Would you like to gain the ability to use Utility talents in the Elite slot?

[Zaxares.5419]

I would have loved to see a wider array of utility and elite skills, yes. I'm reminded of GW1 and how, over the years, the introduction of new skills and elite skills eventually meant that you had a considerable array of skill types like Shouts, Stances, Traps, Wells, Minions etc. and there would almost certainly be at least one elite skill of that particular category (which, in turn, were often a linchpin skill that your entire build revolved around). As others have mentioned here, build diversity generally plays second fiddle in GW2 to the character stats. Skills and traits that boost your stats often have outsized effects on the effectiveness of your performance rather than skills that "do the job, but in a different way".

 

On a somewhat related note, one idea I had was the introduction of "Racial Skill Slots", 2 or 3 additional skill slots that sit above your normal bar, and you can only put racial skills into them. (I'm thinking 2 normal, and 1 elite.) This change would mean that racial skills can be balanced against themselves, not against profession skills, so players don't have to decide between something they want to take for flavour (when was the last time you saw an Asura use one of their Golem elites, for instance? Or a Norn use one of their Racial transforms?) and the more powerful profession skills, and ANet can deliberately make the racial skills weaker (which they already are, generally) and balance them against what the other races can bring to the table. To shore up any serious deficiencies between the races, new generic racial skills could be introduced, like Summon Mistfire Wolf. For example, Human racial skills bring a fair bit of general utility to the table, like healing, condition removal, boon removal etc. For races that don't have these options (like Norn or Charr), they could bring back a skill like the Antitoxin Spray, make it heal a little, clear conditions etc. but put it on a fairly long cooldown.

 

Naturally racial skill slots would be disabled in sPvP. I wouldn't object to having them in WvW, although I think the servers might protest if there was a three-way fight in SMC and all three 60-man zergs all summoned Mistfire Wolves. :P

[Cyninja.2954]

20 minutes ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

What this would lead to is a complete homogenization of class design and every profession feeling the same, doing the same thing, only with different visual effects. The game would become boring rather quickly.

Sure, if you want to completely omit the better encounter design and game play feel (I'd argue that having a specific skill have a measurable impact on an encounter noticeable to players is a huge benefit in how they perceive combat).

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Let people under-perform. As long as they're having fun with their under-performing build, that's fine.

Except it's not. The vast disparity in performance is a serious issue to this game. You would do good to consider the overall effect rather than the individual effect such design decisions have.

 

Other MMORPGs have gone exactly in the opposite direction between, streamlining and removing choice as to allow more control over content.

 

Now oversimplifying obviously leads to what many other MMORPGs now experience: generic and uninspired classes on a rollercoaster. We are far from that here though so far.

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If THEY become bothered by how under-perferming they are, they'll pick more meta options on their own and that's the end of it.

So your solution to an issue which you are inreasing is to simply tell players: if you are to bad at this game, go use someone else's build. Sounds fun.

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If people create awful builds, they're most likely casual having casual fun in the game. Pick the META builds for yourself, find like-minded people to raid with, and leave those people be.

I don't care why players create awful builds. I care for the developers to implement sensible game design with the goal to guide players to a suitable amount. Within that framework, players are free to do and chose as they like.

Edited June 1, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Andy.5981]

No, but I would like to see them doing some work on the Elite and normal skills that are currently blocked from use underwater so that they can be used.

[Tails.9372]

19 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Sure, if you want to completely omit the better encounter design and game play feel

One does not automatically lead to the other and is only really relevant for OW content anyway for which the main issue is that the scaling oftentimes assumes that every player in the area is fighting every mob in the area at the same time.

Edited June 1, 2021 by Tails.9372

[Cyninja.2954]

8 minutes ago, Tails.9372 said:

One does not automatically lead to the other and is only really relevant for OW content anyway for which the main issue is that the scaling oftentimes assumes that every player in the area is fighting every mob in the area at the same time.

True, it is not given. I was presenting an example. Scaling is a non issue here, in fact it would benefit stricter skill restrictions because in my given example it would ensure that every player in the area would have a cc skill for example (helping with those pesky break bars which are all to often an issue when scaled up). Just as the current system ensure that every player has a self heal and elite skill on their bar.

 

The same is true for more freedom in utility choice. Not every player will automatically enjoy this. That too is an assumption based on the underlying idea that freedom always leads to more enjoyment/fun. We could now start an entire debate on how successful rollercoaster games versus sandbox games versus a healthy mix of both games are, but that would go far off-topic now. I personally think a good mix is the ideal approach.

Edited June 1, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

I know a lot of people who would love to have an option - back to topic - to use an utility-skill in their elite slot. It would definitely add a lot of extra variety to the builds and grant more opportunities for every content. 

 

One huge problem would come with the Revenant class, which does not have any additional skills. But I think that could be solved somehow. Could also be an interesting concept for a new Elite Specialization, instead of getting another F-Key ability.

 

 

[Astralporing.1957]

2 hours ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

And yet nobody, not even you, is asking for this because that would NOT result in players having more fun with the game. That's the issue here. It's not a discussion about efficiency and how to buff elite skills. It's about giving players a choice.

For you, maybe. For me it's about not giving players bad choices.

 

2 hours ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

We're probably THE MMO with the least freedom in our build, with weapon-locked abilities (especially true for 2H weapons), 1 talent locked for heals and 1 locked for elite skills.

Untrue. There are MMORPGs out there that give you basically no choice at all. And some of them are far more popular than GW2 is at the moment.If anything, gw2 is probably somewhere near the top as far as the freedom of buildcraft is concerned.

 

2 hours ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

We can only customize 3 slots, and since that number is so small, we're going to feel way more guilty if we pick a suboptimal but fun talent precisely because we have so little to work with in the first place.

We can customize far more than 3 slots. I mean, it's not like you are limited to a single weapon, single heal skill and single elite. Well, sometimes you are, but not because the game doesn't offer you more choices, but because those other choices are just plain bad. Which is a far bigger issue than some limitations to build freedom.

 

A freedom to make choices is purely illusory when most of the choices are bad.

 

2 hours ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

Allowing players to pick a regular talent in the Elite slot can only improve the player experience. I'm convinced even the minority who oppose it would enjoy it in the long run after its implementation.

I'm not. But i can already see the wave of nerfs that would follow if it turned out that stacking too many skills of the same type becomes suddenly too op.

I mean, do you think that cc skills would get nerfed so much as they already did if you could only carry one such skill in your build and could not stack it? Do you think Anet would allow heal skills to retain their current effectiveness if you could suddenly use 5 of them in one build?

 

1 hour ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

What this would lead to is a complete homogenization of class design and every profession feeling the same, doing the same thing, only with different visual effects. The game would become boring rather quickly.

FF XIV says otherwise. That game decides your weapon, traits and skills for you. Each player with the same class and level is basically a carbon copy of each other. Sure, they can move the skills around on hotbar how they want (which changes nothing about the build itself), or even decide to not put some on the hotbar (why, though, anyone might want to deprive themselves of useful skills, i have no idea - it's not like there's a limit to hotbar slots you have to worry about), but that's all the choice you get. It does not result in a boring playstyle though.

 

1 hour ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

Let people under-perform. As long as they're having fun with their under-performing build, that's fine. If THEY become bothered by how under-perferming they are, they'll pick more meta options on their own and that's the end of it.

Problem starts when their underperforming starts bothering other players. Either directly (when underperforming players drag the optimized ones down) or indirectly (when it starts affecting game balance levels in non-high-end content). The massive gap between open world content and instanced one is a result of just that - game allowing players to use massively underperforming builds.

 

 

[Tails.9372]

31 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

If anything, gw2 is probably somewhere near the top as far as the freedom of buildcraft is concerned.

 

That says more about the other MMOs than it does about GW2 as GW2 in that area is still severely lacking in multiple regards.

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Tails.9372 said:

 

That says more about the other MMOs than it does about GW2 as GW2 in that area is still severely lacking in multiple regards.

Whether it is lacking or not is highly subjective. Saying GW2 is a MMO that offers the least build freedom,when in reality it's one of those that offers the most is not subjective however. It's just plain untrue.

[SoulGuardian.6203]

Wow.

This is a good thread.

I've been reading a lot of good comments here. Interesting.

Thank you.

 

I like the idea of having at least one other alternative skill for each weapon of each class.

But because that is highly unlikely to happen; the next best thing is to have a vast selection of Elite Skills for each class, and all related to the current Utility set.

Some existing ones could just get a rework?

Or do you think that the US should be related the weapon instead of the other USs?

 

For instance,  Warrior+Sword= A hundred blades.

 

[Tails.9372]

2 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Whether it is lacking or not is highly subjective.

If you use it as a general statement which is not what I did. That it lacks in certain areas is just objectively true, whether or not an individual cares about these areas is a different question.

 

 

 

9 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Saying GW2 is a MMO that offers the least build freedom,when in reality it's one of those that offers the most is not subjective however. It's just plain untrue.

 

Which was an obvious hyperbole but your own words:

 

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

A freedom to make choices is purely illusory when most of the choices are bad.

 

call your "it's one of those that offers the most" into question.

 

 

[nopoet.2960]

I don't dislike the idea of replacing your elite with a utility skill but a far more interesting decision would be if we could replace our healing skill with a utility.

 

[Aodlop.1907]

3 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Saying GW2 is a MMO that offers the least build freedom

Well, "build" is a broad term. Yes, you can customize stats, you can choose 3 specializations, I'll give you that.

But GW2 has the least freedom when it comes to which spells you want to actually use in combat.

You can choose your weapon, but you're stuck with their spells, and if it's a 2 handed weapons you're stuck with all 5 even if two of them are lame.

You get only 3 talent slots, and the elite slot has very few options.

The spellbar options ARE very limited, this you can hardly deny. 

[Astralporing.1957]

8 hours ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

Well, "build" is a broad term. Yes, you can customize stats, you can choose 3 specializations, I'll give you that.

But GW2 has the least freedom when it comes to which spells you want to actually use in combat.

That's also not true. There are very succesful MMORPGs out there that do not give you any freedom in that regard at all. I mentioned one (FF XIV) already.

 

Quote

You can choose your weapon, but you're stuck with their spells, and if it's a 2 handed weapons you're stuck with all 5 even if two of them are lame.

You get only 3 talent slots, and the elite slot has very few options.

The spellbar options ARE very limited, this you can hardly deny. 

How it is limited compared to the MMORPgs that offer you more spellbar slots, but no actual options?

 

Notice, btw, that freedom of choice always end up benefitting only a small minority that can take a full advantage of the system. I've yet to see a game where big freedom of choice would not turn out, in reality in merely being a freedom to make bad choices. The more flexibility you get, the more unbalanced the system always becomes. the more options (and combinations of options) you get, the more of them become subpar, bad, or abysmally bad. And the smaller and smaller percentage of those remains good and worthwhile to use.

 

If you have multiple choices, then either all choices are equal, with only cosmetic differences, or the differences are meaningful, in which case for each situation there's likely only one proper choice to take, because all the others are, in that situation, inferior to it.

 

So, in the end, such systems always result with only an illusion of freedom, because you invariably end up with either choices that are not meaningful at all (same effects but different visuals), or meaningful choices, of which only a few are ever worth taking.

 

I, for one, prefer simpler and more limited systems, that do not create massive gaps between players that are utilize them to a different degree of effectiveness, and are easier to balance for devs.

Edited June 2, 2021 by Astralporing.1957

[zealex.9410]

Would actually lile the ability to freely costumise utils, other than the 1 elite rule itd be cool if we could not take a healing skill or have 4 healing skills. (ok maybe nit 4 healing skills but you get the idea.

[zealex.9410]

10 hours ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

Well, "build" is a broad term. Yes, you can customize stats, you can choose 3 specializations, I'll give you that.

But GW2 has the least freedom when it comes to which spells you want to actually use in combat.

You can choose your weapon, but you're stuck with their spells, and if it's a 2 handed weapons you're stuck with all 5 even if two of them are lame.

You get only 3 talent slots, and the elite slot has very few options.

The spellbar options ARE very limited, this you can hardly deny. 

Where the build making choice in wow? i have 30 slots but i just take every skill thats not choice.

[Malitias.8453]

33 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Notice, btw, that freedom of choice always end up benefitting only a small minority that can take a full advantage of the system. I've yet to see a game where big freedom of choice would not turn out, in reality in merely being a freedom to make bad choices. The more flexibility you get, the more unbalanced the system always becomes. the more options (and combinations of options) you get, the more of them become subpar, bad, or abysmally bad. And the smaller and smaller percentage of those remains good and worthwhile to use.

Games that offer freedom in how you build your character do this to accomplish one or both of the following goals:
1. Giving the player the tools to create a playstyle or character fantasy he enjoys. It's a form of creative expression.
2. The process of coming up with a good build idea (often referred to as theorycrafting) is part of the challenge of the game and, if done correctly, offers more good solutions than a single human being could possibly come up with. It's a form of creative problem solving.

Path of Exile is notorious for the complexity of its build creation and beloved for its build diversity. It's the games main selling point. Grim Dawn is very similar in that regard.
Archeage, like it or not, also has an astounding amount of build diversity.
Guild Wars 1 has an insane amount of build diversity. More often than not "optimal" is something you can only say about a GW1 build in a very very specific situation. Optimal is also not even close to required to succeed or be worthwhile.

And there are a lot more games like that, which offer vast good build diversity.
They're games where "balance" includes the players capability to create a build, the same way shooters often balance their weapons around the players capability to aim and fighting games balance the moves around the players capability to react.

I think your idea that more options just means more bad options largely comes from GW2, which indeed has a very very low percantage of worthwhile skill/trait combinations in comparison to the amount of skills and traits there are. And this is one of the main points of criticism being brought up here, or at least that's why it's brought up, I think.

[zealex.9410]

18 hours ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

And yet nobody, not even you, is asking for this because that would NOT result in players having more fun with the game. That's the issue here. It's not a discussion about efficiency and how to buff elite skills. It's about giving players a choice.

For an MMO, GW2 already has a very small numbers of abilities. We're probably THE MMO with the least freedom in our build, with weapon-locked abilities (especially true for 2H weapons), 1 talent locked for heals and 1 locked for elite skills.

We can only customize 3 slots, and since that number is so small, we're going to feel way more guilty if we pick a suboptimal but fun talent precisely because we have so little to work with in the first place.

Allowing players to pick a regular talent in the Elite slot can only improve the player experience. I'm convinced even the minority who oppose it would enjoy it in the long run after its implementation. 

Its the age old question of extensive build making vs balanced builds. The more choice you have the less balanced things are but more options you have to come up with what you find fun. Meanwhile the less choices you have the more defined how you should be playing the game/class becomes and balancing gets easier but then you sacrifice build diversity.

 

Both can can very well tip over to the class homogenization space of things (which depending who you ask is either amazing or very bad) but the latter is usually more likely because you dont have an choice in it.

 

Wether one or the other aproach is better comes down to preference. Imo great build making freedome promotes casual pve and pvp while strict class settups and homogenization favour hardcore pve endgame.

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, zealex.9410 said:

Wether one or the other aproach is better comes down to preference. Imo great build making freedome promotes casual pve and pvp while strict class settups and homogenization favour hardcore pve endgame.

It's more like greater freedom promotes bigger gaps within the community. Notice also, that it never promotes casual play. The benefits of freeform build system always go to the hardcore players only. What it does is influence game design. And here, it can go in two directions. 

In a game revolving around instanced content with skill/effectiveness requirements, it actively hinders casuals, because it practically forces you to assume a hardcore approach in order to be able to play the main content of the game. In a game like gw2 however, it does the opposite, hindering hardcore gameplay. It does that by keeping a huge majority of players out of more demanding content, which starves that content of players (and, in the end result, of dev resources).

 

It's exactly the freeform build system (technically aimed at hardcore players) that is the main culprit behind the failure of raids in gw2.

[vilkanor.3072]

On 5/31/2021 at 10:52 PM, DarkEmiLupus.2876 said:

Tbh I want ele elite signet and to be a fully res like guardians or warrior's elite banner. I felt underwhelmed by those powerful res skills in 2v2. What I'm going to do with a 5% res signet Anet????? Even mirage was better at ressing.

Ele will never improve, by design

[Aodlop.1907]

5 hours ago, zealex.9410 said:

Where the build making choice in wow? i have 30 slots but i just take every skill thats not choice.

You have 7 talents rows, each with 3 abilities to choose from. You can technically add 7 new abilities to your spellbar if you desire.

[Tails.9372]

5 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

I've yet to see a game where big freedom of choice would not turn out, in reality in merely being a freedom to make bad choices. The more flexibility you get, the more unbalanced the system always becomes. the more options (and combinations of options) you get, the more of them become subpar, bad, or abysmally bad. And the smaller and smaller percentage of those remains good and worthwhile to use.

 

This is rather disingenuous as you only focus on the lack of synergy between theoretical options while ignoring the bigger picture. If you have two games, one that limits your choices to ten builds and one that has 1000 theoretical builds but only 5% of them are "good" then the latter one has still five times as much "non illusionary" build diversity as the former one.

 

And this only applies to builds that are bad because they lack synergy on a fundamental level anyway. Your argument does not apply to builds that are bad in spite of playing to their related synergies, in case of GW2 you have multiple things where the approach to game design leaves much to be desired. In some cases they even intentionally made builds bad without explaining the reasoning behind it which is nothing you can blame "build diversity" for.

 

 

5 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

or the differences are meaningful, in which case for each situation there's likely only one proper choice to take, because all the others are, in that situation, inferior to it

 

This, as a general statement, couldn't be further from the truth because it omits gameplay as a factor which is one of and for many players the main reason why they play a game in the first place.

 

 

6 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

I, for one, prefer simpler and more limited systems, that do not create massive gaps between players that are utilize them to a different degree of effectiveness

 

You're playing the wrong kind of game then. There will always be a gigantic gap between the top and the "average" players especially in games with "action based" combat systems. Expecting that limiting build choices would solve the issue you want to adress (or even just improve it to a noticeable degree) is nothing but wishful thinking as "build diversity" is just one part of the equation. To get the result you want to have they would also have to significantly dumb down the gameplay in general.

 

 

[Astralporing.1957]

34 minutes ago, Tails.9372 said:

 

This is rather disingenuous as you only focus on the lack of synergy between theoretical options while ignoring the bigger picture. If you have two games, one that limits your choices to ten builds and one that has 1000 theoretical builds but only 5% of them are "good" then the latter one has still five times as much "non illusionary" build diversity as the former one.

This is purely theoretical case. In the "1000 builds" one, you will almost certainly find that out of all those builds, for each situation only 2-3 builds (not 5% of builds) are worth using. Or, if more are actually on similar level, then almost surely those builds are practically reskins of each other - with effectively the same mechanics, just changed visuals.

 

Quote

 

And this only applies to builds that are bad because they lack synergy on a fundamental level anyway. Your argument does not apply to builds that are bad in spite of playing to their related synergies, in case of GW2 you have multiple things where the approach to game design leaves much to be desired. In some cases they even intentionally made builds bad without explaining the reasoning behind it which is nothing you can blame "build diversity" for.

Oh, it does apply to those. If you have 5 builds, each with their own synergy, that each are meant for the exact same role, then there's no way they will be equal to each other, unless their mechanics are very, very similar and the "choice" between them is purely fictional. In such a case, the best you can hope for is that each of those 5 builds will have their own niche to shine in, a situation where it is better than others. That's not really diversity, however. That's just using different tools for different jobs.

 

 

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This, as a general statement, couldn't be further from the truth because it omits gameplay as a factor which is one of and for many players the main reason why they play a game in the first place.

It does not omit gameplay. You liking certain gameplay won't suddenly make a bad build that supports that gameplay a good choice. Unless, of course, the choice is not meaningful. Yes, you can have such diversity in a content where your effectiveness does not matter. A game design can choose to not penalize you in any way for running a bad build. It would still be a bad build, however. There are also some very far-reaching consequences for such a game design - for one, it hits the hardest the very group of players that the freeform build systems are aimed at.

 

Quote

You're playing the wrong kind of game then. There will always be a gigantic gap between the top and the "average" players especially in games with "action based" combat systems. Expecting that limiting build choices would solve the issue you want to adress (or even just improve it to a noticeable degree) is nothing but wishful thinking as "build diversity" is just one part of the equation. To get the result you want to have they would also have to significantly dumb down the gameplay in general.

Reality does not support you here, because. funnily enough it actually works in other games. Without significantly dumbing down the gameplay.

Edited June 2, 2021 by Astralporing.1957

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

On 5/31/2021 at 10:58 PM, Aodlop.1907 said:

This request has been overwhelmingly approved by the community every time it's been brought up. I don't get why they're so stubborn about it. There are only a few elite skills to choose from, and while some can be fun, some professions are stuck with either underwhelming or unfun "choices". 

You just answered your own question. They are most likely there to balance the "power budget" of professions that have great utility skills in context of everything else. Having underperfoming (or overperfoming) elite is most likely calculated way to balance the profession's overall strength in competitive.

Take a look at  a necro for example. Excluding scourge (cause i admit it's broken), necro's utilities are nothing to brag about in competitve modes. Every necro main knows in pvp buttons 7 to 9 are reserved for survival first and foremost.  If it doesn't protect you from getting murdered it has no right to be there.

And for that reason most likely Lich Form is so powerful. Many other professions are given way more freedom in terms of what to put there, without becoming insta kills. And in return their elites are more lackluster as they are not the only sources of some powerful offense on the right side of your skillbar...

Edited June 2, 2021 by ZeftheWicked.3076

[WindBlade.8749]

as much as it's sound like a good idea, i think it's will be a bad idea.

Every utiltity skills dmgs, sustain and others have been balance while having in mind 3 slots, if you add one more some class will have acess to too much at the same time.