Design antipatterns to avoid in EoD

[The Boz.2038]

Instead of explaining what I mean in detail, I'll just start listing off my points in random order, and hope you get the gist of it.

 

1. Nonboon/noncondition - In general PvE, boonstrip and condition removal is heavily disincentivized. Mobs in open world just don't use conditions enough to warrant dedicating resources towards removing them, and only the high level instanced raids and fractals offer a use for most boon removal. This is exacerbated by ANet's tendency to design around their own design frameworks. "I want this mob to inflict a lot of bleeding, but players might just cleanse it, and I, for some reason, don't want that, so I'll give them SuperBleeding! It's a non-condition effect that you remove by dodging, and it keeps stacking up low-duration bleeds, just for fun!" So, instead of bringing a cleanse for it, just do what every prof already has access to: evade the eels. "Oooh, we can't have this mob just inflict a lot of Vulnerability and exploit it with mob-side boosts that double Vulnerability effect! Nono, the chak need something more dangerous! But you can just dodge out of it." This all started with the Southsun release. It was recognized as a mistake then, but ignored. Stop it. Give mobs conditions. Give them boons. Make people actually engage with the content in a manner that is not just 111ing things to make them die, with a dodge every now and then, at random.
2. PvP design in PvE - Very powerful PvP effects, such as 5ish seconds of quickness on a 30+second cooldown, are significantly less useful in consistency-optimized PvE in which, at higher levels, access to full uptime teamwide quickness, alacrity, 25 might, and fury is pretty much a given. You need the full uptime to down the raid boss in 2 minutes of constant DPS rotation. You need the 5-second boost to secure an execute or manage to outplay a similarly-equipped player, and turn the tide of a match. However, you, alone, fighting an Elite Bitemonster? Yay. Enjoy your tiny temporary DPS increase, it isn't likely to turn the tide or significantly speed up the kill. All that coming from a skill you just won't bring with you to a raid, because the alacren/druid/qfb has you covered. Cat's out of the bag for instanced content. The builds that "got you covered" exist, and I highly doubt they'll be going anywhere. If it's a skill that makes your build work, such as a Fury providing you 100% crit chance, but only for 15 seconds per minute? It just feels bad, man. We have PvE/PvP splits, but they seem to be most commonly used to just bring damage down. Why not buff some buff skills for PvE, so that a Quickening Zephyr-based build can actually reach full quickness uptime for casual open world PvE without devoting the entire build, rune, sigil, food toward that one, singular goal.
3. Temporary Precision boosts - This is a ticklish one, so bear with me for a moment. Power builds work with very high Precision values, often 100%. This is because 100% gives you not only a high resulting DPS off your natural or Ferocity-boosted critical damage, but because it also makes the build more consistent. Working with just 95% crit chance can, on paper, work 95% as good as a build with 100% precision, and possibly even just as good, if the 5% crit is shoved over into Power instead, but the first time your Decapitate hits for normal damage will make you feel bad. Will make you feel real bad. Warrior is a favorite example here, because of the lack of crit-chance boosters in their kit, outside of a banner, but let's start on the topic of Elementalists, too! Arcane skills. Their special power? They always crit. That's their schtick. Every hit, a crit. There is five of them. All of them hit for Power damage, without a single condition between them. So, it is easy to assume that they will be used in, you know, Power builds. The exact type of build that is likely to have a very high critical chance. Now, using them in PvP is beautiful, as you can siphon off your Precision stat points into more survivability, and use your Arcanes as killshots once you've significantly tenderized your target with weapon skills and staying power, but in PvE? Any PvE? The "passive" effect just might not even exist, it is such a niche thing, and using the skill type just feels wrong most of the time. I don't want this outright axed, but the feels-bad-man effect can be greatly lessened through the use of traits, PvP/PvE splits, and such... Just rethink them a tiny bit.
4. Confusing monster design - Thankfully, there aren't a lot of examples of this, but I feel I must mention it, because hooo booy. Mushrooms. Heart of Thorns Mushroom enemy type. Nothing in the game is, to me at least, as frustrating to fight as these things. They have very varied abilities, they have overlapping threat patterns with varying amounts of threat, they will happily use chain CCs, and their damage output is quite high. All these combined would make a deadly special forces type faction that the player could approach with care and respect, and then tactically prioritize and engage... except for two-three things. First, the game loves spawning more of them mid-fight, and some of them spawn more, just for fun. Ok, so there's more of them to fight. No bother. Second, they all look so alike. Pretty much all other enemies have a clear silhouette, animation, glow, or other tell that lets you identify them at a glance, but not these guys. At best, you get hue, or size. Size often isn't even a clear indicator of threat level, either. Further complicating the identify-threat side of things is their AoE skillset. Some of their red circles hit you for four thousand damage. Some for five hundred. There are five around you, good luck choosing what to dodge. Naming your ranger Hearty Wolf and your pet X Pwnerer X was fun in GW1, but please... 
5. Leave It To Me - Some achievements aren't a test of skill, knowledge, or teamplay. Some are just there to annoy you. Leave It To Me is the perfect example of this. For those that don't remember, that's the HoT one that requires you to beat the rez-soldiers-as-a-bunny section without rezzing any soldiers. You just call up four friends, and then lose an hour of your life beating on shrubbery wolves, winning by attrition, while using a whole of four skills. There used to be methods of making that less painful: you could use food, and even some summon consumables, allowing you to "buy" your way past the agony. ANet quickly removed those. So, four friends, and an hour of whacking at enemies ineffectually. Because, obviously, killing the will to even play the game is the goal of this achievement. Could we please not have that in EoD? This. Genuine Imposter. Shield of Kormir. Stuff that significantly alter the approach to the game in a less entertaining way. God, I wish Leave It To Me was the only example of this, I truly do..

 

So, you know. Just some stuff I wish were avoided in EoD.

What would yours be?

[Acelidon.1358]

Dragon response missions. Lets avoid more of those.

[The Boz.2038]

2 minutes ago, Acelidon.1358 said:

Dragon response missions. Lets avoid more of those.

Oh, jesus, you're right! I forgot all about those!
Related: Loot masteries! Jesus to heck, let's not repeat loot masteries ever again.

[Hellissane.3041]

7. Champions story - Being forced to play 10 missions solo, which were meant to be fought by a party of 5 players? Hype up for a major threat to the world for decades, even from the first game(Primordus), and a whole story Saga about two major threats(Prim and Jormag) only to be absent until the last 20 minutes of the story? Two enormous dragon corpses just vanished?
No more of that please.

[Mungrul.9358]

No more Elite skills with a major downside. I'm looking at you Headbutt.

I mean, I get it. The original GW1 dazed the player too. But there, it was meant to be paired with a means of transferring the daze to your opponent.

If it weren't an Elite, I could get behind the self-daze. But as it stands, it really doesn't feel Elite.

Let alone which, it's the only Elite in the entire game with a negative effect.

[The Boz.2038]

1 minute ago, Mungrul.9358 said:

Let alone which, it's the only Elite in the entire game with a negative effect

Harbinger says hi!
Ironic, mentioning this as an antipattern to avoid, and then, well...

[Mungrul.9358]

Oops, confused Harbinger with Willbender.

Nothing to see here, move along please!

😄

Edited August 18, 2021 by Mungrul.9358

[Linken.6345]

2 hours ago, Hellissane.3041 said:

7. Champions story - Being forced to play 10 missions solo, which were meant to be fought by a party of 5 players? Hype up for a major threat to the world for decades, even from the first game(Primordus), and a whole story Saga about two major threats(Prim and Jormag) only to be absent until the last 20 minutes of the story? Two enormous dragon corpses just vanished?
No more of that please.

 

Well the champions story scale so more low dps people would result in the same or longer stories mate.