Aging & GW2

[Solvar.7953]

Having recently had a birthday, and GW2 having its birthday soon, this got me to thinking.

Even when GW2 came out 10 years ago, I was at an age where my reactions were past their prime and would go down.  But for original GW2, that really wasn't much an issue.  Sure, being able to dodge at the right time would make some content easier, and being able to player better would make fights faster.

But as new content has been released, more of it seems to be of a nature where good/fast reactions are necessary - if you don't dodge that attack, you may get knocked down, AoEs cover 90% of the area so you have to be able to quickly identify and move to that 10% safe area, relatively fast reactions for other mechanics, etc.  And there seems to be more of a push for instanced/harder content (raids & strikes).

Anet is of course free to design/change the game however they want.  But this does get me to thinking that as my reactions slowly decrease and Anet slowly ramps up difficulty, there will be some point where new content will effectively be not playable by me.  Which is a bit of a pity, as I enjoy the game, and while I can keep playing the old content, at some point that gets repetitive and this will just force me to move onto something else.

No real point to this post, other than maybe some hope that someone at Anet will see this and recognize that maybe keeping older players playing the good game would be a good thing.

 

[Endaris.1452]

Anet largely increases difficulty by increasing the amount of things you need to look out for at the same time, not necessarily how quick you need to be with your reactions. Normally the amount of damage/CC done to you directly scales with the duration of the tell.

Dhuum CM for example - for a long time the most difficult encounter in the game - is hard because there are many different mechanics layered on top of each other - with each individual mechanic giving you seconds of time to prepare for it and the main difficulty comes from having to juggle them around simultaneously.

For much end game content, mechanics are predictable by being on a timer or a sequence so even if it appears overwhelming at first, you can grow into it and learn it. Anticipation can almost completely substitute any need to react to things and speed up your reaction considerable in the cases where you still have to react somewhat quickly.

Edited July 27, 2022 by Endaris.1452

[Dawdler.8521]

Tl;DR yes you are getting old.

Edited July 27, 2022 by Dawdler.8521

[A Hamster.2580]

1 hour ago, Solvar.7953 said:

And there seems to be more of a push for instanced/harder content (raids & strikes).

Four strikes were released with story mode, normal mode, and challenge mode difficulty for each. Everyone should be able to clear at least the story mode version so I would not say that the new strikes were only aimed at the "hardcore" crowd. As for raids, they added Emboldened mode (easy mode), so they actually made it easier for the casual player base. Many casuals are finally unlocking and working towards crafting their PVE legendary armor. I am not sure what the concern is here.

 

1 hour ago, Solvar.7953 said:

No real point to this post, other than maybe some hope that someone at Anet will see this and recognize that maybe keeping older players playing the good game would be a good thing.

 

The recent expansion made most of the game easier by adding the Jade Core that can provide up to 235 vitality. You can grab the new Jade offensive and defensive buffs before roaming Open World and have almost all boons upon entering combat. You now have the new Rescue Protocol skill that lets the jade bot resurrect you even faster upon going into downstate. There are modules that you can equip that will boost your mount and gliding. The new expansion End of Dragon made the game easier for PVE. I think it's safe to say Anet has the older player base/casuals in mind.

Edited July 27, 2022 by A Hamster.2580

[Sunchaser.9854]

If people ever get tired of reading, why even bother coming to a fourm they say they don't like reading? 😆. To me, that's like walking into a shoe store and complaining you came there to buy shoes and they have too many shoes.

 

There's tons of places where if you don't like reading, you can just close your eyes or not even come to the fourms to make posts about not reading haha. 

Anyways yeah, i suppose there's always good and bad, as people age, their reactions slow down. Gw2 as far as mmorpgs seems good on rewarding open world exploration. Though it doesn't seem to always reward apm by spec's and practicality easily. As it figures though, i don't blame players for using mechanist, it's a build notorious or famed for being very easy to pilot to the point that while other classes might require kill proofs.

People will just take a mechanist with the reasoning that "if it can't fail a rotation because it only presses one button, there's no need to filter out a glorified auto attack presser from a experienced one!" 🙂 XD .  But at the same time, you can blame players for using builds that succeed with minimal effort and that means more time can be spent on game. The counterpart of the issue is when only 2/9 classes have access to dev favored specs, it's pretty hilarious to see a mmorpg where one class afks or autos to 20-30k+ dps and still gets buffs. But 50% of people will think they're the hottest thing ever, like a sniper who can't hit a moving headshot or a dps player who does 2k dps and fails a event.

 

Sure it's all a video game, but it's kinda hilarious that some specs are designed to be 20-30k on auto attacks or 1-4 button use, and others are literally designed to be 2-7k if you auto chain them without highly specific auto attack builds and proper ascended and gear runes. 

 

Tl;dr: Yeah it's kinda weird how people will come to fourms, a place literally designed for reading, to complain about reading lmao. But yeah, best of luck, For what it's worth, there are some specs that can be light on the hands. Bets of luck on your journey! 

 

{If you install a dps meter, many of the pug johnsons are just mechanists pressing 1 to top 4/5 of the top dps spots of most 50 man pugs with 20-30k autos, to a unskilled userbase of 25+ players under 2-5k dps. Many players vastly overestimate their ability, while massively underperforming.

 

Without a dps addon, it can be easy to see that apm does not always translate into dps, many times, 60-100 apm on a build can lead to a 2-4k dps, just because gw2 seems to have a philosophy where only a few abilities do a majority of your damage, while others are dps decreases.

Which means.. being more engaged with a rotation can actually be a dps loss in some cases for classes, making interaction unrewarding, while others afk to practical 20-30k results. for a perplexing balance design.

 

This section is meant for those who care for detail. If your brain doesn't like words, if you're not at a level able to understand it, just skip it like the asura would. Your eyes can move for a reason lmao. Posts about "WORD LONG, DON'T LIKE READ" seem to be pretty useless lol.  🙂 XD  )  

[Donari.5237]

I am also low reflexes thanks to being middle aged.  Plus my left hand has tendonitis now.  Plus to fight motion sickness I play so zoomed out and back that I can't do precise positioning at speed (or even with a ton of time -- jps with thin spikes sticking out of walls are my bane, I just don't have the depth perception needed thanks to my camera settings, but better that than having to log off completely before I puke).

Yet I do manage to complete content.  I just have to learn it first.  In my semi-static DE squad I almost never get downed fighting Su-Won, because I have learned the patterns and am moving before the cues come up.  I have move keys bound to my mouse side buttons so my left hand can just tap on skills.  I don't know if you saw the newer Zorro film with Antonio Banderas, but an early scene in that one has him handily winning a sword fight while barely moving because he has such economy and precision of motion that he is able to do subtle escives rather than acrobatic bounces.  I am -not- in that category, but it's my inspiration.

I agree that the newer content requires a lot more attention to the mechanics.  I've done the new base-level strikes, but only with a subgroup from that static squad with voice callouts and a willingness to leave me dirt napping if need be (I have managed to survive the first three, but have yet to make it to the final orbs-everywhere stage of Harvest Temple, though as I've only even tried that 3 or 4 times I don't feel wretched about it).  Still, I don't think I'm in danger of getting "priced out" of playing the game.  I'll never be fast enough to succeed in PvP.  Happily I have never liked PvP even in my younger, healthier times, so I don't feel any loss there.

Hopefully you will also continue to thrive in the game even if you aren't the fastest kid on the block.  There's so much to do even at lower levels of skill.

[Freya.9075]

9 minutes ago, Sunchaser.9854 said:

If people ever get tired of reading, why even bother coming to a fourm they say they don't like reading? 😆. To me, that's like walking into a shoe store and complaining you came there to buy shoes and they have too many shoes.

 

There's tons of places where if you don't like reading, you can just close your eyes or not even come to the fourms to make posts about not reading haha. 

Anyways yeah, i suppose there's always good and bad, as people age, their reactions slow down. Gw2 as far as mmorpgs seems good on rewarding open world exploration. Though it doesn't seem to always reward apm by spec's and practicality easily. As it figures though, i don't blame players for using mechanist, it's a build notorious or famed for being very easy to pilot to the point that while other classes might require kill proofs.

People will just take a mechanist with the reasoning that "if it can't fail a rotation because it only presses one button, there's no need to filter out a glorified auto attack presser from a experienced one!" 🙂 XD .  But at the same time, you can blame players for using builds that succeed with minimal effort and that means more time can be spent on game. The counterpart of the issue is when only 2/9 classes have access to dev favored specs, it's pretty hilarious to see a mmorpg where one class afks or autos to 20-30k+ dps and still gets buffs. But 50% of people will think they're the hottest thing ever, like a sniper who can't hit a moving headshot or a dps player who does 2k dps and fails a event.

 

Sure it's all a video game, but it's kinda hilarious that some specs are designed to be 20-30k on auto attacks or 1-4 button use, and others are literally designed to be 2-7k if you auto chain them without highly specific auto attack builds and proper ascended and gear runes. 

 

Tl;dr: Yeah it's kinda weird how people will come to fourms, a place literally designed for reading, to complain about reading lmao. But yeah, best of luck, For what it's worth, there are some specs that can be light on the hands. Bets of luck on your journey! 

 

{If you install a dps meter, many of the pug johnsons are just mechanists pressing 1 to top 4/5 of the top dps spots of most 50 man pugs with 20-30k autos, to a unskilled userbase of 25+ players under 2-5k dps. Many players vastly overestimate their ability, while massively underperforming.

 

Without a dps addon, it can be easy to see that apm does not always translate into dps, many times, 60-100 apm on a build can lead to a 2-4k dps, just because gw2 seems to have a philosophy where only a few abilities do a majority of your damage, while others are dps decreases.

Which means.. being more engaged with a rotation can actually be a dps loss in some cases for classes, making interaction unrewarding, while others afk to practical 20-30k results. for a perplexing balance design.

 

This section is meant for those who care for detail. If your brain doesn't like words, if you're not at a level able to understand it, just skip it like the asura would. Your eyes can move for a reason lmao. Posts about "WORD LONG, DON'T LIKE READ" seem to be pretty useless lol.  🙂 XD  )  

I’m confused. Where did they complain about reading? Did I miss something? This topic is about reaction time as you get older. Which is part of being human. 

[Labjax.2465]

Honestly, I'm on the younger-ish side of things and I find some of the mechanic reaction time expectations, and subsequent unforgiving 4 second stun type stuff, to be extremely uninteresting and off-putting. Particularly as any melee build, it starts feeling like the game is determined to make life extra hard, and this for whatever reason is a complaint I've seen about melee play in more than one MMO.

But GW2 in particular is by far the spammiest game I've ever played in memory, in terms of what it shoves in front of your eyes at mach speed. Even some FPS games I've played do not feel as intense. As far as I can tell, it's not that the mechanics themselves are necessarily occurring super fast (tho some are pretty absurd in their expectations, like scattered ground AoEs that fill half the screen); it's more that there's just too much to pay attention to, so if you have a mind that is at all easily distracted or overwhelmed, the challenge is less about reacting to a particular mechanic in time and more about somehow managing to stay focused amidst the chaos to even process that a mechanic is happening and where. A problem that is made worse from all the visual and audio ability spam from other players. The end result for me, is it feels like my reaction time is slow, but it's more like my ability to focus in on what I need to focus on is slow because the game is so kitten spammy.

Maybe that's not you and you process it just fine, idk, but that is most of what bothers me about the design in this way. I also think the insistence of punishing things like stuns are just counterintuitive to learning and improving. Like how are you supposed to learn to recover from what happened in real-time if all you can do is lie on the ground and watch yourself get destroyed because of one mistake.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

1 hour ago, A Hamster.2580 said:

Four strikes were released with story mode, normal mode, and challenge mode difficulty for each. Everyone should be able to clear at least the story mode version so I would not say that the new strikes were only aimed at the "hardcore" crowd. As for raids, they added Emboldened mode (easy mode), so they actually made it easier for the casual player base. Many casuals are finally unlocking and working towards crafting their PVE legendary armor. I am not sure what the concern is here.

 

 

The recent expansion made most of the game easier by adding the Jade Core that can provide up to 235 vitality. You can grab the new Jade offensive and defensive buffs before roaming Open World and have almost all boons upon entering combat. You now have the new Rescue Protocol skill that lets the jade bot resurrect you even faster upon going into downstate. There are modules that you can equip that will boost your mount and gliding. The new expansion End of Dragon made the game easier for PVE. I think it's safe to say Anet has the older player base/casuals in mind.

This got me thinking: One thing I'd really like to see is the story mode strikes to be accessible from the Strike Mission Portal, instead of just the Story Journal, slightly modified so they can be entered like a normal strike. Currently to replay them in story mode difficulty requires alot of effort, unlike dungeons.

 

(This kind of thing is important for many reasons I won't go into here.)

Edited July 27, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Vayne.8563]

I can sympathize OP.  60 here, with arthritis and bursitis, plus some chronic back pain. Everything is harder than it was 10 years ago.  The game is getting harder and harder. 

I used to PvP a lot more, but the intensity of it cause me injury. Now I tend to gravitate to easier content, but I feel there's still enough easy enough content, the majority of the content, that I can keep playing for the foreseeable future. I also enjoy helping people older than I am get through content, including a guy in my guild who's 77 years old, and another who's 75. At the end of the day, you don't have to solo everything.

If you're on a US server and you need some help, hit me up in game. I'd be happy to give you a hand. It's not like I don't need a hand from time to time either.

[Mungrul.9358]

2 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Tl;DR yes you are getting old.

As are you 😉

[disco.9302]

4 hours ago, Solvar.7953 said:

Having recently had a birthday, and GW2 having its birthday soon, this got me to thinking.

Even when GW2 came out 10 years ago, I was at an age where my reactions were past their prime and would go down.  But for original GW2, that really wasn't much an issue.  Sure, being able to dodge at the right time would make some content easier, and being able to player better would make fights faster.

But as new content has been released, more of it seems to be of a nature where good/fast reactions are necessary - if you don't dodge that attack, you may get knocked down, AoEs cover 90% of the area so you have to be able to quickly identify and move to that 10% safe area, relatively fast reactions for other mechanics, etc.  And there seems to be more of a push for instanced/harder content (raids & strikes).

Anet is of course free to design/change the game however they want.  But this does get me to thinking that as my reactions slowly decrease and Anet slowly ramps up difficulty, there will be some point where new content will effectively be not playable by me.  Which is a bit of a pity, as I enjoy the game, and while I can keep playing the old content, at some point that gets repetitive and this will just force me to move onto something else.

No real point to this post, other than maybe some hope that someone at Anet will see this and recognize that maybe keeping older players playing the good game would be a good thing.

 

the majority of players don't want a snail pace game.  no offence intended but 99% of people shouldn't need to slow down for the 1% lagging behind.

As for player retention, the old leave, and new players join - the danger is that if you have a boring, slow game then newer players don't stay past day 1 and you have a population decline getting out of control.

[Mppa.3250]

5 hours ago, Solvar.7953 said:

Having recently had a birthday, and GW2 having its birthday soon, this got me to thinking.

Even when GW2 came out 10 years ago, I was at an age where my reactions were past their prime and would go down.  But for original GW2, that really wasn't much an issue.  Sure, being able to dodge at the right time would make some content easier, and being able to player better would make fights faster.

............

No real point to this post, other than maybe some hope that someone at Anet will see this and recognize that maybe keeping older players playing the good game would be a good thing.

 

Im not young either and I also have some issues. Its not at all easy for me as well. But, to be honest, Anet gave  lately a lot of nice utilities to help new and/or low performance players like the extra vitality on jade bot, the ez mode on raids, the extra health in fractals, the defensive buff in armor repair. They also having specs like mechanist which allow players to reach a good damage per second point without having to press a lot of buttons, something that helps towards paying less attention to the rotation and focus more on the mechanics. 

 

Even if I do want the content to be easier and to have all people able to get all the rewards, that wouldnt please the more skilled players that many of them support and promote this game for years and help us with guides and more. Everyone should have some content to feel enjoyment and even if Anet would give us for example an easy mode on Harvest Temple CM, the end result would still depend on the community. Having for example a commander willing to tag up and create an "everyone welcome" group, willing to stay and keep trying even after many wipes, willing to repeat the mechanics, willing to spend a lot of time. And players that are a bit more skilled that also would want to jump in and help., especially healers that for example would give stability to not get pushed and etc.

 

99 Fractal CM for example, is pretty much about not ignoring skull and killing anomaly as pretty much everything else can be canceled by a healer. I have no problem proving that in a group with you if you are in EU. But, when it comes to me, due to my issues, there are some days that although I have almost 50k UFE, I feel like Im doing CMs for first time, feeling overwhelmed and with a lot of stress. Anet can't help me with that and shouldn't. All I want to say is that if you get 1-2 nice and exp people in a party or 4-5 in a squad, im pretty sure most of the content is doable for everyone. 

 

 

Edited July 27, 2022 by Mppa.3250

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, Mungrul.9358 said:

As are you 😉

I know, yet people are still confused.

[Vayne.8563]

2 hours ago, disco.9302 said:

the majority of players don't want a snail pace game.  no offence intended but 99% of people shouldn't need to slow down for the 1% lagging behind.

As for player retention, the old leave, and new players join - the danger is that if you have a boring, slow game then newer players don't stay past day 1 and you have a population decline getting out of control.

You're assuming percentages. How do you know how big a percentage of disabled or older people play this game? Or how many people simply aren't gamers at all, and have a below average skill set.

 

It's easy to say that 99% of the people are being held back by the 1%, but it's just as possible that 75% of the players are frustrated by the 25%. Anyone can make up numbers. It devalues whatever argument you want to make.

 

As for new players joining, the question is how old and skilled those new players are. This game does not have a skilled player base. I've noticed it myself and I've seen Anet talk about it.  My guess is the high end player base you think are being inconvenienced or held back by catering to the not so high end playerbase might very well be smaller than you think.

[Zephire.8049]

I'm not super old (though not getting any younger) and I've also found this. Throw in ping issues and it makes things a lot more challenging since by the time you see and can react to something, you have far less time to do it in because as far as the server is concerned, you were happily watching mechanics be telegraphed and didn't bother to respond until the last second. And far too many mechanics chain together in such a way there's no way to recover unless you bring specific skills to a fight or are a class where your skills double as stun breaks or have stability on them.

It's not fun to lose control of your character for 8+ seconds in PvP so why it was moved over to PvE is beyond me. Either it leads to death or you and/or support has to panic to stay alive before the next mechanic happens. Older content did have punishing mechanics but also had more reprieves and chances to recover between them. If you failed A, you could still recover in time to do B. Now if you fail A, you're hit by B, C, and have a brief chance to recover in time for D to not kill you.

It feels far spammier and there's not much time to catch your breath or respond. And it really doesn't help that Anet has introduced mechanics that cannot be dodged through, mechanics that for years people with slower reflexes and/or bad ping relied on dodging through since there wasn't enough time to leave the area entirely.

It's not about rewarding people who can do mechanics perfectly with faster clears/bigger numbers/more loot anymore, it's about punishing players (and possibly 9 others) if a mechanic is failed once by one person even in non-CM content.

[AliamRationem.5172]

2 hours ago, disco.9302 said:

the majority of players don't want a snail pace game.  no offence intended but 99% of people shouldn't need to slow down for the 1% lagging behind.

As for player retention, the old leave, and new players join - the danger is that if you have a boring, slow game then newer players don't stay past day 1 and you have a population decline getting out of control.

It's not the diplomatic thing to say, but essentially correct.  If ANet travels too far down the path of accommodating ease of play for various subsets of the population, they risk losing the well-deserved reputation the game has for excellent combat.  EoD was arguably a big step in the wrong direction in that sense, introducing several overtuned ranged specs with easy rotations with the express purpose of accommodating players who find the gameplay overwhelming.

I can only speak for myself when I say it's not that I don't care about the OP's plight (I'm not a young gamer anymore myself!).  I just don't see myself enjoying or playing a game where the classes are more like mechanist and less like weaver.  That's just my opinion, of course.  I like what I like and everyone else is welcome to the same.

 

[Astralporing.1957]

8 hours ago, Endaris.1452 said:

Anet largely increases difficulty by increasing the amount of things you need to look out for at the same time, not necessarily how quick you need to be with your reactions.

It's both. Take Ryland in Dragonstorm for example - some of his AoE attacks are pretty much normal, with indicators that give you enough time to react. But you also have icicle spikes that require much faster reaction, and that frontal attack that hits you a fraction of the second after indicator shows up. That last one is for people with top reflexes only. Sure, you can try to never be in front of him, but in that case, why even show that indicator at all?

 

[kharmin.7683]

3 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

It's both. Take Ryland in Dragonstorm for example - some of his AoE attacks are pretty much normal, with indicators that give you enough time to react. But you also have icicle spikes that require much faster reaction, and that frontal attack that hits you a fraction of the second after indicator shows up. That last one is for people with top reflexes only. Sure, you can try to never be in front of him, but in that case, why even show that indicator at all?

 

I have a similar problem with the small fire circles during the Fire Elemental world boss.  They appear and instantly knock me down before I can even acknowledge they've appeared.  I'm sure it's more likely due to some client/server lag, but it's pretty much one of the few indicators that I can never seem to avoid.

[Reznov.5423]

after you play enough, you will remember what mechanic will happen at what time, so it would be less need for reaction

[Randulf.7614]

I like to go to  my borderland fort and shout “get off my lawn you kids” at the invading force. I like to think it helps and requires minimal mechanic learning for my tiring brain

[Hashberry.4510]

Well the sweet young things are getting older too and will get to enjoy the slide down.

 

I recall when this all started in the 80s we had computing pros confidently predicting that as coders aged, they would naturally address issues older folks face. They really had no idea they would be replaced in a few years with a younger set with no perspective on these issues.

 

So the worm turns.

[Sobx.1758]

Knowing the encounter and being able to ""predict"" (or rather expect) what can/should/will happen soon helps with responsiveness more than some people think btw.

[Bish.8627]

Pattern recognition is important too, you dont lose that, infact you may get better with that. Going through old stories recently I am finding so much easier because I have done more challenging content. Mostly because I recognise what will happen. But also little things like, I know if I sit here, the boss will aggro on an ally AI and I can avoid this move sort of thing.

[kharmin.7683]

15 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Knowing the encounter and being able to ""predict"" (or rather expect) what can/should/will happen soon helps with responsiveness more than some people think btw.

In most cases, I agree.  The FE example I gave, though, is random.  Or, at least it appears so on my screen  🙂