Fundamental design problems in large scale combat: stability a right, not privileged

[jul.7602]

Another one of those threads. Straight to the point. Skip to the posture bar if TLDR.

Guild wars 2 combat is like reverse quantum mechanics. At the small scale it is relatively balanced (for what its worth), but once you approach larger groups of 20+ the fundamentals of combat change. Single target damage is almost entirely irrelevant, phased out by AoE skills. Dodging individual a!ttacks and keeping track of enemy cool downs is near impossible amidst a sea of red; your survival is based on your ability to anticipate and avoid the enemy's "bomb", damage mitigation from stacking, and praying to god that you don't get your stability stripped, which for some strange reason is only available en mass to 1 class, and nearly non-existent on any other.

Stability is a right, not a privledgeThe biggest problem I have is the anti-symmetry between the access to stuns, and the access to stability (similar arguments hold for condi application and removal, and damage vs healing).By this I mean that each player can potentially pack up to 3 aoe hard CCs just from their weapon skill+profession mechanics, without any investment in utilities, elites, or even traits. In a large scale fight, damage packets are so high that losing control for more than 1 second can easily be fatal. It would make sense in theory that players would be able to access maybe a few basic stun-breaks or personal stabs without having to investing heavily in traits or commit to utilities, but that's not the case and its in fact even worse. To my knowledge, no existing rune, sigil or class has stability built into their profession mechanic or weapon skills (except for tempest and Tomes of courage). To my knowledge no class,rune or sigil has the ability to stun break either without tapping into utilities, elites or traits. Even worse is that there about 12 utilities or elites in a game more than 3 years old that grant more than a single stack of stability, and almost half of them, including the strongest of these stab abilities belong the to the guardian. So now we have dilemma in which the most important boon in the game that is required just avoid getting knocked around like a ping pong ball is almost exclusively available to one class, the guardian, hence why for the last couple of years everyone basically required to have at least 1 guardian per party. The punchline is that every year we add to the power creep, each class does more and more damage and has more and more stuns without having to invest in them. Meanwhile, we still can only bring 1 heal skill, which for the most part heals the same amount as it did in Vanilla gw2 (despite the fact that scourges and eles do at least twice as much damage now), and still have more or less the same access to stability as we did several years ago (arguably worse due to stability rework). Ironically, the only classes that get "stability creep" are the classes that had a massive abundance in the first place, namely the guardian which can now +5stab 10 people! The unreasonably scarcity of promotes unhealthy gameplay where you basically have to ball up near guardians because nobody else save for warriors has any reliable stab on their profession to split away from the pack, and even they have to commit a full set of utilties+grandmaster traitline.

Similiar arguementsI think you can make similar arguments for healing and other boons. We've reached a point in the game where everyone has this big red button of doom and the only way to make the game playable was for the devs to add big blue buttons of heal. An immovable object vs unstoppable force which in my opinion it's not a design worthy of such a dynamic game. We've literally devolved into the holy trinity that this game pledged not support. If you don't believe then look at arc dps. You will see that over 80% of the universal healing, condi removal and boons are coming from literally 5-6 people in a 25 man squad, which contribute literally 1% of the total squad damage. The problem with systems like these is that erease any sort of individuality or skill from the player. At any skill level you are basically just a drone in a hivemind, you freeload off the stab and healing of someone else, who in turn freeloads off your damage. If either of us fails, dies or does not even exist then we're at such a grave disadvantage that even high skill disparities wont allow us to overcome a semi-competent foe that can.

My ideas for a solutionIf you played a game called Sekiro, you'll know exactly what I mean. Give every player a "posture bar" which is nearly identical to a breakbar you see on PvE mobs or when picking up a dragon banner. The posture bar is a colored bar that is displayed above your hp like this https://cdn.gamer-network.net/2019/usgamer/sekiro-stun-meter-example.jpg

Posture barYou have the following buffs while your posture bar is active

1. 50% damage reduction from conditions and physical attacks
2. Immunity to all hard CCs, immobilzation, and daze
3. Slows/soft CCs have 50% effectiveness (eg. cripple slows by 25% instead of 50%)
4. Incoming damage packets are capped at 20% of your maximum health (like protective spirit from gw1). If a single attack was going to remove 50% of my HP after all dmg calculations, it will be hard capped and remove 20% instead.
5. Posture will remove 1 conditions every 5 seconds

Losing Posture pointsThe amount of posture you lose is ordered from top to bottom. The first few bullets will consume substantially more posture.

• Whenever you nullify a hard CC through mechanic (2) you lose posture proportional to the length of the CC and how detrimental it is (eg Stuns deplete more than daze). (Eliminates the need for strict compositions and allows skilled players and classes to succeed independent of support roles)
• Whenever you limit damage through mechanic (4). (Make fights longer, and less gimmicky by reducing the potency of cheap and unpredictable AoE 2 shot skills. Should allow skilled and and small guilds not instant-wipe or get steamrolled by substantially larger zergs.)
• Each time mechanic (5) removes conditions (Lessen dependency on mega healers.)
• Using attack skills 1-5 consume a non-trivial amount of posture (favor thoughtful input and engagement)
• Each second you suffer from cripple, chill or slow, your posture bar is depleted, mechanic (3)

When Posture bar is depleted

• You lose all buffs associated with having a posture bar and are fully susceptible to any CCs. A red dot will appear above your head so that enemies can take advantage.
• You take 50% more damage from all types. (Allow good players to punish undisciplined players)
• If you are stunned, you will take 100% more physical damage instead of 50%. (Reward active engagement. Combat should be about exploiting openings in your opponent)

Restoring posture

• When you lose posture a countdown starts. After 20 seconds your posture is instantly replenished to full.
• Using personal healing skill
• Will slowly recharge unless mechanic (4) or (2) is triggered. In that case you will have to wait 5 seconds before it begins to recharge.
• No other way to restore posture or we defeat the entire purpose.

Necessary changes

• Remove barrier
• Remove all +% healing modifiers
• Remove downstate
• Anything that gear that gives healing power stats, will give only 3/4 of that. (100hp>>75hp after. Universal healing nerf)
• probably remove stability.
• remove target cap for offensive skills.

[Dawdler.8521]

Though sometimes you have to wonder whether the player created problem of stacking meta zergs deserve an Anet created solution.

[steki.1478]

Sounds like too much work for a trivial solution - nerf stability on guard and introduce it on already strong/popular supports such as chrono, tempest, scrapper and rev.

I still don't understand why there's no scrapper+chrono parties since they have access to 4+ aoe stabs together and are already necessary builds in each squad. Especially now when guard has 10 man stab.

[Voltekka.2375]

Didnt you fix wvw on another post tho?

[schloumou.3982]

Well... you would destroy any complexity of the combat system and turn it into a flat breakbar bludgeoning, where every skill you use does the same but is more or less effective. Also a lot of stuff you wrote about healing and CC is wrong but I dont play the game anymore atm so I leave this to others to comment on.

[Aeolus.3615]

@Dawdler.8521 said:Though sometimes you have to wonder whether the player created problem of stacking meta zergs deserve an Anet created solution.

Players did it cause games allow it and game designs leads players into certain bad behaviors.

[joneirikb.7506]

Can't really decide if I like your post or not, I agree with all of the start, but not sure about your proposed solution. Some of the ideas are interesting, but I just dunno it touches me in the wrong spot I guess.

Though it makes sense that the game plays better at small scale, since the entire combat system was initially designed around 5vs5 sPvP, and the 20+ fights has always been ... weird.... special.... bit retarded. I can't really come up with a good way of counteracting that though, I wonder if it would be possible without drastically changing the entire combat system from scratch.

Anyways, agreed that ANet should take a long hard look at giving more personal stability to classes from more varied places so you don't have to lock builds in order to get a little bit of stability to keep yourself alive. Adding some self-stability to most classes profession mechanics could be a good start.

[Straegen.2938]

Long post about an issue easily fixed in a way many other MMOs figured out a long time ago. Stuns and such should have significantly diminishing returns and be immediately removed upon receiving damage. Spamming stunlock abilities is on par with AoE spamming in terms of skill and royal screws up melee mechanics.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

spread the stab love, forget this breakbar nonsense.

[LetoII.3782]

Game needs more boon spamSometimes skills even go off still ain't nobody got time fo dat

[jul.7602]

@Straegen.2938 said:Long post about an issue easily fixed in a way many other MMOs figured out a long time ago. Stuns and such should have significantly diminishing returns and be immediately removed upon receiving damage. Spamming stunlock abilities is on par with AoE spamming in terms of skill and royal screws up melee mechanics.

I don't think a D.R on stuns is enough. In this meta a 1 second stun inside of a coordinated bomb by a larger group is enough to be lethal even with full tank gear. It's not like you really even have to chain CC anymore. Further, I think damage creep is out of control and if anything there needs to be some hard limitations on that.

[jul.7602]

@joneirikb.7506 said:Can't really decide if I like your post or not, I agree with all of the start, but not sure about your proposed solution. Some of the ideas are interesting, but I just dunno it touches me in the wrong spot I guess.

Though it makes sense that the game plays better at small scale, since the entire combat system was initially designed around 5vs5 sPvP, and the 20+ fights has always been ... weird.... special.... bit kitten. I can't really come up with a good way of counteracting that though, I wonder if it would be possible without drastically changing the entire combat system from scratch.

Anyways, agreed that ANet should take a long hard look at giving more personal stability to classes from more varied places so you don't have to lock builds in order to get a little bit of stability to keep yourself alive. Adding some self-stability to most classes profession mechanics could be a good start.

Probably a simple and non-creative solution. Give every single class a utility that stunbreaks and grants themselves stability and repeal the stability so that it stacks in duration.

[ArchonWing.9480]

@Straegen.2938 said:Long post about an issue easily fixed in a way many other MMOs figured out a long time ago. Stuns and such should have significantly diminishing returns and be immediately removed upon receiving damage. Spamming stunlock abilities is on par with AoE spamming in terms of skill and royal screws up melee mechanics.

Exactly. The only reason why stab is needed is because CC is too oppressive. The best example of this was at HoT release.

[subversiontwo.7501]

Like so many others have already said, there are far easier to fix the stability issues should they want to fix them.

Rolling things back towards vanilla seems rather popular. While that is a larger project it solves more spam issues than just stab and hard-CC.Rolling back assumes going back to an old balance and volume where this crossover was not a problem (stun is an effect, stab is a boon etc.).

If you keep that in mind you can see that another option would be to rather split those systems apart and build a new relationship within each layer.You already have that with breaks for example, which is an effect. You could remove stab and replace it with more breaks (and add a short immunity).

That is the gist of it.

I would then take it one step further to split the effects from their interaction with the boon/condi layer of the mechanics and that would be to remove the rooting effects, namely stun and float and just replace those with more knockback and launch. That may not make sense at first but it means that it is much harder to create killzones where you use effects to keep players in conditions (or damage). We have immobilize for that and it does not need to be multi-layered. It is enough to have that one root and its counterplay in boons and the cleanse/corrupt dimension.

It feels like a way to keep hard CC without needing as strong a counter as stab or longer immunity and give players more of an option to use their break(s). Making the overall gameplay less dependant on breaks than it is on stab today since the CC itself becomes much less likely to indirect kill you instantly and thus giving you more control over when you want or need to use your breaks (or making the reactive nature of breaks more forgiving so it does not need to be proactively spammed to keep up). You basically add the annoying Ranger knock-back situation to all hard CC to make it more of a trade-off and choice, adding layers of complexity that way instead, introducing more chaos to the gameplay rather than complexity to effect synergies.

It could be discussed at length but I'm getting tired so I'll only incoherently ramble about it. It's a thought anyway that could shake up or spice up. I'd probably still prefer a roll back myself since I think the old system was good.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

the stab rework is a classic example of anet remaking the wheel instead of fixing it. the old stab meta had to go, everyone was running around with 20sec of stab and it was a snooze fest. what they should have done is nerf durations and reduce cds, or deny the ability to stack stab duration. I get why they changed to stacks, from a balance perspective the old stab was way op, but man... then they did it again with condis. just up the coefficients! I know I know im just a lowly peasant who thinks he knows everything...

[zengara.8301]

Please do correct me if I am reading this wrong. The even shorter TLDR is that you think people damage more that they can heal/stab, correct?

Doom button:The problem is not really the amount you are able to heal/stab, but rather the players within the open groups, at least in my experience. You can have 10-20 cleansing in a 50 man squad, and still have 5 people actually performing good cleanses. This can go all the way back to gear, while Minstreal insignias require the expansion + lvl 400 in any of the 3 gear-wise disciplines, berserker insignia/gear can just be bought from the TP.

It is very easy for me to put the "get good" theory out there, though I do not think there is an actually way of finding out, unless if you a deep data analysis of many pug groups/their gear and their performance vs the other groups, to find out if it is gear that affects it, the people or stab/healing, but the fact of the matter is, if the red button of doom was so heavily structured into the fights then Guilds would not be able to 30 vs 60+ and simply stand there and sustain the damage. Or the fact that there are a lot more damage dealers in a group than healers, also all the way down to 1 person vs 1, you can basically cleanse your way out vs full zerkers. You can also have 2 blobs where they both have to much sustain and you are basically fighting forever until someone logs in with damage, or they both leave the fight. All of these things would lead you to believe that the damage dont override the sustain

To put it simply, I do believe that people are able to sustain in these scenarios, I do generally not know if your ideology comes because you are in a group with people that are not fully geared, or not playing the "meta". But I find it generally to not be the case. It is just that you got a lot more damage dealers in a 50 blob instead of healers.

What I dont get:

You seem to push the idea that we are all in a hive-mine scenario, but also frequently decide that if 1 of these 5 people whom are cleansing/healing weren't there, then the group would suffer heavily. This ideology suggest that you also think that there are individuals in groups who changes the group fully?

Your sugguestion:

By creating this Posture Bar, it would inevitably change a lot of things like the meta, people would not run around with marauder gear since the damage is capped at a certain point, and people would probably invest heavily on CC (thief probably have the best CC, and since utilities are not going to affect the bar, the free conditional removal+ the massive damage cap it would be easiest for a thief to clean CC at a near range, and necro/ele if you want a lot of CC at far range, but it would not make sense to be ranged, unless if its only for the CC staff provides you). If we simply accept your idea, that the damage is above the sustain currently without questioning it when it comes to these other scenarios, then It would provide you with the solution you are looking for, but the same time give you a lot of other problems. In other words I just think the meta will change drastically to target the weakness of this posture bar. Something more gimmicky like investing on CC´s and then bomb.

Obviously this is just a theory-crafting, but seems like how it would be played out in the long run, since anything close to the comp we have now, would lead to a forever battles...Like bunker vs bunker