Controversial opinion but I think power and condition should be removed from gear

[Kalocin.5982]

I'm scared to check my notifications tomorrow but I gotta say it. I think Power and condition should be baked into the traits, it'd allow Anet to balance several specs across the board and would also allow gear sets to be reworked with more focus. Likewise, they could fine tune specs more because there's less fragmentization of gear.

 

Sure you do less healing or less crit but focusing on support or DPS wouldn't be so heavy. Power and condition causes a lot of confusion, and some people have terrible build stats while others don't play what they want because they feel they need a perfect stat set. In my opinion, it makes the game more customizable you can play power or condi, and swap based on build and not gear. As a bonus you get a reason to sell those silly build slots

 

 

[Cyninja.2954]

Okay, and which traits would this be? Do you decide? Do the developers decide?

 

Your idea can be summarized as:"I want a more streamlined, less customizable, build and equipment system which makes classes/builds perform more similar at the cost of taking away players choice, freedom and creativity."

 

Not sure I'd agree that this is more fun, it might be beneficial to bridge the gap in player performance ("might" because even with similar stats performance varies greatly, meaning the next step would be to add global cooldowns to reduce the disparity even more), but that does not mean it would be more fun.

[Kalocin.5982]

Just now, Cyninja.2954 said:

Okay, and which traits would this be? Do you decide? Do the developers decide?

 

Your idea can be summarized as:"I want a more streamlined, less customizable, build and equipment system which makes classes/builds perform more similar at the cost of taking away players choice, freedom and creativity."

 

Not sure I'd agree that this is more fun, it might be beneficial to bridge the gap in player performance ("might" because even with similar stats performance varies greatly, meaning the next step would be to add global cooldowns to reduce the disparity even more), but that does not mean it would be more fun.

Honestly I'd like to hope random guys on a forum like me aren't in charge with development. The developers definitely decide. Normally I'd struggle to say homogenization is against fun but in this case I think it'd remove less barrier to entry for low players, while also allowing more build diversity for established players. Right now there's really only a few gear stat sets people go with, we all know em. Maybe it might be the same for secondary stats but I do like to think there'd be less restriction

[Cyninja.2954]

13 minutes ago, Kalocin.5982 said:

Honestly I'd like to hope random guys on a forum like me aren't in charge with development. The developers definitely decide. Normally I'd struggle to say homogenization is against fun but in this case I think it'd remove less barrier to entry for low players, while also allowing more build diversity for established players. Right now there's really only a few gear stat sets people go with, we all know em. Maybe it might be the same for secondary stats but I do like to think there'd be less restriction

 

Obviously streamlining can reduce barriers of entry. It also removes all individuality. You know what would reduce the most barriers of entry? Making all classes equal by removing any choice of individualization and/or class build differences. That would make everyone absolutely equal, aka remove any difference which result from builds/class/gear choice. Doesn't sound a lot of fun, has worked in other MMORPGs to some extent, until players felt that there was no individuality between classes any more.

 

As to gear sets being used, that is only true if you limit yourself to 1 game mode. If you actually branch out to multiple game modes, multiple classes and multiple roles, the amount of stat combinations which find use increases drastically. Let's do a short count of the "mainstream" ones:

- berserker

- viper

- trailblazer

- divinier 

- marauder

- assassins

- valkyrie

- knights

- dire

- rabid

- celestial

- minstrel

- plaguedoctor

- sinister

- harrier

- grieving

- shaman

- magi

 

That's 18 stats minimum which see regular use or are splashed in and 8 stat combinations which see regular use even as full sets. Not sure what you count as a few, but I'd say given there is a total of 46 stats combinations, 8 of which are spvp only bringing this down to 38 stats, that's not that bad a result.

Edited September 7, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Kalocin.5982]

2 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

 

Obviously streamlining can reduce barriers of entry. It also removes all individuality. You know what would reduce the most barriers of entry? Making all classes equal by removing any choice of individualization and/or class build differences. That would make everyone absolutely equal, aka remove any difference which result from builds/class/gear choice. Doesn't sound a lot of fun, has worked in other MMORPGs to some extent, until players felt that there was no individuality between classes any more.

 

As to gear sets being used, that is only true if you limit yourself to 1 game mode. If you actually branch out to multiple game modes, multiple classes and multiple roles, the amount of stat combinations which find use increases drastically. Let's do a short count of the "mainstream" ones:

- berserker

- viper

- trailblazer

- divinier 

- marauder

- assassins

- valkyrie

- knights

- dire

- rabid

- celestial

- minstrel

- plaguedoctor

- sinister

- harrier

- grieving

- shaman

 

That's 17 stats minimum which see regular use or are splashed in and 8 stat combinations which see regular use even as full sets. Not sure what you count as a few, but I'd say given there is a total of 46 stats combinations, 8 of which are spvp only bringing this down to 38 stats, that's not that bad a result.

Ironically it kind of points to my other thing about the struggle to balance specs and stats across the board. They can't just keep putting out new appealing stats and expecting that to balance the game. That's a ridiculous stat result, no other competitive online game requires you to deal with 38 stat combos.

[Cyninja.2954]

4 minutes ago, Kalocin.5982 said:

Ironically it kind of points to my other thing about the struggle to balance specs and stats across the board. They can't just keep putting out new appealing stats and expecting that to balance the game. That's a ridiculous stat result, no other competitive online game requires you to deal with 38 stat combos.

 

Sure, but you have yet to make an argument that this is less fun.

 

I'd say a lot of people would weigh in, myself included, and argue that this diversity is MORE fun than the more streamlined nature, mostly to make it easier to balance for other developers in their games, in other games. Without getting into any arguments about horizontal versus vertical progression which could be drawn as a reason why more build variety could make sense design wise to offset lack of gear threadmill (in essence putting in place a threadmill for build variety versus gear depreciation and reaquisition).

 

You'd then have to explain why it is a good idea to make this game similar to other MMORPGs, taking away it's unique selling proposition.

Edited September 7, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Kalocin.5982]

8 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

 

Sure, but you have yet to make an argument that this is less fun.

 

I'd say a lot of people would weigh in, myself included, and argue that this diversity is MORE fun than the more streamlined nature, mostly to make it easier to balance for other developers in their games, in other games. Without getting into any arguments about horizontal versus vertical progression which could be drawn as a reason why more build variety could make sense design wise to offset lack of gear threadmill (in essence putting in place a threadmill for build variety versus gear depreciation and reaquisition).

 

You'd then have to explain why it is a good idea to make this game similar to other MMORPGs, taking away it's unique selling proposition.

I could say it's more fun and you could say it's less fun. I said my opinion was controversial, not that it was definitive. My care is more toward devs being able to properly balance the game. Hey what can I say, I miss ele. It's more fun being able to swap builds while not changing gear if you want to be support or DPS focused. Power and condition doesn't add much other than using a stat that an elite spec gets more dps from. Baking it into the traits means you can focus on picking stats you actually care about. Likewise devs can make stats more definitive.

 

Why, you like power scourge?

Edited September 7, 2021 by Kalocin.5982

[Cyninja.2954]

8 minutes ago, Kalocin.5982 said:

I could say it's more fun and you could say it's less fun. I said my opinion was controversial, not that it was definitive. My care is more toward devs being able to properly balance the game. Hey what can I say, I miss ele. It's more fun being able to swap builds while not changing gear if you want to be support or DPS focused. Power and condition doesn't add much other than using a stat that an elite spec gets more dps from. Baking it into the traits means you can focus on picking stats you actually care about. Likewise devs can make stats more definitive.

 

Why, you like power scourge?

Power scourge, the meta build for the class in WvW? I don't have to like it, but it seems a lot of players enjoy playing it (I do too, though I multiclass in WvW, just saying me liking or not liking it has nothing to do with it being very viable atm).

 

Again, you seem to limit your observation to only PvE. Yes, stats in general in PvE are more streamlined because nearly all defensive stats fall away and as far as damage, which ever is higher or more beneficial to certain encounter wins out. WvW is a very different matter and so is Spvp.

Edited September 7, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Chrysaliss.8720]

Power and Condition (and other stats ) used to be tied to traits back when the game first released. And later it was changed, because that was really dumb idea.

[Kalocin.5982]

19 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Power scourge, the meta build for the class in WvW? I don't have to like it, but it seems a lot of players enjoy playing it (I do too, though I multiclass in WvW, just saying me liking or not liking it has nothing to do with it being very viable atm).

 

Again, you seem to limit your observation to only PvE. Yes, stats in general in PvE are more streamlined because nearly all defensive stats fall away and as far as damage, which ever is higher or more beneficial to certain encounter wins out. WvW is a very different matter and so is Spvp.

My point is that builds and balance can be better defined. Stats are not a fun. It's not even a huge change really. Remove the complicated part that causes balance headaches.

 

Why is power and condition stats fun? That's the question. Can it be replaced with other stats? If so, why power and condition then? Does it matter if you're forced to pick gear sets that require those stats anyways?

 

Edited September 7, 2021 by Kalocin.5982
Removed rant

[Cyninja.2954]

24 minutes ago, Kalocin.5982 said:

My point is that builds and balance can be better defined. Stats are not a fun. It's not even a huge change really. Remove the complicated part that causes balance headaches.

and my point was:

The flexibility we have right now allows for such builds like power scourge to exist. If it was up to fixed stats, that elite would be played only 1 way, and if following your dismissive question that would be condi based. While with the open nature of how stats and builds work, anomalies can happen (which leads us full circle to my initial question of who would be making this decision to begin with).

 

This also leads to suddenly specific builds or entire elite specializations actually becoming viable, condi scrouge is not a thing in large scale WvW blobs for example yet power scourge is.

 

As to how huge the change is, not going on a tirade of how wrong you are, but removing damage stats and tying them to traits would be a HUGE change which would also require a ton of rework in multiple areas of he game.

 

Quote

 

Why is power and condition stats fun? That's the question. Can it be replaced with other stats? If so, why power and condition then? Does it matter if you're forced to pick gear sets that require those stats anyways?

 

 

It's not that power or condition is fun or not fun. The choice and different possibilities are what make it fun to some players.

 

Choice is fun to some players. That's why there are diverging builds in the first place in certain games. If you want no choice or less choice, there are other games which offer such design both in terms of MMORPGs, as you stated yourself, and entire other genres of games.

Edited September 7, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Danikat.8537]

32 minutes ago, Chrysaliss.8720 said:

Power and Condition (and other stats ) used to be tied to traits back when the game first released. And later it was changed, because that was really dumb idea.

Yep. Each trait line (what's now called a specialisation) gave you points in 2 different attributes. It made builds more restrictive and often included annoying trade-offs because there were many times when the traits themselves weren't that useful for you, but you had to take them for the stats...or use better traits and settle for weaker stats.

 

That system was in the game for a couple of years and they kept tweaking it and trying to balance things before eventually separating the two, so trait lines are purely for the passive abilities and stats come entirely from your equipment, allowing both to be customised separately.

 

If anything I think the system we have makes it simpler for players because they don't have to worry about that trade-off and how to work out which option is the least bad, you just pick the traits and the stats which are best for you.

[Zephire.8049]

Going to go with no as it means you're locked in to picking traits you may not want just because otherwise you're going to be all over the place. There may be a bit of a budget to pick the "wrong" stat if the trait is an overall build upgrade, but with just 3 options per tier that means you'd have 1 power, 1 condi, and 1 that could be either or both.

 

I was playing WoW when they trimmed the skill tree into a "skill bush" (their words) and all it did is kill diversity and hybrid builds despite Blizzard claiming they knew best and it would make everyone's lives better and reduce confusion. Tying critical stats to traits would do the same.

 

There can be challenges to balancing but reducing build options so severely isn't how to deal with it. Min-maxers will still go with whatever's meta and those who play non-meta builds will be worse off than before.

[Kalocin.5982]

5 minutes ago, Zephire.8049 said:

Going to go with no as it means you're locked in to picking traits you may not want just because otherwise you're going to be all over the place. There may be a bit of a budget to pick the "wrong" stat if the trait is an overall build upgrade, but with just 3 options per tier that means you'd have 1 power, 1 condi, and 1 that could be either or both.

 

I was playing WoW when they trimmed the skill tree into a "skill bush" (their words) and all it did is kill diversity and hybrid builds despite Blizzard claiming they knew best and it would make everyone's lives better and reduce confusion. Tying critical stats to traits would do the same.

 

There can be challenges to balancing but reducing build options so severely isn't how to deal with it. Min-maxers will still go with whatever's meta and those who play non-meta builds will be worse off than before.

You don't need power or condi stats if the builds are made to be built without them. I'm not saying put random power or condition into the build stats. My point is remove them entirely and bake the stats into the skills and abilities, alongside the traits that affect those abilities.

 

The other guy is telling me there's other MMOs though so I guess I'm supposed to go back to FFXIV after playing GW for 15 years. Sorry for the thread, didn't mean to upset folks.

[Gehenna.3625]

 

1 hour ago, Kalocin.5982 said:

I think Power and condition should be baked into the traits, it'd allow Anet to balance several specs across the board and would also allow gear sets to be reworked with more focus. Likewise, they could fine tune specs more because there's less fragmentization of gear.

I think this idea is not a good one. You're basically moving a problem from one area (gear) to another (traits). There is too much choice now and some stat combinations aren't even out yet, but for me the obvious choice would be to take out some of the stat combo's that people rarely pick. And it would make the traits more complex because they already exist and now you want to add something in there that's actually a major change.

1 hour ago, Kalocin.5982 said:

Sure you do less healing or less crit but focusing on support or DPS wouldn't be so heavy.

I don't understand this. You skipped a few steps in your explanation here. Why would you do less healing or less crit? 

1 hour ago, Kalocin.5982 said:

Power and condition causes a lot of confusion, and some people have terrible build stats while others don't play what they want because they feel they need a perfect stat set. In my opinion, it makes the game more customizable you can play power or condi, and swap based on build and not gear. As a bonus you get a reason to sell those silly build slots

This is an issue, but I think that it's larger than that and the issue is really that people in general don't understand the stats and how much of an effect they have. Not just power and condition damage. And with that there are the traits from the specs that affect them also, making it more complex on top of that.

 

The thing is that casual players don't want to get involved with such complexity. They just want to pick what they like or appeals to them. I mean there is celestial gear for example. If your character concept is something celestial (as in shiny white and heroic) people will be tempted to choose celestial stats because the name fits with their concept. A lot of times it doesn't go beyond that. 

[Cyninja.2954]

4 minutes ago, Kalocin.5982 said:

The other guy is telling me there's other MMOs though so I guess I'm supposed to go back to FFXIV after playing GW for 15 years. Sorry for the thread, didn't mean to upset folks.

The "other guy" is disagreeing with you and telling you that giving up a unique point guilds wars has compared to its competition (which to a great extent had simplified and streamlined their classes), that is literally what a USP is, glad you looked it up, is not something which should be done lightly. That and giving examples of why it is beneficial to have more complex gearing and builds systems.

 

Glad you have such a healthy approach to diverging opinions or people who challenge yours.

 

That said, if you do want a more streamlined class experience, maybe you should try out FF14 if this is so dear to your heart.

Edited September 7, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Gehenna.3625]

11 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

Yep. Each trait line (what's now called a specialisation) gave you points in 2 different attributes. It made builds more restrictive and often included annoying trade-offs because there were many times when the traits themselves weren't that useful for you, but you had to take them for the stats...or use better traits and settle for weaker stats.

 

That system was in the game for a couple of years and they kept tweaking it and trying to balance things before eventually separating the two, so trait lines are purely for the passive abilities and stats come entirely from your equipment, allowing both to be customised separately.

 

If anything I think the system we have makes it simpler for players because they don't have to worry about that trade-off and how to work out which option is the least bad, you just pick the traits and the stats which are best for you.

We do have to worry about other trade-offs instead though. A lot of specializations have a better effect and reduced cd for weapon skills of a certain weapon type for example.

[Gehenna.3625]

6 minutes ago, Kalocin.5982 said:

You don't need power or condi stats if the builds are made to be built without them. I'm not saying put random power or condition into the build stats. My point is remove them entirely and bake the stats into the skills and abilities, alongside the traits that affect those abilities.

Well I think you underestimate how much work this would be for Anet. I don't think this would be easier for them to balance either.

6 minutes ago, Kalocin.5982 said:

The other guy is telling me there's other MMOs though so I guess I'm supposed to go back to FFXIV after playing GW for 15 years. Sorry for the thread, didn't mean to upset folks.

Well you did expect backlash as you said in your first post. You'll find people like that in any game. Just ignore that. There will always be someone telling you to go to X game, when you criticize the game. You'll always upset some people.

[Linken.6345]

46 minutes ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

Well I think you underestimate how much work this would be for Anet. I don't think this would be easier for them to balance either.

Well you did expect backlash as you said in your first post. You'll find people like that in any game. Just ignore that. There will always be someone telling you to go to X game, when you criticize the game. You'll always upset some people.

They did not say go to x game tho, they said dont take away what make this game different from other games.

[Gehenna.3625]

26 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

They did not say go to x game tho, they said dont take away what make this game different from other games.

ah right, I misunderstood that, but in any case, if you're going to be critical, you can expect counter-opinions. If you know that backlash is something you can't deal with that well, I wouldn't post it in the first place in such a public place. 

[Quench.7091]

The condi, healing, and power stats do create a problem where it's all or nothing. If you are a condi build, you use condi abilities. If you are a power build, you use power abilities. If you are a healing power build, you get healing abilities. Stat diversity at the cost of ability diversity.

 

That said, limiting ability choices into different categories does make things easier to balance. It is harder to balance everything vs everything than condi vs condi or power vs power. Making builds limited in how diverse their skill selection can be does have it's perks.

 

I don't mind either way, as long as they are able to maintain balance.

[Linken.6345]

8 minutes ago, Quench.7091 said:

The condi, healing, and power stats do create a problem where it's all or nothing. If you are a condi build, you use condi abilities. If you are a power build, you use power abilities. If you are a healing power build, you get healing abilities. Stat diversity at the cost of ability diversity.

 

That said, limiting ability choices into different categories does make things easier to balance. It is harder to balance everything vs everything than condi vs condi or power vs power. Making builds limited in how diverse their skill selection can be does have it's perks.

 

I don't mind either way, as long as they are able to maintain balance.

How do you explain the plague doctor scourge then?

[Astralporing.1957]

4 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Your idea can be summarized as:"I want a more streamlined, less customizable, build and equipment system which makes classes/builds perform more similar at the cost of taking away players choice, freedom and creativity."

Depends on how that system would work. Notice, how GW1 system did exactly what OP asked for, while being as good if not better at allowing players choice and creativity.

 

I'm still sad they decided to add stats to gear in order to placate traditional MMORPG players, instead of following the GW1 design.

 

Unfortunately for OP, i just don't see Anet doing big enough to matter stat/traitline rework at this point in the game's history.

[Quench.7091]

1 minute ago, Linken.6345 said:

How do you explain the plague doctor scourge then?

Not many professions can afford to go into those kinds of stat sets. It would be nice if they could, wouldn't it?

[Super Hayes.6890]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Depends on how that system would work. Notice, how GW1 system did exactly what OP asked for, while being as good if not better at allowing players choice and creativity.

 

I'm still sad they decided to add stats to gear in order to placate traditional MMORPG players, instead of following the GW1 design.

 

Unfortunately for OP, i just don't see Anet doing big enough to matter stat/traitline rework at this point in the game's history.

I enjoyed playing with my builds in GW1 more than I do in GW2 but there were a metric ton of useless skills in GW1. I feel like they went this path in GW2 for easier balance? Hard to say if it worked.