to invest in something that can counter the use of your mounts. If they don't it's because they decided to counter something else. "Build Wars on the level of World tactics" sounds like a true call back to what this game should be about (build wars). I guess that's another issue i didn't raise but...the upgrade system seems...lacking too.

The problem to me, is where the objectives are physically on the map. You want to physically bring enemy players, and allied players together into the same physical places for a fundamental game mechanical reason. Right now players just "choose" to wander into enemy territory with pretty much no real reason other than that they are bored, and the most efficient way to "cure bordeom" is SMC (not to mention this is the cause of vacancy on other BL's too), by way of just this colloquial meme understanding that that is where you go if you want to have fights. This is bad game design to me... even though its got this quality of "if it's not broken don't fix it." How it should work, is that there is a reason you would go into an enemies territory. The first most logical step are camps because the maps "currency" are supplies. Because camps are already in your base...then why bother attacking someone else camp outside the base... just defend your own since that is more optimal, it's easier to do, takes less energy, is less risky and so on... So why are people standing around in keeps and not doing anything?: Because there's no reason why they need to leave their base, and its the same idea on the other side of the map for the enemy. The only reason you might leave a base currently, is cause you got a tag now, and you can go bully the enemy so that you don't have to be bored sitting in base. Changing the amount of supply in the camps that exist already isn't going to change this behavior, it has to be more fundamental than this (changes to the physical locations of objectives) So it's not so much the value of the currency itself...or the currency itself really...it's where that currency is located and asking whether it (the location) brings people together or not. I think mounts are bad for the mode, because it makes roamers less of a threat. I'd bet my horse that this also inadvertently fuels some of the zerg hate that goes on here, on top of the constant nerfs to siege and tower defenses. Roamers should have use in the game mode as a way of stifling an enemies reinforcements...a tactical gameplay strategy that's essentially been eradicated and i think that's a shame...and i'm saying this as a Zergling. Not only that but players that might be newer to WvW just mount up and zip around the big baddies that are praying for content and so those Zerglings never really get to learn about how to deal with certain scenarios (like how to better run away from an enemy, or supporting your teammates in smaller skirmishes so that you can get to the zerg together) not to mention that these skirmishes ultimately create new dynamics outside of the zerg fight (and leads to more meaningful content, and reasons to fight each other) I can kind of go on about these topics...but it's another one of these fundamental game loops that are just straight up missing from the game.

Okay example of an EBG Rework (but can apply to any borderland): https://i.imgur.com/GRZOEqc.jpeg After such a rework, it then makes logical sense to make defenses matter more since it's more difficult to update to t3, and therefor should be more meaningful. One thing i like about stuff like this is that, it should increase growth scale in fights in the same way we see it do for SMC today : its starts out with a few players fighting each other at the camps...the fights grow in size since it's the main point of interest between the two sides...which leads to small-scale, and eventually to large scale fighting. This also helps split up the map player wise to reduce lag (skill lag) that Tent warfare usually creates since everyone is fighting all at the same places all of the time. Lastly, supply routes added from Spawn to the Keep only, for each base (The spawn is therefor a camp) It's like this so that spawn farming isn't always so oppressive when it happens, and makes it easier for players to take back their keep when it gets taken away, and upgrade it back to t3 to start themselves over.

With regard to number 5: I feel like most of the resources needed to upgrade your base are too self contained. If you got all the thing you need to get to T3, then there's no reason to venture out, and the only reason you do so is because your looking for content, driven superficially by this motivation over what the game requires. In other words : Pretend that 80 players existed in WvW on each team at all times: the optimal state of the game, is everybody just sits in their base and does nothing, since camps are also in your base, it basically imposes that players need to derive their own reason to go outside of the base and do anything. That's why i think like in other similiar games, you need to have game mechanical reasons for why you need to not sit in spawn. Camps should not be located in your base, they should be located outside of them (think about Warcraft 3 goldmines and how you had to establish bases outside of your main stronghold) Anyway... trying to make this post coherent but the point is that the game mode has no fundamental game mechanical rules and it's just a joke to think about why it currently works : Players wanna have some reason to fight...and it's become such a meme to take SMC as the reason people fight because ironically SMC is the real deriver of why content happens in EBG. Honestly if they made it more strategic to get to T3 (by placing supply areas in enemy zones, or in neutral areas of interest, rather than inside the base) then they could buff defenses and make base defense during low pop actually interesting again. It also gives people reasons to group up, and go to enemy bases since they need (their) resources to upgrade their own! Long story short there's just some fundamental game loops and screws missing in WvW at a basic basic level. Again looking at actually successful strategy games you notice these differences. Edit: Hold on i'll just draw an illustration.

Wanted to share this video, as a follow up to the "New Meta" thread from last week. It's another very interesting build with good theory-craft principle behind it, and worth looking into.

Ya, I’ve yet to see one heal.