Curse

Swingline · Jan 16, 2012, 11:48 PM // 23:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

Success in PvP demands a lot of scarce attributes: dedication to improvement, time commitment, quality connection, reaction time, the ability to anticipate, and the ability to work as an effective team member. What made GW PvP great is also its Achilles heel: it's deep and unique, but it's also not for most gamers.

Many players shave claimed these as their reason but many new players also claimed the sheer amount of skills sent them packing int he first place. It becomes more of a problem when they have to unlock the skills to. If the attributes you said are the primary cause then I see trouble for GW2s conquest game type. I would hate to see Anet repeat their mistake.

Reverend Dr · Jan 17, 2012, 03:51 AM // 03:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

Any meta would be stagnant after this many years in release. You can't pin that on the devs.

But it could certainly be far better than it is in its current state. Back towards the end of Prophecies there were less skill updates, yet there was still evolution in the metagame. A large part of this came back to the fact that the game at that time, despite having less skills, had more effective builds. Currently there are so many "must have" skills that there is very little difference between most teams, and only a very small number of gimmicks. A lot of the old meta evolution revolved around finding and slotting various skills to be able to deal with the multiple builds that would be encountered, but with less builds to be considered it should be no surprise that there is less meta evolution.

Martin Alvito · Jan 17, 2012, 05:02 AM // 05:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reverend Dr

But it could certainly be far better than it is in its current state. Back towards the end of Prophecies there were less skill updates, yet there was still evolution in the metagame.

You won't get any argument from me that it could be a whole lot better. However, the primary reason that the metagame was still evolving in late Prophecies was that there were still a lot of mechanics left to tease out. We didn't fully understand the importance of armor, VoD hadn't been exploited to the hilt by [iQ] yet, and so forth.

Once we learned what was left to learn and optimized, even the Prophecies-era meta would have stagnated. But it's a credit to the developers that so much remained to be discovered after a year of very serious competitive play.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reverend Dr

A large part of this came back to the fact that the game at that time, despite having less skills, had more effective builds. Currently there are so many "must have" skills that there is very little difference between most teams, and only a very small number of gimmicks.

That's definitely true. Some very poor Factions/NF skill introductions severely limited HA build diversity, and the change from one HoH win condition to three then pretty much killed diversity. Power creep (particularly among elites) has similarly limited GvG build diversity.

Kaida the Heartless · Jan 18, 2012, 01:15 AM // 01:15

Even the proph meta stagnated to a degree; this should look familiar:
Warrior (Shock Axe)
Warrior (Dev Hammer)
Ranger (DShot, Crippling Shot)
Mesmer (ESurge, Diversion, Blackout)
Ele (Light Orb, Blinding Flash)
Monk (Boon Prot)
Monk (WoH, Infuse)
Ele (Ether Prodigy, Heal Party)

It's just the way games like these work. People find things that work, then sit inside the box. It was really the S-tier teams that rotated the meta (via obs mode/tournies), and most of them are gone.

Then Nightfall brought a power creep and a stagnation that brought Guildwars to where it is now.

Edit: Found a perfect example of the power creep. This is kinda neat:

Word of Healing, Original
5e, 1c, 5r (Bumped to 5e, 3/4c, 4r shortly thereafter)
Elite Spell. Heals for 20...56...65. Heals for 30...74...85 more if target ally is below 50% Health.

Word of Healing, May 14, 2009
5e, 3/4c, 3r
Elite Spell. Heals for 5...81...100. Heals for 30...98...115 more if target ally is below 50% Health.

It's just short of 70% stronger, if you're hitting your procs like a good Monkie. And that's without the decreased recharge. Just something interesting!

Swingline · Jan 18, 2012, 01:33 AM // 01:33

With WoH, they chose to solve power creep with power creep. That's what that is there.

Killed u man · Jan 18, 2012, 03:44 AM // 03:44

Actually, the biggest buff to WoH was the change to "self targettable". That change alone (offcourse in conjuction with every skill added from Factions/NF) changed the "heal monk" from a character which required insight, timing and a good understanding of positioning to a character who can spam his shit in recharge.

Back in the day, if you infused someone, you were screwed. Infuse is amongst the most tactical in GW (the Monk's frenzy, so to speak), or was atleast. Infusing someone meant that you put yourself in a very vunerable position to save an ally. Healing Touch barely healed you up to 60-70%.

Power creep isn't just all the numbers they buffed over the years, it's also the idiotproofness that creeped into the game when all these tactical mechanics/skills got replaced by raw power. Ob flame now does exactly the same damage as it did back then, yet noone called Ob flame bad the past 5 years. (ignoring the recent buff) Skills around it got buffed like mad, yet Obsidion Flame has always seen play, and by no means, was concidered OP in the early days.

Point I'm trying to make here is that alot of people are under the illusion that reducing the numbers on every OP skill out there will suddenly make this game "skillfull" again, which sadly isn't true. So many mechanics and "mini-games" disappeared from GW due to skill changes and overhauls.

I think if you ignore the blatantly overpowered skills (which early Proph had aswell), you'll find that the numbers now aren't that much higher than back then. Eles got a little bit extra damage (not much) but alot more options (Proph: air and earth, now: everything will work). Monks heal for more, but it's not that much. (I'dd say an increase of 25-30%, it was alot worse during LoD days) Prots are pretty much identical, with the exception of Aura of Stability. (Which is once again a nice example of non-number related power creep)

It's the removal of "skill" in GW PvP that made it so unfun, not the increase in raw damage or healing power.

Kunder · Jan 18, 2012, 04:10 AM // 04:10

WoH also had a 5s recharge and 1s cast time. Altogether it got at least a 200% buff in raw power, along with an infinite buff in self-sustainability during splits, other monk being disrupted, or <8 player areas thanks to being able to target self.

bhavv · Jan 18, 2012, 07:07 AM // 07:07

WoH had to be buffed because damage creep ended up getting too strong.

Powercreep in PVE is understandable - you have content which vastly scales in difficulty from easy peasy to HM UW + DoA.

In PVP though I just dont get it. Monking has continuously become insanely difficult as powercreep in PVP keeps on going up when players only have the same fixed amount of armour and HP since day one.

Monking in RA now is a serious challenge. I manage to get 10-20 wins regularly in a good team, but getting to 25 wins is a gamble, no matter how good you are at healing. The only way I've managed 25 wins since the update is with my mesmer going full caster shutdown.

This is just the one thing I hate the most about GW -

1) Anet introduce some new really hard PVE content.
2) Current skills, and several classes are terrible at this content, and every group runs the same highly class inclusive meta builds to complete the content asap.
3) Anet realize this but a few years later than they should, and have their team of highly trained monkeys with magical typewriters find an adequate solution (or maybe the monkeys need to spend 2-3 working on such balance fixes).
4) Anet for some reason that is completely beyond me apply 90% of their skill changes to both PVE and PVP, regardless of which one the change was intended for.
5) The community weeps over anets ever continual lack of being able to correctly balance both PVE and PVP, even since they added the skill split.

AndrewSX · Jan 18, 2012, 07:34 AM // 07:34

I'm stll amazed, like you, that Anet hasn't never thought of splitting muchmuch more skill, like the 50-70% in PvE/PvP versions. Simply, those game modes in GW are so different that having same working skills (for numbers mostly, but some effects too) is very (impossible) difficult for balancing properly.

Missing HB · Jan 18, 2012, 08:24 AM // 08:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndrewSX

I'm stll amazed, like you, that Anet hasn't never thought of splitting muchmuch more skill, like the 50-70% in PvE/PvP versions. Simply, those game modes in GW are so different that having same working skills (for numbers mostly, but some effects too) is very (impossible) difficult for balancing properly.

Most skills are balanced either from PvE, either from GvG and that's why other formats ( most popular ones) are suffering from it for years until they get empty like today...
It makes no sense having an OP meta not nerfed and abused by every single team for months in Heroes Ascent, then nerfing it only because 2 guilds are running it in GvG, it really looks like " bwaaa i got rolled by that build, let's nerf"...

If, in theory, they can't really make each arena have a proper balance( too complicated, too many disparities) they should take into accounts them at least and not just do like " oww that's true, we didn't think of RA.." and not just delete formats for no reason without ANY explaination aside( expecially about Codex, which is really their biggest fail ever)

enter_the_zone · Jan 18, 2012, 11:25 AM // 11:25

Yeah, at this point, I'd back Anet moving all PVP to a large "closed deck" of skills which are seperately balanced to PVE. Like Codex, but with more skill choices.

DiogoSilva · Jan 18, 2012, 01:04 PM // 13:04

Fusing PvP formats could be a cool idea, but only if that meant all formats would get attention, not just GvG. I may be a bit radical, but the game doesn't even needs to have more than 3 formats:

1) Put back in Team Arena. It's the same format as RA, just without being random.
2) Put FA/ JQ maps inside the map rotation of AB. Improve AB's map rotation. Give the option to join teams randomly, or only with 2-3 players and then have another random other players fill the holes. Don't make AB dependent on the guild. Remove codex, use its outpost to enter AB. Have the matches be joined as fast as in JQ/ FA.
3) Remove HA. Make GvG far more accessible.

Then, you would have to balance your PvP skills between a 12vs12 format, a 4vs4 format, and a hybrid 4vs4/12vs12 format.

EDIT: Or alternatively, leave RA as it is, ignore it, put something like Costume Brawl map system, put in them two teams of 4, and then we have a semi-AB. CB+AB would be easy to balance because what applies to one almost certainly would apply to the other. There, "two" formats MAX to balance around.

Yes, some of those proposals might be too radical and maybe beyond ridiculous, but the idea is simple: make some clean up, simplify all formats into a few crucial ones, and then focus on them.

drkn · Jan 18, 2012, 01:25 PM // 13:25

The most basic and the most important idea has already been realised by ANet, but unfortunately, it only got introduced in GW2 - the ease to get into PvP. Why RA/JQ/FA are so popular? Because they're just one click away from playing; you don't need to form a group, they're friendly towards less sociable (not necessarily less skilled, though, for each format) people, they offer fast play instead of wasting time to form the group, wasting even more to find someone who would fill an empty slot because someone had to leave due to real life issues; and it's also reflected in the waiting times - waiting for opponents wouldn't be so bad in HA if it was a click-and-play format, like RA.
ANet realised it a bit too late, and they could only introduce PvP with such an easy start-up system in GW2.

Deleting RA in favour of TA would make it only worse and much more exploitable. On the other hand, letting people in AB to either form their own group of four or create a team with other random people, just as in JQ and FA, would tremendously heighten the popularity of AB.

Whatever overhaul we're talking about, though, is not likely to happen - not with so limited resources on ANet's side, not so 'close' to GW2's release. If we want some real changes, we would probably have to actually think of achieveable, small steps, and then present ANet a draft of all those small tweaks in one big post in their support forum and/or the wiki, hoping that at least half of them makes it into the game.

DiogoSilva · Jan 18, 2012, 03:13 PM // 15:13

The addition of random play for AB would actually be an easy change, I think, and probably a good place to start. Have its NPCs accessible outside of the GH would be another (put them in GToB and several factions maps). What else could we suggest? But that's probably best to leave it to another thread.

Missing HB · Jan 19, 2012, 08:22 AM // 08:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by DiogoSilva

3) Remove HA. Make GvG far more accessible.

I can't believe i'm going to say it, but i actually think it's a very good idea. Making some place to find players to " pug" GvG( read: to find guests easier) and keep the main format of GW a bit more active...HA is completly dead anyway , too much flawed with unfair 1v1 situations when it's a little active, and metas are joke and unfun...Add to it you usually need hours to expect a full run and it's pointless...

Maybe some kind of personnal ranking like we had in Hero Battles could be something to increase players motivation...

Swingline · Jan 19, 2012, 09:09 AM // 09:09

They won't delete HA.

I know I have said it before in this thread but I believe I must again to get the point across. HA can be active again by doing 2 things, make it a random join format like JQ/FA and cut the number of maps down to 5 or 6. The hardcore HAers will up and rage quit but a new wave of players will come in and possibly make it the most popular format. Some maps could probably use some tweaks to support the random format as well. By doing this GvG could become lively without any changes to it.

Codex could possibly benefit from being a random format but IMO it will still be a crap format due to the lousy skill pools that come around, monks especially suffer in this format because of this.

I find it puzzling that Anet claims to be for the casual gamer yet they won't embrace the random format more.

*lemming* · Jan 19, 2012, 09:40 AM // 09:40

random format + team game = ???

(and no, cod is not a team game)

Fluffy Kittens · Jan 19, 2012, 09:42 AM // 09:42

HA has same activity as GvG has. Both formats are great the way they're designed. HA is probably the best type of PvP format ever made. Problem now is lack of players which makes format look bad (i.e. 1v1 HoH when it's obviously meant to be 3-way).
One of the easiest solutions would be adding more rewards or even make a title for HoH wins, that way those silly PvE players who farm underworld or doa or whatever whole days would maybe actually be able to change their mind and play PvP and actually have fun in this game. But PvE is way too easily abused and gives easy rewards + requires no skill at all, which is complete opposite from PvP so it's kinda easy to see why PvP is dead.

Coast · Jan 19, 2012, 10:00 AM // 10:00

Making pvers to do ha would be a possible fix ha.
Make it pve-related again: in the old days guild wars worked with continents.
Lets say: Asia had the favor: only people on asian server had acces to the underworld and fissure of woe.
Now, an american team won halls and a message popped up: America has won a battles in the hall of heroes. 4 more wins and America will have the favor of the gods.
So after 4 more wins by an American team they had favor and then people on the American servers had acces to the Underworld and Fissure of Woe.

Why don't they introduce something similar again?
Like: every hour there needs to be a winner in the hall of heroes, if this didn't happen then accies to the underworld and fissure of woe is denied untill a team wins in the hall of heroes.

This way people will have to do some ha if they want to have acces to these popular areas of the game.( Large amount of people play uw/fow: some will not like this idea tho,but it can be good to revive ha).

discuss.

Mouse at Large · Jan 19, 2012, 10:02 AM // 10:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rezz Anna Nicole

<snip>that way those silly PvE players who farm underworld or doa or whatever whole days would maybe actually be able to change their mind and play PvP and actually have fun in this game. But PvE is way too easily abused and gives easy rewards + requires no skill at all<snip>

Do you by any chance live under a bridge????