It's time to delete Unstable Magic Abilities from the game and create champions/bounties with actuall skills.

[Antycypator.9874]

Because we're not even fighting these bosses anymore, we're fighting annoying mechanics forcing us to move/stand, be in melee/range or avoid additional AoE.

Champions and Bounties should be bosses with unique skills, not BIGGER mobs with 5mln HP and random stuff forcing us to run around to avoid perma blindness.

[Smoky.5348]

They really do just slap these abilities on whenever they can't come up with anything else. It was cool enough as a Path of Fire bounty standard, but then they just keep showing up. Have they even added new ones?

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Ohh no. Mechanics that force interaction. 

The horror. 

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

The randomized effects replayability.  That way the fight isn't exactly the same over and over again.  

[Smoky.5348]

Want me to get into the nitty gritty of it? Okay, most of the mechanics suck. Red/Green Light encourages you to stand still in a movement-based game. Ley-Line Buildup doesn't spawn places to discharge your stacks half the time, so you just die after awhile if you get unlucky. The one where all attacks are blocked until you get close will randomly block your melee attacks anyway. And, all the other ones have vague or no audio to signal when the bad thing is gonna come out (love getting knocked down with no warning), or they're complete non-issues that you never notice (do Healing Tendrils do anything?). That's all to say nothing about certain mechanics gelling horribly with certain champs because it randomly assigns them.

It's one thing that ANET reuses them so much, but it's another when they do that and the things just suck on their own. But, why improve 'em when they're too busy with SotO, right?

[DanAlcedo.3281]

2 hours ago, Smoky.5348 said:

Want me to get into the nitty gritty of it? Okay, most of the mechanics suck. Red/Green Light encourages you to stand still in a movement-based game. Ley-Line Buildup doesn't spawn places to discharge your stacks half the time, so you just die after awhile if you get unlucky. The one where all attacks are blocked until you get close will randomly block your melee attacks anyway. And, all the other ones have vague or no audio to signal when the bad thing is gonna come out (love getting knocked down with no warning), or they're complete non-issues that you never notice (do Healing Tendrils do anything?). That's all to say nothing about certain mechanics gelling horribly with certain champs because it randomly assigns them.

It's one thing that ANET reuses them so much, but it's another when they do that and the things just suck on their own. But, why improve 'em when they're too busy with SotO, right?

Red/green: Why are you even moving? Just go melee and dps.

Block effect: why are you even at range? Just go melee and dps. 

Ley line: Why are you playing a build without self sustain? Gives you enough time for the balls to spawn. I mean, you need some self sustain to go melee and dps. 

If you roleplay as logalas and camp Longbow, I could understand the problem here. 

[kiroho.4738]

On 3/20/2024 at 5:55 PM, Antycypator.9874 said:

Because we're not even fighting these bosses anymore, we're fighting annoying mechanics forcing us to move/stand, be in melee/range or avoid additional AoE.

Well, that's what game mechanics do -> forcing you to interact.
That's how games work.

Unstable Magic Abilities is a proven successful concept, it even turned out to be more successful than the PoF bounties itself.
I don't see any reason to discontinue this concept.

Edited March 21 by kiroho.4738
spelling

[LSD.4673]

14 hours ago, Smoky.5348 said:

They really do just slap these abilities on whenever they can't come up with anything else. It was cool enough as a Path of Fire bounty standard, but then they just keep showing up. Have they even added new ones?

Nah, they sucked in PoF as well because the game's UI is atrocious, and trying to hover over these dumb effects for tooltip to see what they actually do was impossible. To this day, any given squad will be comprised of 3/5ths of the players laying dead on a boss with leyline accumulation because no one knows what it does.

They're just even worse now. At least in PoF they were a throwaway for some side objectives. Since then they've just been the go-to choice for any boss because they're too lazy to come up with actual mechanics for them. How many years are we gonna fight identical bosses for? 

[DanAlcedo.3281]

1 hour ago, LSD.4673 said:

To this day, any given squad will be comprised of 3/5ths of the players laying dead on a boss with leyline accumulation because no one knows what it does.

Literally a learn to play issue. 

Also, does it never cross peoples mind as to question why they died but the other 2/5 didn't? 

Do they not look at their screens and see what others do? 

"Ohh! They walk to the balls. Maybe I should try this too. "

You don't even need the UI for that. Ontop of you only needing to learn the mechanic once. 

 

 

[Antycypator.9874]

10 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Ohh no. Mechanics that force interaction. 

I would prefer unique mechanics, tied to specific enemy type, not a set of random side effects forcing players to go ranged, or missing 50% of hits because you have to stand still (in a movement-based game, someone made a good point). This is lazy design — make regular mobs bigger, with more HP and just slap 2 random mechanics that don't even fit them.

[Solvar.7953]

I also felt these unstable abilities were a cop out for a thought out design.  Instead of getting abilities that make sense for a given boss, we are instead given these abilities that make no actual sense but get brushed under a 'unstable magic', which is why they have them.

While I know it is a game, and a lot of stuff is put in to challenge players, I also like that content that follows within the lore of the game world.  It would be a simple thing to make a game where monsters just have random abilities (or even random maps/dungeons) - I'd be unlikely to pay for such a game.  I'm willing to pay for GW2 (or other games) that have actually thought out the content they provide.

In some cases, less can be more - if the reason for doing this was so they could quickly put out a lot of bounties because they didn't have to think about them much, I might have instead preferred having half as many bounties but each creature having some thought out abilities.

 

[Shiyo.3578]

14 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Ohh no. Mechanics that force interaction. 

The horror. 

They never fix bugs with them and certain creature types like Imps.

 

[Astralporing.1957]

15 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Ohh no. Mechanics that force interaction. 

The horror. 

"Interaction", right.

A far/close mechanic on mob that jumps around fast. Or on one with melee hate/missile reflection (well, those at least are an issue only half of the time).

A close range bubble on mob with melee hate skillset. Or (again) on one that keeps running away/keeps jumping around.

a random invuln period on mob with very short "cc or it heals" phases.

Those are the most egregious combinations, but it's just top of the list - it is much longer.

It would be different if the whole mechanic was vetted correctly and adjusted for each mob it's used with, but that's not the case. The mechanics not only do not get adjusted to not get weird combinations on bosses with conflicting abilities, but they aren't even fully bugfixed yet and can cause unintended issues (usually when mechanic, or its visual, or both, desync from each other and/or boss).

Edited March 21 by Astralporing.1957

[LSD.4673]

6 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Literally a learn to play issue. 

Also, does it never cross peoples mind as to question why they died but the other 2/5 didn't? 

You mean in the game where 95% of the PvE population gets by spamming auto attack? Yeah, no. 

And that's not what literally means. If people wanted to read the skill tooltips, they wouldn't be able to, because every buff or DoT on the boss makes his boonbar jump around. This is poor mechanics in a game with a terrible UI and a population accustomed to just standing there and spamming skills. 

[Shiyo.3578]

18 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Ohh no. Mechanics that force interaction. 

The horror. 

Also, most ele builds simply go afk when its "zero dmg from melee".

10/10 interaction.

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

The worst offender is the Sniping ability “target 1 player, instantly  down them” tbh. Wow, so much interaction. Especially when it spawns along with things that vomit a gazillion AoE particle effects and it’s impossible to see the firing marker or the bullet. 

And let’s face the real problem as someone mentioned too: These are not a “proven successful concept”; or more like these only prove that Anet can successfully get away with designing lazy mobs PoF onwards by simply slapping 2 random unstable abilities on them and cranking their HP tenfolds to call it a day, and SotO is full of these poorly designed mobs.

Speaking of SotO mobs, “interaction” yeah right. Of all the mobs til now the SotO mobs are the ones that offer the least amount of counterplay. What’s there to even learn? Everything either instantly kills you in 1 hit, or wait 5 seconds to instantly kills you in 1 hit, with very few mobs have a CC bar and/or ways to counter their attacks. Oh and since they have a gigantic HP pool, you’re guaranteed to see those things fairly often. Where did the guy that design mechanics at Anet go?