Concepts to Avoid in PvP Game Design

[pcgamefreak.5208]

Poor Concepts

High Ranged DPS:
    
    Ranged DPS should not be used to get a quick win in the distance, instead, it should have been low conditional damage in an effort to shrink a player's health some before the face-to-face "throw down."  The only players who can get through ranged dps are those players who can go immune to all damage for 10+ seconds...still don’t know how they’re doing that because I can’t find such an ability on any class/spec.  It won’t matter in the end because the “CC” is going to get them.

 

Power Rules All:

 

    Guildwars 2 is the only mmorpg I've played that only has one attribute that really matters.  You can stack conditional damage and never get high enough conditions to be a threat.  You can stack healing and never get enough healing to have major sustains.  You can stack concentration and never get enough boon duration.  It doesn't matter what you stack, if it isn't Power, it's not going to make a major difference when it comes to PvP and Roaming.  So when you see Meta builds for Core Condi Necro, ignore it because Condi builds really don't exists.  That sucks, because the concept of a Necro that can deal damage like a power build through conditions kind of buts the "necro" in Necromancer.

 

Pets with Ranged DPS:

 

    As if it's not bad enough the developers gave classes long ranged DPS, they added Pets who can do significant damage and "CC", further adding to easy ranged kills for ranged classes with Pets.

 

"CC":

 

    This one concept is probably the biggest breaker of PvP in GW2.  All players needed was one special slot on their action bar that allowed them to have one "CC" ability and a significant cool down should have been placed on the slot.  That's it....one "CC" that would probably only get used once in a 1 on 1 encounter unless the fight goes on for awhile.  Instead, the developers have "CC" all over the place and as a result, the combat is broken beyond repair.  There is no face-to-face "throw down" because you're stunned, dazed, knocked down, floated, launched, etc etc all the freaking time.  The Mesmer class combat is build around keeping you "CC'ed" all the time.  WORST decision a developer could have come up with!

 

Excessive Boons:

 

    I just can't wrap my head around the fact, the developers didn't see what was going to happen when players put all their boons together in PvP...  I mean, it's really like...common sense.  The same thing that happened because of excessive "CC" was going to happen with excessive boons.  That's why Zerg Blobs can just steam roll over everything and everybody, again, eliminating any meaning combat because you can't fight it, you just die.  A quick fix for excessive boons, would be to simply make boons self-boons in WvW, maybe with the exception of one or two, that would benefit a Zerg some but not over-power it.  Two Zergs should be able to collide and players should just rumble....face-to-face "throw down" but sadly, all the "CC" and high ranged dps would make that impossible even if boons were controlled.

 

Super Speed:

 

    One of the things I did like about Warcraft’s PvP was the fact you couldn’t really do too much running...not like you can in GW2.  What’s the point in PvP if you’re going to allow players to escape combat with ease?  What’s the point in downing a player if you’re going to allow them to rally up with ease?  I’ve seen players fall in combat and before their back could hit the ground, they were back up, full health and teleported off in the distance.  This.... This is why game development isn’t for every one.  Quick fix, remove self speed boosts, remove rally as it stands.  If a player falls, the next action click by the person still standing will auto trigger a finishing move that happens faster, no long cast time.  The only rally should come from a team mate helping you up but that’s before any finishing move takes you out.  If a players is engaging in a finishing move and gets hit by an enemy player, the finishing move cast bar drops a little, thus given teammates time to rally their fallen comrade.  Simply put, you fall, you die unless teammate saves you.  This will also teach players the value of helping their teammates off the ground because players on your side will just leave you down.  Every time that happens to me, I happily watch the team fail because NEVER leave your Condi Build Meta Necro on the ground!!  Such a Necro brings too much to a Zerg effort!  Boon corruptions, conditional status, skill interrupts, high sustain target...  That is the stuff that breaks up a Zerg...  NEVER LEAVE THAT ON THE GROUND!!!!  In fact, you want about 10 Necros in your group like that but sadly, players have switched to the newer, power based “OP’ed” classes (“Devs“ fault).

Conclusion....

 

What were the developers trying to create with PvP?  PvP is supposed to be Player vs Player, not Player vs "CC" or Player vs "OP Classes" or Player vs Death Boon Zerg.  World of Warcraft was not as broken as Guildwars 2 in the PvP department!  The biggest issue in "WOW" was class balance, not "CC."  This "CC" thing is absolutely garbage!  Sure, stick it in PvE if you want to that's fine, but NOT in PvP...not to the extreme extent it is currently at!

 

You ever wonder why players circle around and back up a lot or just run in WvW?  High Ranged DPS and "CC!"  What else are they going to do...run forward while that "Engi" is blasting them with a stream of shots as their Bot jumps up in the air for the slam that will have you laying on the ground for 10+ seconds while the "Engi" is still blasting away....?

Fan Boys and Girls can say what you want....  Defending such horrible development will not help Guildwars 2.  The only reason the servers are still buzzing is because all mmorpgs suck a this point in time.  Man...  If one done right were to ever drop....  ...................... ............................... ............  I'm not even going to stress that you already know what would happen and if you're denying it, you're just fooling yourself.

Really, the developers of GW2 would have been better off just going with the old Tank, Healer, DPS, Support structure like in World of Warcraft.  Tanks could be your front line in WvW because with all the High Ranged DPS, you would need a damage absorbing class to run front line but such a class has to be the lowest dps in the game to balance it.  No one really wants to run front line and  that’s evident because of all the Zerg moving back, around, side to side or just hauling tail out of there.

 

Worst PvP game ever made and I approve this message.  (thumbs up)

 

Not proof reading so “typos” can suck it.
 

[Swagg.9236]

Long-Range DPS:  Agreed.  Particularly in a game where the aiming is done for the player, baking burst damage into super-long-range attack strings takes a lot of risk out of most encounters (and puts a lot of extra onus on targets who don't inherently have long-range attacks).  In order to promote more risk/reward engagement, damage should generally scale from low-to-high as an attacker approaches a target (not ALWAYS necessary, but as a rule of thumb this helps encourage a sensible combat schema).

Power Rules All:  I'm actually OK with this.  Damage is damage.  That said, what I do not believe is that everybody equipping berserker amulets should have necessarily translated to every attack slapping for anywhere between 3-15k a pop.  For instance, conditions are just... untyped damage.  There's absolutely zero reason why they couldn't scale off of power, and then all of their associated attacks could just deal very low or no damage at all.  The fact that GW2 doesn't balance its damage around a single scaling... "value" (whatever you want to call it) only contributed to unnecessary stat bloat.  This shows from how, in Guild Wars 1, everybody just scaled their damage and effect values manually with individual "attribute point" choices rather than stacking gear stats.  The power of a skill was built into that skill itself (via its associated skill type) rather than reliant on arbitrary gear stats.

Pets in general in GW2:  Ranged or not, they're trash because of how hands-off they are.  Fun fact:  Ranger pets used to die super quickly if people focused them around when the game launched.  Solution?  Literally tripled their HP and toughness, so then they just never died no matter how much focus you applied.  Pets on any class wouldn't be such a massive issue if they had to be manually controlled or tediously maintained.  None of them do, so that's the main reason why they're so insufferable; they're an extra, freebie damage cloud with no maintenance.  That all said, I also agree, that they probably shouldn't be the source of a lot of extreme ranged/AoE damage or CC.

CC:  It's trash, yeah.  It hurts more because GW2 has so little true customization with its skill bar at the end of the day, and so many stuns come passively either built into classes or via traits.  It's crazy how you could load up your entire skill bar in GW1 with interrupts and not actually be that effective.  The reason was due to opportunity cost.  Most e-specs and associated weapons/kits do their best to force-feed the users with everything they need to easily survive, and THEN they also throw in some random CC for no real reason.  There's no real function or specialization--it's just all flavor; which quickly leads to things being overpowered.

Boons:  Agreed.  What's still the absolute CRAZIEST thing to me beyond just how they're so spammable, is that the only ones which stack are might and stability (and stability stacking up to or beyond 3 is already enough to end any viable attempt at securing a single CC).

GW2's speed in general:  GW2 is positively garbage at balancing the speeds between players and damage.  It's never been good, and it's only gotten worse.  This isn't just a superspeed thing either; it's more like how Thief set a precedent for teleport spam being extremely effective at lowering the threshold for risk in every encounter.  You don't have to really time anything or think too hard if you can blink in and out while covering your attacks with built-in damage negation tied to your attacks.  After a while, every other class became more and more thief-like.  If anything, it'd be a lot more interesting to see everybody move at a baseline superspeed rate, see teleports culled vastly back to near non-existence, and then scripted movement replaced by more manual leap attacks that don't require targets and allow more mid-air freedom of movement.  It's extremely easy to hit anyone in GW2 (especially in PvP where the main mode is just contesting a tiny point the size of the average AoE attack).  Might as well up speeds and make things more about deciding on where a player wants to be rather than forcing people to pick the ones which just teleport the most or have the most passive escape/movement bonuses.

[Kodama.6453]

Ngl, I think if they followed your "advice" here, this would be a boring kitten game.

Also sounds like you might be a tiny bit biased towards necro.

[Hotride.2187]

But the game has all of the above? Do you want another game?

Ranged bursts normally come from squishies or can be reflected, or both. Last few patches brought some unfortunate exceptions (I think catalyst is the biggest problem here). I hope that gets ironed out.

For condi vs power, just no. Fighting condi is like watching paint dry.

For boon spam I dont know how that is a thing in spvp. Play some wvw to see real boon spam. Also I dont understand how there is a paragraph complaining about lack of boon duration, but also one that complains about boons. If someone pops 10 boons, do some jumping puzzles and wait a few seconds out.

And if not for CCs I really dont see how a lot of professions would ever die, especially if there is a support nearby.

Edited December 20, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[Sahne.6950]

There is so many wrong and biased things... i dont even know where to start....         so i wont.

[Kodama.6453]

2 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

There is so many wrong and biased things... i dont even know where to start....         so i wont.

The bias is kinda funny, tho. I especially liked the bit about "you should NEVER leave a necro like me lie in downstate! You should all come and sacrifice your souls to protect me! I AM THE MESSIAHS!"

[Zekent.3652]

High damage ranged builds are fine as long as their build doesn't have really good survival skills.

[noneHotBuildTest.7251]

11 hours ago, Horace.3184 said:

Poor Concepts

High Ranged DPS:
    
    Ranged DPS should not be used to get a quick win in the distance, instead, it should have been low conditional damage in an effort to shrink a player's health some before the face-to-face "throw down."  The only players who can get through ranged dps are those players who can go immune to all damage for 10+ seconds...still don’t know how they’re doing that because I can’t find such an ability on any class/spec.  It won’t matter in the end because the “CC” is going to get them.

 

Power Rules All:

 

    Guildwars 2 is the only mmorpg I've played that only has one attribute that really matters.  You can stack conditional damage and never get high enough conditions to be a threat.  You can stack healing and never get enough healing to have major sustains.  You can stack concentration and never get enough boon duration.  It doesn't matter what you stack, if it isn't Power, it's not going to make a major difference when it comes to PvP and Roaming.  So when you see Meta builds for Core Condi Necro, ignore it because Condi builds really don't exists.  That sucks, because the concept of a Necro that can deal damage like a power build through conditions kind of buts the "necro" in Necromancer.

 

Pets with Ranged DPS:

 

    As if it's not bad enough the developers gave classes long ranged DPS, they added Pets who can do significant damage and "CC", further adding to easy ranged kills for ranged classes with Pets.

 

"CC":

 

    This one concept is probably the biggest breaker of PvP in GW2.  All players needed was one special slot on their action bar that allowed them to have one "CC" ability and a significant cool down should have been placed on the slot.  That's it....one "CC" that would probably only get used once in a 1 on 1 encounter unless the fight goes on for awhile.  Instead, the developers have "CC" all over the place and as a result, the combat is broken beyond repair.  There is no face-to-face "throw down" because you're stunned, dazed, knocked down, floated, launched, etc etc all the freaking time.  The Mesmer class combat is build around keeping you "CC'ed" all the time.  WORST decision a developer could have come up with!

 

Excessive Boons:

 

    I just can't wrap my head around the fact, the developers didn't see what was going to happen when players put all their boons together in PvP...  I mean, it's really like...common sense.  The same thing that happened because of excessive "CC" was going to happen with excessive boons.  That's why Zerg Blobs can just steam roll over everything and everybody, again, eliminating any meaning combat because you can't fight it, you just die.  A quick fix for excessive boons, would be to simply make boons self-boons in WvW, maybe with the exception of one or two, that would benefit a Zerg some but not over-power it.  Two Zergs should be able to collide and players should just rumble....face-to-face "throw down" but sadly, all the "CC" and high ranged dps would make that impossible even if boons were controlled.

 

Super Speed:

 

    One of the things I did like about Warcraft’s PvP was the fact you couldn’t really do too much running...not like you can in GW2.  What’s the point in PvP if you’re going to allow players to escape combat with ease?  What’s the point in downing a player if you’re going to allow them to rally up with ease?  I’ve seen players fall in combat and before their back could hit the ground, they were back up, full health and teleported off in the distance.  This.... This is why game development isn’t for every one.  Quick fix, remove self speed boosts, remove rally as it stands.  If a player falls, the next action click by the person still standing will auto trigger a finishing move that happens faster, no long cast time.  The only rally should come from a team mate helping you up but that’s before any finishing move takes you out.  If a players is engaging in a finishing move and gets hit by an enemy player, the finishing move cast bar drops a little, thus given teammates time to rally their fallen comrade.  Simply put, you fall, you die unless teammate saves you.  This will also teach players the value of helping their teammates off the ground because players on your side will just leave you down.  Every time that happens to me, I happily watch the team fail because NEVER leave your Condi Build Meta Necro on the ground!!  Such a Necro brings too much to a Zerg effort!  Boon corruptions, conditional status, skill interrupts, high sustain target...  That is the stuff that breaks up a Zerg...  NEVER LEAVE THAT ON THE GROUND!!!!  In fact, you want about 10 Necros in your group like that but sadly, players have switched to the newer, power based “OP’ed” classes (“Devs“ fault).

Conclusion....

 

What were the developers trying to create with PvP?  PvP is supposed to be Player vs Player, not Player vs "CC" or Player vs "OP Classes" or Player vs Death Boon Zerg.  World of Warcraft was not as broken as Guildwars 2 in the PvP department!  The biggest issue in "WOW" was class balance, not "CC."  This "CC" thing is absolutely garbage!  Sure, stick it in PvE if you want to that's fine, but NOT in PvP...not to the extreme extent it is currently at!

 

You ever wonder why players circle around and back up a lot or just run in WvW?  High Ranged DPS and "CC!"  What else are they going to do...run forward while that "Engi" is blasting them with a stream of shots as their Bot jumps up in the air for the slam that will have you laying on the ground for 10+ seconds while the "Engi" is still blasting away....?

Fan Boys and Girls can say what you want....  Defending such horrible development will not help Guildwars 2.  The only reason the servers are still buzzing is because all mmorpgs suck a this point in time.  Man...  If one done right were to ever drop....  ...................... ............................... ............  I'm not even going to stress that you already know what would happen and if you're denying it, you're just fooling yourself.

Really, the developers of GW2 would have been better off just going with the old Tank, Healer, DPS, Support structure like in World of Warcraft.  Tanks could be your front line in WvW because with all the High Ranged DPS, you would need a damage absorbing class to run front line but such a class has to be the lowest dps in the game to balance it.  No one really wants to run front line and  that’s evident because of all the Zerg moving back, around, side to side or just hauling tail out of there.

 

Worst PvP game ever made and I approve this message.  (thumbs up)

 

Not proof reading so “typos” can suck it.
 

High Ranged DPS = engi  nade

Power Rules All = power scrapper 

Pets with Ranged DPS = rifle mecha

CC = tool holo

Excessive Boons =  prot alchemy engi

Super Speed = Kinetic Battery engi

 

Conclusion = nef engi will solve the problem

 

[Luthan.5236]

It is a team game though. Just have some guys with the same stuff in your own team. Then it is balanced - and fun. (Since more of the stuff mentioned here ... used tactically - means more fun.)

Otherwise it would just be boring combat.

Edited December 20, 2022 by Luthan.5236

[Khalisto.5780]

Pretty much disagree with everything but the boons part

 

Boon access and duration is what makes elites so much stronger compared to core, this is a pve and pvp issue btw

[Kodama.6453]

36 minutes ago, noneHotBuildTest.7251 said:

High Ranged DPS = engi  nade

Power Rules All = power scrapper 

Pets with Ranged DPS = rifle mecha

CC = tool holo

Excessive Boons =  prot alchemy engi

Super Speed = Kinetic Battery engi

 

Conclusion = nef engi will solve the problem

 

High Ranged DPS = scepter or staff ele

Power Rules All = power catalyst

Pets with Ranged DPS = glyph of (lesser) elementals ele

CC = shock aura tempest / catalyst

Excessive Boons = literally every ele build in existence

Super Speed = air elementalist

 

Conclusion = nerf ele, it will solve the problem /s

Can we please get perma bans on this forum just for this guy?

[Khalisto.5780]

I read this post like

 

Obviously new player

 

High ranged dps: owned by rifle mech

Power rules it all: clearly hasnt played for long enough to witness a condi meta

Pets with range dps: it doesnt really matter if it's ranged or not, even if it was melee this AIs have so much health that they wont die in your aoe

CC: memed by cc spam spellbreakers

Excessive boons: this i actually agree

Superspeed: only 3 classes can consistently pump ss, fa weaver, holo and scrapper, so i dont know, you maybe playing necro so you cant keep up with almost any class

[baldr.9784]

I agree with some of the points made here, Im a newer player and the barrier to entry to start playing pvp in this game is extremely high.

I think the main reason for this is the strength of buffs and debuffs, And also the quite absurd dmg, That often leads to straight confusion of why I died and what I should have done to prevent it. 

[Cuks.8241]

Maybe you should first specify what game mode you are actually talking about. Wvw is generally a team mode, sure solo roaming is fun but its not on Anet's priority to balance. If you want small scale combat spvp is your mode of choice. Some of your complaints might be valid in some specific encounters but you make it seem like all you do is trying to solo a 30 man zerg. 

So Ill assume you are talking about wvw and mostly roaming.

Power rules all. Currently many if not most strongest roaming builds run celestial gear which is usually a bit heavier on the condi dmg. Its a completely balanced set stat wise and its the exact opposite to what you are describing. In group play yeah power rules all until your cleanses stop keeping up (which shouldnt happen).

Pets with ranged dps. You died to ranger. It sucks but LB soul beast have clear weaknesses. Druid can be an annoying kitten yes. There are no pets or rangers in group play.

CC. Yeah game has a lot of CC and no DR. Game also have lots of stun breaks and a boon called stability. If you get CCed in a Wvw group your composition was bad or you got outplayed.

Boons. Yeah boons are over the top. But mostly this applies to group play boon stacking. And half of your other complaints go straight out of the window when we talk about group play.

Super speed. You go all over the place in this paragraph. I agree its too strong and its kinda mandatory fro group play. In solo roaming its not an issue. 

I think you're just expecting too much from a core necro. Its not a build that you want to find yourself alone in the field against pretty much anything and its just a worse necro variant compared to any elite spec. Celestial harbinger is god tier in roaming and both power scourge and reaper are meta in groups.

 

 

[Kodama.6453]

4 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

So Ill assume you are talking about wvw and mostly roaming.

Dude, this is the PvP subforum and the title of the thread is "Concepts to Avoid in PvP Game Design".

[Eddie.9143]

forgot stealth and moa. 

[Bazsi.2734]

I'd like to add an additional concept to avoid: Threads like these.

[Swagg.9236]

This is a good example of why this game's community is basically broken inside lol.  A guy shows up to levy criticism about gameplay legibility, combat interactivity, and the lack of any real roles, and then the whole forum just throws mud because all these dudes who "know" how to play a super-esoteric game with a bunch of cul-de-sac design gimmicks "know better."  We've got the term "whales" for the dudes who feed GW2's gem store IV drip, but I wonder what word these guys deserve.  Sorry that you tried to have a conversation, OP.