If the numbers are the issue wouldn't it be a simple solution to nerf Might?

[Danny De Ditto.1345]

Maybe i'm looking at it in a way that's way too simplistic but if we're doing double the DPS intended for content, overperforming/underperforming builds aside, wouldn't it be better to start by just nerfing might stacks either to 15 or 10 stats? or reduce the maximum stacks?

As an example, Power Soulbeast, which is pushing 42K, deals 21K with no might applied, which has always been the optimal number most people recommend, and yet it's still too high cuz i've heard people say that even if you're doing 10K you'll be skipping phases in some fights.

I dunno... sounds way better than removing class fun in an attempts to fix this whole situation.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

It would nerf the dmg of everyone when the 99% don't need a dmg nerf. 

The problem is that the top 1% simply knows how to break the game/ killing bosses to fast for anet's liking. 

It's a difficult task for balance. Because the 1% will simply move to the next broken builds while the 99% just suffers the consequences. 

I reality, you would need to create a dmg cap to realy fix the problem. But that would mean there is no incentive to get better after a certain point. 

 

[Rhailex.2513]

On 10/16/2023 at 1:20 AM, Danny De Ditto.1345 said:

Maybe i'm looking at it in a way that's way too simplistic but if we're doing double the DPS intended for content, overperforming/underperforming builds aside, wouldn't it be better to start by just nerfing might stacks either to 15 or 10 stats? or reduce the maximum stacks?

As an example, Power Soulbeast, which is pushing 42K, deals 21K with no might applied, which has always been the optimal number most people recommend, and yet it's still too high cuz i've heard people say that even if you're doing 10K you'll be skipping phases in some fights.

I dunno... sounds way better than removing class fun in an attempts to fix this whole situation.

I mean, look at vindicator, then. It's at 42k. The spec can generate 25 stacks of might alongside quickness and fury in open world with just a few trait changes.

While halving the damage would make a lot of instanced content more interesting, it would also make them longer and would require anet to basically double the rewards for each. Then you'd have the next problem with the weeklies for each raid instance. Should that be halved if you double the individual rewards? A lot of smaller problems arise.

[Puck.3697]

On 10/17/2023 at 6:36 PM, Rhailex.2513 said:

I mean, look at vindicator, then. It's at 42k. The spec can generate 25 stacks of might alongside quickness and fury in open world with just a few trait changes.

While halving the damage would make a lot of instanced content more interesting, it would also make them longer and would require anet to basically double the rewards for each. Then you'd have the next problem with the weeklies for each raid instance. Should that be halved if you double the individual rewards? A lot of smaller problems arise.

Why would you have to double rewards?

The rewards are the same as they were back when they did take longer. Lol

[Sweetbread.3678]

I think it's kind of insane that anybody makes a live-service game like this and doesn't just have a stat for each enemy with it's ideal time-to-kill and then with each expac release they can just automatically scale it's health pool to the new average dps to keep that fight duration roughly the same. Seems like a no brainer.

At this point though I doubt Anet will ever deal with it even if they could. By ignoring the power creep for 10 years they've pretty much been de facto catering to entitled idiots (if not explicitly catering to them with autopilot tricycles like Virt and Mech) that can't actually play the game and expect all content outside of CM strikes to be an unfailable faceroll. So now that's like 80% of the playerbase that would collectively lose its mind if things actually got back to even PoF difficulty, let alone HoT difficulty.

[Puck.3697]

9 hours ago, Sweetbread.3678 said:

think it's kind of insane that anybody makes a live-service game like this and doesn't just have a stat for each enemy with it's ideal time-to-kill and then with each expac release they can just automatically scale it's health pool to the new average dps to keep that fight duration roughly the same. Seems like a no brainer

We're u about during EoDs launch, when they launched a meta event considerably harder then previous ones?

Or when HoT arrived?

This caused a large scale war to a point the community turned on one another, the reason anet don't increase the difficulty of raids and things is because of the backlash continously recieved when they implemented Difficulty into GW2. 

The community has never responded well to gw2 getting harder, and tbh I don't think it's needs doing, as much as scaling difficulty needs to be expanded on. 

Rather then just things increased across the board to give options of both. 

Edited October 22, 2023 by Puck.3697

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

i wouldn’t say that the players didn’t or don’t like difficulty (so long as it’s fun), it’s the toxicity that arose and usually accompanies the players as a result of the content being more difficult, incentivizing more elitist strategies to be taken. “Gotta take build X or build Y” or some other things I’ve heard about those times like servers being “sacrificed” because there was no hope for them…coming up with schemes to screw hundreds of people over during these events 

the kind of behavior in reference to that war… I wasn’t around it all that much so I don’t have any specifics and those what I mentioned is paraphrasing at best…but these are the kinds of stories I heard mostly when EOD came out…was just massively toxic behaviors. For those that actually experienced it feel free to elaborate on what happened more. @Puck.3697

Anyway, I believe there is a happy middle ground between difficulty and player collaboration out there in the space of possible concepts for games…we’ve seen it in games like Death Stranding… that there are ways to get players to come together without toxicity in order to accomplish a goal and for that goal to mean something in building a relationship…ideally that’s what the design of the game needs to strive for. What that design is I don’t know, but looking at games like DS is at least a start in trying to look.

Edited October 22, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Puck.3697]

1 hour ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

the kind of behavior in reference to that war… I wasn’t around it all that much so I don’t have any specifics and those what I mentioned is paraphrasing at best…but these are the kinds of stories I heard mostly when EOD came out…was just massively toxic behaviors. For those that actually experienced it feel free to elaborate on what happened more

I was present during the launch lol. This was even a debate mukluk and Teapot had (dont know if they saved it)

And no it was very much about its difficulty. The vast majority of players were completely unable to complete this event it had a less then 10% success rating. 

People couldn't get their turtle mounts for a long period due to so many unable to get success from this event. 

The concept a open world event demanded some level of demand in terms of group comps and proper builds was deemed unacceptable by alot of players. 

This is not the first time casuals have attacked more "hardcore" players either, lol there's many times through gw2 we have seen it attacked

I remember Teapot doing another discussion surrounding some players at higher levels of play considering quitting the game due to the fact their outcasted due to having a demand of harder content. 

Guild wars 2 does have a ton of players who are against the game becoming harder, and i ain't saying that's wrong either. 

Guild wars 2 hasn't accelerated irs difficulty since HoT at all, things have only ever gotten easier, so ofcourse the audience u build are one who enjoys this, if u then flip the switch on the audience you've built yea they are gonna react. 

And yeah there's likely a middle ground. 

More difficulty modes, instead of making the game as its base floor harder, increase the difficulty modes avaliable. We see this being massively successful in WoW in regards of

- lfr auto queue. 

- normal, heroic and mythic, being premade demand for players looking to increase that difficulty of the raid. 

Issue arises with finding rewards to fit each of these, without killing gw2s core concept regarding loot. 

Edited October 22, 2023 by Puck.3697

[Gendalfs.7521]

I just wonder how many % of the player base needs content to be harder? Maybe its not a problem at all?

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

2 hours ago, Puck.3697 said:

I was present during the launch lol. This was even a debate mukluk and Teapot had (dont know if they saved it)

And no it was very much about its difficulty. The vast majority of players were completely unable to complete this event it had a less then 10% success rating. 

People couldn't get their turtle mounts for a long period due to so many unable to get success from this event. 

The concept a open world event demanded some level of demand in terms of group comps and proper builds was deemed unacceptable by alot of players. 

This is not the first time casuals have attacked more "hardcore" players either, lol there's many times through gw2 we have seen it attacked

I remember Teapot doing another discussion surrounding some players at higher levels of play considering quitting the game due to the fact their outcasted due to having a demand of harder content. 

Guild wars 2 does have a ton of players who are against the game becoming harder, and i ain't saying that's wrong either. 

Guild wars 2 hasn't accelerated irs difficulty since HoT at all, things have only ever gotten easier, so ofcourse the audience u build are one who enjoys this, if u then flip the switch on the audience you've built yea they are gonna react. 

And yeah there's likely a middle ground. 

More difficulty modes, instead of making the game as its base floor harder, increase the difficulty modes avaliable. We see this being massively successful in WoW in regards of

- lfr auto queue. 

- normal, heroic and mythic, being premade demand for players looking to increase that difficulty of the raid. 

Issue arises with finding rewards to fit each of these, without killing gw2s core concept regarding loot. 

I was present during the launch lol. This was even a debate mukluk and Teapot had (dont know if they saved it)

This is mostly how I heard about that situation (through social media and influencers like teapot explaining what happened) so I have 0 first hand knowledge of what people were actually going through. I’m also a pvp fellow not to much an open world fellow. All I know was that the key talking point was about the toxicity of the events where the events were extremely difficult. 

But ya I think my stance was that people do like difficulty…people want it subconsciously. It’s just that people don’t want toxicity…and that there’s a way to have both difficulty and no toxicity in a game it just takes some good design solutions.

like you mentioned in the ladder half of your response, having different difficulty modes is a fine solution to that problem…not exactly novel but it goes a long way in getting rid of that toxic nature without discarding difficulty from the game.

i played WoW for a long time…close to 10 years ago now. the system they used (having different difficulty modes) worked very well to reduce toxicity…why it took gw2 so long to implement that is a mystery to me but at least now they have it now…and until they do develop some other kinds of solutions…they should continue to follow such models.

Additionally I think rewards should be tiered…if you play the hardest difficulty you should be rewarded for doing so, more than the casual version. It was like this in WoW as well. Something WoW also did though was it gave you multiple dungeons to attain what would be similar gear scores armor.

back in Wotlk which was when I played, if you went into an  dungeon on normal mode your Gears would typically be 245 gear score or something…and there was about 5 or 6 dungeons in believe at the time…so it ranged from 200gs to 254gs…then you had your heroics which were tier higher so one of the lower gs dungeons, gave out higher gs loot which would have been equivalent difficulty to a higher gs dungeon on normal mode…so 200gs on normals was giving out 220gs on heroic…which was the same gs on this other dungeon on normal mode…

So the difficulties of the content perfectly interweaved with each other for the player to gain a much better sense of difficulty progression as well as social progression with their peers (less toxic). Not to mention that the systems were constructed in a way where you has to do them multiple times (grind) which created veteran of dungeons that had to pass down knowledge to other players doing the same dungeon who was in their place not long before that point

open world stuff might be a different nest egg then instances content… I did always imagine open world bosses should be massively difficult…and that nobody should be beating them on average. But I guess the issue was with gw2, tying practically required items (like turtle mount) to the loot of some insanely difficult world boss which prevents players from moving forward in the story.

[Puck.3697]

4 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

This is mostly how I heard about that situation (through social media and influencers like teapot explaining what happened) so I have 0 first hand knowledge of what people were actually going through. I’m also a pvp fellow not to much an open world fellow. All I know was that the key talking point was about the toxicity of the events where the events were extremely difficult

Well I played EoD launch, and being told I'm a "elitist pro wannabe troll" for saying I liked its difficulty werent great. I was attacked for merely saying anything positive about that event. Anyone who enjoyed it got beaten into silence. 

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

46 minutes ago, Puck.3697 said:

Well I played EoD launch, and being told I'm a "elitist pro wannabe troll" for saying I liked its difficulty werent great. I was attacked for merely saying anything positive about that event. Anyone who enjoyed it got beaten into silence. 

I know what you are talking about. I do think there is an overwhelming "casual" and "solo-gaming" mentality that pervades gw2. I won't sit here an act like I can claim if it's true or just a conspiracy...but I do like to try my best to see the whole big picture, and what the greatest charitable interpretation is.

The assumption is that people want to play this game and for the playing of it to be meaningful. If everything was just one hit kill (which a lot of it is, i find it boring hence why i play PVP mostly) I think most people would find that experience to be meaningless. So subconsciously, when we play a game, we do want there to be difficulty to those games...and when a casual comes along, I imagine that what they are complaining about is not really the difficulty...but something else that underlies that difficulty.

For instance, Dark Souls is really hard to the point of almost being completely unfun. Yet many people play and love this game...35 million of them. And I'd say that on average, most games in history are more difficult than guild wars 2. Guild Wars 2 is in the bottom tier of what would be the easiest games to play in terms of difficulty.

What I'm trying to say is that not all problems are on the surface, and not so black and white. There are usually many layers below the surface...I think people like difficulty, subconsciously even, and that whatever happened in that situation, is a symptom of something deeper than just it's difficulty (my opinion: game design). 

Edited October 22, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Puck.3697]

10 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

The assumption is that people want to play this game and for the playing of it to be meaningful. If everything was just one hit kill (which a lot of it is, i find it boring hence why i play PVP mostly) I think most people would find that experience to be meaningless. So subconsciously, when we play a game, we do want there to be difficulty to those games...and when a casual comes along, I imagine that what they are complaining about is not really the difficulty...but something else that underlies that difficulty

Well ofcourse it is, when difficulty reaches proper heights. The demand for group comps, boons and more to present becomes more demanded. 

Which demands proper builds, which simply reduces options, lots of players in solo game modes have enjoyed the continous allowance of that flexibility into more "fun builds". 

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

30 minutes ago, Puck.3697 said:

Well ofcourse it is, when difficulty reaches proper heights. The demand for group comps, boons and more to present becomes more demanded. 

Which demands proper builds, which simply reduces options, lots of players in solo game modes have enjoyed the continous allowance of that flexibility into more "fun builds". 

I think you just are looking at this with too short of a reference frame bro. "Proper builds" is a reflection of the way skills are designed into the game. What makes skills "proper" is a result of those skills being compared to each other in such a way where that is possible for players to do. 

For instance...ask yourself what is the "proper" strategy in Rock Paper Scissors...

it's a silly question, because there is none...because rock paper scissors game design is made in such a way where there is no "proper" strategy. 

RPS is the most universally know, and simplest game design ideas to understand that concept...but this quality can be found in a lot of things and takes many different forms if you look for it and look deep enough.

Ultimately the point is that "fun builds" and "proper builds" shouldn't be mutually exclusive. Thinking that they are, fuels the very mentality that you are arguing against. Maybe the reason the casual called the elitist a troll is because you strip them of what they think is fun...all because you might want them to play a "proper" build when in actuality..."proper" only means something based on the skills that are presented to them in the game. And whos responsible for what the players builds end up being and what those skills on those build they choose even do? It's Arena-net's design of the skills and the ruleset of the game.

So it's important to get to the real heart of the problem and not just look for an outlet. cause I mean look...if casuals are just toxic by their very nature because that's what they are (and this might even actually be true) then what's the solution to that? Send them to the gas chamber? there's no real solution there so what's the goal other than to complain about casuals?

Edited October 22, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Puck.3697]

3 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

I think you just are looking at this with too short of a reference frame bro. "Proper builds" is a reflection of the way skills are designed into the game. What makes skills "proper" is a result of those skills being compared to each other in such a way where that is possible for players to do

When we talking proper, we are talking meta. 

Builds which provide the demanded boons required in every group to maximise the dps, u jave to remember over half ur characters dps, is entirely on those boons being 100%.

So when content demands u to do a certain amount of dps to clear (a dps check) it becomes more vital ur group is giving u the the correct boons to ensure this is managable. 

And thats the issue, after a certain level of difficulty, boons are demanded, and for boons to correct compositions have to be made, whjch will annoy you average Joe who's running around with longbow soulbeast 

Becahse suddenly he's not getting invited because the group comps demanding a alacrity mech. 

If ur potiental dps/sustain wasn't dependent on boons existing in harder content the problem wouldn't be near as severe, as you could achieve difficult content without group composition being such a large concern. 

But at this point if they were to hit boons that hard, u will end up having massed of pure dps builds with 0 group comp making pve feel zergy. 

Most casual players aren't running around with 4 different builds and sets on the fly to fill roles, and will generally just build towards solo. Ur average open world mech prolly doesn't have a full set of minstrels to fill a alacrity role etc etc. 

Simply put. To introduce difficulty, it demands too much of a casual player to fit into, which is why they uproar at the introduction of difficulty. You cant expect a casual player to have 3 builds and a condi / power / minstrel set on the fly to fill role gaps in a open world enviroment. So introducing difficulty into open world content isn't exactly achievable. 

This goes further. 

Because if open world to raid / fractal difficulty and demands are at a large disparity it quickly alienates ur casual players because of the sudden spike in difficulty caused separating these 2 things. 

Edited October 22, 2023 by Puck.3697

[Raarsi.6798]

Might is a steady value set that usually rewards players for doing "things" while in combat, which is why it's probably the last thing that should be removed.

Quickness and Alacrity tend to be the more gamebreaking culprits, which is why if any buffs were to be removed, then that's what I'd rather pick.

[Puck.3697]

On 10/23/2023 at 9:18 PM, Raarsi.6798 said:

Might is a steady value set that usually rewards players for doing "things" while in combat, which is why it's probably the last thing that should be removed.

Quickness and Alacrity tend to be the more gamebreaking culprits, which is why if any buffs were to be removed, then that's what I'd rather pick

It does, but it rewards 19 people for doing nothing because that 1 person is doing things. 

Don't forget 100% uptime on just taking 33% less damage as a major culprit either the power creep is caused because boons are 100% uptime now. 

The stats don't need hitting. Their uptime needs reducing its awesome building that momentum and having that big burst yes, and buffs are for this sorta concept. 

But when u make it 100% its just permanatly doing rly high dmg its no longer a burst or stacking things and using things at right times. 

Might would feel far more rewarding, if it was a window of opportunity, where setting it up to fall into ur burst is the aim rather then just someone spamming 25 might on his group permannatly 

Edited October 24, 2023 by Puck.3697

[LadyKitty.6120]

1 hour ago, Puck.3697 said:

It does, but it rewards 19 people for doing nothing because that 1 person is doing things. 

Don't forget 100% uptime on just taking 33% less damage as a major culprit either the power creep is caused because boons are 100% uptime now. 

The stats don't need hitting. Their uptime needs reducing its awesome building that momentum and having that big burst yes, and buffs are for this sorta concept. 

But when u make it 100% its just permanatly doing rly high dmg its no longer a burst or stacking things and using things at right times. 

Might would feel far more rewarding, if it was a window of opportunity, where setting it up to fall into ur burst is the aim rather then just someone spamming 25 might on his group permannatly 

Offensive boons having 100% uptime isn't anything new, been that way since HoT (first by druid+chrono+BS combo) and overall they've even been nerfed from how they used to be. Removal of unique buffs alone was huge and only buff boons have got is +5%u to Fury to compensate for Precision loss from removal of banners. The power creep has come from big skill and trait buffs.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

I would just cap the maximum DPS. We are talking about how many people? Top 1-3 % of the playerbase? It would not harm any of the hardcore players at all. But they will always advocate that such a change would harm the newbies and learning players, as it would promote lazy gameplay. What is the benchmark for the AVERAGE player? Can they even reach 40k? If it is too strictly, adjust the cap every quarter. But please stop nerfing functional classes in favor of a few exploiters.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

On 10/22/2023 at 12:22 AM, Sweetbread.3678 said:

I think it's kind of insane that anybody makes a live-service game like this and doesn't just have a stat for each enemy with it's ideal time-to-kill and then with each expac release they can just automatically scale it's health pool to the new average dps to keep that fight duration roughly the same. Seems like a no brainer.

They sort of did this with the original world bosses--it just ends in long boring fights.  

[Sweetbread.3678]

On 10/26/2023 at 12:39 AM, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

They sort of did this with the original world bosses--it just ends in long boring fights.  

Yeah but most of that stuff is due to being in the level 10 zones where scaling is wonky af to begin with (I imagine downscaling stats/gear, but ignoring 70 levels of trait and skill unlocks is a real can of worms to deal with) , while anything Shatterer and beyond (besides whatever the f is going on with Covington's door) pretty much just instantly melts. Ironically the world bosses with almost no mechanics live forever, while the ones that actually have developed mechanics end up going down so fast that they're completely ignored. Low-level scaling being whack is it's own issue, but the world boss buffs not keeping up with current dps was because they were a one-time, manually applied band-aid rather than a part of an automatic, ongoing upkeep process that was built into the game's core systems as a way to maintain the integrity of it's horizontal content/progression.

[Rhailex.2513]

On 10/22/2023 at 2:04 AM, Puck.3697 said:

Why would you have to double rewards?

The rewards are the same as they were back when they did take longer. Lol

Sorry for late reply, but I feel like I need to reply to this.

People are used to a certain amount of rewards for doing X, Y and Z content. If you suddenly spend twice the time for the same rewards as currently, people will be outraged, not to mention they will flock to other types of content. It's a delicate balance and simply because it "used to be like that" it doesn't mean that's how it should be now. Same can be said for PvP (wether it's good or bad); When game was released, there were 9 professions, no specializations. You only had to care about wether it's a condi build or power build, other than that you knew roughly how your opponent's class plays. Today you have 9 professions, with 3 elite specs each, each with at least 1-2 builds, not even mentioning core spec builds (that are viable on many professions). That's at least 27 builds, more realistically at least 60 builds that all play differently.

[Firebeard.1746]

There's not an issue. How about people who think that things die to too fast just use supports with less boon duration to scale the difficulty accordingly. we've had 40k+ builds since when I came back in PoF era. There was a brief period they nerfed the max down to high 30ks. The reality is more people are learning how to play the game with boon soup. 

Edited November 18, 2023 by Firebeard.1746