Rotation vs reaction, work vs fun

[Raven.1793]

One big reason many of us do not like the 6/27 changes it made the game less fun. There has been an attempt to fix this by numeric tweaks but that will not work. The problem is that the balance philosophy itself is narrowly focused around an inherently unfun type of gameplay: skill rotations. Mukluk already has a great video describing the problem from a druid perspective. Since scrapper is my pve main, I'll describe the situation from that perspective. For comparison, I find catalyst - my wvw main - to be no fun at all in pve. I don't believe the accusations of favoritism towards elementalist but I will suggest that game balance has leaned too much towards balancing all professions to be like elementalist which is a bad direction for the game.

Before the patch, quick dps scrapper was fun. We were the lowest entry on the benchmark but it did not feel that way since burst dps was good with clever gameplay on very short fights. Using gyros off CD was not a problem as long as you always use medic, blast, shredder in order with the possible addition of purge, bypass, and function. I personally ran enough diviner so that I could comfortably run everything off of the 25s CD for blast. That is it, my quickness rotation was 4-5 skills executed in under 2 seconds once every 25 seconds - this is about the same amount of time as rocket charge. The rest of the time, I could engage with the game, paying attention to mechanics and looking for opportunities to make the best use of utilities such as superspeed, stability, purge, etc. Quickness uptime and dps made the build viable but people do not play "barely viable" builds. People play strong builds or fun builds. Quick scrapper was not a strong build, but it was a fun build thanks to its minimal rotation and reactive game play.

There is a good reason I keep my elementalist in wvw. The pve rotations for catalyst require constantly invoking skills off cooldown. Weaver has a few autoattacks that make it worse because we then need to perfect the art of skill chaining and cancelling. If I want to do anything outside of the rotation such as CC, I have to plan for it a few seconds ahead of time and figure out how to restart my rotation again afterwards. Note that this mechanic is not too bad in wvw because the gameplay is inherently unpredictable and it's generally possible to recover or counter-pressure if I choose the wrong skill chain. Not so in pve where missing the rotation can cause a major dps drop, loss of boons, or missed CC that could ultimately result in a group wipe. Staring at cooldowns or practicing my muscle memory is not fun. It's work.

So what makes for fun gameplay? In the case of pve scrapper, the rotation was minimal and I could focus on reacting to the game environment. In the case of wvw catalyst, the dynamic nature of fighting other players created an environment where short skill chains were more relevant than rotation execution. For all of its flaws, the original design philosophy of GW2 was all about fun. Encounters were chaotic, professions were unique, and mechanics encouraged players to engage with the game. I understand that there are many who want to work hard and who want the game to reward hard work, but that game is not the Guild Wars 2 I played for 10 years.

When anecdotes conflict with data, there is probably a problem with the way you are using that data. This means that something is wrong with your balance philosophy. For once, listen to your customers, completely roll back the druid and scrapper changes, and rethink balance from the perspective of what players enjoy.

[DeceiverX.8361]

I mean yeah, that's why the entire premise of the core game was having no roles and no real buffing-style gameplay.  Boons and effects were all mostly self-cast and short duration aside from a few things like AoE stability from Guardian for larger-scale PvP.

If someone went down, the rest of the party would need to react and adapt to get them back up.  This bucked the norm of the entire MMO industry and launched GW2 into the limelight of success.

GW2 with elite spec powercreep, gear stat block powercreep, boon-oriented play/powercreep and the enabling of DPS meters has evolved into a copy of WoW with the only remaining community members obsessing over raid numbers rather than the thing people purchased from launch, and it's been this way, especially so in the competitive modes, for nearly a decade.  The silent migration has been staggering (especially from the competitive modes), and is why the company continues to see YoY income decline more or less since the first expansion.  People who've stuck around are only really noticing now because a lot of the fun theme builds were already so bad prior to all these things being exacerbated by the expansions that nobody played them anyways.  What was "left" is now being put into the same overcrowded graveyard of weapons and traits and utilities that have sucked and continue to suck for years that people have just gotten up and left for having been once viable and now utterly useless. 

When was the last time you heard of a S/S mesmer doing anything?  Literally like 2013.

In that same era, I played a ludicrously-tanky healing power P/P venom thief in sPvP that would reset its health bar from 0 to full near-instantly every 5 seconds.  Stuff like that no longer exists.  And frankly, it's why everyone I know quit, including myself, aside from more or less just trolling around on the forums.

I'm sorry to tell you this, but what you want is largely what everyone who initially joined wanted, and most of those players are no longer here, because ANet has not catered to that audience in quite literally close to 10 years, while showing no signs of attempting to put forward an effort to bring them back into the fold.

[FrancisN.9276]

In order to make gameplay lean more toward "reaction" than "rotation" is making every class having 1 no CD attack skill with the HIGHEST damage efficiency and the remaining 4 short CD skills loaded with effects (CC, evasive movement, block, self buff,...) with LOW damage efficiency. This way, when you want your highest DPS possible, you will let yourself be either vulnerable or unable to CC your target. Or take thief, for a different approach, the initiative mechanic allows for this kind of reactive combo gameplay rather than rotational combo gameplay, which is really fun.

[itspomf.9523]

Not going to quote the whole thing here, but just signing in to say, thank you, @DeceiverX.8361

This is what I've been feeling since early 2014 and the introduction of specializations, which killed countless builds and paved the way for easy consolidation over quality and unique choice (and the quantity thereof that made the Guild Wars franchise what it was since Prophecies).

[Gaeb.2837]

On 7/3/2023 at 9:46 PM, Raven.1793 said:

Before the patch, quick dps scrapper was fun. We were the lowest entry on the benchmark but it did not feel that way since burst dps was good with clever gameplay on very short fights. Using gyros off CD was not a problem as long as you always use medic, blast, shredder in order with the possible addition of purge, bypass, and function. I personally ran enough diviner so that I could comfortably run everything off of the 25s CD for blast. That is it, my quickness rotation was 4-5 skills executed in under 2 seconds once every 25 seconds - this is about the same amount of time as rocket charge. The rest of the time, I could engage with the game, paying attention to mechanics and looking for opportunities to make the best use of utilities such as superspeed, stability, purge, etc. Quickness uptime and dps made the build viable but people do not play "barely viable" builds. People play strong builds or fun builds. Quick scrapper was not a strong build, but it was a fun build thanks to its minimal rotation and reactive game play.

Great articulation of why I loved the old quick scrapper and hate the new one.    

Why has renegade been a king of alac for so long? You push one button every 20s (@80% boon dur) and the rest of the time you're able to react and play the game. You can build support or dps and be effective in either role (and more importantly, you get to play the game!) while still providing 100% Alac uptime.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Gaeb.2837

[Roadkizzle.2157]

@DeceiverX.8361

The rotation vs reaction is why I prefer support classes over DPS classes.

 

In other games Support classes have no rotations but DPS classes are utterly dependent on maintaining optimized rote rotations or else their DPS suffers and it's harder to beat the bosses.

But support classes have to react to the battle to help control it.

 

But from what I see Anet removed any way for the players to really affect the flow of battles except by how fast they can power through mechanics.

There is no CC in boss fights. There is no taunting. The bosses really don't even notice the players at all. That was done to keep players from being able to control the fights so that tank roles couldn't be introduced.

 

But that means that players really have zero agency in the fights. It's just up to them to avoid set mechanics and the only control they have is how fast they can push through phases to hopefully bypass mechanics.

This means that the game is much more dependent on rigid rotations than a dynamic reactive combat system.

 

I think the lack of reactive combat in favor of rigid rotations stems more from the original game design of forcing no possible tank or full support roles by removing the ways players have agency over the combat.

[Flapjackson.1596]

Rotations to a certain extent are an unavoidable part of a combat system, particularly one with minimal resource cost for using skills. I agree that Anet has seemed to lose focus on the problems with how Gw2 handles rotations. There are three major pain points they haven’t addressed:

1. How much “real estate” should a damage rotation take up on a skill bar? Should classes that commit more of their skills to a damage rotation be rewarded with more dps? Is damage cost for bringing utility fairly distributed across builds? Should more damage be weighted towards auto attack chains to shift emphasis on skill usage?

2. Skills do too many things. This is a major headache because it isn’t easy to determine what the intended use for a skill should be when it does a dozen different things. Skills that do too many things at once make it challenging to properly react to combat because you always end up wasting a portion of the skill. This can be very frustrating when key parts of the skill like stab or aegis get burnt because a player had another purpose for it.

3. How much “real estate” should boons take up on a skill bar? This is in part a duration and gearing issue. The duration of boons and the boon duration required is inconsistent across builds and leads to very frustrating gameplay when Anet is stingy on boon duration. If you can increase boon duration, then you typically have less skill demand. You end up with less damage though for taking BD through gearing. The push for max damage encourages players to have worse feeling skill usage just to keep up boons. Utility at the cost of damage is fine, but is a smooth gameplay experience worth sacrificing? Boons must be provided, so they will inherently make the skill usage feel worse the more emphasis you give them.
Druid will be much better off after the 7/18 buff, but it still begs the question, which parts of a spec’s kit are acceptable to be roped into boons? Should the major selling point of the spec (i.e. the big celestial form) be dedicated to the monotonous task of maintaining a permanent party buff? Should the gyros on scrapper do this? What about the overloads on a tempest? 

[Aaron Forestman.4758]

38 minutes ago, Roadkizzle.2157 said:

But from what I see Anet removed any way for the players to really affect the flow of battles except by how fast they can power through mechanics.

There is no CC in boss fights. There is no taunting. The bosses really don't even notice the players at all. That was done to keep players from being able to control the fights so that tank roles couldn't be introduced.

 

But that means that players really have zero agency in the fights. It's just up to them to avoid set mechanics and the only control they have is how fast they can push through phases to hopefully bypass mechanics.

This means that the game is much more dependent on rigid rotations than a dynamic reactive combat system.

 

I think the lack of reactive combat in favor of rigid rotations stems more from the original game design of forcing no possible tank or full support roles by removing the ways players have agency over the combat.

That's only really the case in strike missions. Almost all raids have tanking mechanics and require dynamic movement and reaction to a wide array of attacks rather than mindless dps rotations. If you focus on strikes, the worst of the endgame content, you'll naturally only see the worst of what the game has to offer.

[Roadkizzle.2157]

3 hours ago, Aaron Forestman.4758 said:

That's only really the case in strike missions. Almost all raids have tanking mechanics and require dynamic movement and reaction to a wide array of attacks rather than mindless dps rotations. If you focus on strikes, the worst of the endgame content, you'll naturally only see the worst of what the game has to offer.

No you have it backwards.

Raids are really the only case in GW2 where tanking is legitimately possible.

But Raiding is almost impossible to get into in GW2. Takes a much bigger investment than almost any player is able to commit.

That's why Strikes were created and are much more popular in GW2.

 

Fractals, Strikes, Dungeons, and Metas all really don't have tanks and the only roles there are DPS and Boon Support of which one normally adds AOE heals automatically into the rotation.

Even then tanking is only about having high toughness for boss fights. There should be much more tools to control the fights.

[Echostorm.9143]

On 7/4/2023 at 10:49 AM, FrancisN.9276 said:

In order to make gameplay lean more toward "reaction" than "rotation" is making every class having 1 no CD attack skill with the HIGHEST damage efficiency and the remaining 4 short CD skills loaded with effects (CC, evasive movement, block, self buff,...) with LOW damage efficiency. This way, when you want your highest DPS possible, you will let yourself be either vulnerable or unable to CC your target. Or take thief, for a different approach, the initiative mechanic allows for this kind of reactive combo gameplay rather than rotational combo gameplay, which is really fun.

Very well said OP and @FrancisN.9276 

The way it's been going feels like they might as well take the skills and descriptions away and just leave a giant number on each key, hit them in this order and you win.  I miss EQ style buffs you applied every hour or so or DAoC where they were on until you died.  They were important but you got to focus on the game and reacting to the fights, not this soulless boring rotation kitten.

I don't feel like a gamer, I feel like a macro.

[Batalix.2873]

So this is tangential to another problem I have been trying to identify:

Weaponswap is kind of a flavorless, tyrannical, spastic blahness in this game. Most professions and builds strongly encourage if not mandate crafting rotations off the weaponswap cooldown, because in general if you have access to a damaging skill you have to use it.

I don't like this gameplay. I don't like breaking a tool that was initially crafted to be used as intentional *stances* or *kits* into radical shifts in tone/utility every 10 seconds or less. I don't like the fact that most of the time when I swap to a staff in Necro or longbow in Warrior, I am doing it at point blank range as if it were a melee weapon and enjoying none of its unique identity. I don't like that on nearly every build, I have a weaponset that feels right and I prefer, but also this second weaponset I had to slot out of obligation to do DPS.

I think a lot of the overtuning and power creep and even some of the problems with Weaponsmastery might be alleviated if the game would just increase the weaponswap cooldown and invest more in making single-set weapons have engaging gameplay loops. It would allow much better focusing of damage balancing without needing to account for players trying to break systems. But with profession/espec-specific features/traits, would still allow for targeted opportunities for some builds to craft swapping rotations.

Other benefits of this would be: players having more options and modularity with their rotations and weapon choices. Because instead of having to combine the weapons into a single rotation, they would have two separate stance rotations that can each focus on separate strengths or functions. It would likely also open up the meta to more weapon options that would now be able to self-promote (or otherwise be more easily tweaked) instead of being included on a basis of whether they "slot in" with the more meta weapon choices.

Obviously this wouldn't work in a vacuum, other things would need to be adjusted. I feel like a lot of numbers would need tweaking up and down, as well as several weapons given more exciting gameplay loops/options. But on the whole I just don't like weaponswap and think over access to it has been a large part of power creep in the game.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Batalix.2873

[DeceiverX.8361]

10 hours ago, Roadkizzle.2157 said:

@DeceiverX.8361

The rotation vs reaction is why I prefer support classes over DPS classes.

 

In other games Support classes have no rotations but DPS classes are utterly dependent on maintaining optimized rote rotations or else their DPS suffers and it's harder to beat the bosses.

But support classes have to react to the battle to help control it.

 

But from what I see Anet removed any way for the players to really affect the flow of battles except by how fast they can power through mechanics.

There is no CC in boss fights. There is no taunting. The bosses really don't even notice the players at all. That was done to keep players from being able to control the fights so that tank roles couldn't be introduced.

 

But that means that players really have zero agency in the fights. It's just up to them to avoid set mechanics and the only control they have is how fast they can push through phases to hopefully bypass mechanics.

This means that the game is much more dependent on rigid rotations than a dynamic reactive combat system.

 

I think the lack of reactive combat in favor of rigid rotations stems more from the original game design of forcing no possible tank or full support roles by removing the ways players have agency over the combat.

The thing is, support roles in difficult content could have easily been achieved by better encounter design.  Not even insofar as much as raw healing but mechanics to encourage healing and sustain builds helping out, and a few mechanics on all of the professions to help mitigate damage.

Examples for an encounter designs to promote but not mandate supportive play (not even just direct healing) without dedicated trinity roles, just off the top of my head:

- Swarms of health sponge enemies with fairly low but consistent damage attack the players.  Back in the days of 5-target cap, this would force a lot of players to either position very well and slowly grind down the mobs, or be able to stack up and heal through the damage while grinding their numbers.

- A boss having a persistent weak spot/extra hit location where it takes increased damage, but players standing near it take significant constant DoT or retal damage on top of existing aggro/AoE.

- Extra mechanics which bolster party damage at the expense of the player attacking the boss itself; think CoE plant boss, but with more constant need for maintenance of these mechanics by a skilled player, but also without such huge penalties as to make it required.

- Multiple strong attackers with improved AI; support is what defines the PvP modes in GW2 being as strong as it is in competitive.  This has never been reflected in PvE, and Big Dumb AI is the biggest reason why all PvE boils down to DPS rushes.

Examples of profession mechanics which help mitigate group damage:

- AoE Aegis/Stealth/Immunity to negate a single large attack/combo by the boss

- AoE stunbreaks/stability with more boss stuns and combos

- Supportive skills/utilities and trait options having or providing better combo field potential.

 

The support role doesn't need to exist by forcing players into dying without it.  It just needs to be viable in terms of an encounter and the benefits it provides.  Support-loving players are obviously going to want to play a support role, but the fact of the matter is in most games, an overwhelming majority of players don't like playing support, and the dependence on the DPS/tank/healer trinity has caused a ton of games to die due to a lot of players struggling to make proper parties.  This was directly addressed near the launch of GW2 and explicitly stated why they didn't release the trinity; it's financially a bad decision and makes people quit.

By extension, DPS meters need to be removed from the game so toxic assholes don't kick people for playing less-than-optimal DPS.

[Roadkizzle.2157]

3 hours ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

The thing is, support roles in difficult content could have easily been achieved by better encounter design.  Not even insofar as much as raw healing but mechanics to encourage healing and sustain builds helping out, and a few mechanics on all of the professions to help mitigate damage.

Examples for an encounter designs to promote but not mandate supportive play (not even just direct healing) without dedicated trinity roles, just off the top of my head:

- Swarms of health sponge enemies with fairly low but consistent damage attack the players.  Back in the days of 5-target cap, this would force a lot of players to either position very well and slowly grind down the mobs, or be able to stack up and heal through the damage while grinding their numbers.

- A boss having a persistent weak spot/extra hit location where it takes increased damage, but players standing near it take significant constant DoT or retal damage on top of existing aggro/AoE.

- Extra mechanics which bolster party damage at the expense of the player attacking the boss itself; think CoE plant boss, but with more constant need for maintenance of these mechanics by a skilled player, but also without such huge penalties as to make it required.

- Multiple strong attackers with improved AI; support is what defines the PvP modes in GW2 being as strong as it is in competitive.  This has never been reflected in PvE, and Big Dumb AI is the biggest reason why all PvE boils down to DPS rushes.

Examples of profession mechanics which help mitigate group damage:

- AoE Aegis/Stealth/Immunity to negate a single large attack/combo by the boss

- AoE stunbreaks/stability with more boss stuns and combos

- Supportive skills/utilities and trait options having or providing better combo field potential.

 

The support role doesn't need to exist by forcing players into dying without it.  It just needs to be viable in terms of an encounter and the benefits it provides.  Support-loving players are obviously going to want to play a support role, but the fact of the matter is in most games, an overwhelming majority of players don't like playing support, and the dependence on the DPS/tank/healer trinity has caused a ton of games to die due to a lot of players struggling to make proper parties.  This was directly addressed near the launch of GW2 and explicitly stated why they didn't release the trinity; it's financially a bad decision and makes people quit.

By extension, DPS meters need to be removed from the game so toxic assholes don't kick people for playing less-than-optimal DPS.

But all those mechanics really just require players to master their rotations so they can keep providing the DPS needed to make it through the mechanics.

Grinding down swarms are just maintaining DPS to chew through the crowd.

Weak spots on bosses forces optimized DPS rotations to be able to take out the weak spots as quick as possible to limit incoming damage.

DPSing down mechanics other than the boss.

 

It's all just memorizing your DPS rotation. The only difference is where do you stand while doing the rotation. Do you stand in a specific spot on the boss? Do you stand behind the boss using the rotation on a pillar?

Bosses are immune to CC. Breakbars are just another phase where you have a rotation to get the optimal amount of Breakbar DPS out. Still just rote process.

The only real thing I'll give you is Stability and Aegis shouldn't be a set part of a rotation other than for Firebrand. But they have enough sources of it to be able to throw them out constantly.

[DeceiverX.8361]

1 hour ago, Roadkizzle.2157 said:

But all those mechanics really just require players to master their rotations so they can keep providing the DPS needed to make it through the mechanics.

Grinding down swarms are just maintaining DPS to chew through the crowd.

Weak spots on bosses forces optimized DPS rotations to be able to take out the weak spots as quick as possible to limit incoming damage.

DPSing down mechanics other than the boss.

 

It's all just memorizing your DPS rotation. The only difference is where do you stand while doing the rotation. Do you stand in a specific spot on the boss? Do you stand behind the boss using the rotation on a pillar?

Bosses are immune to CC. Breakbars are just another phase where you have a rotation to get the optimal amount of Breakbar DPS out. Still just rote process.

The only real thing I'll give you is Stability and Aegis shouldn't be a set part of a rotation other than for Firebrand. But they have enough sources of it to be able to throw them out constantly.

That assumes bosses just stand there and run their own rotations of damage, though, or that the swarms aren't threatening enough to outlast player sustain resources.  Even on fairly low damage, if you throw 100 monsters at 10 players, each dealing 500 damage per second, and each with 750k health, each player is taking 5k/second or more on a pure average, with tankier players in reality taking way more, and the "stand and grind" mentality breaks down because all stat-stick defenses just get overwhelmed.  Suddenly, it's a madhouse with every individual player kiting things around and struggling for even brief seconds of reprieve while everyone cycles their mitigation to cover for each other.  A thief goes into stealth because it just lost half its health in two seconds and now 20 more mobs aggro the necromancer who's out of life force.  Everyone has to move together and aggro has to be managed.

Player rotations can be pretty easily interrupted by making the bosses a bit less predictable.  I addressed this in the point about improved AI.  Getting a boss to be responsive to what's happening around it makes a true standard rotation impossible.  Or frankly, even if the boss behaves in a semi-predictable but difficult-to-deal-with way that doesn't consist of standing around menacingly while just eating tons of attacks with the same repeated phases.  If a boss is allowed to just boon strip, stun the party, and then immediately do it again, the channeled DPS skills all fail and every rotation is screwed up.  Obviously this is an extreme example that is overly-punishing, but these are the kinds of scenarios players should be prepared to face in difficult PvE.

There will always be optima for how damage is dealt when players are safe.  Cancelling animations, using some skills to more-efficiently gain resources or gain some interactions, choosing to use certain skills over others and maximize the output they have at a given point in time... there's no way to inhibit this.  Even in the scope of the competitive modes, which are way more dynamic and require way more snap-decision making on the whole, there are always time-efficient combos and animation cancels for these conditions.  It's the nature of having predefined skills in combat in general.  I do a fair bit of swordsmanship competitive combat in real life, and even then, with limitless possibilities and angles of attack, there are still some genuinely preferable maneuvers and stances - offensive and defensive - that take priority an overwhelming majority of the time, because there's just no point in wasting energy or risking getting hit while trying something superfluous or less-efficient.  A little one-two sequence, a preferable defensive guard catered to your opponent based on their height and weight and combat style and aggression and yours... there will always be small optimizations people make when trying to win at anything.

A thief will backstab for damage, a mesmer will try and rapidly generate clones for Mind Wrack, a ranger will usually use Rapid Fire after Point-Blank Shot, and so on.  Unless there are no skills in the game, it'll always have some degree of this.  Getting players to be constantly evaluating their safety and maybe need to preserve some cooldowns for different situations is the best that can be done.  The desired outcome isn't to homogenize all skills to be numerically identical - that'd be tremendously boring and impossible unless all kits had all the same skills and no skills had overlapping utility - the desired outcome is to make people be just on the edge enough to know they run a risk of death if they stop paying attention, or that they won't deal as much damage as possible if they ignore the mechanics constantly changing before them.  That's why encounter design is the major factor here which ANet has largely failed on.  Most of everything can just be bypassed by stacking up and boonballing through the worst of it, and engaging support gameplay should come from interacting with the mechanics to enable your party out there dealing the damage, which statistically, is what most people want to be doing.

If the rhetorical boss with a "weak spot" was highly-mobile, constantly changed direction, and such a "weak spot" was only a 90 degree cone behind it, this interrupts rotations by forcing players to move around and re-prioritize when to activate their skills.  If a major damaging skill comes off cooldown and the boss relocates such that its "weak spot" is no longer available, the player needs to decide if it's worth spending the time autoing or using different skills for a few seconds while they re-position, or just burning the skill and not getting the bonus and just waiting until next time.  That delay inherently counters rotations by forcing the player to make those changes on the fly.  And should player power not be so insanely bloated like it is now wherein cooldowns are actually a real concern, the decision carries even more weight.

Further, only current bosses are immune to CC at all times.  The entire discussion is how ANet has failed to make their encounter design allow for reactive play and provide support players things to do.  They can always change mechanics if they desire to.  What if during certain attack animations, just before the damage comes out, some bosses were reworked to take huge penalties to their respective break bars to be interrupted by very little CC akin to a FromSoft game?  What if a boss encounter is designed to not have a single boss, but many hard-hitting but controllable player-like entities which can be CC'ed?  The possibilities are limitless as to what ANet can do to make challenging encounters less one-dimensional than big health sponges with burn phases and stacking CC together.  That's my whole point; the change to enable supportive playstyles has always needed to have been based on fundamentally changing how players engage with the content rather than keeping it more of the same.

Edited July 6, 2023 by DeceiverX.8361

[Raven.1793]

It's good to see that so many people remember and enjoy the way the game was originally designed. GW2 is a beautiful game. I love the art style and gameplay design really incentivized players to watch and interact with the game environment instead of focusing on the skill bar. I would say that rotations and reactions are both built into the gameplay. There will always be an optimal way to play in pve and that optimal approach will involve a rotation. The issue is how much time and effort should the fixed part of this rotation take? A lot of design effort is going into making the rotations interesting and challenging. Herein lies the problem: rotations are predictable and they are tedious. Creating more ways to work does not make it fun. The original team understood this well and built a game that emphasized dodges, in-combat rezzing, and damage window mechanics over executing the same set of skills over and over again.

3 minutes ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

Player rotations can be pretty easily interrupted by making the bosses a bit less predictable.  I addressed this in the point about improved AI.  Getting a boss to be responsive to what's happening around it makes a true standard rotation impossible.  Or frankly, even if the boss behaves in a semi-predictable but difficult-to-deal-with way that doesn't consist of standing around menacingly while just eating tons of attacks with the same repeated phases.  If a boss is allowed to just boon strip, stun the party, and then immediately do it again, the channeled DPS skills all fail and every rotation is screwed up.  Obviously this is an extreme example that is overly-punishing, but these are the kinds of scenarios players should be prepared to face in difficult PvE.

This actually sounds like a lot of fun. Having random phases and boon strips along with other mechanics that force players out of their comfort zone would go a long way towards more interesting gameplay. I think one of the keys to fun and reactive gameplay in group pve content is to set up reversible situations that are unpredictable, involve interaction with other players, and require players to pay attention to the environment.

One existing example I can think of is the role of heal scourge on boneskinner. With a perfect group, heal scourge is dead weight. However, we all know what happens in pickup strikes so people bring a heal scourge to deal with the possibility of pugs being pugs. This interaction has it all: reversible? check. unpredictable? check. player interaction? check. environmental awareness? check.  Sure the actual attack has a pattern but you can't just brainlessly transfuse after every slam, otherwise you'll have to think of something else if people get downed on the next slam.

[Yasai.3549]

DPS in general absolutely love rotational gameplay because that's their only role but Healers and Supports are the ones who prefer reaction based gameplay due to the fact that the only feedback for their skill is if they can express their role's capabilities with finesse.

The June update hit 3 builds that prefer reactionary gameplay and these 3 builds are all healers in nature. HealRes Scourge, HealDruid and HealQuickHerald. With your resources now being held hostage by Boon application, it's no wonder people who are fans of these builds are absolutely livid. Imagine being a DPS but you have to burn your DPS skills not doing damage and you can imagine why these Healers are so heartbroken when forced to throw away powerful Heals, Barriers or Energy that can translate into powerful utilities just so that the group can "maintain boon uptime".

Edited July 6, 2023 by Yasai.3549

[SlayerXX.7138]

11 hours ago, Batalix.2873 said:

I don't like this gameplay. I don't like breaking a tool that was initially crafted to be used as intentional *stances* or *kits* into radical shifts in tone/utility every 10 seconds or less. I don't like the fact that most of the time when I swap to a staff in Necro or longbow in Warrior, I am doing it at point blank range as if it were a melee weapon and enjoying none of its unique identity. I don't like that on nearly every build, I have a weaponset that feels right and I prefer, but also this second weaponset I had to slot out of obligation to do DPS.

I think a lot of the overtuning and power creep and even some of the problems with Weaponsmastery might be alleviated if the game would just increase the weaponswap cooldown and invest more in making single-set weapons have engaging gameplay loops. It would allow much better focusing of damage balancing without needing to account for players trying to break systems. But with profession/espec-specific features/traits, would still allow for targeted opportunities for some builds to craft swapping rotations.

Other benefits of this would be: players having more options and modularity with their rotations and weapon choices. Because instead of having to combine the weapons into a single rotation, they would have two separate stance rotations that can each focus on separate strengths or functions. It would likely also open up the meta to more weapon options that would now be able to self-promote (or otherwise be more easily tweaked) instead of being included on a basis of whether they "slot in" with the more meta weapon choices.

Obviously this wouldn't work in a vacuum, other things would need to be adjusted. I feel like a lot of numbers would need tweaking up and down, as well as several weapons given more exciting gameplay loops/options. But on the whole I just don't like weaponswap and think over access to it has been a large part of power creep in the game.

I think there is a much simpler solution. Just have strong auto Attacks or other forms of reliable base damage. Virtuoso Auto attacks + Bladesongs are strong enough to not relay on the weapon swap. Weapon swap will still increase your dps, but your dps doesn't drop of a cliff if you don't. Thief in general should play like you described thanks to initiative, but the devs actively work against that principal by nerfing everything they decided is too easy to play. 

[Jski.6180]

That what where combo where for but no one liked them or even knew how to use them right so they took an major back set to the games updates. A lot of what you see in the game now has a lot to do with missing effects for classes that players wanted.

I do not like how classes are now both an combo starter and finisher or how we have true healing classes but that is what they gw2 player base wanted.

Rotation are simple min max out comes of the game gw2 just lets you play more effectively with out own class effects then other classes (not comboing with other classes as well as you combo with your self.)

[Roadkizzle.2157]

8 hours ago, Raven.1793 said:

It's good to see that so many people remember and enjoy the way the game was originally designed. GW2 is a beautiful game. I love the art style and gameplay design really incentivized players to watch and interact with the game environment instead of focusing on the skill bar. I would say that rotations and reactions are both built into the gameplay. There will always be an optimal way to play in pve and that optimal approach will involve a rotation. The issue is how much time and effort should the fixed part of this rotation take? A lot of design effort is going into making the rotations interesting and challenging. Herein lies the problem: rotations are predictable and they are tedious. Creating more ways to work does not make it fun. The original team understood this well and built a game that emphasized dodges, in-combat rezzing, and damage window mechanics over executing the same set of skills over and over again.

This actually sounds like a lot of fun. Having random phases and boon strips along with other mechanics that force players out of their comfort zone would go a long way towards more interesting gameplay. I think one of the keys to fun and reactive gameplay in group pve content is to set up reversible situations that are unpredictable, involve interaction with other players, and require players to pay attention to the environment.

One existing example I can think of is the role of heal scourge on boneskinner. With a perfect group, heal scourge is dead weight. However, we all know what happens in pickup strikes so people bring a heal scourge to deal with the possibility of pugs being pugs. This interaction has it all: reversible? check. unpredictable? check. player interaction? check. environmental awareness? check.  Sure the actual attack has a pattern but you can't just brainlessly transfuse after every slam, otherwise you'll have to think of something else if people get downed on the next slam.

I hear people talk with reverence on the early game with no support roles.

But how were things designed differently then so people didn't have to rely on just performing rotations even if they're quick burst rotations?

If you have nothing but DPS specs then how do you provide anything other than trying to do DPS as quickly and optimized as possible?

Sure there are short phases, breakbars, mobile bosses, and alternate targets you have to kill. But all of those are just DPS down. Rotations are the most important thing for all of those mechanics because the quicker you get through it the less time you spend in the mechanic.

 

It's like the adage. To a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail.

The game started out by handing out players nothing but hammers.

[Echostorm.9143]

8 hours ago, Yasai.3549 said:

DPS in general absolutely love rotational gameplay because that's their only role but Healers and Supports are the ones who prefer reaction based gameplay due to the fact that the only feedback for their skill is if they can express their role's capabilities with finesse.

The June update hit 3 builds that prefer reactionary gameplay and these 3 builds are all healers in nature. HealRes Scourge, HealDruid and HealQuickHerald. With your resources now being held hostage by Boon application, it's no wonder people who are fans of these builds are absolutely livid. Imagine being a DPS but you have to burn your DPS skills not doing damage and you can imagine why these Healers are so heartbroken when forced to throw away powerful Heals, Barriers or Energy that can translate into powerful utilities just so that the group can "maintain boon uptime".

I don't agree about DPS loving rotational gameplay.  Many games provide for DPS to use reactive skills.  In DAoC you had attacks that would only succeed after you block or parry for example.  I like to be able to save my CC and boonstrips for when they are needed, not because they're step 12.  I like having a blink to save me from dying when something goes wrong, not dying because my build demands all skills do damage.  I want to feel enaged in the fight, not mindlessly spamming things in a certain order, that isn't fun, it's macroing.

[Helgaley.3619]

I feel like the developers are approaching balance and profession design from the perspective of making it fair according to the quantitative data they have access to that we never see, and they aren't really considering whether the outcome of their approach is going to be fun or if it even makes sense. The implication is that our feedback accounts for a very small piece of what they take into consideration, and these elite specialization and weaponmaster betas etc are only done for the optics of making it seem like they value our feedback despite their actions pointing to the contrary. 

The pattern is just really tiresome, and I'm sick of these nonsense posts from the devs saying, "wow these changes really didn't land the way we intended" as if we weren't shouting at them for weeks to not make those changes. The lip service needs to stop. 

[Roadkizzle.2157]

1 hour ago, Echostorm.9143 said:

I don't agree about DPS loving rotational gameplay.  Many games provide for DPS to use reactive skills.  In DAoC you had attacks that would only succeed after you block or parry for example.  I like to be able to save my CC and boonstrips for when they are needed, not because they're step 12.  I like having a blink to save me from dying when something goes wrong, not dying because my build demands all skills do damage.  I want to feel enaged in the fight, not mindlessly spamming things in a certain order, that isn't fun, it's macroing.

The reason I don't want to play DPS classes is because I don't like being forced to repeat the same memorized rotations every fight.

I found playing ESO that I had no patience to sit at the training dummy practicing my rotations to be able to achieve the needed DPS. Instead I could learn how the combat worked and play as a Tank to control the fights and make it easier for everyone else.

 

So I do agree with you that I don't think that every DPS loves rotation combat. But the people that enjoy figuring out and optimizing rotations play DPS.

So in practice that means that DPS players have a higher number of people who are happy with having the game based around rotations in combat.

 

I'm not going back to ESO for many reasons. I love the design in GW2 much more for many reasons... I just really wish there were more options for roles and everything wasn't so centered around rotation spamming.

[SlayerXX.7138]

17 minutes ago, Roadkizzle.2157 said:

So I do agree with you that I don't think that every DPS loves rotation combat. But the people that enjoy figuring out and optimizing rotations play DPS.

So in practice that means that DPS players have a higher number of people who are happy with having the game based around rotations in combat.

Nope I don't think so. Not in general at least. The whole complex rotation thing is for people who played a lot and have everything on farm. Probably a loud minority. Look at wow classic. People did go out of their way to level a Mage to 60, gear him and collect dozens of buffs, to then press the 2 button very hard. If I'm sitting in challenging content I'm quite happy to just press 2 spells for damage and doing mechanics. Virtuoso is one of the profession you see very often in content, because it is very strong without a Rotation.

[keykey.9182]

On 7/4/2023 at 4:49 PM, FrancisN.9276 said:

In order to make gameplay lean more toward "reaction" than "rotation" is making every class having 1 no CD attack skill with the HIGHEST damage efficiency and the remaining 4 short CD skills loaded with effects (CC, evasive movement, block, self buff,...) with LOW damage efficiency.

Yeah no , lets not bring the 2022-2023 Mechanist mentality into other classes ty

Edited July 7, 2023 by keykey.9182

[Lily.1935]

18 hours ago, Roadkizzle.2157 said:

I hear people talk with reverence on the early game with no support roles.

But how were things designed differently then so people didn't have to rely on just performing rotations even if they're quick burst rotations?

If you have nothing but DPS specs then how do you provide anything other than trying to do DPS as quickly and optimized as possible?

Sure there are short phases, breakbars, mobile bosses, and alternate targets you have to kill. But all of those are just DPS down. Rotations are the most important thing for all of those mechanics because the quicker you get through it the less time you spend in the mechanic.

 

It's like the adage. To a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail.

The game started out by handing out players nothing but hammers.

I've heard some people talk about the early days like that, but early GW2 was pretty awful and I highly doubt any of them would keep playing that version of the game. I was there, it wasn't just unbalanced, it was broken. People would stack in corners the only viable set of armor was berserkers in pve and only a small handful of classes were even viable. Engineer was under powered, Ranger was under powered and necromancer wasn't just bad, it was the weakest DPS, provided almost no support, had no defenses and and had skills which actively harmed your party's synergy.

It was typically Warrior, Guardian and Elementalist who were the best DPS at the time and it wasn't interesting gameplay. Elementalist would summon a fire sword and run into the wall stacking its trail effect causing massive burst damage. Then that was nerfed, then they'd do the same with staff which also was nerfed. Then you had Warrior which was rush into the corner with greatsword while the enemy stacked up and couldn't do anything. Guardian was pretty solid with its utility and also broke several world bosses with hammer stacking multiple symbols at a time doing absurd amounts of damage. Mesmer and Thief had uses too but the game's meta was centered around "how can we cheese this the best.

There was No Skill in early PvE. There was a good number of players that thought that stacking in a corner and bursting out fire fields  and abusing movement mechanics against a wall to out DPS 5-8 players before the advent of quickness was the intended way to play and a few of the quit  when that horribly abuse of the system was patched out because they had spent 2 years not learning how to dodge or even running dungeons normally.

I'm not saying there wasn't good things that happened during that time. Attack on Lions arch was fun, the new shiny game was cool, old lions arch was great. But Balance was an absolute mess. Guild Wars 2 is a much better game today then it was then.

But its not like there weren't support roles in those days either. Just they were different roles like the Reflect class(mesmer or guardian), the Phalanx strength warrior, Stealther(Mesmer or Thief). And Support did exist in PvP and WvW as well. HoT just codified it a bit more, pushing more into traditional roles.

Arena net has always struggled with transitioning into a new philosophy for their game. This current balance patch is trying to transition into their new philosophy for balance. And its ROUGH right now for sure. But Its not like this is the last build we'll ever see.

Sorry for the long rant.