Thoughts about how to improve the PvE instanced content in GW2. Maybe I am wrong? I don't know.

[KasiCair.5760]

Hello, guys. Recently I started playing FF14 and that, weirdly enough, brought some thoughts about GW2 instance PvE to me. I made this post to share them, and maybe get a different perspective from you... but I don't really expect Arenanet to react, take into account, or even read this. I write this just to get it out of my head.

That said, let's get started.

These thoughts started with wondering what makes FF14 so successful at instanced PvE compared to GW2 which struggles with it. Someone might say it is because of the holy trinity of tank, healer, and dps which makes it possible for the devs to make incredible encounters and mechanics.

I find that explanation lazy.

Before somebody gets angry at me for that, please let me explain myself. The game already possesses its own holy trinity. Just look at the LFG and what people are looking for. For dps, there are the quickness provider, the alacrity provider, and the regular pure dps. There is the tank in certain encounters that can also be dps or boon support. And there are healers that are always also boon supports.

There you go. GW2's own holy trinity... just with more versatility. In FF14, one class has one build and one correct playstyle (or so I was told. After all, I am quite new in FF14, so don't take my word for it). In GW2 that doesn't hold true but that doesn't mean the game lacks defined roles. They are just different.

Of course, that doesn't mean I think creating PvE instance content is easy for the devs. I remember MightyTeapot saying in one of his videos that creating encounters for GW2 PvE is hard because of how complicated the combat is and the sheer variety of builds/utilities various classes bring to the table (Yes, I am looking at you, Mr. Stability bot called guardian). To a degree, I agree just like many others... but I think the entire problem could be approached from a different angle.

Obviously, you can't really just look at how FF14 does its instanced content and copy it because that wouldn't work exactly because of the aforementioned reasons. So, let's get a bit creative.

Thinking about this problem, I realized the solution is already present in GW2 raids. It's just that Arenanet never took it to a new level, and never went to the extremes with it.

Toughness. Based. Tanking.

Yup. That's it. A mechanic that depends on the in-game stats. Just imagine the lengths this could be taken to. But before I delve into that...

To give you some context and how I came to this idea. I started playing GW2 a half year after it came out. And my first experience with the endgame content was Citadel of Flames path 1 speed runs. I have experienced the full berserker stats meta (I have suffered).

Fast-forward a decade... and nothing much changed, to be honest. Don't believe me? Then think about it. What are the basic roles in groups? It doesn't matter if it is 10-man or 5-man instanced content. It is always one healer/boon support and 4 dps. Yes, one of these dps usually does alacrity or quickness but the reality doesn't change. The main purpose of the dps boon supports is to do as much dps as possible with taking the barest minimum of utility to reach 100% quick/alacrity uptime.

The biggest difference from the early berserker meta is that there is a healer/boon support in the group. That's it. Ten years and this is how the 'meta' evolved. Yes, there are new builds. Yes, the people are pushing the boundaries and making pretty crazy stuff in the game like low-intensity builds that can do 30k dps. But I find it a bit sad that the game that has so many stat varieties and so much versatility is just so limited and close-minded in its approach to the instanced PvE content.

The reason for this is the design of the PvE instance content. Everything from the easiest strikes to the hardest Harvest Temple CM is designed in a way that allows stacking on a single spot. The encounter mechanics are not designed in a direction that would prevent this. They are not designed in a way that would make use of the versatility and diversity of GW2 build potential. Nothing in these mechanics forces you to take a different build than full yolo dps.

Let's look at the Harvest Temple CM. Yes, there are mechanics. Yes, it is an incredible encounter. But the main thing that makes it hard is, to my understanding, the strict dps check (I hope I am not wrong about that :D. -> Edit: A guy below already corrected me that I was wrong. So I guess I stand corrected :D). Which means... you will want to stack as many dps in the group as you can. Again.

Let me facepalm for a moment... (<- And to make things clear, I am not making light of the HT CM or those who cleared it. That's a really big achievement. My beef is simply with the fact that one of the hardest contents in the game and it can be comfortably cleared with 2 supports and 8 dps glass cannons just like everything else. Yes, these dps people have specific roles, they do specific mechanics or provide important boons... but that's not the point. This entire post is about ideas to bring more variety to a group composition in the game, after all.)

To make every hardcore player who will perceive my opinion as a slight to his ego, let me assure you, it is not meant that way.

So, let me return to the mechanics affected by stats. I think this has the potential to truly change the 'meta' and the stacking of dps in a party on these specific encounters. Obviously, people would still try to do that as much as possible since more dps = kill = fewer mechanics = easier time. But what if the encounter itself didn't allow for going full yolo dps?

R.I.P. Speedrunners :D. (Though I think human ingenuity would eventually find a way to min-max the encounter anyway. Remember how much the people wiped at the Vale Guardian at first? Kinda the same situation.)

Imagine a boss mechanic (a big, unblockable, and undodgeable attack that happens once every minute or so) that would deal percentual damage based on how much toughness you have. Do you have a baseline 1k toughness? Are you fully focused on dps in your build? Well, then you would get insta-killed by this attack. GG. And then the boss would tell you "You are not tough enough to face me!".

Imagine the chaos. In the current meta where nobody runs toughness outside of very specific encounters with toughness based tanking, a group of players would go into a new (well, let's call it a strike mission since that's what Arenanet is focusing on right now) normal mode strike and at the very first boss mechanic, they would all get wiped out. No matter if you are 25k hp Scourge or 15k hp Elementalist. It would just nuke you!

The encounter mechanic would force the players to play something else than just full dps. You could say that this mechanic would have an easy counter once people realized what was going on. But that's not the point. The point of this would be to make other stat variants relevant.

Then the build theorist could have their field day trying to make the most optimal builds for an encounter like that.

Of course, to prevent people from just going 2k toughness and full condi dps, I'd personally opt for the boss to spawn fast (or preferably massively ranged) mobs with big health pools so they couldn't be cleaved in a second, and these mobs would do the exact reverse of the boss. The more toughness you have, the bigger damage they would deal to you. This would force the players to 'balance' their toughness... or run full celestial. I have no idea.

Add to that some slow pulsing damage field (like the one on Boneskinner, maybe a quite bit weaker) and people would actually have to get effective healers for the encounter.

The point of these mechanics is that they are not really all that hard for even your average Joe to clear. You would only need an optimal build, knowledge, and play more defensively. That's it. It is the easy mode (normal mode). Just with a very specific twist and clear condition.

Of course, there could be other mechanics and stuff to make the fight more dynamic and interesting, and so on and on, but this is the bare bones of my first idea.

The advantage of making mechanics affected by player stats and dealing percentual damage based on them is adding versatility and easy scaling to the encounter. The devs could make it as challenging or as easy as they want without having to worry about their set damage value on a boss attack being too low or too high after a patch or expansion. This would, in my honest opinion, go extremely well with the horizontal progression in the game and give the content more longevity. Of course, pairing percentual damage with attacks with set damage value would probably still be for the best.

For CMs, you can make tighter toughness checks, making the mobs/boss deal more damage the fewer/more toughness the players have -> putting more pressure on the healers. You can make the pulsing damaging area more threatening. Even make the boss use long Crowd Control stun effects on the players with the most healing power (hehehe). After all, there are stun breaks for party members so this way they could be actually made relevant somewhat.

It would allow for the devs to make different clear conditions than yet another old dps check. I think GW2's ability to be and become more versatile in its approach to game/encounter mechanics is what could truly distinguish the game from other MMOs. It could easily become a 'raiding game' if the devs were so inclined to make it into one. All it requires is a bit of creativity in the approach. Of course, it would also require a different approach from games like FF14 with the holy trinity. (Not that I personally care if GW2 became a raiding game. I also might be wrong so take my opinion with a grain of salt. If you want, you can educate me in the comments :D)

The GW2 has incredible versatility when it comes to putting together builds and stat variants. So... why is it not used for making encounters? Why not make toughness relevant?

(Heh, I can already see all the toxic responses from dps enjoyers to this post, crying about not wanting that to happen...)

Nevertheless, my first idea might seem a bit bland to many of you. But that's where this gets interesting. It is not supposed to be used alone. The thing it could be paired with it is my second idea, something that Arenanet is already using to a degree.

Special debuffs/buffs of bosses.

Oh, yeah. The very thing that can wreak havoc.

There is no end to things that could be done through this. From mechanics that would make an invulnerable boss vulnerable for a period of time upon completion, to the boss debuffing the whole raid group with some special effect that would make the encounter harder.

It is once again, an easy-to-scale way to make encounters challenging (Or at least from an outside perspective. Maybe I am wrong?)

As an example, I'd pick 'reduced incoming healing effectiveness'. I think that one already exists in the game too. Not too sure, though. I just have a feeling I had seen it somewhere already.

The way this could be utilized is simple. Once again, you put a damaging field on the whole arena and have the boss/adds attacks actually hurt. Not much, but enough for it to be noticeable and have the ability to down/kill somebody if the healer is inattentive. This means the group needs effective healing.

The normal mode could have -25% reduced healing effectiveness. Challenge mode could have -60% healing effectiveness and increased damage from the pulsing damage field. And Ultra Disaster Hell Mode, as a final middle finger to the players, could have -90% reduced healing effectiveness, and increased damage of the pulsing field further, and everyone's healing power would be halved.

An encounter where you would have to run 6 healers to just survive this one mechanic. Easy. You are a good player? Then clear that one. I dare you. (That's the attitude Arenanet should have had, in my opinion, by the way).

The advantage of this would be practically making 3 modes in one go. All the devs would have to do is create one encounter and then adjust the debuff. (And add some randomness to mechanics to not make it just a bland position memorization. And make the boss randomly move from place to place so the fight is dynamic.)

Of course, these buffs/debuffs could be of endless variety. One could increase the boss's damage every time someone dies (or gets downed ... and imagine Boneskinner having this, lol. R.I.P. Healing Scourge.). Another could halve the power and condition damage stats of players unless a certain mechanic is done. Another one could be like Icy Echoes from the Cold War Strike (the debuff that deals damage to you if you are too close to another player).

In fact, I am surprised that Arenanet doesn't use Icy Echoes more often in more encounters to prevent stacking on the boss and making fights more dynamic and less stationary.

Another debuff could do the same thing as Slothasor's shaking. Give the victim 10 stacks of every condition in the game, strip stability, and cause fear. Make it so that if it is not cleansed in 3-5s, the person gets downed (or the whole raid group, really).

Another special buff could make the boss steal boons from players. Imagine if the boss that already hits quite hard suddenly stole 25 might, quickness, alacrity, fury, etc (AND PROTECTION OMG!!). CM could make boon rips ineffective against this boss (lol, what kitten, right?). Just for memes.

Another could copy all the conditions on the boss onto every player in a certain proximity to him. Or even the player furthest from him. Or even the player with certain highest stat. Or the tank. Or the healers. Or... I think you got my point about how versatile this could be.

The best part? The biggest difference would be balancing the debuffs and buffs. Their duration and effects. There is no need to remake the whole encounter to make it more challenging. Just adjust the debuff and you can easily have 3 difficulties or even more depending on the buffs and debuffs. 

Right now, we have some 'You take more damage' special debuffs... but once again as with many things in GW2, this is just soooooooo straightforward and dps oriented. Damage. Is that all that is in the game? The very game that prides itself on variety and versatility in the in-game builds? Is damage all it boils down to at the end of the day? If you have damage, you can just beat everything?

It is the mechanics, the minigames, within the boss encounter that makes the whole fight interesting. It doesn't always need to be about ignoring mechanics and seeing who has bigger numbers. That's... how GW2 encounters currently feel to me, tbh. Stack. Get boons. Swing your sword. The end.

I am barely at the end of Realm Reborn in FF14 and only have 3 alliance raids unlocked... and the power creep in that game is so massive that I barely even registered that there are mechanics at all in these encounters, but their mechanics are actually somewhat meaningful. Despite the power creep, their mechanics can still kill people. They can even raid wipe (True story. Happened to me. Kinda unlucky :D).

That's not to say GW2 mechanics can't do that. They can. But all the difference is in stacking on the boss. It truly makes the experience a lot different.

I'd like to see more of that in GW2. Raid wipes. Challenging encounters. Special clear conditions. Preventing stacking on the boss. Minigames in the encounter. That kind of stuff.

Speaking of the mechanics of FF14, I think GW2 also needs more boorish, old-school mechanics that force people to move around the arena. For example, something like three pillars randomly spawning on the edge of the arena and needing to be activated all at the same time within a 5s time window, otherwise raid wipe, three times per fight. And make the boss arena-wide knockback. And make it possible for players to fall off the arena.

Straightforward. Easy to understand. But still has the potential to be deadly and challenging for a normal mode. And the potential for the challenge to be increased a lot for the CM (stability boon strip before and during the mechanic so the knockback would have to be dodged by all three players? Maybe?).

In GW2 it usually boils down to -> Stand in the green! Don't stand in the red!

That's... kinda it? Maybe now I'd add 'Don't drop red on the group!' and 'CC now!'? I am trying to think about more main mechanics in strikes but... And now that makes me sad. At least the GW2 is going in the right direction if the new CM EoD strikes are to go by. Let's hope for the best.

Back to the topic!

My third idea would be... downstate.

Downstate is such a great resource the devs could use to make an encounter interesting, but we seldom see that happen. (That's because the Arenanet devs are not vicious people that want to see the blood and tears of their players. Sad reality.)

For example? A mechanic where the boss would teleport to a downed person and start a totally different and savage attack pattern from his normal kit. Area of effect attack with occasional CC, enough to hurt even people with protection. Enough to make healers need to actually heal the ressing group and be away from the group in order to not get CC'ed by the boss area of effect attacks, lest the party is wiped.

Now, why would they want to ress the downed person if it would be so punishing? Simple. For each killed player, the boss would gain +100% dmg perma buff. Remember, we are speaking about a boss that would already hit like a truck and require healers to survive. Not challenging enough? Add pulsing area damaging field. And with each dead person, this field would do 100% more dmg. Not enough? Add spawned mobs with the same effect. Still not enough!? Well, at this point, you'd probably have to run 10 minstrel-wearing healers so let's not go there...

Is it too much? Well, you can always scale down the debuff to 50 or 25%. *eye-roll*

As for the balance? It is PvE. Why would you balance it too much? Let the players find their own balanced group compositions for these encounters. After all, that's kinda the whole schtick of GW2.

The downstate could also be used for some vampiric shenanigans by the boss. Such as one random player goes downstate for certain as an encounter mechanic (if its a healer -> unlucky. Feels bad man), and then he would be teleported to a random spot in a massive arena and the group would need to ress him fast because every 1, 5, or 10 seconds, the boss would regain a certain percentage of his health pool.

Or every time someone gets downed, the whole raid group gets a 10% reduction in their vitality and toughness. Considering there would be enough dmg to actually down a player, this would be a significant thing.

There are loads of funky little things that can be done with downstate.

Another thing... I'd like to see condition-based bosses. This is a true rarity in GW2. Other than Slothasor and maybe Xera, I can't really think of one from the top of my head. It is such a shame. I get it. Condition-based bosses would be broken. It would either completely wipe you out or the players would just put an area of an effect cleanses underneath them.

But what if the boss randomly marked a person, causing cleanses to not affect him? Or it wouldn't even need to be random. Just put that on the tank. Artificially created holy trinity, there you go. Healers would have to heal the tank so he wouldn't get killed by the conditions.

Or would that be too hard to make for the devs? I don't know.

Then, and I liked this idea a lot, the next thing that came to my mind are boon-based mechanics. Boons are a massive and extremely important part of GW2. So, why not implement them into the encounter mechanics?

The very first thing that popped up in my mind was: Resistance.

It is such a forgotten boon. Nobody would tell you: 'You gotta make the resistance uptime perfect!'. Like ever. Nobody cares about it, to be honest.

So? An encounter where not having resistance at a specific time would mean getting instantly killed could be interesting, no?

Want to make it more challenging? Make it a roulette between three, five, or even all boons and 5s before the insta-kill attack, the boss would tell you which one you need to have to not die. Want to play boon support? No slacking off for you!

Even something seemingly trivial such as giving an unremovable debuff causing -100% endurance regeneration on anyone who lacks vigor at a certain point could potentially be a massive challenge. Especially if it is paired with boon-ripping attacks/mechanics.

Or an encounter where it is impossible to get boons at all.

The last thing I want to mention is something I had already spoken about. There are already loads of interesting mechanics in GW2, especially in the raids. These mechanics are just mostly forgotten and nobody gives them a second glance.

Things such as a boss being unable to be damaged by power-based or condi-based attacks. The need to strip a certain boon to be able to damage a boss. Random teleports around the arena if you stand in AoEs (And I'd really like to see this go along the lines: If you don't teleport, you get downed or insta-killed).

Wow, I am only on the Vale Guardian and as you can see, there are already a lot of interesting mechanics in the game. It's just that after several years of doing the same content over and over again, people found ways to counter the implementation of these mechanics on their specific bosses quite handily. That, however, doesn't mean the mechanics are bad and can't be reused effectively.

In my opinion, to diversify the fights, it would be nice if the Arenanet looked a bit back to these times, and modernized these mechanics before implementing them in future encounters. Veterans, look back at the times when you were wiping over and over again on the Vale Guardian. Wasn't it challenging then? When you had no idea what to do?

Arenanet has so many options for PvE-instanced content creation exactly because it is different than other games. It is not its weakness. It simply requires to be utilized well. (If you disagree, I will be happy to read your opinion on the matter.) Exactly because every class can fill every role, you can, theoretically, make these insane encounters. Exactly because the players can just have 10 healers in a group, you can go all yolo with your content development (as long as you don't add timers and strict dps checks, duh. But they can also be somewhat used to prevent exactly the healer stacking). I don't think you can have 4 healers in a dungeon party in FF14 (Or am I wrong?). The ability to do that is GW2's strength.

Imagine an encounter that would need 10 tanky builds for 10 mini-bosses. And bringing these mini-bosses together would empower them...

And if by some mistake an encounter would be unintentionally so hard that barely anyone could clear it? Just label it a hardcore endgame for the best players and problem solved! Many masochists would be happy! (Joking, ofc.)

I'd be happy if the devs were not so afraid of making challenging content. Challenging doesn't necessarily need to mean that only 1% of the player base would be able to clear it, though. In a game with horizontal progression, I'd say that content that can be cleared by only 1% of the player base is a nice thing to have in the game but at the end of the day, it is a bad usage of resources.

The horizontal progression means this content will most likely stay this way for years to come. There is no Item Level increase that would make it easier. No level cap raising that would allow even average players to eventually clear it. The only way to make it more accessible is to nerf it... which would just make the hardcore community mad.

Instead of needing players to be the top dogs who can hit 35k dps benchmarks for breakfast while evading the boss attacks like a pro, I'd like to see more mechanically challenging fights that even your average GW2 players could theoretically clear as long as they know how to do the encounter mechanics and put in the effort to practice them/coordinate the group.

And after that? Tune the encounter up and let the 1% of the best players have their fun in even more deadly and mechanically challenging CM where even the slightest mistakes are fatally punishing.

I guess I could count Harvest Temple as one of these kinds of encounters, to be honest.

I could talk more... but this post is getting long enough as it is so I'll leave it at that. The whole idea is that mechanics should force players to change their playstyle and build to fit the boss encounter they are going for. In a game with so much freedom, the only way to force players away from their glass cannons is to take that freedom away if they want to clear a specific encounter. It shouldn't always be: "Meh, I'll just take full dps and it will be somewhat fine. We will somehow do it. Who cares?"

GW2 has so much variety of stats, but it is a bit wasted because you truly only need viper, harrier, and berserker to be able to clear everything.

As for the accessibility issues: New players can download a game, use the boost, and do the end-game content practically all on the same day. Look at Teapot's Zero to Hero series. It is possible. Even if we make that a week, it is still not a lot of time compared to other games.

So... I don't know. Shouldn't the 'endgame' content actually mean something? The new players won't be able to participate in these encounters because they don't have legendary armor or different gear sets? Well, it is called end-game for a reason, you know?

If you are so inclined, share your thoughts about the topic.

Have a good day.

Edited November 4, 2022 by KasiCair.5760

[Randulf.7614]

Don’t take this as disrespectful, but is there a shortened version you can give us? It’s not so much the length (although it’s crazy long), but the meandering nature of it (I gave up a third of the way down). Can you make this more concise and digestible?

[Farohna.6247]

Burn me that was a wall of rambling text.  

Or because the focus hasn't been on instanced content and because most players don't do it?  While there is always room for improvement, and hopefully they continue to do so, I don't think this would appeal to the majority.  They've introduced training modes to make it more interesting to new players, not messier.  Niche all 10 tank fights sounds...odd.

Coming from WoW raids from a decade ago, I found the lack of trinity interesting.  I still do.  Having dealt extensively with raids there, and timers, and roles, and mechanics, and 10, 25, and 40 person raids and the achievements for hard mode, I have little interest in pursuing a raiding career in GW2.  I don't care to lump people into all tank fights or a rebranded trinity system. 

[Ashen.2907]

Just to clarify, you are suggesting adding attacks that do more damage to you if your toughness stat is low?

That is how damage works already.

Making this damage unavoidable just means that core mechanics such as evade, block, etc are made irrelevant....to the detriment of an active combat system.

Requiring people to take more toughness does not increase build diversity...it merely changes the optimal selection.

This does not, in any way, address the initial concern about encounter creation compared to other games.

I have not seen  FFXIV's instanced content as the beginning content is off-putting to me and I am not fond of the idea of playing something that is not fun in the hope that someday it will get better. But, if their instanced content is good, I hope ANet devs are taking notes.

Edited November 2, 2022 by Ashen.2907

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Sorry, way TL...D completely R

Gave up about a quarter of the way through when it still didn't seem to address Toughness. 

[Machineuzi.5604]

>Let's look at the Harvest Temple CM. Yes, there are mechanics. Yes, it is an incredible encounter. But the main thing that makes it hard is, to my understanding, the strict dps check (I hope I am not wrong about that :D). That's what makes the encounter truly hard. Which means... you will want to stack as many dps in the group as you can. Again.

 

Could you please not give examples about stuff you have not even tried once, let alone looked at a guide for? There are tons of mechanics one needs to handle in this fight before even thinking about dps. Its difficult because of all the stuff you need to handle while dpsing the boss down, well that and the bugs

The 'dps' you stack in this boss is not just 'dps' and most have specialized roles. Facepalm on that for a moment will you?

 

Edited November 3, 2022 by Machineuzi.5604

[Cyninja.2954]

Main issue with the ideas here is: they are base on incorrect observations/assumptions and don't actually tackle the areas why players struggle in this game (compared to other MMORPGs, without getting into the different focus and itemization issues which run alongside dungeons and instanced content).

 

1. one of the main reasons, and not mentioned at all, why players struggle more in GW2 than in other MMORPGs (and players struggle there too, just to a lesser extent) is the lack of a global cooldown. When you go from 20-40 actions per minute to double that, you will lose players along the way. Moreover you are creating a far larger gap between players who have mastered the combat system and those who have not

 

2. toughness already mitigates damage. Increasing toughness efficiency will simply shift the sweet spot. Skilled players will still not need it, or take the absolute bare minimum they have to, less skilled players will still have to rely more on it. The damage gap remains since both groups will still run different amounts of toughness, you've simply changed the maximum damage output, effectively punishing weaker players even more

 

3. the trinity issue is only a simple visual representation of the differences in skill and build systems. GW2 has a far more expansive build system than mots other MMORPGs. You can literally run wrong traits, gear, weapons, specializations, etc. whereas in most other MMORPGs these build decision are far more streamlined (think about it, how much can you actually mess up your build in FF14 or WoW besides not having the correct skills on your bar? What is it, maybe 50% less output compared to ideal? In GW2 it's as much as 10% or less of the output). The net result is a less clear build preset players can follow but the main issue originates in the difference in build complexity

 

As to Harvest Temple CM, no the damage check is NOT the main issue in that fight. If your group can't hit the damage check, you are below the skill floor which your players need to even attempt the encounter. The main difficulty with Harvest Temple CM, besides keeping the group long enough together and committing the time needed to clear, are the mechanics and synchronicity required, most importantly the greens and phase transitions.

Edited November 3, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

One issue we need to look at in particular is while there is a trinity in the game, the middle role (DPS boon support), isn't that much different from a DPS which results in groups still mostly being DPS.

 

I think that pure DPS and healers are in a very good spot, but we should probably move some boons and utility from healers onto the boon support, and shift healers more towards being closer to pure healers like Scourge is right now, instead of superheroes like Firebrand.

 

Then on the boon supports, this would include dialing their DPS back a bit more until its about in the middle of the other two, with their kit being middle of the road as well. This way you truly have an important role to play instead of just heavily leaning towards DPS still while one or two players carry your group.

 

In other words I think the group should be carried by 40% of its players instead of 20% as it is now. This would also help pull back some of the powercreep as well, by distributing that power more evenly.

Edited November 3, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[KasiCair.5760]

On 11/2/2022 at 10:43 PM, Ashen.2907 said:

Just to clarify, you are suggesting adding attacks that do more damage to you if your toughness stat is low?

That is how damage works already.

Making this damage unavoidable just means that core mechanics such as evade, block, etc are made irrelevant....to the detriment of an active combat system.

Requiring people to take more toughness does not increase build diversity...it merely changes the optimal selection.

This does not, in any way, address the initial concern about encounter creation compared to other games.

I have not seen  FFXIV's instanced content as the beginning content is off-putting to me and I am not fond of the idea of playing something that is not fun in the hope that someday it will get better. But, if their instanced content is good, I hope ANet devs are taking notes.

I'd like to think my intelligence is not low enough to simply suggest that damage in game should work as it is already working. If you understood it that way, my bad. I probably conveyed it incorrectly in my rambling. No. What I am suggesting is having one raid mechanic, for example an unavoidable arena-wide attack happening once every while or when set conditions are met (Just like Samarog's breakbar at every 10%, or Vale Guardians Greens when you fail them... so this already exist in the game in some capacity and these mechanics are already unavoidable.). This attack would do percentual damage (or debuff or have some other effect) based on how much toughness (or any other stat, really) the players have. If you have baseline 1k toughness (meaning you are running full glass canon), you would get 100% of your health pool wiped out, no matter how much hp you have, and be insta-killed with no downstate.

 

As I said, the idea is just bare bones. It is just an example of what could be done by making mechanics affected by stats of a player. The aim of this particular example is basically to make people go for other gear options and diversify their builds away from full glass cannon meta, even if only for these particular encounters, simply because these encounters would be unclearable without it. Different encounters could have different optimal/required builds set-ups too. Of course, people would still go as bursty as possible and the best players would most likely find a way to get around this mechanic in some way... but wouldn't the journey to find most optimal builds/ways to beat it actually be the point of interest for them? I'd like to think it would keep them occupied for a while.

 

I am also not trying to compare GW2 encounter creation to other games here. GW2 is too different to do that. I am trying to look at what GW2 has (stats, special debuffs, boons) that could be used in encounter creation. I am not saying this particular idea is great. It is just an example.

[KasiCair.5760]

On 11/3/2022 at 12:56 AM, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Sorry, way TL...D completely R

Gave up about a quarter of the way through when it still didn't seem to address Toughness. 

😄 No problem. It's totally fine. It is just me rambling. There's nothing interesting, really.

[KasiCair.5760]

On 11/2/2022 at 10:30 PM, Randulf.7614 said:

Don’t take this as disrespectful, but is there a shortened version you can give us? It’s not so much the length (although it’s crazy long), but the meandering nature of it (I gave up a third of the way down). Can you make this more concise and digestible?

Nah, I am fine. You are right. It is truly just me rambling. I wrote what I had on my mind at that particular moment without thinking much about it and from the replies, I already see there was a lot of miscommunication happening. 

 

I'll give you some main points.

 

1. Encounters mechanics based on player stats. Basically, make mechanics that would require people to have various gear/stats. My example was: Getting insta-killed if you play glasscannon (no toughness in gear -> 1k baseline toughness). The mechanic would simply do percentual damage, in this case, 100% of your hp would get wiped out. The more toughness you have, the less damage this attack would do. Yes, people would just go full rabid gear... but there could be mechanics that would punish you for having too much toughness in the same encounter too. Maybe have some strong spawned mobs do more damage to you the more toughness you have. The idea itself might be bad... but it is there to illustrate that maybe stats could be used for encounter mechanics in some ways.

 

2. More creative debuffs/buffs of bosses. This is already used but it is mostly damage increase/decrease. I'd like to see more variety like reduced healing output, making people slower, reducing endurance regeneration... of course, these debuffs would trigger depending on the encounter mechanics. You can basically do anything with it and the difficulty scaling between normal mode and challenge mode would depend on the strenght of these buffs and debuffs, maybe adding some ease in content creation. Hopefully.

 

3. Boons used for encounters in different fashion than just to power up the team. I made an example of getting insta-killed if you don't have a specific boon at a particular moment in a fight. But it could be done in many different ways. Like making you impossible to damage the boss unless you have some specific boon. Or make the boss steal boons from players while making boon corrupts useless on the boss. Or even make boons unusable for a specific encounter. Etc. I don't know. Go wild with the idea.

 

4. Using downstate in mechanics. Like boss porting on a downed player and starting a bursty aoe+cc attacks while the group would have to ress the player, or the boss would be significantly empowered in some way. Maybe he could even recover a percentage of his HP. Or teleporting a player randomly on the arena when upon getting downed while also making not ressing the ally punishing in some manner. (Maybe you would have better idea about how to make downstate useful for encounter mechanics?)

 

5. I remember having 5th point too but I forgot what that was about :D. 

 

Anyways, these are just ideas. Some might be bad but I mostly wanted to point out that GW2 has its own unique things that could be used for encounter creation.

 

And I might have also mildly complained about the fact that for the last decade, GW2 meta is practically full dps, and that the encounters in the game right now are accomodating it instead of trying to force people to play more defensively at least in some of them. But well, that's a personal preference.

[KasiCair.5760]

On 11/2/2022 at 10:36 PM, Farohna.6247 said:

Burn me that was a wall of rambling text.  

Or because the focus hasn't been on instanced content and because most players don't do it?  While there is always room for improvement, and hopefully they continue to do so, I don't think this would appeal to the majority.  They've introduced training modes to make it more interesting to new players, not messier.  Niche all 10 tank fights sounds...odd.

Coming from WoW raids from a decade ago, I found the lack of trinity interesting.  I still do.  Having dealt extensively with raids there, and timers, and roles, and mechanics, and 10, 25, and 40 person raids and the achievements for hard mode, I have little interest in pursuing a raiding career in GW2.  I don't care to lump people into all tank fights or a rebranded trinity system. 

Okay. Totally get your point and acknowledge it. But the point of this post was not talk about what would appeal to the majority or how to make the content easy for the new players. I think you totally missed my point, to be honest. You might be right that it is messy. It is basically just me rambling. I didn't put that much thought into it at the moment of writing it. I just wrote what was on my mind. I presented ideas and ways I think it would be possible to use unique things in GW2 (like boons and massive variety of stats or downstate).

 

But... you also took the most ridiculous thing from the whole post to point out how foolish my ideas are :D. 10 tanks fight, lol. I have no hope of that ever happening, nor would I probably want that to happen. I mentioned it to portray that even though there is no 'tank' role in the game, through stat-based mechanics, it could be artificially created. I wanted to convey that it is possible. Not that it should be done. But as I didn't put much effort into cleaning up my text, the miscommunication is my bad.

 

As I said, there already are set roles in the instanced content. They are just more versatile and oftentimes one person covers more of them. Dps, Boon Support. Alac. Quick. Healer. It is what it is. It's just so versatile it doesn't feel constraining like in other games. Fortunately.

 

If you don't care to lump people into all tank fights or make a trinity system in GW2, that's completely fine by me. I also don't mind if your raiding career in GW2 is nonexistent. I also honestly do raids more causally. Nothing wrong with that. Once again, the whole point of this post is to put forth a few unusual ideas and maybe make people think/consider different ways things could be done. There is no need to take it so seriously or be all defensive about it, rejecting new ideas just because they sound silly at first glance.

[KasiCair.5760]

21 hours ago, Machineuzi.5604 said:

>Let's look at the Harvest Temple CM. Yes, there are mechanics. Yes, it is an incredible encounter. But the main thing that makes it hard is, to my understanding, the strict dps check (I hope I am not wrong about that :D). That's what makes the encounter truly hard. Which means... you will want to stack as many dps in the group as you can. Again.

 

Could you please not give examples about stuff you have not even tried once, let alone looked at a guide for? There are tons of mechanics one needs to handle in this fight before even thinking about dps. Its difficult because of all the stuff you need to handle while dpsing the boss down, well that and the bugs

The 'dps' you stack in this boss is not just 'dps' and most have specialized roles. Facepalm on that for a moment will you?

 

You are right. I have never beaten HT CM. Shame on me. I simply don't even have a group to attempt it with. And that's fine by me.

 

But really, I think you misunderstood what I was 'facepalming' at. I didn't mean to insult anyone who cleared the content or the content itself. Clearing HT CM is a big achievement. I was facepalming at the fact that just like anything else in the game, the composition of the desired team doesn't really change. Or do you not take 2 healers and 8 dps into the encounter just like everywhere else? Of course the dps have specialized roles. That wasn't the point

 

There is really no need to feel offended by my statement as that wasn't the point. I didn't even realize it would sound bad and with a different context than what I intended when I was writing it.

 

The post is about ideas on the encounter creation and how to use unique things in GW2 (boons, stats, downstate...) for that. If all you took from it is me trying to degrade HT CM and make light of those who cleared it, then it is my fault for not being clear enough and causing miscommunication.

 

Maybe I shouldn't have used HT CM as an example. But you also didn't need to be so sarcastic about your reply either. So instead of apologizing, I am just going to facepalm.

 

Have a nice day.

[KasiCair.5760]

20 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Main issue with the ideas here is: they are base on incorrect observations/assumptions and don't actually tackle the areas why players struggle in this game (compared to other MMORPGs, without getting into the different focus and itemization issues which run alongside dungeons and instanced content).

 

1. one of the main reasons, and not mentioned at all, why players struggle more in GW2 than in other MMORPGs (and players struggle there too, just to a lesser extent) is the lack of a global cooldown. When you go from 20-40 actions per minute to double that, you will lose players along the way. Moreover you are creating a far larger gap between players who have mastered the combat system and those who have not

 

2. toughness already mitigates damage. Increasing toughness efficiency will simply shift the sweet spot. Skilled players will still not need it, or take the absolute bare minimum they have to, less skilled players will still have to rely more on it. The damage gap remains since both groups will still run different amounts of toughness, you've simply changed the maximum damage output, effectively punishing weaker players even more

 

3. the trinity issue is only a simple visual representation of the differences in skill and build systems. GW2 has a far more expansive build system than mots other MMORPGs. You can literally run wrong traits, gear, weapons, specializations, etc. whereas in most other MMORPGs these build decision are far more streamlined (think about it, how much can you actually mess up your build in FF14 or WoW besides not having the correct skills on your bar? What is it, maybe 50% less output compared to ideal? In GW2 it's as much as 10% or less of the output). The net result is a less clear build preset players can follow but the main issue originates in the difference in build complexity

 

As to Harvest Temple CM, no the damage check is NOT the main issue in that fight. If your group can't hit the damage check, you are below the skill floor which your players need to even attempt the encounter. The main difficulty with Harvest Temple CM, besides keeping the group long enough together and committing the time needed to clear, are the mechanics and synchronicity required, most importantly the greens and phase transitions.

 

Your 1st point: The ideas are not supposed to tackle the problem of why the players struggle so I am not even going to reply to that. Because I truly have no idea what to say about it. Not once in my post did I breach that topic, to be honest. 

 

Your 2nd point: You totally misunderstood what I meant by 'toughness-based mechanics.' It was probably my fault for not being clear enough. I was thinking more along the line where the encounter would be unclearable unless players had a certain amount of toughness. The damage being percentual would mean that you would be utterly unable to have 0 toughness in the gear as it would always mean getting insta-killed (at least as far as my example is considered -> 100% hp pool wipe if you only have baseline 1k toughness). And conversely, if the players had too much, they would also get nuked from the orbit by the boss too. I just think creating optimal builds for encounters that require different composition than just 2 healers/supports and 8 dps could be fun for many people and keep them occupied. But my example might not have been the best. Rather than 'toughness-based mechancis', I wanted to convey that player stats could play a role in an encounter design, 'forcing' people to chose different gear sets/stat variants for different encounters just to have a chance to survive. Don't go at me with accessibility and complexity of such a thing. I am trying to put forth unusual ideas of how to use resources GW2 has like stats, boons, etc, for the encounter design. Nothing else. I am not saying my particular examples are good.

 

Your 3rd point: I got lost. I... have no idea what you are commenting about within my post. I have never talked about build complexity. You are correct, of course. I just really have no idea what exactly brought that on.

 

As for the HT CM: Fair enough. I should have probably used different encounter as an example. Totally my fault, that.

 

Anyway, I am not really trying to say: This is the mechanics that should be put into the game. I am truly only trying to put forth ideas. Some may be bad or crazy. I simply want to get people to think. Okay, so GW2 can't fully imitate other games when it comes to the encounter creation because the combat is too different... but the game has its own unique systems (boons, buffs, debuffs, stats) and things that could be creatively used for it.

 

You can even artificially recreate some loose holy trinity with it! And I am not saying that it should be done. Just that it is possible. By making fights rely less on raw dps and power of the builds, and more on the encounter mechanics. 

 

Would that be too complex for the new players? Eh, maybe. But then again, isn't endgame content in other games also complex for new players? It is end-game content for a reason. And considering that GW2 is a game with horizontal progression, the whole thing also has to be approached from a different angle. But that's just my opinion.

 

As for people not playing instanced-PvE content... I think the problem lies more in the complexity of the reward system, rather than the encounters. If people don't feel rewarded enough for doing it, most simply won't do it. But that's a discussion of its own. I doubt anyone cares about my opinion on the matter :D.

[KasiCair.5760]

18 hours ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

One issue we need to look at in particular is while there is a trinity in the game, the middle role (DPS boon support), isn't that much different from a DPS which results in groups still mostly being DPS.

 

I think that pure DPS and healers are in a very good spot, but we should probably move some boons and utility from healers onto the boon support, and shift healers more towards being closer to pure healers like Scourge is right now, instead of superheroes like Firebrand.

 

Then on the boon supports, this would include dialing their DPS back a bit more until its about in the middle of the other two, with their kit being middle of the road as well. This way you truly have an important role to play instead of just heavily leaning towards DPS still while one or two players carry your group.

 

In other words I think the group should be carried by 40% of its players instead of 20% as it is now. This would also help pull back some of the powercreep as well, by distributing that power more evenly.

 

The first sentence is true. And that's exactly what my ideas are aimed at. At least for some specific encounters, people would be required by the mechanics to run juuuust a little bit more defensive builds or more heal oriented builds. Something different than the standard 8 dps 2 supports. I am not saying 'make the glass cannon dps meta go away'. That's not going to happen. But some encounters could have a different aim than to just stack on boss and do big numbers, no? (That's probably going to happen anyway, judging by the direction of the EoD strikes. Hopefully.).

 

I do think that people would not play pure healers in a group if the healers lost their boon support (at least not in easy content like some normal mode strikes). Not to mention that it is kinda impossible. You can't delete boons from druid, firebrand, or tempest. It also wouldn't be healthy for 'boon supports' to provide every boon/utility on their own. 

 

That's kinda why I proposed pulsing damage area/incoming healing reduction debuff so much in my post. There simply isn't all that much need or focus on pure healing in the current instanced content, except for a few specific encounters.

[Cyninja.2954]

2 hours ago, KasiCair.5760 said:

 

Your 1st point: The ideas are not supposed to tackle the problem of why the players struggle so I am not even going to reply to that. Because I truly have no idea what to say about it. Not once in my post did I breach that topic, to be honest. 

Why players struggle is directly connected to why instanced content is having issues.

2 hours ago, KasiCair.5760 said:

 

Your 2nd point: You totally misunderstood what I meant by 'toughness-based mechanics.' It was probably my fault for not being clear enough. I was thinking more along the line where the encounter would be unclearable unless players had a certain amount of toughness. The damage being percentual would mean that you would be utterly unable to have 0 toughness in the gear as it would always mean getting insta-killed (at least as far as my example is considered -> 100% hp pool wipe if you only have baseline 1k toughness). And conversely, if the players had too much, they would also get nuked from the orbit by the boss too. I just think creating optimal builds for encounters that require different composition than just 2 healers/supports and 8 dps could be fun for many people and keep them occupied. But my example might not have been the best. Rather than 'toughness-based mechancis', I wanted to convey that player stats could play a role in an encounter design, 'forcing' people to chose different gear sets/stat variants for different encounters just to have a chance to survive. Don't go at me with accessibility and complexity of such a thing. I am trying to put forth unusual ideas of how to use resources GW2 has like stats, boons, etc, for the encounter design. Nothing else. I am not saying my particular examples are good.

This changes  nothing. Again in short: any mantadory toughness will simply change the base amount needed.

 

Good players will clear the encounter with minimum toughness, for example with 1,050. They eat the 99% damage hit and let the supports clean up the mess.

 

Weaker players will be put under pressure by having to take more toughness because their damage decreases even more.

 

Case in point: high end groups tank Vale Guardian amd most fights with 1,050t versus a dedicated minstrel tank. Weaker groups use dedicated minstrel tanks to ensure survival of the tank. Strait out the bat the weaker groups are taking a performance hit, which might very well be necessary because the tank and healers might not be as experienced.

 

Now extrapolate that approach to the entire group and you'll get the same effect for each individual player.

2 hours ago, KasiCair.5760 said:

Your 3rd point: I got lost. I... have no idea what you are commenting about within my post. I have never talked about build complexity. You are correct, of course. I just really have no idea what exactly brought that on.

 

You are talking about the trinity as though that is one of the issues. It's not. The build complexity is. There are other MMORPGs without trinity which do not face the same content issues as GW2 (Destiny 2 for example or Warframe). Those games also most often have far less complex build systems or at least not as large a performance gap between good builds and trash builds paired with a more streamlined and straightforward gearing system.

Edited November 4, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Warscythes.9307]

I am going to comment on the toughness point as well. What cyninja says is correct. If you enforce a toughness criteria, it would not change builds at all. The only thing it will force me to do is swap 1 piece of the gear to something with toughness on it. The gameplay would be exactly the same. This really changes nothing. The reason why players go glass cannon in this game is because the healers heal so much that you can go from 1 hp to full pretty easily in addition to the amount of baseline of defense you have. 

 

If you want to have a fight that is not majority dps, then it need to make sure that the damage does not matter. Since this is GW2, we can talk a bit about GW1 where glass cannon is often not good. In fact GW1 is incredibly defensives heavy. Your most important teambuild aspect is to make sure your team does not die, the damage for the most part does not matter as much as not dying. The most meta build right now I think is mesmers that constantly sap energy and interrupt with ritualists that provide massive defensives and necros to provide energy to all via BIP. 

 

So if you want to replicate this sort of thing, there would need to be things such as extremely frequent defiance bars which will force people to take ccs. Frequent boon application that if not stripped, does massive damage to the party which will force boon removal. Very frequent and high damage aoes that 2 healers cannot keep up so it will force additional healers or hybrids. Maybe multiple mobs will need to be constantly applied a certain condition or they will explode on the party such as weakness/blind/slow etc. Basically, it needs to be done via encounter mechanics, not forcing a strict mathematically number.

 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Warscythes.9307

[Machineuzi.5604]

4 hours ago, KasiCair.5760 said:

You are right. I have never beaten HT CM. Shame on me. I simply don't even have a group to attempt it with. And that's fine by me.

 

But really, I think you misunderstood what I was 'facepalming' at. I didn't mean to insult anyone who cleared the content or the content itself. Clearing HT CM is a big achievement. I was facepalming at the fact that just like anything else in the game, the composition of the desired team doesn't really change. Or do you not take 2 healers and 8 dps into the encounter just like everywhere else? Of course the dps have specialized roles. That wasn't the point

 

There is really no need to feel offended by my statement as that wasn't the point. I didn't even realize it would sound bad and with a different context than what I intended when I was writing it.

 

The post is about ideas on the encounter creation and how to use unique things in GW2 (boons, stats, downstate...) for that. If all you took from it is me trying to degrade HT CM and make light of those who cleared it, then it is my fault for not being clear enough and causing miscommunication.

 

Maybe I shouldn't have used HT CM as an example. But you also didn't need to be so sarcastic about your reply either. So instead of apologizing, I am just going to facepalm.

 

Have a nice day.

The dps is very reductive term as far as HT CM is concerned. The dps in HT CM fall into 3 categories: Boss DPS which is 'pure' dps, Blink DPS to handle greens intermittently, and Portal DPS to help people get back from the greens etc. We cant just pile all of them together as 'dps', or it loses the nuance. Similarly, we cant just pile Boon DPS with 'regular' DPS, as they have different priorities - regardless of the encounter the Boon DPS (e.g. QFB) should have maintaining its boon as the priority (and this is not trivial, especially if the content is difficult) and maximizing personal dps as second, while 'regular' DPS would almost always have dps as its main and generally only priority, excluding CC. In HT CM in particular even the QFB is made distinct from the DPS in where they are positioned and their responsibility to take Stability etc. It is an encounter loaded with mechanics and specialized roles.

 

I am sorry that I was sarcastic but your comment just wrote off every bit of nuance in this encounter, and it still does.

 

 

[pfuetzi.5421]

I think when it comes to instanced pve the combat system is the biggest advantage and disadvantage to gw2. Because it is so dynamic and versatile (see my last paragraph), playing your character to its full potential is really hard. Therefore, to make pve content achievable by a wide player base, the boss mechanics cannot be too difficult. However, that means that for players who can control their toon very well, the content is really easy and they can carry the rest really hard.

 

Furthermore, gw2 "roles" (Heal/Alac/Quickness) have emerged because it is an easy way to organize a group. There is nothing wrong with everyone playing a build that does some boons/healing but that would be a pain to organize in order to make sure everything is covered.

 

It is often said that raid encounters are "stand in greens" / "avoid reds" but that is not true (even for the earlier encounters) altough, to be fair, some of those mechanics are skipped nowadays because of power creep.

However, usually only a couple of experienced player need to and usually will do those mechanics. If you are pugging you will notice that groups often wipe when that is not the case, e.g. when random players have to do those mechanics (Sabatha green bomb*/ sloth poison) or when players are unfamiliar with a boss-specific mechanic.

 

Also, many subtle mechanics are handled by experienced player and you wouldn't even notice they did something (e.g. boonstrip bosses at critical moments; apply group aegis/stability against certain attacks; projectile reflects; clearing shards at Xera; distort Sloth's shake and many more). There are actually a lot of things you can do if you know your class and the mechanics of an encounter, enabled by the combat systems far beyond stand in greens and avoid reds.

 

* I know it is not random who gets the green bomb but for many pugs it kind of is 😉

[KasiCair.5760]

4 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Why players struggle is directly connected to why instanced content is having issues.

 

We are talking about two different things, to be honest. My aim is not to discuss why the instanced content is struggling in GW2. It's not my aim to discuss the solution to that. I am not trying to give ideas how to improve that or get more players to play instanced content. I am purely trying to give ideas on what could be used that's already within GW2 to create maybe interesting mechanics and encounters. You are correct in what you say but 😄 we are on different topics here.

 

4 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

This changes  nothing. Again in short: any mantadory toughness will simply change the base amount needed.

 

Good players will clear the encounter with minimum toughness, for example with 1,050. They eat the 99% damage hit and let the supports clean up the mess.

 

Weaker players will be put under pressure by having to take more toughness because their damage decreases even more.

 

Case in point: high end groups tank Vale Guardian amd most fights with 1,050t versus a dedicated minstrel tank. Weaker groups use dedicated minstrel tanks to ensure survival of the tank. Strait out the bat the weaker groups are taking a performance hit, which might very well be necessary because the tank and healers might not be as experienced.

 

Now extrapolate that approach to the entire group and you'll get the same effect for each individual player.

 

You are forgetting that my idea is just bare bones. It is just one mechanic. One attack. In an encounter, there will be other things happening around. Boss attacking. Adds attacking. Other mechanics. Maybe even pulsating damage field if the creators wanted to be mean. The whole fight could also be extremely dynamic if the boss randomly moved around the arena too.

 

Eating 99% hit would probably not happen. The whole point is that with percentage-based damage, you can fine-tune it however you want. For example, you could do something like stopping the insta-kills only when a person has above 1200 toughness. It is that possibility for versatility in the mechanics design I am trying to point at. (A stupid example but I hope it gets a point across.)

 

Sure, you are totally correct that the best players would find their way to clear the content with as little toughness as possible. But to what degree they could get away with it (and of course, dps is important so there will definitely need to be a wiggle room for that) would depend on how the mechanics of the encounter would be set/designed.

 

You are looking at it too narrowly and only focus on the specific example I wrote about. Toughness is not even the main point of the idea. Mechanics could be based on other stats. For example, the boss could target people with the highest healing power with long CC before his big burst attack or something.

 

4 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

You are talking about the trinity as though that is one of the issues. It's not. The build complexity is. There are other MMORPGs without trinity which do not face the same content issues as GW2 (Destiny 2 for example or Warframe). Those games also most often have far less complex build systems or at least not as large a performance gap between good builds and trash builds paired with a more streamlined and straightforward gearing system.

 

I don't care about the trinity. Who cares? I play GW2. I just pointed out that the GW2 has its own set roles in the group content. You are correct that GW2 is extremely complex. But once again, that's not really what I wanted the aim of this discussion to be. I purely wished to discuss what special/unique things or systems exist within GW2 that can be used to create interesting mechanics in encounters. Some games use the trinity and the fact that one class has only one specific playstyle and build for this. GW2 can't do this. So, I am trying to look at how GW2 could go around that with the resources it has available. Like boons, downstate, stats, and so on.

 

Yeah, I think I didn't convey my intentions well in my post. 

[KasiCair.5760]

Let me start with: I really enjoyed reading your opinion on the matter. 

 

1 hour ago, Warscythes.9307 said:

I am going to comment on the toughness point as well. What cyninja says is correct. If you enforce a toughness criteria, it would not change builds at all. The only thing it will force me to do is swap 1 piece of the gear to something with toughness on it. The gameplay would be exactly the same. This really changes nothing. The reason why players go glass cannon in this game is because the healers heal so much that you can go from 1 hp to full pretty easily in addition to the amount of baseline of defense you have. 

You are probably correct about this but same as Cyninja, my toughness idea is not supposed to be used alone. I mean, anyone could clear Shiverpeaks Pass even if it had a toughness requirement. The thing is supposed to be used alongside other mechanics. The whole point wasn't even about toughness being relevant. Toughness was just an example. What I wanted to convey is that stats could be used for creation of mechanics. I am just proposing a new way to make encounter mechanics. Nothing more.

 

1 hour ago, Warscythes.9307 said:

If you want to have a fight that is not majority dps, then it need to make sure that the damage does not matter. Since this is GW2, we can talk a bit about GW1 where glass cannon is often not good. In fact GW1 is incredibly defensives heavy. Your most important teambuild aspect is to make sure your team does not die, the damage for the most part does not matter as much as not dying. The most meta build right now I think is mesmers that constantly sap energy and interrupt with ritualists that provide massive defensives and necros to provide energy to all via BIP. 

 

So if you want to replicate this sort of thing, there would need to be things such as extremely frequent defiance bars which will force people to take ccs. Frequent boon application that if not stripped, does massive damage to the party which will force boon removal. Very frequent and high damage aoes that 2 healers cannot keep up so it will force additional healers or hybrids. Maybe multiple mobs will need to be constantly applied a certain condition or they will explode on the party such as weakness/blind/slow etc. Basically, it needs to be done via encounter mechanics, not forcing a strict mathematically number.

 

I don't think that dps would need to be irrelevant is actually true. But other than that, you are right on the money about what I meant. I'd like to see the fights being more mechanics oriented rather than the 'stack here, boon up, swing your sword until the boss is dead' that is so prevalent right now. The point of this post was supposed to discuss how to create these mechanics in a different way and how GW2 especially could use things that are already in the game like boons, stats, downstate to make them.

[Zok.4956]

On 11/2/2022 at 10:15 PM, KasiCair.5760 said:

Thinking about this problem, I realized the solution is already present in GW2 raids. It's just that Arenanet never took it to a new level, and never went to the extremes with it.

Toughness. Based. Tanking.

Yes, there is toughness based tanking in the game. Which means there are mostly only two roles from the fight mechanic: Tank and DPS (and the supporters/healers that try to buff them and keep them alive). I think GW2 already has better (and more fun) encounter mechanics where a lot of more players have to take different/special roles in a fight and have to react faster and coordinate better. 

 

7 hours ago, KasiCair.5760 said:

1. Encounters mechanics based on player stats. Basically, make mechanics that would require people to have various gear/stats. My example was: Getting insta-killed if you play glasscannon (no toughness in gear -> 1k baseline toughness). The mechanic would simply do percentual damage, in this case, 100% of your hp would get wiped out. The more toughness you have, the less damage this attack would do

So you want toughness to be, somehow, what Agony and Agony resistance already are in higher level fractals?

 

On 11/2/2022 at 10:15 PM, KasiCair.5760 said:

creating encounters for GW2 PvE is hard because of how complicated the combat is and the sheer variety of builds/utilities various classes bring to the table

An Anet dev stated, that creating encounters for GW2 is hard because the DPS from low/medium skilled players with bad builds is so much lower, sometimes 10-times lower, than the DPS from a high skilled player with a optimal best-in-slot build who is able to do complicated high intensity rotations in every encounter.

As an example/consequence: Before you deal with a challenging fight/raid mechanic, you should know your own class/rotation well and have trained on the golem. This increases the barrier to entry for some players.

Anet's solution to this is to make more and better LI (low intensity) builds with decent/good enough DPS, so players could succeed with less complicated and shorter rotations (maybe just button smashing on cool-downs and auto-attacks) and  low/medium skilled players could focus better on the encounter mechanics and do their part in the fight.

Edited November 4, 2022 by Zok.4956

[KasiCair.5760]

1 hour ago, Machineuzi.5604 said:

The dps is very reductive term as far as HT CM is concerned. The dps in HT CM fall into 3 categories: Boss DPS which is 'pure' dps, Blink DPS to handle greens intermittently, and Portal DPS to help people get back from the greens etc. We cant just pile all of them together as 'dps', or it loses the nuance. Similarly, we cant just pile Boon DPS with 'regular' DPS, as they have different priorities - regardless of the encounter the Boon DPS (e.g. QFB) should have maintaining its boon as the priority (and this is not trivial, especially if the content is difficult) and maximizing personal dps as second, while 'regular' DPS would almost always have dps as its main and generally only priority, excluding CC. In HT CM in particular even the QFB is made distinct from the DPS in where they are positioned and their responsibility to take Stability etc. It is an encounter loaded with mechanics and specialized roles.

 

I am sorry that I was sarcastic but your comment just wrote off every bit of nuance in this encounter, and it still does.

 

 

Thanks for taking the time to explain these nuances of roles in HT CM and I understand your point. I understand that boon dps is different than regular dps. As I said, I did play the game for the last decade and while I am definitely not a hardcore player, I'd like to think I have learned at least the basics :D. 

 

The reason why I wrote all these nuances off is simple. I am generalizing it. You are right. Calling it just 'dps' is really not enough because of how complex and specialized the roles are. But my main point was the group composition is 2 supports and 8 dps (with different roles) and it is like this for years now. There is not even one encounter where you would need, I don't know, 4 healers. Or some specialized roles like Hand Kiter, Lamp, or whatever.

 

To be honest, I enjoy the way it is right now in GW2. I just felt like putting forth ideas about a new perspective and wanted to see how people would react. The HT CM was probably really off the mark example. I am sorry if it ticked you off.

[KasiCair.5760]

1 hour ago, pfuetzi.5421 said:

I think when it comes to instanced pve the combat system is the biggest advantage and disadvantage to gw2. Because it is so dynamic and versatile (see my last paragraph), playing your character to its full potential is really hard. Therefore, to make pve content achievable by a wide player base, the boss mechanics cannot be too difficult. However, that means that for players who can control their toon very well, the content is really easy and they can carry the rest really hard.

 

Furthermore, gw2 "roles" (Heal/Alac/Quickness) have emerged because it is an easy way to organize a group. There is nothing wrong with everyone playing a build that does some boons/healing but that would be a pain to organize in order to make sure everything is covered.

 

It is often said that raid encounters are "stand in greens" / "avoid reds" but that is not true (even for the earlier encounters) altough, to be fair, some of those mechanics are skipped nowadays because of power creep.

However, usually only a couple of experienced player need to and usually will do those mechanics. If you are pugging you will notice that groups often wipe when that is not the case, e.g. when random players have to do those mechanics (Sabatha green bomb*/ sloth poison) or when players are unfamiliar with a boss-specific mechanic.

 

Also, many subtle mechanics are handled by experienced player and you wouldn't even notice they did something (e.g. boonstrip bosses at critical moments; apply group aegis/stability against certain attacks; projectile reflects; clearing shards at Xera; distort Sloth's shake and many more). There are actually a lot of things you can do if you know your class and the mechanics of an encounter, enabled by the combat systems far beyond stand in greens and avoid reds.

 

* I know it is not random who gets the green bomb but for many pugs it kind of is 😉

 

Yeah, I over-simplified it a lot. To be frank, I'd like to see mechanics like these in raids more often. Raids have really interesting mechanics in GW2. The thing I tried to do with this post (and utterly failed, lol) is basically this: Look, FF14 has its holy trinity and they build their content around that. GW2 can't do this because of its combat system and build freedom. So... what unique things does GW2 have that could be used for making mechanics for their instanced content?

 

That's what I wanted to speak about. The mechanics in raids are great and quite diverse. When I said 'stand in green' and 'avoid red', I meant mostly strikes since that's the content I do the most often. So it might have made me biased.

 

Thanks for your input.

[KasiCair.5760]

14 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

Yes, there is toughness based tanking in the game. Which means there are mostly only two roles from the fight mechanic: Tank and DPS (and the supporters/healers that try to buff them and keep them alive). I think GW2 already has better (and more fun) encounter mechanics where a lot of more players have to take different/special roles in a fight and have to react faster and coordinate better. 

 

Fair enough.

 

14 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

So you want toughness to be, somehow, what Agony and Agony resistance already are in higher level fractals?

 

Not really. Mentioning the toughness was just a bad example and the fact so many people misunderstood it is just my inability to probably convey what I meant. It woulnd't necessarily need to be toughness. For example, there could be a mechanic where the boss, before using a big damage aoe, would target a player with highest healing power and stun him. Or when you fail a specific mechanic, your vitality is reduced by a half, reducing your hp pool by a significant amount for a set period of time. Things like that. I meant the general idea of using stats for encounter mechanics rather than using toughness only for it.

 

14 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

An Anet dev stated, that creating encounters for GW2 is hard because the DPS from low/medium skilled players is so much lower, sometimes 10-times lower, than the DPS from a high skilled player who is able to do complicated high intensity rotations in every encounter.

Anet's solution to this is to make more and better LI (low intensity) builds with decent/good enough DPS, so players could succeed with less complicated and shorter rotations (maybe just button smashing on cool-downs and auto-attacks) and  low/medium skilled players could focus better on the encounter mechanics and do their part in the fight.

 

Didn't know that. Thanks for info.