Is Anet flipping boons into confusion and torment for the playerbase?

[AlexVoyd.8094]

             Hi! After the recent couple of dev communication, I can't help but feel that we mostly talk about boons regarding this game. And I have this bad feeling that the devs are "wasting" time trying to "fix" how boons, buffs, synergies and in general our classes work.

             Is adding more boons really the answer? Giving might to everyone, fury to every spec, alacrity and quickness for every wanna-be support class who is waiting in the line for Firebrands to be nerfed while at the same time watching Mechanists skip the queue? Meanwhile, there is no control over boons in game, you don't know if the so-called support in your group has 100% BD or not and without ArcDPS_buffs, good luck trying to figure out if you have a good uptime... pfff even now I'm falling on the same trap the devs have fallen again again the last years!

             More importantly: IS BOON MANAGEMENT FUN? Any1? Is playing with 5 spirits fun? 5 wells maybe? Is current alacrity tempest fun? Watching the channel bar of your overloads? The warrior mistake says nothing btw, cause the problem lies in the philosophy. A philosophy which tries to homogenise the classes in order for every1 to be viable at the cost of actually creating fun classes with fun rotations. Is any1 enjoying the "blob meta"? Why boons are still 360 (at best)? Why druids are punished for doing mechanics? We need FUN rotations,not stupid mathematics!

             Plz Anet don't follow blizzard's steps where for 2 expansions their whole focus was on how to balance 3 or 4 systems on top of each other! Keep it simple,stupid! K.I.S.S.

             My advice? Boons have 2000 radius in pve, quick/alac are behind specific traits that pulse every 3sec while in combat for 1,5sec. Will open up our utility bars, will open up the design for the classes and will lower the skill floor!

Thanks,take care every1 ❤️
PS: please make engin rifle FUN! 

[AliamRationem.5172]

I don't really see the advantage in making boons easier to use by extending their range.  Either you put the final nail in the coffin for melee DPS specs and finish what EoD started or ranged is still forced to stack due to the boss moving around too much with random aggro mechanics.

All of this nonsense could have been avoided if they had gone trinity from the start.  Then we could have a way to control boss positioning and a UI that allows for targeted support/healing from range rather than spamming area effects.  Until then it's either stack in a pile or overtune your ranged DPS and design encounters where the boss is stationary and only moves into predetermined positions (e.g. most of the EoD strikes).

[Kikokuma.9405]

It's almost as if they screwed themselves over by over simplifying combat when they originally designed it and now they are stuck with nothing to do. But as METAs evolve they try to break it up by tuning more classes to be "viable" but in doing so classes lose their identity. Meaning every class now does everything so playing a different class doesn't feel different at all. Good job, you turned yer game into SWTOR. 👍

[AlexVoyd.8094]

5 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I don't really see the advantage in making boons easier to use by extending their range.  Either you put the final nail in the coffin for melee DPS specs and finish what EoD started or ranged is still forced to stack due to the boss moving around too much with random aggro mechanics.

All of this nonsense could have been avoided if they had gone trinity from the start.  Then we could have a way to control boss positioning and a UI that allows for targeted support/healing from range rather than spamming area effects.  Until then it's either stack in a pile or overtune your ranged DPS and design encounters where the boss is stationary and only moves into predetermined positions (e.g. most of the EoD strikes).

Increasing the range will pseudo-improve visual noise,make ranged specs feel like...well...ranged and open the boss design for more mechanics. Going for trinity right now is impossible, I won't discuss if it would be a good or bad idea,doesn't matter right now, BUT they could fully embrace "roles" like <support-alac>, <support-quick> with fixed specs.

2 hours ago, Kikokuma.9405 said:

It's almost as if they screwed themselves over by over simplifying combat when they originally designed it and now they are stuck with nothing to do. But as METAs evolve they try to break it up by tuning more classes to be "viable" but in doing so classes lose their identity. Meaning every class now does everything so playing a different class doesn't feel different at all. Good job, you turned yer game into SWTOR. 👍

Your opinion is that gw2 combat is over-simplified?

Edited July 10, 2022 by AlexVoyd.8094

[Kikokuma.9405]

1 hour ago, AlexVoyd.8094 said:

Your opinion is that gw2 combat is over-simplified?

let's see... no special dmg types, or resistances. (fire, piercing, blunt, magical, etc...) 
There is only conditions and boons, and with the current builds you can pretty much guarantee you'll have 80%+ uptime on most of em. Soooo what is special about them? Boons don't feel like they "turn the tide" of combat because you always have em, you always need em. Same with conditions on enemies. There is very few combos of requiring a condition or something on an enemy before you can apply another. There is no difference of say like "conditions and hexes" like GW1 had, everything is a condition. 
Combo fields don't really matter much cuz you can guarantee them always being there in groups. Combat is just raw dmg, with passive fields being applied constantly. Very little thinking required to play.  
EDIT: I should also probably add that there is no changing out yer main weapon skills to make a unique build or anything. Every great sword warrior is just like every other great sword warrior. I'm sorry but linking class skills to weapons was just bad design. I know they did it so it would be much easier to balance but that doesn't seem to have actually helped them with class balance in the long run. 

Edited July 10, 2022 by Kikokuma.9405

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

There's an irony to all of this that I just realized, and that is Anet is killing one of their paths to monetization by doing this update.  Let me explain:

There were two stated goals for the update.  First was to allow more builds to fulfill more roles.  The second was to make it so players didn't have to take different builds to maximize performance in different content.  The second one is a bit weird, because Anet makes money by selling slots on the build template system.  Also, players buy bank space to hold their equipment, buy invisible bags to contain their equipment, by inventory slots, and also play the game longer to acquire different pieces that they can swap out quickly.  

Solving logistics problems is part of gameplay, and the players have had the tools to do this for a long time.  Anet has traded a revenue stream for 10 seconds of convenience once every week.  

[Astralporing.1957]

4 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

There's an irony to all of this that I just realized, and that is Anet is killing one of their paths to monetization by doing this update.  Let me explain:

There were two stated goals for the update.  First was to allow more builds to fulfill more roles.  The second was to make it so players didn't have to take different builds to maximize performance in different content.  The second one is a bit weird, because Anet makes money by selling slots on the build template system.  Also, players buy bank space to hold their equipment, buy invisible bags to contain their equipment, by inventory slots, and also play the game longer to acquire different pieces that they can swap out quickly.  

Solving logistics problems is part of gameplay, and the players have had the tools to do this for a long time.  Anet has traded a revenue stream for 10 seconds of convenience once every week.  

Seriously, "template" system is just that bad. I'm personally not surprised that Anet is not trying anymore to push players into it, as they would have to rework it into something far more useable first before more players would ever consider actually thinking about buying that stuff.

[SlayerXX.7138]

19 hours ago, AlexVoyd.8094 said:

 More importantly: IS BOON MANAGEMENT FUN? Any1? Is playing with 5 spirits fun? 5 wells maybe? Is current alacrity tempest fun? Watching the channel bar of your overloads? The warrior mistake says nothing btw, cause the problem lies in the philosophy. A philosophy which tries to homogenise the classes in order for every1 to be viable at the cost of actually creating fun classes with fun rotations. Is any1 enjoying the "blob meta"? Why boons are still 360 (at best)? Why druids are punished for doing mechanics? We need FUN rotations,not stupid mathematics!

First and foremost I don't like the blob meta.

Its fun to be good. Challenging content even if not needed attracts optimization. The meta way will always be 5 wells or a 12+ step rotation. People go the way of least resistance and are at least 50% responsible for the state of the blob meta. Like didn't people cry out to get their profession quickness or alacrity so they can be relevant? Weren't many engies happy they could give quickness? Increasing boon range doesn't to much anyway we just become a less dense blob, but a blob all the same. There isn't any non drastic solution for that problem after years of player meta gaming and forcing content creation around them.

Kill perma boons: That would be a colossal player outrage and rebalancing of a lot of content so not really an option.

Increasing radius: Just increases the blob in diameter with all the same restriction the dense blob has.

Making new content that just ignores or disables boons: I think that would be cool and would open up so much more encounter design, BUT it would force a split in PVE to balance around 2 type of content so also a NONO.

Nobody forces you to do boring rotations and manage boons, but yourself and other players. Wanna have new never before seen PVE content do Boneskinner like it was indented. But do you really wanna do it? Even if yes, can you find 9 other people willing to do that?

Remember DRM when Prismatium was worth something? LFG was full with people wanting to run content with hfb. Player will chose the meta way and as long as boons are somehow worth it boon meta will persist. So it is either centralization or giving boons to everyone. Sure everyone being an alac is lame, but so is bringing guardian on every encounter. Player force the boon meta on the devs not the other way around. The time the dev could reasonable put a stop to Boon meta has passed a long time ago.

 

On the point of rotation: Besides some wow style procs Guild wars kinda has exhausted what they could possible do with their game in the case of rotations. If you don't like Managing heat/Stealth/shroud or filling up Malice/Blades/adrenalin or Switching between Weapon swap and kits cooldown there isn't much the game can give you as an rotation that isnt already there.

[Zera.9435]

I'd rather they just get rid of all boons and just permanently double everyone's base stats and increase attack/cast/movement speed and be done with it.

[ThunderX.6591]

Not all boons, but alacrity and quickness can be off if you set the bonus they give directly to the game (so +50% attack speed and -25% cooldown on skills), i think those changes could improve the game a lot and semplify the balance in it.