Power Creep, The game is too easy [Merged]

[Luthan.5236]

56 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

First of all there is no average player. And also if someone is far from the potential, the nerfs and buffs are most likely impacting their gameplay much less than they think.

This might be true - but it also depends on "how" they are going to nerf dps. I think there is kind of a misunderstanding between the people with different opinion. When I do not want the overall dps reduced to not make the open world mobs harder/slower to kill I obviously do not just want them to flat reduce the coefficients everywhere by a certain percentage. That would hit everyone the same - affecting that "average" player also. And making it slower for them in open world when it might feel okay now.

What they can do (and what they actually seem to do): Make certain combinations of skills/traits (that make up those "rotations" of the top players) harder by fine-tuning there. That of course ... should not affect the "average" player. The suggestions of some people though ... seemed like they't want a flat reduction of dps everywhere. (Like ... take the calculated damage and multiply it by 0.8 or even 0.5. :D)

For the "average" player ... I'm sure they have data on this. Could make sense to view this like a bell curve - most somewhere in the middle. With a extreme dps at the top that only a handful of players reach. And I think ... it would make sense to maybe cut out the upper and lower few percent. Nobody wants it that easy so even the worst person can auto afk + auto attack and solo a raid boss. On the other hand: If a handful exceptional players can do that ... it would not make sense to nerf flat dps for everyone. (Just make it hardre for that exceptional player.) If you take the extreme ones away ... you will still have a lot that perform above average (and others that are below.)

We have to keep in mind that the main playerbase is not the raiders. And the main selling point of the game is that it appeals to casuals + has lots of other content (jumping puzzles, collections) and stuff. Would make no sense to flat out reduce all dps making it harder (= slower) in "everyday" content of the casual player that might run an "allrounder" build to not have to switch often. (Where the focus in open world already is not to run raid dps to 1-shot veterans.) This especially if you take into account that some maps might be played less - and it is not just "zerging everything down" in open world.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

i don't understand posts like "nerfing the damage will make the open world too hard". you can take a level 50 character an on-level area, wearing only green items, and still demolish the enemies in just a few hits. players who struggle with open-world are either wearing random loot drops for their gear, or don't understand basic buildcrafting, and that's not something we should cater to because it encourages players to not learn the game.

 

i'm sorry, but this is definitely something we should stop pushing. it's an mmo, not a single-player game, afterall.

 

i still remember when water combat in the starting zones was removed because "newbies can't handle the concept", and merchants stopped selling everything but some bags, with all their food and other items removed because it was seen as too complex. we wonder why players come into end-game content not even using food when changes like this were made, due to apparent complaints about the difficulty.

 

its important to be new player friendly, but hiding critical knowledge and introducing powercreep are both severe missteps.

Edited October 1, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Gendalfs.7521]

15 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Ok, which benchmarks, what data should they use than? 

They should also play their own game. If some wonderkind can get something out of class with unreasonable effort, class shouldnt be nerfed. Theres always a middle ground. Making adjustments from pure numbers in logs is wrong.

[Cuks.8241]

1 hour ago, Luthan.5236 said:

For the "average" player ... I'm sure they have data on this. Could make sense to view this like a bell curve - most somewhere in the middle. With a extreme dps at the top that only a handful of players reach. And I think ... it would make sense to maybe cut out the upper and lower few percent.

The problem is you don't know what are the main parameters why someone does average dps. Or actually there are too many.

Someone is executing the rotation sequence perfectly, has a perfect build but is just slow at pressing numbers and reaches average dps.

Someone might be a very good player but just doesn't give a kitten about outside information and plays a game on his own and for fun. He runs a build that is fun for him and is good enough by his own standards. Reaches average dps.

Someone might have perfect numbers on golem but he gets downed in live encounters all the time because he cant position himself and he just loves standing in fire. Getting down is a huge dps loss. He reaches average dps.

Someone plays perfectly at 250 ping. Reaches average dps because he's always late.

Someone's cat takes a dump on the floor in the middle of a fight, needs to clean up before his wife sees and throws the cat out, afks half of the fight, reaches average dps. Nerf cat.

How do you balance based on that? Put it in a controlled environment (benchmarks), cut out the factors you can't control. You have something you can work with.

[AliamRationem.5172]

2 hours ago, joerginger.4730 said:

The number of deaths on my characters, especially my main, disagrees vehemently with the claim that this game is too easy.

That SAB tribulation mode is a real killer.

[Luthan.5236]

1 hour ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Someone's cat takes a dump on the floor in the middle of a fight, needs to clean up before his wife sees and throws the cat out, afks half of the fight, reaches average dps. Nerf cat.

How do you balance based on that? Put it in a controlled environment (benchmarks), cut out the factors you can't control. You have something you can work with.

Of course. But you can't just take the top of the top and balance around that and forgetting about the "average" player. I mean ... even in benchmarks where games get tested how they perform on hardware ... they just take the best hardware and then create the game for that. (Might not sell well then - if most other players can't even run it. :D)

They can take the numbers of some top player. Or even letting some AI or program try out different builds to get the max numbers (even if they are not played by anyone and the top players have not found out yet). But they can also check just in game for the whole playerbase. Then you'd have kind of a mix - with the lower dps of the average players having more weight. (Which also works without actually knowing whether some individual player feeds the cat or plays at 250 ping or something.)

They seem to work on different ends though. When the meta in Dragon's End failed often (back then at release) they did not just increase the dps (cause lots of low dps players were in the group) to make the boss die faster. They changed other stuff. (At the boss.) There this of course worked. Since big events in the open world are not meant to be played solo.

With this way of fine-tuning they did not have to look at the top players (their benchmark would have told them to maybe make the boss even harder since with only raid players doing it ... it might have died easy compared to lots of low dps players in the open world squad) ... they did not even to check for an "average" player ... or how many players with good vs low dps there were in the maps doing the meta.

They could - simple as it is - just monitor a fail rate ... seeing how often the boss failed. Adjusting mechanics to make it succeed more often.

So ... I think that's pretty fine. Just flat out changing overall dps would not work. What SoftFootpaws said does not make any sense here. Most people play the game because it is easier than others. Not because they want it to get harder/slower. It would not be a good idea to get people to train to use raid build to be able to enjoy open world - making the dps so low that without a raid rotation it felt "too slow".) I mean: The whole point of having stuff like raids is that open world can be easy and the players that want harder stuff can play the raids.

If they introduce more and more grind for open world stuff it is good that the trash mobs die faster - so you can be done faster with the grind there. (Most people seem to no like the grind. In an asian grind game it might be fine if open world stuff dies slooooow so you can have more "fun" grinding.)

---

Death count at the char probably is not a good measurement for anything. Has no real informational value ... besides telling you how often the char died. I bet it even counts /gg command deaths. The SAB got mentioned already. Then there is PvP and WvW which also increases the counter. And situations where you just try out stuff. Or jump down somewhere for fun. 😄

Edited October 1, 2023 by Luthan.5236

[Linken.6345]

4 hours ago, joerginger.4730 said:

The number of deaths on my characters, especially my main, disagrees vehemently with the claim that this game is too easy.

Stop abusing /gg 🤪

[Linken.6345]

3 hours ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

i don't understand posts like "nerfing the damage will make the open world too hard". you can take a level 50 character an on-level area, wearing only green items, and still demolish the enemies in just a few hits. players who struggle with open-world are either wearing random loot drops for their gear, or don't understand basic buildcrafting, and that's not something we should cater to because it encourages players to not learn the game.

 

i'm sorry, but this is definitely something we should stop pushing. it's an mmo, not a single-player game, afterall.

 

i still remember when water combat in the starting zones was removed because "newbies can't handle the concept", and merchants stopped selling everything but some bags, with all their food and other items removed because it was seen as too complex. we wonder why players come into end-game content not even using food when changes like this were made, due to apparent complaints about the difficulty.

 

its important to be new player friendly, but hiding critical knowledge and introducing powercreep are both severe missteps.

Just read through this thread to see the average playter mate it is quite horrifying.

Edit

Did they not  remove the food because people salvaged it for research notes?

Edited October 1, 2023 by Linken.6345

[Adry.7512]

How can I explain this?  Power creep is normal and to be expected. Always remember that aeenanet doesnt want to alienate new players. The difficulty level for a new player is much harder than that of a seasoned player. You want difficulties? Do challenge motes, do raids, etc.

[rainhelm.3827]

On 9/26/2023 at 10:17 AM, Panda.1967 said:

This may come as a surprise to you… but the average player doesn’t actually have the support of a large guild or 13 hours a day to grind out ascended gear and legendaries… the average player is kitted out in whatever exotics they can get their hands on, and often don’t even have a full set of accessories let alone a full set of runes. Many even have a mix of random runes. Additionally being largely solo players they aren’t well versed in placement for group events and may frequently miss out on buffs because they were not actually in the deathball.

You literally get FREE ASCENDED GEAR out of WV now please for the love of god stop making these pathetic excuses for lazy players already, I'm so sick of the sob tears of people who couldn't spend 10 gold for exotics or put in 20 minutes of rotation practice.

How convenient does it have to be for you all to stop making excuses for these players? Does Anet need to automatically assign them with BiS gear upon character creation and also put an auto-rotation button that does the fighting for you?

Edited October 1, 2023 by rainhelm.3827

[Burnfall.9573]

After watching this video, all that came to mind is that Anet really pushing hard to make Guild Wars 2 a serious Gimmick game. Here is Revenant Profession, one shotting enemies with the addition of Power Creep.....by jumping lol

Revenant Profession- The One Shot Jumping Rabbit 

It is not obviously hard to not notice that Anet is pushing really hard to turn PvP and WvW into a PvE game mode.  In all Honesty, this game is making Walt Disney look like a child play. 

The Gimmicks, Jokes, The Level of Absurdity.... Never Ends With This Game

 

"This feels illegal. It's like watching an adult box a bunch of toddlers, also the adult has a greatsword."

 

 

Edited October 1, 2023 by Burnfall.9573

[Sobx.1758]

18 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

I'd really hope they'd use a much wider selection of datapoints than just player made benchmarks on golem. I mean, it's their game, they should have a much better access to such data than players do.

Isn't this just making a blind assumption that they're looking at benchmarks and not at ingame stats, which they can easly do? But just because we as players have access to unofficial benchmarks and can base each of the class/build performance on them doesn't mean anet does the same. So that whole idea is just... Made up?

18 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

As for the second point, "potential" and "reality" need not be the same. There were builds in the past that overperformed on perfect conditions on golem but weren't as good in less than perfect situations because they depended too much of that perfection.

I'm not sure anyone claimed "potential" and "releaty" are the exact same thing and they really don't need to be. OW events are blown out of their intended gameplay design and it's rather easy to say it's not somehow based on that proclaimed tiny % of raiders who achieve absolute efficiency. The general power creep is also visible, even if we don't have direct access to stats that anet does.

Edited October 1, 2023 by Sobx.1758

[Hashberry.4510]

This idea that the choice is between entry level verse raid difficulty is awfully disingenuous. If the game never requires a learning curve it won't retain anyone either.

[LadyKitty.6120]

Just to be clear: what do you guys consider average player? How is it measured? What are the parameters considered? And how do you practically balance with that as your main focus?

Asking 'cause in these recent threads, none has given concrete answers, just mainly "we should balance/focus on average player". Opinion without suggestion isn't very constructive feedback.

And just saying, anyone who even remotely cares about their build (which people should do or they're just making things harder by not knowing better) and killing stuff in any reasonable time, they likely already use somewhat similar builds as those "filthy raiding elitists", just with some self-buffing and open-world oriented changes. So the nerfs and buffs to high-end do affect low-end and viceversa.(Though people with mixmash builds would see bigger difference from getting it sorted than from balance team doing something.) Many times non-hardcore players even play almost same builds as hardcores but with easier rota for the ol' wisdom of "Keep it simpele." Kitty's pretty infamous for being like that (using good builds but not practising much so usually 80-85% of benchmark).

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

22 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

I'd really hope they'd use a much wider selection of datapoints than just player made benchmarks on golem. I mean, it's their game, they should have a much better access to such data than players do.

As for the second point, "potential" and "reality" need not be the same. There were builds in the past that overperformed on perfect conditions on golem but weren't as good in less than perfect situations because they depended too much of that perfection.

The issue is that using open world you could also see many builds overperforming.

[Gendalfs.7521]

Problem here are most difficult rotations are overperforming. LI buids also overperforming. Why arent Anet adress those li overperforming builds, BUT not nerfing them to ground? They need to get that OW is not the same as Fractals, Strikes and Raids. If you stack like chicken, why you need survivability? Give every class high dps and null survivability and give every class chosen boons or heals. Thats what Anet is going for. Give US choice. Why limit some classes to support?

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, Gendalfs.7521 said:

Why arent Anet adress those li overperforming builds, BUT not nerfing them to ground?

But they also did do that (and as far as I remember, you didn't like the results).

1 hour ago, Gendalfs.7521 said:

Why limit some classes to support?

Which classes are "limited to support"?

Edited October 1, 2023 by Sobx.1758

[Burnfall.9573]

4 hours ago, Gendalfs.7521 said:

Problem here are most difficult rotations are overperforming. LI buids also overperforming. Why arent Anet adress those li overperforming builds, BUT not nerfing them to ground? They need to get that OW is not the same as Fractals, Strikes and Raids. If you stack like chicken, why you need survivability? Give every class high dps and null survivability and give every class chosen boons or heals. Thats what Anet is going for. Give US choice. Why limit some classes to support?

I have the right wording for this

"It’s called by different names: An “authoritarian” or “dictatorial” style (soften it a bit and it’s “benevolent dictatorship”… in other words, “What I’m demanding is really for your own good!”). But there’s no getting around it – it’s still demanding and totalitarian – even despotic. Sadly, this is an approach that communicates, “It’s my way or the highway!”

The player has no other choice. We have limited to no say. It is either play the way how Anet want it, or take a walk and figure it out

                                       --It Is Anets' Way Or The Highway--

Edited October 2, 2023 by Burnfall.9573

[xellink.7568]

On 10/1/2023 at 11:34 PM, rainhelm.3827 said:

You literally get FREE ASCENDED GEAR out of WV now please for the love of god stop making these pathetic excuses for lazy players already, I'm so sick of the sob tears of people who couldn't spend 10 gold for exotics or put in 20 minutes of rotation practice.

How convenient does it have to be for you all to stop making excuses for these players? Does Anet need to automatically assign them with BiS gear upon character creation and also put an auto-rotation button that does the fighting for you?

It already exists...

20k Auto Attack Challenge - Accessibility Wars Too

[rainhelm.3827]

1 hour ago, xellink.7568 said:

It already exists...

20k Auto Attack Challenge - Accessibility Wars Too

 

In my opinion GW2's PvE community are a bunch of softies constantly coming up with ways to show these players that it can be done, constantly encouraging them. While in a lot of other communities you'll just be told its a skill issue and everyone will move on. Its a mentality problem that the players you're trying to encourage just want to make excuses, they don't want to put in any real effort.

Anet should just give these people easy mode, call it story mode or something and move on. You shouldn't need to go out of your way to interact and encourage people who don't want to put in the bare minimum effort. Thats absurd to me.

 

[idpersona.3810]

1 hour ago, rainhelm.3827 said:

Its a mentality problem that the players you're trying to encourage just want to make excuses, they don't want to put in any real effort.

Anet should just give these people easy mode, call it story mode or something and move on. You shouldn't need to go out of your way to interact and encourage people who don't want to put in the bare minimum effort. Thats absurd to me.

The bare minimum effort....to enjoy a video game?
People play games for different reasons. At different levels. And with different goals in mind. I don't understand the whole "minimum effort" angle. Why disparage players who are also enjoying the same game you are?

There's different content for different players. That's the whole point. The game needs to be balanced, both around the average player and around the higher end players.

[Jedrik.3109]

This thread has proven to me that we as a community have no hope in empathic discourse. 

[Passerbye.6291]

On 10/3/2023 at 6:16 PM, idpersona.3810 said:

The bare minimum effort....to enjoy a video game?
People play games for different reasons. At different levels. And with different goals in mind. I don't understand the whole "minimum effort" angle. Why disparage players who are also enjoying the same game you are?

There's different content for different players. That's the whole point. The game needs to be balanced, both around the average player and around the higher end players.

Except, the game has ungodly amounts of content for when you just want to shut your brain off and play. We're talking about endgame content, this is where balance and powercreep actually become relevant, because as someone shared a link before, there are multiple builds hitting 20k with auto attacks alone, which is more than enough to roflstomp all open world content. 
Now, if you are joining instanced content, yes, you are expected to put in the minimal effort required to enjoy the game, because the alternative is potentially making it less fun for 9 other people.

If all you do is fishing in the game because that's what you enjoy, more power to you. It does, however, become an issue when the fishermen join content meant for people willing to "challenge" themselves and demand that said content become easier to suit them. To point a picture from the other end, people supporting powercreep is akin to people doing benchmark levels of damage requesting a change to fishing so that people with higher APM catch more fish than others.

Edited January 13 by Passerbye.6291

[idpersona.3810]

9 minutes ago, Passerbye.6291 said:

Except, the game has ungodly amounts of content for when you just want to shut your brain off and play. We're talking about endgame content, this is where balance and overcreep actually become relevant, because as someone shared a link before, there are multiple builds hitting 20k with auto attacks alone, which is more than enough to roflstomp all open world content. 
Now, if you are joining instanced content, yes, you are expected to put in the minimal effort required to enjoy the game, because the alternative is potentially making it less fun for 9 other people.

If all you do is fishing in the game because that's what you enjoy, more power to you. It does, however, become an issue when the fishermen join content meant for people willing to "challenge" themselves and demand that said content become easier to suit them. To point a picture from the other end, people supporting powercreep is akin to people doing benchmark levels of damage requesting a change to fishing so that people with higher APM catch more fish than others.

The post I was responding to said "You shouldn't need to go out of your way to interact and encourage people who don't want to put in the bare minimum effort." 

To be clear: I don't think fishing toons should just show up in raids or (most) strikes and expect to be carried. They can't show up in higher level fractals. It's worth noting that just saying "instanced content" is still very vague. Any toon (imo) can show up for the 3 easy IBS strikes. Or lower level fractals. What's the expected dps for those? 5-8k? I agree players who don't want to "work at it" shouldn't do the most challenging content. But in reality, how often does that particular situation even come up?

For balance, it would be nice to know what the intended numbers actually are. Like, should high end players be doing 40k? 45k? 35k? What is Anets goal with the nerfs they've been tossing out. And how has that affected "normal" players? Apparently rifle mechs doing 24k damage was too much for higher end players to stomach.  These sorts of points matter when talking about this stuff. If a player is in full ascended (or legendary) gear, what is an acceptable dps for an LI build, because from reading posts on here, opinions on that vary wildly.

[Passerbye.6291]

31 minutes ago, idpersona.3810 said:

The post I was responding to said "You shouldn't need to go out of your way to interact and encourage people who don't want to put in the bare minimum effort." 

To be clear: I don't think fishing toons should just show up in raids or (most) strikes and expect to be carried. They can't show up in higher level fractals. It's worth noting that just saying "instanced content" is still very vague. Any toon (imo) can show up for the 3 easy IBS strikes. Or lower level fractals. What's the expected dps for those? 5-8k? I agree players who don't want to "work at it" shouldn't do the most challenging content. But in reality, how often does that particular situation even come up?

For balance, it would be nice to know what the intended numbers actually are. Like, should high end players be doing 40k? 45k? 35k? What is Anets goal with the nerfs they've been tossing out. And how has that affected "normal" players? Apparently rifle mechs doing 24k damage was too much for higher end players to stomach.  These sorts of points matter when talking about this stuff. If a player is in full ascended (or legendary) gear, what is an acceptable dps for an LI build, because from reading posts on here, opinions on that vary wildly.

Sadly, people joining content that they don't know what to do in happens very often. Very frequently, will someone join my squad, say nothing even after I ask whether anyone needs explanations, hoping to go unnoticed, then die to the first mechanic, or worse yet, in things like KO, wipe the squad.
Just the other day (2-3 days ago) we had to do boneskinner with 4 or so people, and then did the last 2 phases of OLC with 3 people because everyone preferred to die to the mechanics. This was a run listed in the experienced section mind you. While I agree that IBS 3 and other super easy content can be joined by anyone, I believe I've made myself very clear by saying content meant for people who wish to challenge themselves. Though to be fair, I don't think any of the non CM strikes can realistically be considered challenging either but eh.

We've gotten to a point where it is considered toxic to expect someone who joins group as DPS to actually try to do damage. And the moment you mention that a person maybe isn't pulling their weight, you are the devil himself. I'm fine with people being unable to hit high damage numbers, I never expect it from a pug in the first place, but I find it hard to respect someone not even trying. This is the part where effort comes in, if 9 other people are making sure to contribute as well as they can to either make a run smooth or go faster out of respect for all the other people involved, the other person needs to do the same too. 

When it comes to the intended numbers, from the looks of it, the current target benchmark for DPS is about 40-42k. Mechanist was benching 38k while being almost entirely ranged with massive amounts of CC, on demand mobility and unmatched dps uptime, which is why it got nerfed. Keep in mind this was at a time where most power dps specs did around 37-42k.
You can still do over 20k damage with rifle mechanist literally auto attacking and nothing else, so I don't get where this 24k is too much comes from.

Edited October 3, 2023 by Passerbye.6291