Curse

Rieselle · Sep 15, 2005, 11:16 PM // 23:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bingley Joe

One simple example: Someone who didn't bring a res in the first place winds up being the only person left alive on their team can suddenly grab a res and bring back someone capable of resing the entire team (talkin' theoretically here).

I know that's pretty much the Holy Grail of your "claw your way back from the brink of death" idea, but it's hardly fair to the team that was just one simple kill away from victory due to poor initial strategy on the part of the opposing team..

I dunno, if a team can claw its way back from that position, then all power to them. Certainly more fun than chasing that last guy around for 30 mins (although I admit that mostly happens only in random arenas.)

Like I said, it's Starcraft vs. Daytona. Do you want every battle to be hard fought, with both sides given a chance of victory until the very last moment, or do you want the side with the advantage to be able to win decisively and move on? I make no judgements on which position is "better", I just personally prefer Daytona.

Wow Algren, you started off so intelligently. But now you've descended back into the barrel of slime you normally live in. I made a direct reply to your points so I wont repeat myself unless you have anything more to add.

Vangor · Sep 15, 2005, 11:36 PM // 23:36

Personally I tire of the victory until the last moments mentality of many games, this create problems when there is any of kind of ability to hold positions and strategize, the idea is to gain enough advantages to overwhelm an opponent, each time you move to a better position, each time you choose the right skill, etc., is another victory which helps for the more unified victory.

I personally do not want to see skills and points being redistributed, and I wonder how overall effective this would be in gameplay as opposed to simply lengthening a fight for unnecessary reasons. This would then change into, a do not doubt it trust me, macroing changes of points and skills based on what the enemy is using, you're going to create a large amount of people shifting, or not wanting to reveal their hand, or revealing a false hand, in order to gain information about what they have and counter it. Plus, I feel that allowing them to change will give more protection spells and resurrects to just further delay a victory, rather than usurp control of the battle.

Honestly, in a team of eight, it should not be difficult to have enough instances of certain types of spkills and situations that switching out becomes necessary, planning is all that it is, and the ability to adjust those.

Rieselle · Sep 15, 2005, 11:37 PM // 23:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Navaros

i agree with the idea of being able to swap out skills during Tombs matches. it should not cost any "refund points" or any such nonsense to do it, though. it should be free and able to be done at any time.

any players who don't know what they're doing would probably end up fubaring themselves up by using this feature anyhow. those who do know what they're doing should be able to counter the enemy party on-the-fly.

I dont agree. The points are there to limit the rate at which you can change your build. Making it unlimited would effectively give you access to all of your skills during the match.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Navaros

Guild Wars Tombs should indeed be about truly countering the enemy, rather than the current system of: "make a build and pray that you don't happen to come across a skilled team that is designed to counter that build".

I agree.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Navaros

as for making PVE missions have res shrines: horrible idea. there are already far, far too many horrible players at the endgame of PVE. to make missions easier would just increase the horrible player mass at endgame missions even more. therefore it's a very terrible idea to make the missions easier. better to let the horrible players die and redo all the missions 10 million times until they change their horrible-playing ways.

I'm going to have to side with Algren on this one. You should not have noob traps in games. Anyway - it just makes them frustrated, impatient, and all the more likely to be jerks.

And are you seriously suggesting ANet should put in a gameplay mechanic to seperate out poor players into a place seperate from the rest of us?!? Think hard about the overall consequences of such an act.

MuKen · Sep 15, 2005, 11:50 PM // 23:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Algren Cole

it's an awful idea...mainly because you can walk through PvE with the skills you get in pre-searing without any trouble at all...but also because it defeats the purpose of planning. Why would I want to expand on an awful idea?

As we've gone over twice already, if this idea were in place, the map designers would simply have to increase the difficulty of the maps, so the game currently being a cakewalk is irrelevant. Note that the OP admits right off the bat that it's too late/impractical to put this in right now, we're just talking about how much better the game might be if this were part of the original design.

Also, who says this defeats planning? That is again an aspect of level design. How frequently will you be getting refunds? How many would you need to significantly change your build? These are all variable things, and so planning is not lost.

Here are some things that COULD be in place if this were here that cannot be in place in the current system.

1) Teams of enemies designed to counter different builds at different points in the map. If this were to be implemented, you would have to make sure that SOME player team build could make it through all portions of the map, which would be horridly restrictive if they could not adapt at stop points on the way.

2) Stealth/scouting classes and builds. There would be a lot more value added to knowledge of the upcoming enemies, esp. if point 1 were implemented, so that you could decide how to spend the limited number of refunds you just earned by beating that last boss.

I'm sure there's more ideas that could be come up with as well. It is not the idea alone, but also the possibilities that it opens up.

Rieselle · Sep 16, 2005, 12:07 AM // 00:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vangor

Personally I tire of the victory until the last moments mentality of many games, this create problems when there is any of kind of ability to hold positions and strategize, the idea is to gain enough advantages to overwhelm an opponent, each time you move to a better position, each time you choose the right skill, etc., is another victory which helps for the more unified victory.

Plus, I feel that allowing them to change will give more protection spells and resurrects to just further delay a victory, rather than usurp control of the battle.

Honestly, in a team of eight, it should not be difficult to have enough instances of certain types of spkills and situations that switching out becomes necessary, planning is all that it is, and the ability to adjust those.

A very valid point. It could cause games to drag out more. I have no real solution to that. Artificial timelimits such as Victory or Death can help, but they kind of distort things in their own way.

Although it makes DP-erasing techniques such as the flag stand more important, as it allows you to adapt more without hitting -60 DP. You could see back-and-forth battles with each side dying and then coming back with a slightly different build, until they managed to figure out a way to put the other side down permanently.

Oh, one thing - it means having a broad knowledge of becomes important - no more copying builds from forums and expecting to do well, since a knowledgable team might be able to adapt to it easily, whereas a forum-copier wouldnt know how to cope.

Looking at the team builds posted at TGH, I think in GW, the more effective builds are specialised ones. I dont hear about wide-ranging general builds doing all that well.

Planning is not really the word, since your opponents are random - you cant plan without advance information. It's more like Risk Management and knowledge of the metagame. But maybe I'm quibbling over semantics. There's nothing wrong with either thing anyway.

Gerbill · Sep 16, 2005, 01:34 AM // 01:34

It's a funny idea, I like it.

though there's one flaw.. which is solvable.. it's just not been mentioned at all here.
the whole attribute points.. stuff cool and all.. let's say 40 for a skillswap...

the flaw... is there a cap on it ? as in.. can I just into PvE die.. let's say 50 times and get like 3000 refund points.. ? that'd be some skill swapping..

solution to this.. a cap.. let's say at 60, just enough for 1 skillswap and halfway to a second one...

OR...

no cap... and each time you get into a new fight.. as in go from a town into PvE area or get into a follow up fight in a PvP area.. it resets and it only counts as in-battle gained so to speak.. But.. the flaw with this is.. that it could only.. happen maybe.. in Tombs or GvG because you have to die 3 times.. to get -45 which would be 1 swap...

also...
Depending on the ease of getting the refund points I think the Res signet should be kept in memory as in if you swap it and swap it back, it's still inactive if you used it, unless you gained a morale boost during the fight while it was swapped out then you can use it again.

if this would be implemented.. it would need a lot of balancing.. and maybe several rules as in.. you can't swap Elite skills or something.. however that might change the entire battle.. so maybe only the swapping of Elite skills..

And maybe.. some kind of quickswap bar.. as in.. you know what builds you might encounter so you have like... 8 spaces to put skills in..
as in.. if you want to swap.. you click a button or icon whatever.. the window that pops up contains the full skill list... to drag it from, but at the top are the 8 you selected pre-hand.. the ones you would most likely swap for, since skill lists are quite long.

As for the whole save reload thing.. GW does NOT have that.. not as much as Doom or games as such.. because.. there's no actual save file.. thus if you have a weapon with a max upgrade.. and you salvage it.. there's a chance it'll be lost forever.. while it wouldn't be if you could save-reload.. till you got it... also GvG battles lost.. will always be count as lost on the ranking.

Rieselle · Sep 16, 2005, 02:01 AM // 02:01

Oh, did I forget to mention it? There's definitely a limit.

Refunds start at 0 when you leave town (ie. when you enter a mission, EA, or PvP match). And they're capped at some value. And even if you use them, there's a limit to how many more you can get, because DP maxes out at -60%. Unless you kill -a lot- of enemies in a mission :P

Die-Retry is less about reloading, as it is about gameplay that kills player with little warning and makes them retry until they've memorised the "optimum" way to complete a level.

Its more a case of linearity, predictability matched with artificial difficulty, and a timesink.