Why GW2 will fail on Steam without core combat changes. (Alac/Quickness Boons too powerful)

[Kulvar.1239]

20 hours ago, Keegers.2573 said:

I know Anet said they don't want one, but lets look for a moment at the other competing MMORPGS on steam and how they compare to GW2. I will focus on the main 3 of steam currently; Lost Ark, FFXIV, and ESO. All of these games use a matchmaker for the majority of their content

 

Other games having automatic matchmaking systems is why they have trash toxic community.
MMORPG should not have automatic matchmaking systems.

Also you are disingenuous. FFXIV & WoW do not have automatic matchmaking for difficult instanced content.
So why should GW2 have automatic matchmaking for difficult content ?

Make your own LFG instead of complaining.

Edited March 23, 2022 by Kulvar.1239

[Wielder Of Magic.3950]

The EoD Meta argument is far from the truth. 
It does not need 100% min-maxed builds to succeed. 
But people are complaining because they can no longer be carried through the game. 
When people complain that their meta squd fails, what you often see:

 

They are running some weird mis-matched build that will never do anything close to okay damage. Why is this not invalidating my 'you don't need 100% min-maxed build' argument you ask?  Because in order to succeed the meta, you only need an average squad DPS of 7k.  That is nothing. A glass cannon build will do more than that auto-attacking, non glass cannon builds should still hit over that amount with all the random boons flying around.

 

People also often show up without 10 stacks of the Dragon's End Contributor buff, which translates to another 20% damage lost (yes, at 10 stacks it becomes 20% bonus damage people!).

 

Next up they also often don't use the Jade Offensive Buff, another 150 power/condition damage lost. 

 

And that is without delving into people not using food, even if the squad provides it, do not even attempt a rotation, do not dodge, do not listen, and don't CC the big fat blue breakbar.

 

So...you do less than 7k DPS (I often see people manage to do less than 2k even), your gear is a mess, you have no rotation worth mentioning, you refuse to use any sort of BUFF or food, you don't listen, you don't dodge, and you don't CC, and still expect to get a win handed to you?

 

Perhaps the problem is not the meta, but you. 

Call me a toxic elitist if you want. 

But that is still a toxic elitist that puts out 40k+ on a lot of moments, and ~20-25k during intense phases, meaning I do more than roughly 6-15 people on the bottom of the DPS barrel not counting supports. And frankly, I do get a bit annoyed by the fact that people like me have to carry the ones who don't invest anything whatsoever in a succesful run. I do not expect people to tick all of the boxes I mentioned above, but too many people simply tick none.

 

And if you tick NONE of them, you should fail, even if its only open world.
We will never get interesting story or open world content if people stay bad. 

So people need to become better, even if its only a tiny bit. 

 

 

[Hot Boy.7138]

I agree. The boon system in this game holds it back. 

1) As you said, many classes just feel dependent on it for a smooth rotation and engaging playstyle.

2) The biggest issue for me is the insanely short range for sharing boons, forcing everyone into melee. Every weapon is essentially a melee weapon because leaving the stack means drastically reducing your damage. Not to mention, most ranged weapons actually do much more damage in the hit box innately, which is silly. 

So I hate to see quickness and alacrity go, but if it means classes will be better designed for more engaging gameplay without those external boons, I'm all for it. 

I like how WoW Handles boons. Or how they did. I haven't played WoW since gw2 released, so maybe things have changed. 

[Keegers.2573]

29 minutes ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

Other games having automatic matchmaking systems is why they have trash toxic community.
MMORPG should not have automatic matchmaking systems.

Also you are disingenuous. FFXIV & WoW do not have automatic matchmaking for difficult instanced content.
So why should GW2 have automatic matchmaking for difficult content ?

Make your own LFG instead of complaining.

Didn't say it was for all content difficulties, WoW however allows you to play through all the instanced content in a matchmaker and casuals never have to step foot into a normal raid or mythic dungeon if they don't want to. They are able to experience all the group content however, GW2 doesn't have a difficulty scale so there is a large amount of players who have never stepped foot in this content. There should be a ladder bridge to help players get comfortable with instanced content, since instanced content and open world play vastly different. This is GW2 not Dark souls, you can't just throw a difficulty curve at players who had a relatively easy time before that. Look at core players first complaints walking into HoT, the difficulty spikes in this game are way to high. Part of the difficulty spikes is the wild variability in builds. Anet needs to balance the exponential dps/build difference to something much smaller.

Edited March 23, 2022 by Keegers.2573

[Keegers.2573]

38 minutes ago, Wielder Of Magic.3950 said:

Perhaps the problem is not the meta, but you. 

Call me a toxic elitist if you want. 

But that is still a toxic elitist that puts out 40k+ on a lot of moments, and ~20-25k during intense phases, meaning I do more than roughly 6-15 people on the bottom of the DPS barrel not counting supports. And frankly, I do get a bit annoyed by the fact that people like me have to carry the ones who don't invest anything whatsoever in a succesful run. I do not expect people to tick all of the boxes I mentioned above, but too many people simply tick none.

 

And if you tick NONE of them, you should fail, even if its only open world.
We will never get interesting story or open world content if people stay bad. 

So people need to become better, even if its only a tiny bit. 

You unironically are making my point. People will always be bad, but we can make them better through balancing. We need to lower the skill floor so that there isn't a big difference in dps of 7k vs your 40k.. That is a 470% difference in dps in a game with no real vertical progression... We can have challenging content in the open world, maybe instead of a instagib mechanic there is a mechanic that punishes the player with a 50% damage debuff. You can punish players by making their numbers smaller, but not as punishing as death (which will lead to them sitting on the ground the whole fight instead of rezzing). I'm not saying good players shouldn't be rewarded but right now the reward difference is insanely imbalanced between top end and low end. It makes it harder to design content for Anet as well, like you mentioned the Meta in itself is not that hard, but the majority of players can't do it. Making a game more accessible does not lower the skill ceiling.

Edited March 23, 2022 by Keegers.2573

[Kulvar.1239]

28 minutes ago, Keegers.2573 said:

Didn't say it was for all content difficulties, WoW however allows you to play through all the instanced content in a matchmaker and casuals never have to step foot into a normal raid or mythic dungeon if they don't want to. They are able to experience all the group content however, GW2 doesn't have a difficulty scale so there is a large amount of players who have never stepped foot in this content. There should be a ladder bridge to help players get comfortable with instanced content, since instanced content and open world play vastly different. This is GW2 not Dark souls, you can't just throw a difficulty curve at players who had a relatively easy time before that. Look at core players first complaints walking into HoT, the difficulty spikes in this game are way to high. Part of the difficulty spikes is the wild variability in builds. Anet needs to balance the exponential dps/build difference to something much smaller.

That ladder bridge exists already. Some strike missions are really easy, early fractals are super easy.

Just do your own LFG and go! I'll start to think that some people are terrified to interact with other humans, think it's normal because they've got used to it with the pandemic, and want a computer to do it for them.

[Erise.5614]

1 hour ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

That ladder bridge exists already. Some strike missions are really easy, early fractals are super easy.

Just do your own LFG and go! I'll start to think that some people are terrified to interact with other humans, think it's normal because they've got used to it with the pandemic, and want a computer to do it for them.

More players than you would assume have never used LFG and may not even know it exists. And even among the ones who know it there's a significant amount who do not understand your average LFG post for any of the instanced content. There's so much abbreviations and lingo used while that open world newbie may not even know what "quick" or "alac" are. Let alone KP and all the other stuff. LFG is intimidating. Especially without mentor. You will have a bad time just joining and asking in most cases.

I regularly command open world metas where I have a set of text typing macros that explain the meta and some of the basic mechanics or systems (e.g. CC, LFG, etc.)

And get very frequently whispers by newbies thanking me for finally explaining it, asking if they can join my guild and such. Not that I'd have a guild. Nor am I active in one nor do I rep one. Point being. I honestly think the game fails in a lot of ways teaching players these things. Which makes the expectations many veterans have at the general player base so outlandish. Everything and everyone fails to onboard properly. You are forced to use out of game tools and well established communities or have an insanely slow and bad time learning to get better.

Like, at this point I think I've gotten hundreds of people to learn about LFG during HoT metas and core bosses and about 30 players who didn't know strikes existed into EoD strikes. Who enjoyed their time and learned a lot very quickly thanks to my Healscourge keeping them alive and giving them not just second but sixth chances in a single run. 

Which is obviously but a drop in the ocean. But I honestly see a whole lot of blaming online and a saddening small amount of training / beginner support in open world / LFG.

Edited March 23, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Sindust.7059]

I think it has less to do with the boons themselves and more with how inflexible it makes group compositions, and that's an issue regardless of the type of the LFG tool. When I make a fractal daily group as a DPS, I couldn't care less whether we have an Alac Mech healer + quick brand, heal brand + alacren, druid + chrono or any other combination of supports. But because picking one kind of support necessarily restricts what the other should be, and even whether we need just 1 or 2 more, thereby changing the number of pure DPS that can join, makes it a headache to even come up with the LFG message that would communicate that without turning into a novel that nobody will read or take seriously.

 

The solution would be if ANet decides what number of supports there should be (I'll assume 2 for the rest of the post), and any support could cover anything that the group is lacking. That way you can search for "heal support+support" and if it turns out to be 2 scrappers, they don't have to relog or change the build in ways that affect gameplay in any way.

 

As for how to do it, I'm not a game dev, I'm sure there are more elegant solutions, but the easiest and least exciting one would be homogenization. Make sure that any support can give all the boons, but with the Uptime of one support capping out at 50%.

 

Currently the group compositions are so inflexible that people can't just play what they enjoy. Our guild leader demands that we make more alts that play different roles if we want to keep raiding, because otherwise one regular person not joining the raid means no raid that day, or instead of taking a guildie we have to take a PUG that fills the required role.

 

I don't remember what game this mantra was from, but "bring the player, not the class" is something that should be considered more while making further adjustments to the GW2 combat system.

[Naxos.2503]

More than anything I'm worried about 2 things : 

The launch on Steam of guild wars 2 has been prepared and then delayed for so long, it might as well be mythical in the eyes of the hopefuls that checked it's steam store page by then. Through no real fault of their own ANET has waited a long time and the game still hasn't launched after appearing on Steam. On the other hand, the discussion forum there has become a cesspool due to no moderation being present, people talk about a game they have not played in negative terms, and people who did play the game go there to discourage others, not the opposite. The community there is not engaged positively, nothing has been done to foster a good welcome once it launches, and the forum is no longer a good place to discuss.

Second : Can the servers reasonably handle the load ? I'm sure many of you still remember the huge performance issues that occured when we got access to Thunderhead Peaks. All the rampant disconnect issues that followed, the weeks without the trade posts. In order to launch successfully, the infrastructure of the servers need to handle it. Currently that point is less of a worry to me, the launch of the expansion has been rather smooth. But who knows what we can expect from a steam release, how many players will join in.

Edited March 23, 2022 by Naxos.2503

[Erise.5614]

34 minutes ago, Naxos.2503 said:

Through no real fault of their own ANET has waited a long time and the game still hasn't launched after appearing on Steam.

Not a problem. In fact, it's positive as they had lots of time collecting wishlists which feeds the Steam algorithm and will make sure the game is presented frontpage for quite a while. Community hub and everything is normal. They can moderate it closer to release once it becomes relevant. 

This is how it should be done. 

34 minutes ago, Naxos.2503 said:

Can the servers reasonably handle the load ? I'm sure many of you still remember the huge performance issues that occured when we got access to Thunderhead Peaks. All the rampant disconnect issues that followed, the weeks without the trade posts. In order to launch successfully, the infrastructure of the servers need to handle it.

You have to differentiate a few things here. Server availability / scaling and server infrastructure.

ANet only does infrastructure. The code for how different elements interact with one another. When a new server should be spawned or when old servers close. That kind of thing. 

The servers themselves are hosted by Amazon. Which means the Thunderhead Peaks patch was ANet messing up their code and taking a while to fix things. So long as no new feature or update breaks the current system they can scale to as many servers as they can pay for. 

I would expect them to prepare that by leaving a few weeks without new content before the launch. And maybe some login queues. Though, to be honest. The sudden influx during the EoD launch had no impact whatsoever. So maybe they are actually prepared to make an entirely smooth experience. 

Edited March 23, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Altonese.6542]

I wanna speak directly to the matter of new players (those coming from a Steam Release especially) and why GW2 lured me in so well at the beginning, personally.

The starting foundation is this; I hate how hand-holdy the 'New Player Experience' from 2014 is. It was such a weird update. Especially the little things.

No more golem chess at the first Asura Heart in Metrica. Why? Just, why? Humans not starting in that little house with the other wounded Seraph from the Earth Elemental - Could the new players not figure out their way out the door? What the new player experience did was take a lot of the wonder out of it. The weapon skills and utilities being unlocked at different levels rather than when players get them regardless of level through action.

To me, what I love about Guild Wars 2 is that, especially my first experiences - They were akin to Minecraft. There wasn't a set goal for you. You had the story, and zones had different levels, and that was about all the guidance you got. You could spend time in the starting scenarios (Defending Shaemoor/etc.) training up your weapons.

Then, you just, pick a direction, and run that way like Forrest Gump. I still think GW2 has that to a degree, mind you. You -know- there's things you can do. You can build legendaries, master PvP/WvW, explore and complete every map - Etc, but like Minecraft, you were just kind of plopped in to a big world.

Mind you, this  is just my opinion solely. I think if Anet wants to get new players really involved, bring back the wonder the game used to have more of. The ability to really shake off rails and just have your own adventure.

I also think swimsuit outfits would make good gemstore money for Anet to use on other things like WvW.

[Wizecrack.5713]

As a super casual player pve wise, I have no issues with the current boon systems. Build flexibility is a huge selling point to me, being able to be a supporty dps, a boon boat, crit focused, dot focused, hybrid, whatever however. As casual as I am I'm well-read and research builds, read up on how stats work all that jank, but I do that with all games and not just gw2. 

 

This game is already leagues ahead in terms of accessibility. Between Li builds, being able to just run up on events and help, nearly all progression being account wide, the Stat gap between exotics to ascended, all of these are huge accessibility points so many other games just don't have. 

 

Getting rid of a couple "pesky" boons to try and lower a perceived skill floor in the hopes of making things more accessible is an absolutely horrible idea. I wouldn't even say these two boons are the gate. I'd say its the stats that are holding you back more than a couple boons. 

 

So many people go "a lower skilled person in exotics is going to be fine in most content" but I think we neglect the stats on those exotics. It's so easy to just go to the tp, go to your armor class/weapons and buy up the cheapest available exotic and feel that's good enough....after all you are now in all exotics, that's all you really need that's what everyone said. Nevermind that you didn't pay attention to the stats, or hell even you looked at the stats and saw "oh hey all of this says healing, I don't heal". "Oh all of this has toughness, but I don't really get hit" "oh this vitality stats gives me a huuuge number in the center if my screen" nevermind you grabbed random armor with boon duration, condition duration, but you aren't running a build that does either....that's the problem there.  Edit: OH and don't even mind that when you google builds the builds say "use dragon, use berserker, etc." And when you go to the tp those cheap 50s exotics say "talywackers helm" and people say "well I only got 4g so il just grab these cheap things and replace them later in whatever content I was gearing for"

 

I would even say quickness and alacrity help teach new less skilled players how to build better and get them to start reading up on stuff. I remember playing firebrand and messing with axe skills going man this feels slow, but when I'd stack up on groups and get quickness I'd be all wow axe feels amazing! And I started asking myself man what's even doing that? But if you 86 these blatantly different visual cues and just let people rely on the stacking number visual cues that mislead you into thinking you are doing giant dmg because you see a big red 1000 on your screen your going to reinforce subpar play, and then people will say because might takes so much time to stack up and low skilled people are only getting 1 stack of the buff we need to just get rid of might and bake it into baseline power...but then they are only stacking 1 vuln...

 

What are in raids and strikes and "harder content" that you are missing out on by not using LFG that you want to give people access to with a toned down "matchmaker"? Why do you assume people not willing to use lfg to do strikes and raids even want to be in that environment? I could only really understand auto queues on dungeons but end game content seems kinda eh.

 

 

Edited March 23, 2022 by Wizecrack.5713

[Keegers.2573]

Quote

As a super casual player pve wise, I have no issues with the current boon systems. Build flexibility is a huge selling point to me, being able to be a supporty dps, a boon boat, crit focused, dot focused, hybrid, whatever however. As casual as I am I'm well-read and research builds, read up on how stats work all that jank, but I do that with all games and not just gw2. 

I'm advocating for more build diversity with these changes. Giving players more freedom by removing overpowered boons of quickness/alac. Right now the current meta, especially with the decrease of these boons from 10 to 5 targets is oppressive for trying any other support builds. Why bring another healer when healing mech provides alac as well. Currently, there is a bottleneck in build diversity because a lot of these boons/buffs you would pass on result in a large dps difference. Lowering effectiveness of the different boons to 1-2% dps difference would go a long way into going back to "bring the player, not the class"

3 hours ago, Wizecrack.5713 said:

Getting rid of a couple "pesky" boons to try and lower a perceived skill floor in the hopes of making things more accessible is an absolutely horrible idea. I wouldn't even say these two boons are the gate. I'd say its the stats that are holding you back more than a couple boons. 

Stats do play a part, but the "pesky" boons are a huge part of dps difference and are accounted for in a lot of the meta builds you say you are aware of. Stats will represent a dps difference, BUT that should be encouraged as a player choice. Do you want more DPS or more survivability? Majority of the players doing this content don't even pay attention to their stats, they just buy whatever the guide says. How is this an engaging system when players just blindly follow gear choices. What if we balanced combat around making players choose what's important for their build/current content they are attempting, return to a more creative and player choice driven build system. GW1 was great for this, the amount of skills, it really encouraged adapting to the situation. GW2 does not encourage this as much outside of a couple utility skill swaps. With Alac/quickness the way it is, it encourages maximum dps output and removes some of the players flexibility in choice.

Edit: Before people say the meta will always favor DPS > survivability. Recall to the launch of GW2, yes there was 1mes+4warr zerk groups but there was also a lot of players just grouping together and tackling content in whatever build they wanted. It was doable, albeit slower, but players could tackle all the content in any build.

 

Quote

What are in raids and strikes and "harder content" that you are missing out on by not using LFG that you want to give people access to with a toned down "matchmaker"? Why do you assume people not willing to use lfg to do strikes and raids even want to be in that environment? I could only really understand auto queues on dungeons but end game content seems kinda eh.

Anet says the focus of this expansion will be on strikes. Unless they abandon this goal, it seems to me the problem will only get bigger. As of now, only a strike is needed for turtle, it's not a hard strike but its still something required for an expansion feature which means all of the players playing EoD will be forced to do it. If going by the advice of everyone here and creating our own lfg. These new players will most likely get all grouped together, now will this group of 10 players be able to succeed or not? Most likely they won't because of the obtuse support system that is not explained anywhere in the game. They never needed supports before but now they do? This is where the system breaks down for casual players. The entire EoD expansion is pushing strikes, but 10player content is not balanced for all skill levels at the moment. Lowering the skill floor by removing the alac/quickness support needs allows for more groups to have success using the same systems they learned in the open world. This is the start of the ladder, the bridge of open world players to 10player content.
 

Edited March 23, 2022 by Keegers.2573

[Ellye.9123]

Zero of the things in the OP are remotely relevant to whether a game succeeds or fails.

Not a single soul will try the game and quit because "the DPS isn't balanced" or stay because "wow the classes are so balanced".

---

That said, I would certainly agree with a change to Quickness and Alacrity.

Edited March 23, 2022 by Ellye.9123

[Keegers.2573]

10 minutes ago, Ellye.9123 said:

Zero of the things in the OP are remotely relevant to whether a game succeeds or fails.

Not a single soul will try the game and quit because "the DPS isn't balanced" or stay because "wow the classes are so balanced".

"You play a class without alac or quickness?"
"Good luck getting into one of the dps slots.. better just re-roll."

New players who just leveled up to 80 and completed EoD experiencing the strike/raid meta are going to be in for a rude awakening if they rolled a subpar class. Most will probably just quit. Experienced players really need to put themselves in the shoes of newplayers. These systems aren't talked about through the standard leveling process, and DPS are a dime a dozen. If your class can't give alac/quickness, good luck finding a group. Plenty of players will quit when no one joins their LFG due to low achievement points or they can't get into because of no LI.

OR
Imagine a new player wanting to play ele because of the ranged mage archetype. Now at max they are basically told to "shove it" and stay in melee range only, how is this a good system? Players can't even play the style they want because of balance. 

Class balance is arguably one of the most important aspects of an MMORPG. RPG players like playing their preferred archetype.

Edited March 23, 2022 by Keegers.2573

[Ellye.9123]

4 minutes ago, Keegers.2573 said:

"You play a class without alac or quickness?"
"Good luck getting into one of the dps slots.. better just re-roll."

Is that actually happening in-game nowadays? Honest question, I'm currently not playing EOD content.

It's just that I have never had this kind of wow-like experience with gw2 in the past - heck, I don't think I ever had anyone even notice what build I or anyone else was playing.

Edited March 23, 2022 by Ellye.9123

[Keegers.2573]

6 minutes ago, Ellye.9123 said:

Is that actually happening in-game nowadays? Honest question, I'm currently not playing EOD content.

It's just that I have never had this kind of wow-like experience with gw2 in the past - heck, I don't think I ever had anyone even notice what build I or anyone else was playing.

Role compression has pushed a lot of classes out. Druid is pretty much worthless compared to mech, mech does everything a druid can but with alac.

You do need some pure dps, but any profession that has the ability to quick/alac will always be more desired than a pure. And quick/alac builds also have the option to just dps so... why not play one with quick/alac.

I'll admit my original statement was a bit of a hyperbole, but my point above stands.

Edited March 23, 2022 by Keegers.2573

[ScottBroChill.3254]

8 hours ago, Wielder Of Magic.3950 said:

The EoD Meta argument is far from the truth. 
It does not need 100% min-maxed builds to succeed. 
But people are complaining because they can no longer be carried through the game. 
When people complain that their meta squd fails, what you often see:

 

They are running some weird mis-matched build that will never do anything close to okay damage. Why is this not invalidating my 'you don't need 100% min-maxed build' argument you ask?  Because in order to succeed the meta, you only need an average squad DPS of 7k.  That is nothing. A glass cannon build will do more than that auto-attacking, non glass cannon builds should still hit over that amount with all the random boons flying around.

 

People also often show up without 10 stacks of the Dragon's End Contributor buff, which translates to another 20% damage lost (yes, at 10 stacks it becomes 20% bonus damage people!).

 

Next up they also often don't use the Jade Offensive Buff, another 150 power/condition damage lost. 

 

And that is without delving into people not using food, even if the squad provides it, do not even attempt a rotation, do not dodge, do not listen, and don't CC the big fat blue breakbar.

 

So...you do less than 7k DPS (I often see people manage to do less than 2k even), your gear is a mess, you have no rotation worth mentioning, you refuse to use any sort of BUFF or food, you don't listen, you don't dodge, and you don't CC, and still expect to get a win handed to you?

 

Perhaps the problem is not the meta, but you. 

Call me a toxic elitist if you want. 

But that is still a toxic elitist that puts out 40k+ on a lot of moments, and ~20-25k during intense phases, meaning I do more than roughly 6-15 people on the bottom of the DPS barrel not counting supports. And frankly, I do get a bit annoyed by the fact that people like me have to carry the ones who don't invest anything whatsoever in a succesful run. I do not expect people to tick all of the boxes I mentioned above, but too many people simply tick none.

 

And if you tick NONE of them, you should fail, even if its only open world.
We will never get interesting story or open world content if people stay bad. 

So people need to become better, even if its only a tiny bit. 

 

 

Dude forreal. Like I learned the game from pvp, but my pve builds and equipment are usually unfinished and I don't really practice rotations on a golem so I just kinda go with it. I know my skills, I know when I need certain things, and I have rotations of my own liking. I've beaten the meta multiple times, beat that one strike people complain about every time (not the one with the balls, haven't really seen a group for that one), and do fine in everything. Wanna know the build I'm running? It's catalyst, the dumpster fire of a spec that everyone says can't perform or do anything. I run Fire-3-1-2, Arcane-1-2-3(sometimes 2 for stuns with arcane blast, or 1 for damage), and catalyst-3-1-1. I have celestial trinkets, 3 zerkers armor and 3 viper armor. No runes, and one sigil of energy. I have absolutely zero issue performing above half the players in all these things. Anybody using any other class besides ele should be able to smoke these results if they just knew the basics of the game. 

[Sobx.1758]

On 3/22/2022 at 6:43 PM, Keegers.2573 said:

Optimal builds are pretty much required and groups are having to engage in gatekeeping behavior of manipulating map population to be able to do the event and succeed.

That's just false. Groups that decide to run specific builds/comps do it by their own accord and they have every right to do it, since "optimal builds" obviously will make encounters easier/faster. That said, it's not required. At no point, when successfully completing DE meta, I had anyone try to inspect my build in any way.

If there are organized subgroups with support buffs relatively evenly spread out, then these are people that want to run them and make it clear to the comm that they're running them. Anyone can just join, deal dmg, complete mechanics the game provides and leave without anyone ever mentioning/checking what they play.

Edited March 23, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[GrabbyGoblin.3265]

Have you considered that the strike mission and raids are make for more than one person, even 1 party you would still have to optimize so I don't think they should remove those boons but I think they should make a party scaling difficulty for them. Like how Diablo 3 how when you have 3 people in your party it is easier than 4 players

[dace.8019]

I just want to sat that I wholly agree with the original post. 

 

Another point touched on briefly is how bad some professions/especs feel without those boons and how it seems implied that you'll be in a group where they'll be showered on you anyway. I don't think they necessarily design them with that built into their core mechanics but I do believe that ANet factor in the prevalence of those boons in endgame group content... and it also robs power from those professions who do provide them. Look at what happened to Catalyst already. 

 

Would the game be so bad if they just made quickness and alacrity baseline? Honestly, sometimes, when you get used to these boons the game actually feels worse when you don't have them on when you strike out into the open world alone. I'm sure their intrinsic numbers would need to be adjusted and entire especs reworked (and various runes, sigils and whatnot) so I recognise it's a lot of work and a huge headache... but if they're on tap in every "proper" group comp, stifling diversity, pigeon-holing specs/professions and becoming a straight-up requirement in the eyes of the playerbase doesn't it just make sense?

 

The other boons suffer from this problem too but they're generally more freely available so their impact on compositions is dramatically inferior by comparison. The ad-hoc nature of the boon system is kind of cool and not without merit and made much more sense in the context of the game at launch, where players were expected to spend most of their time out in the open world and boons were part of the expression of opportunistic collaboration between players. 

Edited March 24, 2022 by dace.8019

[Freya.9075]

I enter strike and tier 4 fractals groups all the time as a selfish reaper dps. I’ve never been kicked for that. This topic seems strange to me or I’m misunderstanding something 

[Kulvar.1239]

14 hours ago, Keegers.2573 said:

I'm advocating for more build diversity with these changes. Giving players more freedom by removing overpowered boons of quickness/alac.
 

 

You mean the diversity of choosing whether you want to do strike damage or condition damage because support would be gutted out of existence ? The freedom of choosing between Berserker and Viper gear ?

[Syvaris Laskaris.5247]

38 minutes ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

 

You mean the diversity of choosing whether you want to do strike damage or condition damage because support would be gutted out of existence ? The freedom of choosing between Berserker and Viper gear ?

If quickness and alacrity are the only thing stopping GW2 outside of raids from turning into a DPS only hellscape that should tell you how serious of a problem it is and how much of a duct tape solution GW2's soft trinity is.

[Nex.1453]

Let's be real here, most players won't be staying for more than a few hours, much less getting to late game where the quickness/alacrity problem matters. The more important thing to discuss is how the levelling experience for F2P players suck, from the lack of general tutorials on the UI/controls to the outdated hearts they need to grind. They can't even enter their city until level 10, and I know many of my friends stopped playing way before even that. Let's address the new player experience first before talking about the boon meta in preparation of the Steam launch.