New path to legendary armor?

[Dante.1763]

3 minutes ago, Vilin.8056 said:

Honestly as far as the current concept of legendary armor goes, I do not believe there is a good concept of implementation for an open world set that would make the majority of players happy.

 

But rather, in my opinion, if Anet indeed wish to make Guildwars 2 a casual centric MMO, they could introduce an even higher tier of ascended armor, to balance out their skill gap with an extra boost of basic stats by spending an significant amount of investment.

 

This would transform account value into factor of a player's combat capability instead of pure skill, at the same time reset the economy, at the risk of pushing this game further into the gear score territory. But players who made threads like this probably prefer gearscore anyways...

 

Saying most of us who want legendary armor want a gear grind is..hilarious. most of us want it for the benefits it offers.

 

Stat swapping ecspecially is something i really want due to wanting to try out different builds.

 

You are right. Some players wouldnt be happy with the way it was introduced. But you know, alot of players said the same thing about weapon collections for legendaries and it turned out alright and made the game alot more accessable.

 

But because a few people are upset with how it works, doesnt mean that making a open world set or making raids easier, would be a waste of time or money.

Just now, MarkoGold.7126 said:

I dont know why so many people think that they deserver raid legy armor for just doing pve with no raids but you dont.

if they did as you like it would be a huge middle finger to every raider who put in the effort and time to get that armor.

Alot of us dont want envoy armor from raids.

 

Id be perfectly happy being able to just "legendarialize" ascended armor via a costly crafting method so that i could have stat swapping/armory/appearence swaps.

 

No unique skin. No unique name. No unique lore. Just the functionality. Perfection.

[Obtena.7952]

12 minutes ago, MarkoGold.7126 said:

I dont know why so many people think that they deserver raid legy armor for just doing pve with no raids but you dont.

if they did as you like it would be a huge middle finger to every raider who put in the effort and time to get that armor.

Because Leg. Armor isn't about' deserving' something, it's about earning it ... and it's entirely possible to think of a method to earn leg. armor without raids to engage more people with long term goals to entice them to spend on the game, which is the whole point of the game in the first place. And no, it wouldn't be like a huge middle finger to raiders who got leg. armor because that leg. armor doesn't lose it's value to the people that have it. 

Edited July 22, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Sobx.1758]

 @Obtena.7952 soo... from blatantly lying in an effort to make me look like a liar to a complete dodge, eh? Convenient. 😆 

 

Edited July 22, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Vilin.8056 said:

Again, Dungeon wasn't nerfed to push player out, this idea is not even logical.

They straight out told us so. Someone on forums asked if the reward nerf was to push players out of dungeons, and a dev answered "yes". They just didn't want to support dungeons anymore, because they were built on dubious quality spaghetti code, and all the devs that had any knowledge of that code have already left the building by that time.

 

1 hour ago, Vilin.8056 said:

The change of reward was made to balance out the lower challenge level post expansions. This is also why we have the repeatable 8 path achievement reward to encourage dedicated players.

Those (as well as upping the rewards back again) were done only because community backlash about the nerf was way bigger than Anet hoped for. Original nerf was way, way worse than what we have before. If i remember right, it reduced the rewards of each path to somewhere around 25 silvers or so, with no additional repreatable achievements to support it.

 

And notice, that even with the community backlash, they've partially reversed that nerf only after the dungeon community was long gone.

 

Yes, they intentionally killed dungeons. It's not a secret. It's not a conspiracy theory. It's a fact. And no, you're not the only person that finds the logic behind it to be dubious at best.

 

1 hour ago, Vilin.8056 said:

 

Given that the majority of recent balance patches are still created around raid benchmarks, it is still at the center of developers attention. In fact, the majority of raid's popularity issue centered only around skill gap among players, not content quality.

They seem to think so. Or at least they say so. Unfortunately, changing players in order to fit an unpopular content is an approach that is far lesslikely to work than simply changing content to make it more appealing to players.

 

Besides, none of their ideas do anything about the skill gap problem. They can't, because it is caused by issues that are far more central to the overall design of the game.

 

1 hour ago, Vilin.8056 said:

Recent casual contents like DRM and Dragonstorm othe on other hand...

It's them trying to throw different new ideas at the wall hoping one of those will eventually stick.

 

Yes, Strikes and DRMs are part of the general issue with them prefering to introduce new things as soon as they run into issues with the old ones, instead of trying to find ways to modify old content to make it more popular.

[Vilin.8056]

49 minutes ago, Dante.1763 said:

Saying most of us who want legendary armor want a gear grind is..hilarious. most of us want it for the benefits it offers.

 

Stat swapping ecspecially is something i really want due to wanting to try out different builds.

If anyone truly want to swap stats, he'd already buy a gear slot with an extra set of gear at a fraction of a cost, instead of still complaining here even after a whole 5 years. Otherwise he's lying to himself.

 

Again, like I've repeatedly mentioned on similar complaints before, the trouble of manually stat swapping all 6 pieces of Legendary armor PLUS all 6 runes on the fly plus the inherent risk of making a mistake and lose all the benefit makes Gear Slot swapping a far more ideal solution even for players with legendary armors.

 

 

49 minutes ago, Dante.1763 said:

You are right. Some players wouldnt be happy with the way it was introduced. But you know, alot of players said the same thing about weapon collections for legendaries and it turned out alright and made the game alot more accessable.

It made Legendaries more accessible to players, but it never made players more accessible to contents.

 

49 minutes ago, Dante.1763 said:

But because a few people are upset with how it works, doesnt mean that making a open world set or making raids easier, would be a waste of time or money.

A grander point of view is, the whole argument exist because a few players are upset that they can't get Legendary armors due to their own denial, so they demand developers to spent another 6-12 month's of work to encourage that denial further, even if it opens yet another floodgate of complaint, at everyone's expense.

Edited July 22, 2021 by Vilin.8056

[Cuks.8241]

Every time there is a reward in a game gated behind something there will be people wanting that reward without playing that something. It's not limited to games.

The following might come out harsh.

Ignore those people, they will always want something more, they will always cry and whine and want the system to bend for them. You can't satisfy them, because tomorrow it will be something else and someone else to blame.

 

Games have challenges. Overcome challenge, win, get reward. This is how it is, this is the point of games. 

[MarkoGold.7126]

1 hour ago, Vilin.8056 said:

That's the whole motive.

Some people in the forum just love to give raider middle fingers, and you can see familiar name's been doing that in Raid forum for years.

 

that's some next level of obsession. 

[Vilin.8056]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

They straight out told us so. Someone on forums asked if the reward nerf was to push players out of dungeons, and a dev answered "yes". They just didn't want to support dungeons anymore, because they were built on dubious quality spaghetti code, and all the devs that had any knowledge of that code have already left the building by that time.

 

Those (as well as upping the rewards back again) were done only because community backlash about the nerf was way bigger than Anet hoped for. Original nerf was way, way worse than what we have before. If i remember right, it reduced the rewards of each path to somewhere around 25 silvers or so, with no additional repreatable achievements to support it.

 

And notice, that even with the community backlash, they've partially reversed that nerf only after the dungeon community was long gone.

You're right, I've just done my research. Here's a link for anybody who wants to see the reference.

http://dulfy.net/2016/03/05/gw2-developer-ama-on-reddit/

 

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

They seem to think so. Or at least they say so. Unfortunately, changing players in order to fit an unpopular content is an approach that is far lesslikely to work than simply changing content to make it more appealing to players.

I believe it as the opposite, raid elements are based around the core principles of GW2's combat system in PvE. Which is why Raid performance still serves as a benchmark tool above all else.

The increasing scale of general player's inability to adapt in a raid environment indicates that even among the majority of GW2 player base, most players prefer WoW's gearscore based performance and semi turn based combat, instead of GW2's design.

 

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Besides, none of their ideas do anything about the skill gap problem. They can't, because it is caused by issues that are far more central to the overall design of the game.

I agree they never done anything about the skill gap problem. Though I never believe that's a design incentive issue, but rather cost incentive. The playerbase, after all, are still mostly gamers who are very used to adapt to different gameplay and their relative systems. GW2's hardcore content isn't anymore complex nor challenging than most of Steam's popular sellers, but it always relying on the community to teach new players on how to play the game.

 

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

It's them trying to throw different new ideas at the wall hoping one of those will eventually stick.

 

Yes, Strikes and DRMs are part of the general issue with them prefering to introduce new things as soon as they run into issues with the old ones, instead of trying to find ways to modify old content to make it more popular.

Exactly.

Once the development team lose faith of their core design elements, they also lose aim with content.

Twisted Marionette is a living proof that despite being graphically inferior, this 2013 content still offer far better content quality than what developers today could output for the last few years.

Edited July 22, 2021 by Vilin.8056

[Dante.1763]

1 hour ago, Vilin.8056 said:

If anyone truly want to swap stats, he'd already buy a gear slot with an extra set of gear at a fraction of a cost, instead of still complaining here even after a whole 5 years. Otherwise he's lying to himself.

 

Again, like I've repeatedly mentioned on similar complaints before, the trouble of manually stat swapping all 6 pieces of Legendary armor PLUS all 6 runes on the fly plus the inherent risk of making a mistake and lose all the benefit makes Gear Slot swapping a far more ideal solution even for players with legendary armors.

 

 

It made Legendaries more accessible to players, but it never made players more accessible to contents.

 

A grander point of view is, the whole argument exist because a few players are upset that they can't get Legendary armors due to their own denial, so they demand developers to spent another 6-12 month's of work to encourage that denial further, even if it opens yet another floodgate of complaint, at everyone's expense.

I have three gear slots on all my toons, across 18 characters, which i play. If i wanted to make ascended armor + trinkets for all of them, after purchasing the 4th 5th and 6th gear slot the cost of making ascended armor for each build, + stat swapping the armor whenever i wanted to try out a new build would very quickly outstrip the cost of even a legendary armor set, not to mention three of them.

 

I also hope you arent saying ive been complaining non stop for 5 years. while i do take parts in these threads whenever they show up, i also do work on things in game...which is why i have 14(or 15, cant remember exact number) of legendary weapons.

 

Fyi, people said the same thing about mounts. "Its been asked for for years, it wont happen, go elsewhere." So that attitude, and that train of thought is a bad one to have. 

 

These threads are going to keep popping up unless either anet actually does release a set of pve open world armor, or comes out and says "No. Its not going to happen." ifn you dont want to see them or read the comments thats always up to you.

[Sobx.1758]

24 minutes ago, Dante.1763 said:

I have three gear slots on all my toons, across 18 characters, which i play. If i wanted to make ascended armor + trinkets for all of them, after purchasing the 4th 5th and 6th gear slot the cost of making ascended armor for each build, + stat swapping the armor whenever i wanted to try out a new build would very quickly outstrip the cost of even a legendary armor set, not to mention three of them.

Then play through the content game has to offer and get the rewards you want, seems rather straightforward.

Edited July 22, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[Vilin.8056]

29 minutes ago, Dante.1763 said:

I have three gear slots on all my toons, across 18 characters, which i play. If i wanted to make ascended armor + trinkets for all of them, after purchasing the 4th 5th and 6th gear slot the cost of making ascended armor for each build, + stat swapping the armor whenever i wanted to try out a new build would very quickly outstrip the cost of even a legendary armor set, not to mention three of them.

So you currently run 54 open world builds, and in the future that number is gonna grow to 108 builds just solely for open world.

Sure 😏

 

29 minutes ago, Dante.1763 said:

I also hope you arent saying ive been complaining non stop for 5 years. while i do take parts in these threads whenever they show up, i also do work on things in game...which is why i have 14(or 15, cant remember exact number) of legendary weapons.

Then you should have made least 15 gift of battles in WvW.

 

29 minutes ago, Dante.1763 said:

Fyi, people said the same thing about mounts. "Its been asked for for years, it wont happen, go elsewhere." So that attitude, and that train of thought is a bad one to have. 

I guess making an insult response on my first reply is a good attitude to have.

 

29 minutes ago, Dante.1763 said:

These threads are going to keep popping up unless either anet actually does release a set of pve open world armor, or comes out and says "No. Its not going to happen." ifn you dont want to see them or read the comments thats always up to you.

And you can keep waiting, complaining, traumatizing, battling people on the forum for another 3 years,

That torment purely is yours.

 

Or, take from our rich resources of guides, video, helpful communities and immediately work on your own legendary armor that's already available now.

 

Edited July 22, 2021 by Vilin.8056

[trunks.5249]

On 7/16/2021 at 3:45 AM, Endilbiach.4132 said:

I might be a rare breed, but I desperately want the utility of legendary armor without necessarily caring about the skins.  As it stands the only ways to get a suit of legendary armor are: a lot of raids, a LOT of wvw, or a crazy amount of spvp.

i have got every piece of my ascended gear   from spvp. nowhere is legendary anything available

[Astralporing.1957]

4 hours ago, Vilin.8056 said:

I believe it as the opposite, raid elements are based around the core principles of GW2's combat system in PvE.

Quite the opposite. They had to intentionally make changes and introduce special mechanics on order to circumvent some core elements and design principles of the game system in their raid design. Introducing fixate mechanic which completely overrides the normal aggro system, introducing dedicated heal specs (something they once specifically said they don't want in this game, and something whose lack was part of the core design), intentionally dumbing down mob AI (see the fixate mechanic again), disabling some parts of the system (like reviving), limiting boss mobility in a game built around mobile combat, and turning some encounters into minigames that are completely disassociated from the combat system... All of this can hardly be called "being based around core principles of GW2's combat"

 

4 hours ago, Vilin.8056 said:

Which is why Raid performance still serves as a benchmark tool above all else.

It's not "raid" performance that serves as the benchmark tool. It's the top tier skill performance in controlled environment that does. It just so happens that a majority of the players that are capable of that play raids and fractal CMs. If raids didn't exist, benchmarks would be still the same.

 

4 hours ago, Vilin.8056 said:

The increasing scale of general player's inability to adapt in a raid environment indicates that even among the majority of GW2 player base, most players prefer WoW's gearscore based performance and semi turn based combat, instead of GW2's design.

First, it's not "increasing scale". It has always been that way. Second, it's not like the players actively prefer gear based effectiveness. It's that the subsystems that impact effectiveness in GW2 are simply too complex for a huge majority of players. And they are intentionally complex in a  way that makes it next to impossible for the game to teach players in understanding it.

Although you are probably right in seeing that the target groups for MMORPGs and for action games are not exactly the same. Some people like one, but not the other. And even among those that like both types of games, some do not necessarily like them in a single package.

 

 

4 hours ago, Vilin.8056 said:

I agree they never done anything about the skill gap problem. Though I never believe that's a design incentive issue, but rather cost incentive. 

It's a direct consequence of introducing the freeform gear/skill system, and active combat.

 

4 hours ago, Vilin.8056 said:

The playerbase, after all, are still mostly gamers who are very used to adapt to different gameplay and their relative systems. GW2's hardcore content isn't anymore complex nor challenging than most of Steam's popular sellers, but it always relying on the community to teach new players on how to play the game.

As i said, while the content may not be so complex, the base game systems understanding and mastery of whose that content requires very much are.

 

4 hours ago, Vilin.8056 said:

Twisted Marionette is a living proof that despite being graphically inferior, this 2013 content still offer far better content quality than what developers today could output for the last few years.

It is also a proof that they either have short memories, or don't actually understand their own mechanics and game systems at all. Because it's clear they did not expect how much of an impact halving the population for this encounter would have. Even though a cursory glance at the mechanics, and basic math would already tell anyone that wanted to know that the impact just couldn't be small.

 

(i seriously doubt that the fact that the public instance ended up with far better succes rates that private one was intended. It was just an accidental byproduct of Anet not understanding how that encounter works)

[blp.3489]

Maybe they can add a vendor that allows you to trade in a legendary weapon for a piece of legendary armor.  That should quash the "too easy" argument.

[ArchonWing.9480]

54 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

 

 

It's not "raid" performance that serves as the benchmark tool. It's the top tier skill performance in controlled environment that does. It just so happens that a majority of the players that are capable of that play raids and fractal CMs. If raids didn't exist, benchmarks would be still the same.

Yes, but what gets valued can change, despite the same benchmarks.

 

Fractals heavily favor power burst because phases are short and the fights overall are shorter compared to raids. That's why a lot of high dps condi builds that are great in raids are not so hot in fractals though there are some exceptions. But what that means is the top builds will depend on content still.

 

(And even in fractals, condi builds are stronger in the longer fights)

 

Also, let's not forget the golem testing place is in the raid hub; so that makes it pretty clear what the intent is. The settings are meant to account for raid environments and every raid benchmark is done with raid buffs in mind-- you wouldn't hit those numbers outside of one, probably.

Edited July 22, 2021 by ArchonWing.9480

[Astralporing.1957]

7 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Also, let's not forget the golem testing place is in the raid hub; so that makes it pretty clear what the intent is. The settings are meant to account for raid environments and every raid benchmark is done with raid buffs in mind-- you wouldn't hit those numbers outside of one, probably.

Raid benchmarks are indeed done with raid buffs and compositions in mind - but that's because they are raid benchmarks that are being done by raid community. Before raids were a thing, dungeon builds were rated and benchmarked too, and, just like there's a guild that keeps a site about raid meta (snowcrows), there's also one that does the same with fractals in mind (Discretize). It's just that before ArcDPS and BGDM there was no way to easily measure dps values, so the "benchmarks" were more in nature of general guidance than strict measurements. And they were highly inaccurate, because they were mostly theoretical, and did not factor in actual combat situations.

 

In short, the only reason why existence of meta went out and spilled to the general populace was the measure tools, not the raids.

 

And yes, it is possible to hit those numbers in fractals, you would just use different group compositions for boons. It is also possible to hit them in open world - just not in a randomly put group.

 

And as for Anet using Raids as benchmark for balancing... they are equally using WvW and SPvP for them. And some of the more recent changes were clearly purely Fractal-based.

 

 

[ArchonWing.9480]

7 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

 

And as for Anet using Raids as benchmark for balancing... they are equally using WvW and SPvP for them. And some of the more recent changes were clearly purely Fractal-based.

 

 

WvW balance? lol that's a good one.

[Astralporing.1957]

1 minute ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

WvW balance? lol that's a good one.

I did not say they are good at it. I said they often use WvW as a reason for balancing, without thought for how those very same changes would impact PvE.

[ArchonWing.9480]

1 minute ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

I did not say they are good at it. I said they often use WvW as a reason for balancing, without thought for how those very same changes would impact PvE.

 

I never said anything about being bad or good about it.

 

Care to list any recent changes in wvw that affected pve?

[Astralporing.1957]

8 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

 

I never said anything about being bad or good about it.

 

Care to list any recent changes in wvw that affected pve?

Recent, no, because we've had only one balance pass in recent history (and a long time of no changes before that). But before? From my memory, without going back and checking the patch notes: Guardian staff rework, change to Scourge's sand shades, at least two passes of changes to boons that hit chronosupport hard, Epi rework from instant effect to projectiles... And it's only the top of the iceberg.

 

And of course there were also a number of general PvP changes (not SPvP specific), like several Confusion reworks that were balanced purely about PvP considerations.

[ArchonWing.9480]

26 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Recent, no, because we've had only one balance pass in recent history (and a long time of no changes before that). But before? From my memory, without going back and checking the patch notes: Guardian staff rework, change to Scourge's sand shades, at least two passes of changes to boons that hit chronosupport hard, Epi rework from instant effect to projectiles... And it's only the top of the iceberg.

 

And of course there were also a number of general PvP changes (not SPvP specific), like several Confusion reworks that were balanced purely about PvP considerations.

 

So basically, you can only think of that over many years, and this is :"often" that they make wvw changes without putting pve in mind, much lesss on equal priority?

 

Not to mention the Chrono nerfs changes aren't necessarily because of WvW. They were sorta overperforming in pve. 

 

And the guardian staff one is pretty dubious there too; it was only noted for being a lootstick in either pve or wvw.  Pretty negligible either way.

[Ashantara.8731]

I don't get what we need another "path to legendary armor" for when we already have three options of acquisition.

 

Edited July 23, 2021 by Ashantara.8731

[Vilin.8056]

10 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Quite the opposite. They had to intentionally make changes and introduce special mechanics on order to circumvent some core elements and design principles of the game system in their raid design. Introducing fixate mechanic which completely overrides the normal aggro system, introducing dedicated heal specs (something they once specifically said they don't want in this game, and something whose lack was part of the core design), intentionally dumbing down mob AI (see the fixate mechanic again), disabling some parts of the system (like reviving), limiting boss mobility in a game built around mobile combat, and turning some encounters into minigames that are completely disassociated from the combat system... All of this can hardly be called "being based around core principles of GW2's combat"

Instance specific boss AI has nothing to do with with core design of combat of this game, neither raid mode neglet mobile elements of boss combat, and healer class is a global change that widely inccoporated into all game modes since 6 years ago, none of these complaints makes a valid point.

 

On the othe other hand, raid combat has always designed around core principles of burst, dodge, CC, sustain, positioning, and situational awareness in which all invidual players are necessary contributing factors.

All of these are usually ignored in open world elements.

 

10 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

It's not "raid" performance that serves as the benchmark tool. It's the top tier skill performance in controlled environment that does. It just so happens that a majority of the players that are capable of that play raids and fractal CMs. If raids didn't exist, benchmarks would be still the same.

 Still don't change the fact that the that raid instances are still widely utlilized and aknowledged as a benchmark standard, and still the central of concern when it comes to adjustment in balance patches.

 

10 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

First, it's not "increasing scale". It has always been that way. Second, it's not like the players actively prefer gear based effectiveness. It's that the subsystems that impact effectiveness in GW2 are simply too complex for a huge majority of players. And they are intentionally complex in a  way that makes it next to impossible for the game to teach players in understanding it.

It's only be too complex for new comers. For any other player who has been playing for over a year, it only stays that way because it was never used at all, which is a common trait for the vast majority of our casual player base.

Then again, it still proves the fact that they prefer geargrind based progression over build optmization, desipte the wealth resources of build guides and templates available, and the community has proven that issue never lies in the teach, but rather adaptation.

 

As long as the community remain the only source of teaching, they will always create frictions when it comes to adaptation.

 

10 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Although you are probably right in seeing that the target groups for MMORPGs and for action games are not exactly the same. Some people like one, but not the other. And even among those that like both types of games, some do not necessarily like them in a single package.

 

 

It's a direct consequence of introducing the freeform gear/skill system, and active combat.)

Nearly all RPG games of today are moving towards action based combat, that's the curent trend based on market preference. GW2's design direction of moving GW1's semi turnbased combat into an action game do seem logical at the time.

 

Yet current contradictions in GW2 is primarily due to the fact that MMO playerbase are increasingly aging, with an significant of their playbase having reflex issues, adaptation problem and mostly physicologocally fragile over failures or when being told that they made a wrong judgement.

 

And you're right that for the general casual players, giving them too much freedom may be the bad thing, as the dire consequences of making bad decisions may be too much to bear when given the reality check, which eventually force developer to held back in future content developments by vastly nerfing down their challenge level.

 

10 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

It is also a proof that they either have short memories, or don't actually understand their own mechanics and game systems at all. Because it's clear they did not expect how much of an impact halving the population for this encounter would have. Even though a cursory glance at the mechanics, and basic math would already tell anyone that wanted to know that the impact just couldn't be small.

 

(i seriously doubt that the fact that the public instance ended up with far better succes rates that private one was intended. It was just an accidental byproduct of Anet not understanding how that encounter works)

I see it as a fair trade off, as it was originally a messy low level meta event with no elite specs. And now every participant is a fully developed veteran.

We had around 1 in 20 success rate in the SoS server back in 2013, and now it is almost a sure win.

 

Edited July 23, 2021 by Vilin.8056

[Astralporing.1957]

49 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

 

So basically, you can only think of that over many years, and this is :"often" that they make wvw changes without putting pve in mind, much lesss on equal priority?

I can think of specific pure Raid-based changes even less - i just dont remember all the changes they made over the years. I would have to go over balance patch after balance patch checking specifics before i could give you a comprehensive list. Notice, that i can thing of SPvP specific balance changes even less than that, but in spite of that there were quite a lot of those over the years. Many of which significantly impacted PvE at the time. And it is exactly because there were so many of them that i don't remember many specific ones.

 

 

49 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Not to mention the Chrono nerfs changes aren't necessarily because of WvW. They were sorta overperforming in pve. 

There were PvE-based changes, but there were WvW-based ones as well (unlike the PvE ones, those did not target chrono specifically, but went with a wide comb at boon generation for large groups of players. Chrono just got run over as a collateral, because iirc devs were mainly aiming then at guards and spellbreakers).

 

 

49 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

And the guardian staff one is pretty dubious there too; it was only noted for being a lootstick in either pve or wvw.  Pretty negligible either way.

It was lootstick in PvE (and it was good at it). What caused it to get reworked (and destroyed its lootstick value) however was a very specific reason - the ability to hit through tower\keep walls and gates. Notice, how that is a purely WvW reason.

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Vilin.8056 said:

Instance specific boss AI has nothing to do with with core design of combat of this game

Yes, precisely. You've just said it yourself - it has nothing to do with core design of combat of this game.

 

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healer class is a global change that widely inccoporated into all game modes since 6 years ago, none of these complaints makes a valid point.

It was "widely incorporated into the game" purely due to raids. And it was a change that went against some very strongly worded original design goals of this game - Anet did not want dedicated healers. They wanted every single player to take care of their own survival. Just as they did not want dedicated tanks - they wanted enemies whose behaviour was impossible to completely predict, ones that could attack any player, so that everyone would need to be on their guard always.

 

Notice how raid boss design is very much not like this.

 

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It's only be too complex for new comers. For any other player who has been playing for over a year, it only stays that way because it was never used at all, which is a common trait for the vast majority of our casual player base.

No. Actually, it's way too complex even for most veteran players. Proper builds and their proper utilization is not something most players (even most hardcore ones) are capable of working out on their own. It's something you need to get told by other players that are already in the know, or find at third-party sites. And even then, in most cases players utilizing those builds and strats don't really fully understand their complexity - they know those builds work, but don't really know why.

 

That's why, when meta approach for some reason doesn't work, a lot of players, even hardcore ones, get lost and have no idea how to adapt to the situation.

 

 

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Then again, it still proves the fact that they prefer geargrind based progression over build optmization, desipte the wealth resources of build guides and templates available, and the community has proven that issue never lies in the teach, but rather adaptation.

 

As long as the community remain the only source of teaching, they will always create frictions when it comes to adaptation.

Yes. But the game is designed in such a way that the community can be the only source of teaching. Because the knowledge the community teaches is not something the game itself is aware of. The game does not know which builds are good or bad at this very moment. Only people designing those builds do. As such, the game is incapable of teaching anything like this to the players.

 

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Nearly all RPG games of today are moving towards action based combat, that's the curent trend based on market preference.

Maybe. It's still aimed at a different group of players. Notice, though, how GW2 game population is quite aged by game standarts - it's not a population of those "games of today", but a population of "games of the past". Thus, the players and mechanics do not match all too well.

 

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GW2's design direction of moving GW1's semi turnbased combat into an action game do seem logical at the time.

Not really. It was an arbitrary decision based on dev preference.

 

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Yet current contradictions in GW2 is primarily due to the fact that MMO playerbase are increasingly aging, with an significant of their playbase having reflex issues, adaptation problem and mostly physicologocally fragile over failures or when being told that they made a wrong judgement.

Precisely. The action-based combat aims at a relatively new players. Not at the older ones. So, we have not only a gamestyle conflict here, but a generational one as well.

 

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And you're right that for the general casual players, giving them too much freedom may be the bad thing, as the dire consequences of making bad decisions may be too much to bear when given the reality check, which eventually force developer to held back in future content developments by vastly nerfing down their challenge level.

It's not even that - most players are simply not capable of reasoning out which choices are good and which are bad. Or why those specific choices are good or bad. That is true even for many of the hardcore players. The difference is that harcore players are more used to support their playstyle with informations from other sources and adjust to it, and often actively look for that kind of information, while most of the casuals do things on their own. And it's often not that casuals are resistant to adjusting to the meta - it's that they are often unaware that something like that exists as something more than a bad word they hear from some "elitist" and "rude" players. It's not like they frequent third party sites, or even game forum, after all - all the information they have is the one the game gives them.

 

A lot of the problems with many casuals is that they often do try to interact with the system. They design their own builds, improve on them, and often are proud of the "accomplishments" they "made" in that direction. Too bad, that, due to unable to fully comprehend the complexity of the whole structure, those builds are often worth kitten. At the same time many hardcores do not even try to do that - they just simply copy the builds they've been supplied with. It's quite ironic, actually.

 

 

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I see it as a fair trade off, as it was originally a messy low level meta event with no elite specs. And now every participant is a fully developed veteran.

We had around 1 in 20 success rate in the SoS server back in 2013, and now it is almost a sure win.

... do you know why the completion rates were rising then, day after day? It's because the weaker players simply got discouraged with failing and stopped coming to the event. The players that learned and adapted were the same players that were already learning and adapting to any other content at that time - and their skill did not improve, they just needed some time to learn encounter-specific mechanics.

 

It's the same nowadays. The first day was a problem, and after that the players capable of learning learned, and carried the others. In Public, where the carrying can be done. Also, most of the veteran and skilled players from Private attempts shifted to public by second or third day at most (and some realized the problems even faster than that, and started shifting by the end of the first day)

 

Also, 1 in 20 success rate was bad even then. What was the population on SoS then? Because the completion rate on Gandara was way better even in the first days (and those were a real mess). You just absolutely had to find a full map for that.

Edited July 23, 2021 by Astralporing.1957