More Complexity != Better Gameplay

[draxynnic.3719]

13 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I expect what they mean with ranger spear is that you have an extra step to do the same or less damage as other weapons that don't require that step.  It makes the weapon feel cumbersome.  When timing matters you're having to activate a 0.5s skill before you can use the skill you need or you lose a ton of damage because the non-ambush versions are strictly inferior.  There's no choice involved, which might be associated with complexity.  You just need to spam stealth to boost your skills and it's an extra button and extra 0.5s every time.  It just feels slow when you need it to be faster.

Mukluk made the comment that it's not clear that stealthing actually helps your DPS. Since the stealth skill interrupts your damage, and you stop autoattacking while stealthed, the autoattacks you lose might well outweigh the extra damage the skill does when it does land. Might still have benefits when a burst is more valuable than sustained damage, but it seems as though it's not the do-this-for-more-DPS mechanic it seems to be.

[Cuks.8241]

On 8/27/2024 at 6:29 AM, draxynnic.3719 said:

Mukluk made the comment that it's not clear that stealthing actually helps your DPS. Since the stealth skill interrupts your damage, and you stop autoattacking while stealthed, the autoattacks you lose might well outweigh the extra damage the skill does when it does land. Might still have benefits when a burst is more valuable than sustained damage, but it seems as though it's not the do-this-for-more-DPS mechanic it seems to be.

To be fair his comment was for pvp where it's mostly all about burst.

[draxynnic.3719]

2 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

To be fair his comment was for pvp where it's mostly all about burst.

Pretty sure that in the video I watched, he raised that as a problem in PvE - he was talking about how the damage rotation was to always use stealth for skill 2, but that he wasn't sure that was actually a DPS boost due to the loss of time spent autoattacking, and that it might be better to just not use the stealth at all in a DPS rotation (but that he hadn't tested it to see, we'll see what Snowcrows and the other number-crunchers come up with).

[RagiNagi.1802]

I'd be all up for simpler rotations, less damage and more class identity.

Now, most of the weapons are used in close range anyway. Axes feel like maces, maces feel like swords, and swords feel like scepters. The target area is mostly the same, and you swing them the same way.

Game is going into a bit different direction. And I guess its fine, as everyone is praising games combat. To me, most specs, i don't see the identity. Maybe simpler skills would do the trick.

 

 

[DeanBB.4268]

24 minutes ago, RagiNagi.1802 said:

I'd be all up for simpler rotations...

Aren't rotations player-created things (optimizing) rather than something the game forces on the player?

[RagiNagi.1802]

8 hours ago, DeanBB.4268 said:

Aren't rotations player-created things (optimizing) rather than something the game forces on the player?

yeah, you are right. It is not forced. But if you want to do half-decent in end-game you should probably use some of the meta builds.

For perspective - I have never gotten above 20k dmg on any build/rotation that I have made myself 😄 aaand with 20k on golem for a dps class in todays raid market, - you are just a dead weight. Sure, you can get carried. But if everyone is running same for-fun, unoptimized builds the squad is bound to fail. And the dps treshold is forced on player with boss timers on them.

[draxynnic.3719]

14 hours ago, DeanBB.4268 said:

Aren't rotations player-created things (optimizing) rather than something the game forces on the player?

There are cases where it's pretty clear what the intended rotation is. For instance, the bullet mechanic for elepistol is very clearly pushing you to use skills in a specific order for damage, and possibly the reverse order when you need defence or sustain more.

[Mungrul.9358]

On 8/29/2024 at 9:50 PM, DeanBB.4268 said:

Aren't rotations player-created things (optimizing) rather than something the game forces on the player?

I personally hate the idea of rotations, and have railed against them before, but hadn't been able to fully voice exactly why they tick me off so much.

At their core, rotations are actually about bypassing the game's mechanics.

GW2 was designed with the idea of combat being a very mobile thing, where you would have to think about positioning as well as when it would be best to unleash a skill or combination thereof.

And since the beginning, people who can't deal with moving AND fighting, have gone out of their way to design ever more complex rotations so they can avoid engaging with these mechanics and just stay in one spot and tank through everything but instant kills, hence the predominance of stacking.

It adds the wrong kind of complexity to the game, and ends up making it more about repetition than creative gameplay.

Over time, this has fed back in to the game and become the accepted way to play, resulting in the development team changing gameplay design to reflect player behaviour, and it's infuriating.

For players who play the way the game it was originally meant to be played, constantly moving and dodging, they will NEVER get massive DPS numbers, because the game was never meant to be about DPS checks. Every dodge, or moving out of engagement, stops the player dealing damage, unless they're ranged.

I'll go outside and shout at some clouds now.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

3 hours ago, Mungrul.9358 said:

I personally hate the idea of rotations, and have railed against them before, but hadn't been able to fully voice exactly why they tick me off so much.

At their core, rotations are actually about bypassing the game's mechanics.

GW2 was designed with the idea of combat being a very mobile thing, where you would have to think about positioning as well as when it would be best to unleash a skill or combination thereof.

And since the beginning, people who can't deal with moving AND fighting, have gone out of their way to design ever more complex rotations so they can avoid engaging with these mechanics and just stay in one spot and tank through everything but instant kills, hence the predominance of stacking.

It adds the wrong kind of complexity to the game, and ends up making it more about repetition than creative gameplay.

Over time, this has fed back in to the game and become the accepted way to play, resulting in the development team changing gameplay design to reflect player behaviour, and it's infuriating.

For players who play the way the game it was originally meant to be played, constantly moving and dodging, they will NEVER get massive DPS numbers, because the game was never meant to be about DPS checks. Every dodge, or moving out of engagement, stops the player dealing damage, unless they're ranged.

I'll go outside and shout at some clouds now.

Great comment.

Like the person you responded to stated, the game doesn't have rotations, they are player created constructs...they don't "actually exist."

But, because players became so enamored with rotations, they begin to believe they are actually real...If all people talk about is rotations, Arena Net's ideas for making balance changes that are based on player feedback, further actualizes the existence of rotations as a built in mechanic of the game rather than just a player created construct, further increasing the enamoration of rotations

Before you know it, people are writing 2000 page essays about whether Anet should add 0.5 seconds of alacrity to this traitline over here instead of this other traitline of there, for a rotation that 95% of people probably don't even know exists, didn't need to care about or use correctly. I alluded to this pointlessness on the previous page, and it drives me crazy as well. Seeing the train heading towards the cliff miles before it gets there, and knowing you can't do anything to stop it, is...such a terrible feeling.

Like the movie Snowpiercer : 

A-net is the authority on the train

People who play this game are the shoe.

And the conductor, are people like us, who at the very least can see and acknowledge that the rest of the train is in a perpetual self fulfilling but pointless feedback loop.

Why are we even on the train again? What is the point of playing this game...to just minmax the time spent killing this boss with as little effort as possible? It's like everyone forgot that this is supposed to be a game, where fights are supposed to be fun, where people are supposed to make their own builds, experiment and test things, explore the space of skill combinations, not a glorified calculator simulation.

Anyway. Good on you and DeanBB for thinking out of the box, and questioning the current narrative. Thanks for that really.

Edited September 12 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Mungrul.9358]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684, It's also why I'm not a fan of raids or strikes. They promote this kind of lazy play that people then herald as being "skilled."

Edited September 12 by Mungrul.9358

[Mell.4873]

On 8/30/2024 at 5:47 PM, RagiNagi.1802 said:

yeah, you are right. It is not forced. But if you want to do half-decent in end-game you should probably use some of the meta builds.

For perspective - I have never gotten above 20k dmg on any build/rotation that I have made myself 😄 aaand with 20k on golem for a dps class in todays raid market, - you are just a dead weight. Sure, you can get carried. But if everyone is running same for-fun, unoptimized builds the squad is bound to fail. And the dps treshold is forced on player with boss timers on them.

10-15k is the main requirement for end game content

[AliamRationem.5172]

9 hours ago, Mungrul.9358 said:

I personally hate the idea of rotations, and have railed against them before, but hadn't been able to fully voice exactly why they tick me off so much.

At their core, rotations are actually about bypassing the game's mechanics.

GW2 was designed with the idea of combat being a very mobile thing, where you would have to think about positioning as well as when it would be best to unleash a skill or combination thereof.

And since the beginning, people who can't deal with moving AND fighting, have gone out of their way to design ever more complex rotations so they can avoid engaging with these mechanics and just stay in one spot and tank through everything but instant kills, hence the predominance of stacking.

It adds the wrong kind of complexity to the game, and ends up making it more about repetition than creative gameplay.

Over time, this has fed back in to the game and become the accepted way to play, resulting in the development team changing gameplay design to reflect player behaviour, and it's infuriating.

For players who play the way the game it was originally meant to be played, constantly moving and dodging, they will NEVER get massive DPS numbers, because the game was never meant to be about DPS checks. Every dodge, or moving out of engagement, stops the player dealing damage, unless they're ranged.

I'll go outside and shout at some clouds now.

Why do I need 4-9 other players if we each function as a solo unit rather than serving a role as part of a group? 

How do you balance?  There's a reason the really tough solos are always classes like Rev and necro.  They're the ones that can survive anything other classes can while giving up the least amount of damage.  Balancing theoretical maximum damage is much easier than trying to objectively measure sustain and its impact on damage output.

I think they realized these problems early on and by the time they put out their first expansion had already begun to change course.  It's difficult to design compelling group content when your premise is basically "every man for himself".

 

[Kulvar.1239]

On 9/12/2024 at 1:23 PM, Mungrul.9358 said:

I personally hate the idea of rotations, and have railed against them before, but hadn't been able to fully voice exactly why they tick me off so much.

At their core, rotations are actually about bypassing the game's mechanics.

GW2 was designed with the idea of combat being a very mobile thing, where you would have to think about positioning as well as when it would be best to unleash a skill or combination thereof.

And since the beginning, people who can't deal with moving AND fighting, have gone out of their way to design ever more complex rotations so they can avoid engaging with these mechanics and just stay in one spot and tank through everything but instant kills, hence the predominance of stacking.

It adds the wrong kind of complexity to the game, and ends up making it more about repetition than creative gameplay.

Over time, this has fed back in to the game and become the accepted way to play, resulting in the development team changing gameplay design to reflect player behaviour, and it's infuriating.

For players who play the way the game it was originally meant to be played, constantly moving and dodging, they will NEVER get massive DPS numbers, because the game was never meant to be about DPS checks. Every dodge, or moving out of engagement, stops the player dealing damage, unless they're ranged.

I'll go outside and shout at some clouds now.

A rotation is merely the optimal sequence of using skills for maximizing damage on golem. There's no bypassing anything.
Any boss who have a mechanic that forces a break in the rotation will throw a wrench in it and make the rotation a mess.
The good players do not dumbly follow a rotation regardless of what's happening in the boss fight.

The need for non-dps skills on bosses (CC, teleport, ...) is even more rotation breaking.
Slothazor with all the invulnerable CC phases for example is a boss that break rotations.
Like the players handling pylons on Qadim 2 needing the mobility to pick up orbs.

[Captain Crapface.7528]

On 8/25/2024 at 9:47 AM, SpaceMarine.1836 said:

As an example - Guardian Spear skill 5 tooltip has more words than all Guardian Greatsword skill tooltips combined.

Grug no like many words. Many words scary.

No wonder we're yet to nerf broken specks, if people refuse to even bloody read what they do.

[Jobber.6348]

On 8/25/2024 at 3:47 PM, SpaceMarine.1836 said:

- Nearly no one plays Bladesworn

- Nearly no one uses Guardian off-hand pistol

- Nearly no Rev players use Scepter

These 3 examples aren't due to complexity, it's cos they're fundamentally unfun to play. 

Dragon Slash root feels really bad. 

Guardian Off-hand pistol is clunky as heck, especially Pistol 5. 

Rev Scepter is atrocious as a healer's weapon and we got Mace nerfed just so Scepter can win a numbers game with a clunky ally targeting which no one enjoys. And it got randomly nerfed the first patch since it launched cos LOL. 

[Mikasa.5217]

On 8/25/2024 at 2:47 AM, SpaceMarine.1836 said:

complexity is not a playstyle.

i read everything you said, but still, say that to a weaver's face

don't say that to bladesworns face though. you... wouldn't like them when they're angry...

[draxynnic.3719]

10 hours ago, Jobber.6348 said:

Guardian Off-hand pistol is clunky as heck, especially Pistol 5. 

Nobody:

ArenaNet: We removed pretty much all of the "press the skill again to detonate a moving projectile" mechanics from the game because they're basically impossible to time correctly unless you're basically sitting on top of the server, but somehow we decided it was a good idea to not only reintroduce it, but combine it with a phased charge-up mechanic that makes it even more awkward to time appropriately.

[Jobber.6348]

26 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Nobody:

ArenaNet: We removed pretty much all of the "press the skill again to detonate a moving projectile" mechanics from the game because they're basically impossible to time correctly unless you're basically sitting on top of the server, but somehow we decided it was a good idea to not only reintroduce it, but combine it with a phased charge-up mechanic that makes it even more awkward to time appropriately.

But we gave Spear old Staff auto, so our one Guardian main in the dev team doesn't quit. 

For legal reasons, this is a joke

[RaveOnYou.2819]

if high ccomplexity was good thing everyone plays weaver. however its least played elite spec on entire game. ill add few examples to op's weapon examples in ele perspective.

ele staff  is better than ele spear

ele scepter is better than ele pistol

[SpaceMarine.1836]

23 hours ago, Captain Crapface.7528 said:

Grug no like many words. Many words scary.

No wonder we're yet to nerf broken specks, if people refuse to even bloody read what they do.

You need to understand that the skills are just one square button that you press and action happens. There's a limit to its reasonable complexity. You have on average around 15 more buttons to press, so no one wants to read an essay about what a single button press does. I used it as an illustration about how the skill design degenerated over the years.

[Captain Crapface.7528]

3 hours ago, SpaceMarine.1836 said:

You need to understand that the skills are just one square button that you press and action happens. There's a limit to its reasonable complexity. You have on average around 15 more buttons to press, so no one wants to read an essay about what a single button press does. I used it as an illustration about how the skill design degenerated over the years.

On the contrary, I'd like my skills to be more than "press x to damage".

Yeah, there is "too much" but there's also "not enough". Let's try and find the middle ground, shall we?

[SpaceMarine.1836]

11 hours ago, Captain Crapface.7528 said:

On the contrary, I'd like my skills to be more than "press x to damage".

Yeah, there is "too much" but there's also "not enough". Let's try and find the middle ground, shall we?

Yes, obviously, like with most things, both extreme ends of the spectrum are bad. But you were mocking one end of the spectrum specifically. Just because someone doesn't enjoy overcomplicated skills (not just me), it has nothing to do with whether they enjoy reading or not. Skill description should not be a space for long paragraphs, and they necessitate them, then it should be a red flag.

There are many skills that have relatively complex behavior yet are simple to use and have concise description. Good example is Binding Blade on Guardian GS. It's AoE projectile that has optionally second pull mechanic, or you can skip the pull and just let it do damage, and you can also use it to fish thieves in stealth. 

[ZephyrusSpring.5728]

I always fall back to Agni from the SMITE moba as the perfect example.  

He has 4 skills which can each be described in a single sentence.  1. Place a lingering circular cloud that damages enemies.  2. Throw out a wave of fire in a rectangular line.  3. Dash forward leaving a lingering trail of fire behind you.  4. Launch an orb of fire into the air which comes down after a delay, this ability has 3 charges.  His first ability has an additional line which states that any other ability ignites the cloud and stuns enemies.

Basic tools with simple interactions where each tool has different characteristics.  That’s how you draw mechanical complexity from a simple sandbox.