Febe CM/LCM Random Thought

[nucklepuckk.1805]

I had a random thought about Febe CM/LCM the other day:

If Blizzard (World of Warcraft) or Square Enix (Final Fantasy XIV) released a raid boss and that raid boss either required or heavily favored one spec of one class to the point that 60% of team composition was that single spec or class, that encounter would be fixed/nerfed/changed/balanced within a week, if not sooner. Yet here we are with Virtuoso representing 59% of all classes in Febe CM/LCM and 98% of the DPS Role. And ArenaNet is apparently done fixing/nerfing/changing/balancing this encounter? That's a joke.

Click CM or LCM, See class representation in the bottom right pie chart.

ArenaNet raid design is deeply unserious.

Edited June 9 by nucklepuckk.1805

[rotten.9753]

They also think Empowered Gluttony is ok so that's that.

[mandala.8507]

The reality is, hardcore endgame instanced content is not high on the priority list for a game like GW2, nor should it be, so there's no reason for them to waste dev resources to fix content less than 2k players will ever touch.

It's played by almost no one and the success or failure of such content has very little impact on sales or general player opinion of the major releases. Arenanet is about to release an expansion with no endgame instanced content available on launch, and when they do release the raid wing in the first follow-up patch, it will have a zerg mode so that people don't even have to complete the normal mode version of the encounter to experience it.

This is a good thing, too. I have all 3 sets of raid legendary armor, the raid legendary ring, and I still have about 200 LI extra beyond that, so I'm not saying this out of spite. I greatly enjoy the raids in GW2 and a lot of the strike missions, but they simply aren't the reason people play GW2.

And lately, as this post alludes to, they've been designed in a way that favors extreme optimization in a game that just isn't made for that flavor of difficulty. What was the point of all the "bring the player, not the class" work they did over the last 2+ years (and did quite successfully, I might add) if they're going to design their encounters around the undisputed easiest and most busted ranged dps class in the game anyway?

Things that need to happen sooner rather than later:

• Nerf Virtuoso. It should stay simple, it should stay ranged, and it should stay high-utility/survivable, it just shouldn't do competitive dmg while being all those things.
• Stop designing encounters for a race to first clear. This is where most of the trouble is coming from, imo. If a perfectly optimized group of highly skilled players is taking a week+ to complete one boss fight in GW2, the fight is designed poorly. End of story. It's that simple. Arenanet is not a studio with the means to properly test content at that level of difficulty, and it shows. GW2 is not that kind of game for so many reasons.
• Actually develop gameplay for the encounter specifically instead of repurposing old combat designs. SotO encounters feel like they were made by a GW2 modder instead of a developer. Is this a resource allocation issue and not actually the fault of the devs who were just doing their best with what they were allowed to do? Probably. But fix it. Make stuff for the encounters themselves.
• Stop designing around dmg checks and cheap positioning gimmicks. No more hp sponges. No more green circles. Make the fight interesting and be more clever about how you force people to move, stay alive, and defeat the boss.
• Focus on the easier modes first instead of last. I promise, the game will be more fun if you do this. I promise.

[nucklepuckk.1805]

4 hours ago, mandala.8507 said:

The reality is, hardcore endgame instanced content is not high on the priority list for a game like GW2, nor should it be, so there's no reason for them to waste dev resources to fix content less than 2k players will ever touch.

It's played by almost no one and the success or failure of such content has very little impact on sales or general player opinion of the major releases.

Meanwhile: ArenaNet Presents Janthir Wilds Feat. The Eighth Raid!

[MercurialKuroSludge.8974]

56 minutes ago, nucklepuckk.1805 said:

Meanwhile: ArenaNet Presents Janthir Wilds Feat. The Eighth Raid!

Now we can watch the Raid peeps complain about yet ANOTHER CVirt fight in W8.
Its gong to be hilarious 🙂

[nucklepuckk.1805]

2 hours ago, MercurialKuroSludge.8974 said:

Now we can watch the Raid peeps complain about yet ANOTHER CVirt fight in W8.
Its gong to be hilarious 🙂

The issue is not virtuoso singularly. The issue is encounter design either requiring or heavily favoring the particular thing that one exact spec of one exact class is good at, to the point that no other options are even considered.

[Vekaiel.8493]

They should just stop designing mechanics around what few professions have, that is when you are going to see people favoring or demanding certain builds. If they need a specific kind of skill for the encounter, then give it to everyone as a special action skill or a bundle/limited time transformation.

Back in core game the hardest foe was lupicus in arah and for me it was a fun encounter because you did not need anything but dodging properly, some mobility skills/stability or blocking certain attacks. which everyone had access to. You could bring for example a teamwide projectile block(which was profession specific at the time) to make it easier but it was not needed.

The moment you force a type of skill not everyone have access to or set a dps requirement that not every profession can achieve reliably, you get what we have now. People should not be punish or have someone else compensate/carry because they want to play a specific profession or weapon type.

I would rather prefer they spend their time making the encounter look cool and epic then having so much mechanics at the same time that require bright color markings to even see/know how to react. Also can we stop with mechanics that choose player at random or luck based? It is just wasting our time and more frustrating then fun.

(And if anyone was asking themselves while reading this, yes I did get a clear on LCM)