Encounter design - my least fav part of GW2

[SolidTx.3249]

Hi there,

 

I hope we can keep this civil and professional. I would like to provide some constructive feedback to the developers regarding Encounter design.

 

I've been a GW2 player since beta. Have my decade title, crafted a series of legendary items and mainly focus my end game on meta events, legendary crafting, some WvW and an occasional strike etc. I love the game. It's the only game that I have played consistently over the last 10 years. That being said, I always have another game I am also playing -- and in those games I play them much more hardcore than I do GW2. Whether it be mythic raiding in WoW, DCUO, SWTOR, FFXIV and currently Lost Ark. I have a 1492 Sorc and 1485 Bard and raid the HM Legion raids every week. Clown comes out this week.

 

My biggest complaint about GW2 is it's encounter design. I believe, when compared to its contemporaries it is the worst of the bunch. From QOL things like not being able to completely turn off other player effects to everyone stand on the pin style raid mechanics, GW2's encounters are (mainly) terrible. Now the EOD strikes are a little bit improved, but for a game supposedly focused on group content - there is a lot left to be desired.

 

• -- Telegraphs are terrible
• -- The "poop on the ground" damage variant is far too overused (need more variety)
• -- Visuals are too chaotic (need to be able to turn off friendly effects)
• -- Difficulty is derived from the above shortcomings, not from lack of player skill or coordination6

 

These issues seem to affect almost every aspect of the game -- encounters in story missions (story model Mordromoth for example) are especially bad. Fractals and raids aren't much improved. Strikes are perhaps the best (and most recent) of a bad lot. Now on their own perhaps some of you think they are okay - but they are not. I'm not advocating for other games, but a Sire Denathrias fight is so much better designed than virtually anything GW2 has, and hard mode Vykas even better than that. Even many of the Meta events are just big chaos machines. There are a lot of examples where other games have evolved their encounter designs to a far better state than what we have here. I'd like to have the Anet team look into those and bring the best of the best to GW2.

 

I am a competent end game raider and have cleared some of the most challenging raids the MMO scene can offer. I would like to do more of this style of gameplay in GW2 but the poor design of their encounters and lack of quality of life features end up making me more frustrated than anything else. 

 

Sincerely. Cheers and have a nice day!

 

 

 

[Hashberry.4510]

This is all pretty spot on. The design is just poor for group combat. Every attempt to push just shows how poor it is.

[Randulf.7614]

I agree the visual noise is an issue with mechanics and it’s sad that Anet do not care even the tiniest bit. I did my first Soo-wan in Sat and the encounter was mostly fine, but it was a complete mess at the same time. I just wish they showed some pride in their work and found a way to mitigate the issues instead of making them worse.

However, across the board I find encounters outside of that obstruction to be excellent. Not always I grant you, but it’s not correct to sweepingly say the game has the worst encounters. Difficulty aside, the game has many excellent ones:

- Tequatl

- Vinewrath

- Mouth of Mordremoth

- Gerent

- the Kodan Strike (actually most of the strikes in IBS)

- Forged in Steel boss

- The Wintersday Frosty Strike

- Wyvern Patriarch

- Shadow of the Dragon in LS2

- Golem

- Mai Trin fractal

- High Priestess Amala

- Triple Trouble

- Canach LS2

All of those are well designed encounters across a wide variety of difficulty levels, with decent mechanics with only really Amala affected by visual noise. The issue is consistentcy. For every good one we get a mess like the Junkyard, Soo-wan, Kralk ls4 final instance, Queen Karka, bounties, legendary facet, Serpents Ire, Hydra Queen all of which have problems with telegraphs hidden by visual pollution or just poor mechanics.

I can’t comment on raids as I’ve never raided, but I think it’s unfair to label gw2 as being the worst culprit in general for encounters. When it gets encounters right, it’s a fantastic experience and fun to replay over and over unlike many of its contemporaries.

Visual noise though is a problem

Edited September 19, 2022 by Randulf.7614

[Ashen.2907]

Agreed.

Artificial difficulty centered on making it difficult to see what is going on in a given encounter is bad. There is nothing quite like realizing that the final boss of a given bit of instanced content is actually easier if half your party is dead so that their fx spam doesnt hide the mechanics/tells/etc.

[DeanBB.4268]

So...the devs are supposed to play all these other games? I have no idea what you want, other than less visual noise.

[Valfar.3761]

I agree that the visual noise is one of the biggest detriments. Doing the story boss fights by myself is one of the few times where I can actually see what's going on, because there isn't a cacophony of spell effects going off. During open world boss fights, half the time I can't tell if I am standing in fire or about to get hit by something because there are just too many spell effects. WvW is impossible without turning down all of your settings but then you're getting a subpar war experience.

 

Just look at this:

 

https://i.imgur.com/I4qGcOc.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/OfZf8cr.jpg

 

I can't imagine any other game that looks like that. As effects heavy as FF14 is, you can still clearly see the telegraphs on the ground.

[Sobx.1758]

52 minutes ago, SolidTx.3249 said:

• -- Telegraphs are terrible

For the most part... I can't really agree with this one.

52 minutes ago, SolidTx.3249 said:

• -- The "poop on the ground" damage variant is far too overused (need more variety)

Possibly, but that just seems like the case of lower effort implementation of limiting the space during encounters.

52 minutes ago, SolidTx.3249 said:

• -- Visuals are too chaotic (need to be able to turn off friendly effects)

Not always, but yeah, some effects (or effect spam) can cover what's actually important within the encounter.

52 minutes ago, SolidTx.3249 said:

• -- Difficulty is derived from the above shortcomings, not from lack of player skill or coordination6

Depends. That just varies between the individual players, specific encounters and groups (since some will be spamming more obstructive effects than the others).

Edited September 19, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[SolidTx.3249]

13 minutes ago, DeanBB.4268 said:

So...the devs are supposed to play all these other games? I have no idea what you want, other than less visual noise.

you bet I expect that....any professional evaluates their competitors in an effort to make their own product better.

What do I want other than less visual noise? did you read the OP?

-- better telegraphs

-- more variety

-- less stand on a pin style group gameplay (specter is a great addition to the game)

-- actual group mechanics vs chaotic and messy design

anyone with significant experience playing other well designed MMOs is bound to agree. raid and encounter mechanics in other games are far superior. Take the "counter" mechanic in Vykas HM in Lost Ark. Brilliant design. Nothing like that in GW2.

Edited September 19, 2022 by SolidTx.3249

[SolidTx.3249]

11 minutes ago, Valfar.3761 said:

I agree that the visual noise is one of the biggest detriments. Doing the story boss fights by myself is one of the few times where I can actually see what's going on, because there isn't a cacophony of spell effects going off. During open world boss fights, half the time I can't tell if I am standing in fire or about to get hit by something because there are just too many spell effects. WvW is impossible without turning down all of your settings but then you're getting a subpar war experience.

 

Just look at this:

 

https://i.imgur.com/I4qGcOc.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/OfZf8cr.jpg

 

I can't imagine any other game that looks like that. As effects heavy as FF14 is, you can still clearly see the telegraphs on the ground.

amen. they say a picture is worth a 1000 words - or 1000 visual effects. that is pure chaos, not good encounter design

[Kulvar.1239]

27 minutes ago, DeanBB.4268 said:

So...the devs are supposed to play all these other games? I have no idea what you want, other than less visual noise.

Yes, game designers should play other games. That's how you keep improving your game design knowledge. You play other games, you analyze how things are designed, how each design brick fit with the others to make a coherent and fun experience for the players, you analyze the design failures so you don't repeat them yourself. Then you think about transferring the good designs and removing the bad designs for the games you make.

[DeanBB.4268]

23 minutes ago, SolidTx.3249 said:

Take the "counter" mechanic in Vykas HM in Lost Ark. Brilliant design. Nothing like that in GW2.

Yes, you provide some good points, not arguing that. But saying "do it like this game does it" is of no value if one hasn't experienced that content.

[Ashen.2907]

48 minutes ago, DeanBB.4268 said:

So...the devs are supposed to play all these other games? I have no idea what you want, other than less visual noise.

To be fair, researching the competition's product in order to ensure that yours is competitive is normal.

[Ashen.2907]

12 minutes ago, DeanBB.4268 said:

Yes, you provide some good points, not arguing that. But saying "do it like this game does it" is of no value if one hasn't experienced that content.

I think he is suggesting that ANet look into that encounter.

[Sobx.1758]

39 minutes ago, SolidTx.3249 said:

amen. they say a picture is worth a 1000 words - or 1000 visual effects. that is pure chaos, not good encounter design

But there's not much to do about the encounter itself if that's what you mean. All of it is focusing on the overwhelming visuals comming from the zerg's skill spam. At this point it almost doesn't matter what you do with the encounter since the skill effects will still cover whatever change you'd want to implement there. And as far as it still can be an issue in smaller group encounters, it's not really what these screenshots show.

Introducing some sort of simplyfied player skill indicators option would probably fix most/all of what you're talking about without touching actual designs of the encounters.

Edited September 19, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Hashberry.4510]

But really, these complaints (like I said, all are fair) are more suited to an actual triple A game. This one is in some respects, like music and graphics, but game play stuff that requires a pro approach is just a crap shoot. Its an elaborate advertisement for the gem store, and does pretty well even with the carelessness that has gone with that approach.

[Ashen.2907]

6 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

But there's not much to do about the encounter itself if that's what you mean. All of it is focusing on the overwhelming visuals comming from the zerg's skill spam. At this point it almost doesn't matter what you do with the encounter since the skill effects will still cover whatever change you'd want to implement there. And as far as it still can be an issue in smaller group encounters, it's not really what these screenshots show.

Introducing some sort of simplyfied player skill indicators option would probably fix most/all of what you're talking about without touching actual designs of the encounters.

Absolutely agreed, but changes to encounter design could address the skill fx spam as well.

[Gehenna.3625]

You know, I'm not so sure GW2 is focused on group content. 

• Dungeons - abandoned
• Raids - abandoned
• PvP - never gets new content
• WvW - never gets new content (though this is not strictly just group content)
• Fractals - when was the last time something new came out for this again?
• Strikes - the new group content...but will it last?

Compared to:

• OW - gets new zones/content regularly
• Storyline - gets new content regularly

I'll leave it up to you to decide, but as far as group content is concerned they seem to drop some of it and then abandon it again for something new. Is that a focus then? You tell me.

Edit: as for your point that encounters leave a lot to be desired, I wholly agree.

Edited September 19, 2022 by Gehenna.3625

[Sobx.1758]

6 minutes ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

You know, I'm not so sure GW2 is focused on group content. 

• Dungeons - abandoned
• Raids - abandoned
• PvP - never gets new content
• WvW - never gets new content (though this is not strictly just group content)
• Fractals - when was the last time something new came out for this again?
• Strikes - the new group content...but will it last?

Compared to:

• OW - gets new zones/content regularly
• Storyline - gets new content regularly

I'll leave it up to you to decide, but as far as group content is concerned they seem to drop some of it and then abandon it again for something new. Is that a focus then? You tell me.

Edit: as for your point that encounters leave a lot to be desired, I wholly agree.

I like how in this completely unbiased post, despite getting EoD strikes at the same time we got the latest OW content (so not even counting strike CMs, which are at a level at least similar to the raid encounters, so not sure "raids abandoned" is even accurate, more like "new raids re-designed to include useful qol changes"?), the best thing you could write is "will it last" 😄

In other words, if we follow your "compared to" style of judging content, it would be "Storyline/OW/instanced content -gets new content regularly".

[Warscythes.9307]

19 minutes ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

You know, I'm not so sure GW2 is focused on group content. 

• Dungeons - abandoned
• Raids - abandoned
• PvP - never gets new content
• WvW - never gets new content (though this is not strictly just group content)
• Fractals - when was the last time something new came out for this again?
• Strikes - the new group content...but will it last?

Compared to:

• OW - gets new zones/content regularly
• Storyline - gets new content regularly

I'll leave it up to you to decide, but as far as group content is concerned they seem to drop some of it and then abandon it again for something new. Is that a focus then? You tell me.

Edit: as for your point that encounters leave a lot to be desired, I wholly agree.

Is absolutely a focus, what do you think majority of the PvE balance is for? Because is certainly not for open world metas.

 

As for PvE content, raids is effectively strike cm at this point, strike itself is basically "wing 8". So yes there is a focus on group instance, the name just changes. In fact there is one coming the next release with CM.

 

to the OP:

I feel the majority of your issue is visual clarity and I agree. I have raided in other games as well yes which includes HM Vykas and I actually feel that is one of the worst example in the game in terms of clarity. Valtan would be a more better example of good telegraph. She has a lot of very random invulnerably moves or just runs out of your attacks when she feels like it. I don't know if you ever did the gate mechanic at P1 at the top left but the terrain there is a huge pain in the kitten as well.

Overall I think the encounter design is fine with the exception of clarity issue as mentioned before as well as the melee stack problem as boons/heals depend heavily on being within short range. Clarity is likely easier to fix, I don't know how they can deal with the melee stack problem other than massively buff the range of literally every boon skill in the game.

There's also the issue with powercreep and rewards, but I don't even know where to start with those.

Edited September 19, 2022 by Warscythes.9307

[Sobx.1758]

44 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

Absolutely agreed, but changes to encounter design could address the skill fx spam as well.

Ok, what I mean is more of a: since the problem with visual skill effect spam is rather clear and the potential solution is to have an option to dumpen/simplify those effects, what else specifically is problematic? (open question, including OP) I don't really see telegraphs being somehow terrible?

Edited September 19, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Ashantara.8731]

Boss fights (at least most of them) are fun.

Fighting high density, pushing 'n' pulling mobs with crazy aggro ranges and insane respawn times on the other hand is plain boring and equally annoying.

I sincerely hope the next expac will be different in regard of the latter! EoD was terrible in that regard.
 

Edited September 19, 2022 by Ashantara.8731

[Randulf.7614]

28 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Ok, what I mean is more of a: since the problem with visual skill effect spam is rather clear and the potential solution is to have an option to dumpen/simplify those effects, what else specifically is problematic? (open question, including OP) I don't really see telegraphs being somehow terrible?

There’s a little bit of both. Visual noise is clearly something Anet want to stack to greater degrees, but it can be mitigated not with dampened mechanics, but by the better use of mechanics which is inconsistent

There are already good examples in play

- the classic one is to split the groups up. We saw this with Triple Trouble initially and then with Marionette and Vinewrath in terms of lanes. That carried through with Octovine and Gerent which added different mechanics in each lane. Spreading the players around is key. Mouth of Mordremoth does this really well.

- boss size. Keeping the boss hit box off the ground unless it’s for spamming attack phases between actual mechanics (like Tequatl foot) is going to help. Keeping spam phases short is essential. This is what Drakkar gets wrong and Patriarch gets right.

- keep the main mechanics away from the boss. This doesn’t work on every boss, but on the really big epic scale ones. Most of what happens at Tequatl and Jormag in terms of mechanics doesn’t actually involve the boss. It involves doing various things around it. Again it comes back to splitting players up

- keeping the number of things going on at one time down to a minimum. Stacking multiple mechanics at any one time. Shatterer is an example of getting this wrong as it stacks too many things in a too small an area. Soo-wan is another even though individually the mechanics are fine, much gets lost as too many things are going on. Keep each phase clean and organised and you mitigate the visual noise. Bosses with a hundred adds sounds epic, but in reality it’s just a mess. Too many things is often also an issue with Caudecus.

- keep the aoe fields visible. Red circles are hard to see. Orange fields like at Golem and Kodan Strike are much easier. Junkyard’s biggest issue is that things are all a similar colour so you can’t easily see what you need to hide behind during a ridiculously small timer.
 

If they have no interest in dealing with visual noise,they have precedent to deal with the issues by looking at their own successful encounters which do deal with the problem. Again it’s consistency. More often than not, they return to stacking in mechanics layered in top of each other, hidden by vast groups and mass firework displays

Edited September 19, 2022 by Randulf.7614

[Silent.6137]

2 hours ago, DeanBB.4268 said:

So...the devs are supposed to play all these other games? I have no idea what you want, other than less visual noise.

Play all those other games, no. Be aware of the issues and how other games do it, definitely. The Devs stressed that they are gamers as well, so they should be familiar with the visual clutter in some of the encounters.

1 hour ago, Valfar.3761 said:

I agree that the visual noise is one of the biggest detriments. Doing the story boss fights by myself is one of the few times where I can actually see what's going on, because there isn't a cacophony of spell effects going off. During open world boss fights, half the time I can't tell if I am standing in fire or about to get hit by something because there are just too many spell effects. WvW is impossible without turning down all of your settings but then you're getting a subpar war experience.

 

Just look at this:

 

https://i.imgur.com/I4qGcOc.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/OfZf8cr.jpg

 

I can't imagine any other game that looks like that. As effects heavy as FF14 is, you can still clearly see the telegraphs on the ground.

The images you posted suggests your PC's capability, your latency or a combination of both. Regardless of what event it is with practically the whole full map population there, I've yet to see anything half as bad. I'm not defending the visual noise though since not everyone will have access to fast PCs and/or great connections. There should be options to turn off or set allies' effects to low. Also, the option to turn off all minions and minis, or at least be transparent with just the outlines showing.

[Ashen.2907]

1 hour ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Ok, what I mean is more of a: since the problem with visual skill effect spam is rather clear and the potential solution is to have an option to dumpen/simplify those effects, what else specifically is problematic? (open question, including OP) I don't really see telegraphs being somehow terrible?

To me, and I get that this is a matter of opinion, the visual noise is so fundamental a problem that other issues or potential issues cannot begin to be addressed until it is. Increasing engagement of encounter design via subtlety or complexity cannot happen so long as the tells and tricks cannot be seen (as an example). Failing a complex encounter because the elements of that complexity are hidden rather than because you were not on your toes is a serious bummer. 

I PUG the Kaineng Overlook strike a lot. As in hundreds of times since EoD release. Usually as a support character in order to help people get their turtle mount. The most common (but of course not the only) source of failure, even with a solid explanation, a tag, and in fight direction, is due to not being able to see Li's tells during his second phase. This strike is my favorite instanced content in the game due to the multiple mechanics/phases providing some element of complexity to learn and practice....but it can be completely overshadowed by not being able to see where Li's arrow is pointing. I think we could have more, and more complex, encounters like this if ANet didnt have to worry that the encounter would drown in the false difficulty of impaired visibility.

[Bakeneko.5826]

To be fair, some of the encounter designs in guild wars 2 are horrible (Siren's reef, Deepstone, Sunqua, any raidboss) - way too many AoEs, pulsing damage fields for no good reason, other than forcing healer presence, mechanics overlaping at some points.