We need more group focused content.

[AliamRationem.5172]

8 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

If I had to go back to a hard trinity, I'd quit MMOs altogether. I came here to get away from that nonsense and to me it is nonsense.  I get that you and other people like you enjoy it.  And you have a whole bunch of games to enjoy that terribly restrictive gameplay in.  This game is different. It was advertised as being different. Many of us are here because we wanted different.

I feel like a part of a team when I'm doing hard content, and that's the comment I responded to.  People  who don't feel like part of a team, probably don't get the combat system that well.

I'm not suggesting they change the game to a trinity format now, and as always you're welcome to your opinions.  I'm merely observing facts.  Do we have targeted healing?  For the most part, no.  Do we have the ability to manipulate enemy movement?  Again for the most part, no.  And that does nothing but remove tools from the developer's kit with regard to encounter design.  This is because there are only a few general ways in which players may interact with the game world.  Limiting the ability of players to interact doesn't add anything to the gameplay.  It only takes away.

Practically speaking, what is the difference between a group with 1 tank, 3 melee DPS with various support capability, and 1 healer as opposed to the GW2 version of 4 DPS (or 3 DPS + 1 support/DPS hybrid) and 1 healer?  Aside from the ability of the trinity group to spread out and attack from range while controlling boss movement?  Not much.  Melee DPS roles in trinity games have to avoid certain mechanics while the rest of the damage they take is covered by the healer.  They also stack because they have to.  So what's the difference here besides the additional limitations in GW2?

[Vayne.8563]

39 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I'm not suggesting they change the game to a trinity format now, and as always you're welcome to your opinions.  I'm merely observing facts.  Do we have targeted healing?  For the most part, no.  Do we have the ability to manipulate enemy movement?  Again for the most part, no.  And that does nothing but remove tools from the developer's kit with regard to encounter design.  This is because there are only a few general ways in which players may interact with the game world.  Limiting the ability of players to interact doesn't add anything to the gameplay.  It only takes away.

Practically speaking, what is the difference between a group with 1 tank, 3 melee DPS with various support capability, and 1 healer as opposed to the GW2 version of 4 DPS (or 3 DPS + 1 support/DPS hybrid) and 1 healer?  Aside from the ability of the trinity group to spread out and attack from range while controlling boss movement?  Not much.  Melee DPS roles in trinity games have to avoid certain mechanics while the rest of the damage they take is covered by the healer.  They also stack because they have to.  So what's the difference here besides the additional limitations in GW2?

The trinity also limits the way players interact with the world. Static roles are the very definition of limiting. At the end of the day though it comes down to preference. I don't really care that you find the trinity better, or less limited. I find the trinity worse and more limited.  

 

The very concept of tanking the way most games do it is silly. The taunt mechanic makes me cry.  Imagine if Lord of the Rings were written by a WoW player.  Boromir would be the tank, Gandalf would be healing him, and the hobbits would be doing DPS without being in any real danger. Why? Because Boromir said to the Balrog, your mother wears combat boots.  This is such an arbitrary, nonsensical, non-dramatic set up, it's amazing anyone has bought into it at, and I'll never buy into it. It found it stupid when I played with it 10 years ago, and I find it stupid to this day. 

Imagine a powerful god or dragon that doesn't have the ability to target the healer, because someone is taunting him? I know to target the healer if I can't kill my target? Why should I even be scared of that guy?  Sorry but the  trinity doesn't work for me. I'm happy it works for you I guess.

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 hour ago, Vayne.8563 said:

The trinity also limits the way players interact with the world. Static roles are the very definition of limiting. At the end of the day though it comes down to preference. I don't really care that you find the trinity better, or less limited. I find the trinity worse and more limited.  

 

The very concept of tanking the way most games do it is silly. The taunt mechanic makes me cry.  Imagine if Lord of the Rings were written by a WoW player.  Boromir would be the tank, Gandalf would be healing him, and the hobbits would be doing DPS without being in any real danger. Why? Because Boromir said to the Balrog, your mother wears combat boots.  This is such an arbitrary, nonsensical, non-dramatic set up, it's amazing anyone has bought into it at, and I'll never buy into it. It found it stupid when I played with it 10 years ago, and I find it stupid to this day. 

Imagine a powerful god or dragon that doesn't have the ability to target the healer, because someone is taunting him? I know to target the healer if I can't kill my target? Why should I even be scared of that guy?  Sorry but the  trinity doesn't work for me. I'm happy it works for you I guess.

Not that I care to continue a discussion where one of us is speaking of game design while the other is going on about Gandalf and Boromir, but I do have to wonder how it makes more sense conceptually that the enemy simply attacks at random?  Do they have severe ADD or they just can't figure out who the healer is with everyone stacked in a pile?

[Vayne.8563]

1 minute ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Not that I care to continue a discussion where one of us is speaking of game design while the other is going on about Gandalf and Boromir, but I do have to wonder how it makes more sense conceptually that the enemy simply attacks at random?  Do they have severe ADD or they just can't figure out who the healer is with everyone stacked in a pile?

For a guy who doesn't want to continue the conversation, you're doing a bad job. lol

Your argument is having fixed define roles somehow is more freeing to game designers because the roles are fixed. The whole logic is counter intuitive.  On the other hand, tank and spank exists and it exists because it's the same old thing over and over again. I'm not saying every encounter in a game like WOW is tank and spank but there's plenty of it, because the rigidity of the design lends itself to lazy design.   

If you think limiting roles makes designs more free that's your opinion. It might take more work/skill/thought process to create encounters without the trinity but I prefer those encounters. If you don't, it doesn't really affect my argument.

[AliamRationem.5172]

6 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

For a guy who doesn't want to continue the conversation, you're doing a bad job. lol

Your argument is having fixed define roles somehow is more freeing to game designers because the roles are fixed. The whole logic is counter intuitive.  On the other hand, tank and spank exists and it exists because it's the same old thing over and over again. I'm not saying every encounter in a game like WOW is tank and spank but there's plenty of it, because the rigidity of the design lends itself to lazy design.   

If you think limiting roles makes designs more free that's your opinion. It might take more work/skill/thought process to create encounters without the trinity but I prefer those encounters. If you don't, it doesn't really affect my argument.

No. My argument is that having the ability to manipulate boss movement and apply targeted healing is less limiting to encounter design.  Nobody said anything about turning GW2 into WoW or forcing rigid class roles.  I certainly think that if you were going to design GW2 from the beginning with this in mind that you would want to support it fully rather than simply tack it on a la toughness tanking and area spam healing, however.

[Astralporing.1957]

5 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

So you're saying all solo activities, events and trash mobs in queensdale don't count because a world boss also spawns in the map once every 2 hours? Are you seriously trying to say, out of all things, queensdale has group events in the amount anywhere near the amount of soloable content? 🙄

No. I am saying that trying to count queensdale as "solo content" while ignoring that this area is shared between solo and group activities is at best disingenious. That's before even going into how ridiculous comparing content by area size is. If we were to seriously compare this, we'd have to arrive at a surprising reveal that DRMs offer much more group content than strikes. And that strike CMs do not count as content, because they do not add any area over normal strikes.

[Astralporing.1957]

25 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Not that I care to continue a discussion where one of us is speaking of game design while the other is going on about Gandalf and Boromir, but I do have to wonder how it makes more sense conceptually that the enemy simply attacks at random?  Do they have severe ADD or they just can't figure out who the healer is with everyone stacked in a pile?

Do you think that bosses always picking for attack the toughest opponent they are the least likely to kill just because they "taunt" them has more sense? I mean, that would make all bosses morons - even those that theoretically should be anything but.

Holy Trinity never made sense conceptually, because the whole idea was created as an exploit that took advantage of dumb mob AI in early games. The only reason why it continued was that it just made both developers' and players' life much, much easier. Even if it was dumb.

[AliamRationem.5172]

32 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Do you think that bosses always picking for attack the toughest opponent they are the least likely to kill just because they "taunt" them has more sense? I mean, that would make all bosses morons - even those that theoretically should be anything but.

Holy Trinity never made sense conceptually, because the whole idea was created as an exploit that took advantage of dumb mob AI in early games. The only reason why it continued was that it just made both developers' and players' life much, much easier. Even if it was dumb.

No, I'm saying it doesn't make sense conceptually in either case.  I think (or at least I thought?) it was understood that sometimes we sacrifice realism for the sake of more compelling gameplay.  In this comparison neither really makes any sense, so I'd have gone with the one that produces more compelling encounter design.

As it happens, the ANet devs tacitly agree as they gave up on the "non-trinity" design with the release of HoT by adding the druid specialization and raid mechanics with toughness tanking.  In my opinion, "non-trinity" is a design that failed to produce and they should have fully embraced trinity design by providing UI and skill support for a fully realized healer spec.  Druid was close, but they didn't want to fully commit, so we're stuck with area spam healing and contrived tanking mechanics for specific encounters.

[Vayne.8563]

6 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

No, I'm saying it doesn't make sense conceptually in either case.  I think (or at least I thought?) it was understood that sometimes we sacrifice realism for the sake of more compelling gameplay.  In this comparison neither really makes any sense, so I'd have gone with the one that produces more compelling encounter design.

As it happens, the ANet devs tacitly agree as they gave up on the "non-trinity" design with the release of HoT by adding the druid specialization and raid mechanics with toughness tanking.  In my opinion, "non-trinity" is a design that failed to produce and they should have fully embraced trinity design by providing UI and skill support for a fully realized healer spec.  Druid was close, but they didn't want to fully commit, so we're stuck with area spam healing and contrived tanking mechanics for specific encounters.

Realism and plausibility are different things. Everyone has a line they can't mentally pass when it comes to accepting.  I can't pass the line the trinity lays down in my mind, and that's a personal decision. Lots of things in games aren't realistic, but they exist within a framework on plausible. TV series, books it's all the same. The further out your draw your line the more people will be left behind by not being able to accept it.

[Linken.6345]

5 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

No, I'm saying it doesn't make sense conceptually in either case.  I think (or at least I thought?) it was understood that sometimes we sacrifice realism for the sake of more compelling gameplay.  In this comparison neither really makes any sense, so I'd have gone with the one that produces more compelling encounter design.

As it happens, the ANet devs tacitly agree as they gave up on the "non-trinity" design with the release of HoT by adding the druid specialization and raid mechanics with toughness tanking.  In my opinion, "non-trinity" is a design that failed to produce and they should have fully embraced trinity design by providing UI and skill support for a fully realized healer spec.  Druid was close, but they didn't want to fully commit, so we're stuck with area spam healing and contrived tanking mechanics for specific encounters.

How is passive toughness tanking any different then taunt tanking the boss follow you and you can position him either way.

( its just that you have 1-3 skills to taunt more if your dps being brain dead in other games)

And and aimed healing or positional healing is not much different either, it is kinda a breath of fresh air to have to move close to the one you need to heal with mostt spells Imo

Lets not get into the lazy 30m-1h buffs vs boons we have here that you actualy have to work to keep up.

[Astralporing.1957]

10 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

No, I'm saying it doesn't make sense conceptually in either case.  I think (or at least I thought?) it was understood that sometimes we sacrifice realism for the sake of more compelling gameplay.  In this comparison neither really makes any sense, so I'd have gone with the one that produces more compelling encounter design.

And i am saying it is not about more compelling encounter design. It never was. It's about dumb encounter design. Which makes things easier for both developers and players.

Notice, btw, that GW2 combat system is capable of making boss encounters way more interesting. It's just that devs made a conscious decision to not use it, and have done it for the same reasons why other games keep to the holy trinity long after the original reasons for its existence disappeared. They do it because fully utilizing GW2's combat engine in a boss encounter not only requires more work for devs (not in creating the encounter itself, but rather in balancing and finetuning it), but it also makes it significantly simpler on the players. Most of the current raiders would not be able to deal with it, because the game paradigm would completely change. Encounters would turn from performing a carefuly rehearsed and memorized dance (always the same if you do everything right) into a chaotic fight where prior experience and muscle memory would mean much less, and you'd have to depend far more on fast reaction speed, on the fly decision making and dynamically adjusting to the new situation. So, way more like high-end pvp is.

Most of the players currently asking about difficulty and challenge would scream bloody murder if those kinds of encounters were to be implemented. Because they'd present an actual challenge, not an illusion of one.

So, in response, Holy Trinity exists and is widely popular, because both players and devs want it easy and dumb. They just pretend it is not so.

[Sobx.1758]

12 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

No. I am saying that trying to count queensdale as "solo content" while ignoring that this area is shared between solo and group activities is at best disingenious. That's before even going into how ridiculous comparing content by area size is. If we were to seriously compare this, we'd have to arrive at a surprising reveal that DRMs offer much more group content than strikes. And that strike CMs do not count as content, because they do not add any area over normal strikes.

You wanted to compare solo content with group content, so do that. Measuring "area" of a map out of context might be questionable, but counting "trash mobs" as solo content is not. And that's what a lot of maps like that one is.

 

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Most of the current raiders would not be able to deal with it, because the game paradigm would completely change. Encounters would turn from performing a carefuly rehearsed and memorized dance (always the same if you do everything right) into a chaotic fight where prior experience and muscle memory would mean much less, and you'd have to depend far more on fast reaction speed, on the fly decision making and dynamically adjusting to the new situation. So, way more like high-end pvp is.

Most of the players currently asking about difficulty and challenge would scream bloody murder if those kinds of encounters were to be implemented

That's just baseless.

Edited October 1, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[CrashTestAuto.9108]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

And i am saying it is not about more compelling encounter design. It never was. It's about dumb encounter design. Which makes things easier for both developers and players.

Notice, btw, that GW2 combat system is capable of making boss encounters way more interesting. It's just that devs made a conscious decision to not use it, and have done it for the same reasons why other games keep to the holy trinity long after the original reasons for its existence disappeared. They do it because fully utilizing GW2's combat engine in a boss encounter not only requires more work for devs (not in creating the encounter itself, but rather in balancing and finetuning it), but it also makes it significantly simpler on the players. Most of the current raiders would not be able to deal with it, because the game paradigm would completely change. Encounters would turn from performing a carefuly rehearsed and memorized dance (always the same if you do everything right) into a chaotic fight where prior experience and muscle memory would mean much less, and you'd have to depend far more on fast reaction speed, on the fly decision making and dynamically adjusting to the new situation. So, way more like high-end pvp is.

Most of the players currently asking about difficulty and challenge would scream bloody murder if those kinds of encounters were to be implemented. Because they'd present an actual challenge, not an illusion of one.

So, in response, Holy Trinity exists and is widely popular, because both players and devs want it easy and dumb. They just pretend it is not so.

As one of the people asking for challenging solo content, this is exactly the kind of content I want.

 

The group paradigm of "stack here, stand here, do this rotation you looked up on the internet for your meta build" is really not very interesting.  However, introducing that much reflex based gameplay with 9 other people sounds like invited stress and toxicity.  I'd like to try a fight, fail at a fight, and then think of ways I can do better through experimentation.  Not try a fight, fail a fight, have let my group down because I didn't pre-research exactly what you need to do to succeed and memorise it.

 

I'd like difficult content where if I mess up, I only mess it up for me and not nine other players.  Similarly, if I do well, I don't want to have to worry about whether nine other people also happened to do that this run as well.

[Sobx.1758]

5 minutes ago, CrashTestAuto.9108 said:

As one of the people asking for challenging solo content, this is exactly the kind of content I want.

 

The group paradigm of "stack here, stand here, do this rotation you looked up on the internet for your meta build" is really not very interesting.  However, introducing that much reflex based gameplay with 9 other people sounds like invited stress and toxicity.  I'd like to try a fight, fail at a fight, and then think of ways I can do better through experimentation.  Not try a fight, fail a fight, have let my group down because I didn't pre-research exactly what you need to do to succeed and memorise it.

 

I'd like difficult content where if I mess up, I only mess it up for me and not nine other players.  Similarly, if I do well, I don't want to have to worry about whether nine other people also happened to do that this run as well.

So, again, you want a single player game.

Edited October 1, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

And i am saying it is not about more compelling encounter design. It never was. It's about dumb encounter design. Which makes things easier for both developers and players.

Notice, btw, that GW2 combat system is capable of making boss encounters way more interesting. It's just that devs made a conscious decision to not use it, and have done it for the same reasons why other games keep to the holy trinity long after the original reasons for its existence disappeared. They do it because fully utilizing GW2's combat engine in a boss encounter not only requires more work for devs (not in creating the encounter itself, but rather in balancing and finetuning it), but it also makes it significantly simpler on the players. Most of the current raiders would not be able to deal with it, because the game paradigm would completely change. Encounters would turn from performing a carefuly rehearsed and memorized dance (always the same if you do everything right) into a chaotic fight where prior experience and muscle memory would mean much less, and you'd have to depend far more on fast reaction speed, on the fly decision making and dynamically adjusting to the new situation. So, way more like high-end pvp is.

Most of the players currently asking about difficulty and challenge would scream bloody murder if those kinds of encounters were to be implemented. Because they'd present an actual challenge, not an illusion of one.

So, in response, Holy Trinity exists and is widely popular, because both players and devs want it easy and dumb. They just pretend it is not so.

I think you misunderstand what the trinity is really about.  Consider the ways in which a player may interact with games like this and pretty much everything you come up with will fall into three broad categories.  Those categories are:  

Ally-to-Enemy - DPS.

Ally-to-Ally - Healing, support.

Enemy-to-Ally - Control effects.

This doesn't preclude "smart" encounter design as you define it and nothing GW2 does better facilitates that goal.  All GW2 does is strictly limit control effects of any kind in PvE boss encounters and limit its healing/buffing almost entirely to proximity-based area effects in order to facilitate a simplified UI.

Note that even PvP games which are "smart" by your definition utilize the trinity (League of Legends, Overwatch, etc.).  It does not simply refer to "a tank standing in front of a boss while a healer heals him and DPS do DPS." 

That's the key point.  GW2's design is purely a reaction to that strict vision of how a successful trinity MMO is designed, which is based on the popularity of WoW at the time GW2 was developed.  The goal was to be "not-WoW", but that doesn't necessarily produce more compelling encounter design and I think it's a hard sell to claim that tying your hands by limiting what your game can do is a benefit toward that end.

 

[SlayerXX.7138]

On 9/28/2022 at 6:59 AM, Krzysztof.5973 said:

How low did we fall that we get threads asking for more group content in an MMO?
How low did this community fall that so many are against it?

People just want to game, not a second life. Almost anything in this game can be done in a group. What Op and probably you too is asking for is more content that forces group interaction one way or another. Something that has tried and failed multiple times over a multitudes of MMO'S. OP isn't asking for group content, as there is and unending amount of group content in the game. OP asked for the romantic idea Group content, who mostly exists in the head of MMO veterans.

 

Edited October 1, 2022 by Albi.7250

[Sobx.1758]

28 minutes ago, Albi.7250 said:

People just want to game, not a second life

And what does this have to do with having group content in a game?

[SlayerXX.7138]

42 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

And what does this have to do with having group content in a game?

People just want to game, not a second life. Meaning they don't want every second of game time depended on other people. OP clearly asking for more group content that forces interaction. As OW metas and other group activities don't count apparently. Its seems to be not enough to be able to group in OW, PvP, WvW and PvE it needs to be somewhat forced or encouraged. You can group in almost everything, but that is clearly not enough for OP.

If you want to group up you can do this in everything with the only expectation being PvP ranked for balance reason. That is 95% of the game. So I don't get how you want more?

Edited October 1, 2022 by Albi.7250

[Sobx.1758]

6 minutes ago, Albi.7250 said:

People just want to game, not a second life. Meaning they don't want every second of game time depended on other people. OP clearly asking for more group content that forces interaction. As OW metas and other group activities don't count apparently. Its seems to be not enough to be able to group in OW, PvP, WvW and PvE it needs to be somewhat forced or encouraged. You can group in almost everything, but that is clearly not enough for OP.

Because it's more about meaningful group content where your cooperation with other players matter, not """grouping up""" by just showing up on timer next to a world boss to zerg it down in seconds no matter what you do. Still nothing about what OP wants is somehow second life, it's still just "a game people want".

 

btw. I don't know why what you wrote has white background, but it doesn't help with readability.

Edited October 1, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[SlayerXX.7138]

7 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Because it's more about meaningful group content where your cooperation with other players matter, not """grouping up""" by just showing up on timer next to a world boss to zerg it down in seconds no matter what you do. Still nothing about what OP wants is somehow second life, it's still just "a game people want".

But it is group content. The general player base apparently just don't want that kind of hard content. Dhuum CM is at like 3% completion.

Edited October 1, 2022 by Albi.7250

[Gehenna.3625]

On 9/27/2022 at 6:21 PM, Einsof.1457 said:

As it stands more than 95% of the game does not require organization or communication with other players. 

Just quoting the OP as a reminder of what they were actually talking about.

17 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

No. I am saying that trying to count queensdale as "solo content" while ignoring that this area is shared between solo and group activities is at best disingenious. 

There is group content and structured group content. I quoted the OP's definition and I would say they're talking about structured group content. Sure, in Queensdale there are group events, a world boss and even those pesky thief-bosses that I wouldn't consider solo content (even if some people do manage to solo them). 

However, how much of that content requires what the OP is talking about (as per the quote above)? There's not a lot of this type of content in OW. Most world bosses and meta's do not require it either.

So it might be better to talk about structured group content (which I think is what the OP is talking about) and not the much more general group content which is what a lot of fencing is about. I think it might avoid a lot of unnecessary confusion.

[Luks.4230]

2 hours ago, Albi.7250 said:

People just want to game, not a second life.

Maybe a single player game suits you better?

[SlayerXX.7138]

30 minutes ago, Luks.4230 said:

Maybe a single player game suits you better?

Maybe you should play another MMO. If you want harder Raids there is WoW. There are also tons of failed MMO that give you exactly what is asked for here. I Mean Strike CM was the last new content, so I am not even sure what you guys want. Are you guys posting here the 30 people who did HT CM already?

Edited October 1, 2022 by Albi.7250

[Luks.4230]

Tons of failed mmo's 🤣

you know.. mmo's fail because pple want single player features. Instead of playing a single player game. And guildwars has shown that an mmorpg with overwhelming single player content will fail no matter what. You played yourself

[Woof.8246]

9 minutes ago, Albi.7250 said:

Maybe you should play another MMO. If you want harder Raids there is WoW. There are also tons of failed MMO that give you exactly what is asked for here. I Mean Strike CM was the last new content, so I am not even sure what you guys want. Are you guys posting here the 30 people who did HT CM already?

This !

There is no reason GW2 to become WoW .

 

(But in the same time those cheeky Devs from WoW are copying GW2 assets , like for example people are no longer needed to do raids  to get the the best gear , from  the latest expansion  . People  can transform dungeon/openworld sets into the same effect but more slowly (one gear per week) .

Can have the same for OW Legendery Set ?)