The Problem of GW2 PvE

[Kickbuttmario]

Playing gw2 pve dungeons with a structured group is some of the best experiences in pve i had since wow. Playing gw2 pve dungeons with a shitty pug group is the same for me as was wow pug pve, lame and boring.

[Sackman]

GW2 just completely missed the mark for me. I've long since abandoned MMO pvp for basic multiplayer games (like dota 2) for my competitive needs. I'm basically a 100% pve player when it comes to MMOs, and GW2 just feels like it has done everything wrong for me. I appreciate them trying to mix things up within the familiar bounds of a theme park MMO, but having played what they have to offer for quite a while and trying my hardest to keep interested, I can say it doesn't work for me. I'm probably one of the few people who liked GW1 pve. It was actually interesting and at times challenging to progress through with people.

I can say emphatically that I just don't like GW2. I wanted to really badly, though. I don't have answers and I can't say what they should have done differently, all I can say is the things they did do didn't work for me on any level.

I agree tbh, GW1 PVE was challenging but you approached it with tactics. It is a shame they didn't bring that into GW2 - or haven't just yet. (I mean, aside from, we need swiftness for this fight, we need ranged for .. every fight practically... etc)

I can see why it is bad for you without PvE, personally I play Dota2 (a bit too much :\) and SC2, so GW2 is my simple, easy game I play to have a bit of progression and exploration and story with friends.

---------- Post added 2012-11-09 at 12:29 PM ----------

I have a lot of issues with the downed system. Not the least is the fact that it - along with the dodge roll - encourages the use of one shot style mechanics.

Then once someone is in the downed state there's this weird shift in the game philosophy where you go from not really being able to heal at all to suddenly being able to click on the downed guy once and channel a heal of pretty epic proportions on them.

So the original question that was posed a long, long time ago, "How will PvE work without healers?" is answered by, "Well, there actually IS a lot of healing after all."

Yeah but when you get up you have about 5-10% of your hp. Not really a heal - you spend ages getting the person up, not damaging what you are attacking, leaving yourself susceptible to attacks, and the person who is downed is also not really damaging either.

Completely different from a massive heal. I can understand not liking the mechanic, it's personal preference, but you're just adding hyperbole to make your preference seem like a fact or criticism.

It is far away from a traditional heal, and indeed, much closer to a very slow cast time combat res.

[ControlBlue]

You are merely talking about the in-game disavantages of the downed state when he is talking about the design disavantages of it, two very different things...

although I will say that there is nothing wrong with the fact that you can 'heal' up a person in a 'downed'/close-to-death state both mechanically and flavor wise.

However I totally agree that the mechanic encourages the use of one-shots mechanics as a way to effectively challenge players that get a free get-out-of-death card that has very few disavantages, even the loss of dps (which is faaarr from mattering anyway) and the dangerous position you put yourself in when you revive someone aren't that bad when it comes to a mechanic that can indefinitely prevent you from 'failing'.

[rhandric]

a mechanic that can indefinitely prevent you from 'failing'

You realize that every time you go down (in a short period of time, such as a single encounter), you'll have less health in the downed state? So the more often you screw up, the more you get punished, until getting hit by a mechanic that will down you does kill you. Which, for the record, doesn't make that mechanic a 1-shot mechanic, since you still have to get hit with it ~4-5 times before you have no health in the downed state.

[Fencers]

Isn't it like 3 downs and you're basically dead for good?

[ddsad2212]

People saying that using the GY to your advantage means your not a good player... I'm sorry you have no idea what so ever makes a good play if you think that. A good player will use all the in game mechanics to there advantage, including death if it comes to that. A-net made a horrible design decision with their dungeons , allowing people to run back after death is such a bad idea, instead allowing them to be res'ed would have been a far better idea as it takes group co-ordination to pull off.

A-net potentially has a game that can foster the best dungeon content to date, but so far they have made very sub-par content. I love only having to beat it once due to no gear cap, that to me is beautiful, but only as long as i enjoyed and was challenged in that first run. Honestly I have finished all normals and about 7 explorable paths and I have no motivation to log back on GW2 to play anymore dungeons, I just think it would be a waste of time outside of having a full 5 man group to do it with.

Gw2 needs to bring in some people who know how to design dungeons and merge them with their current team, just as a guiding hand if nothing else.

@Zito , when you say 1 person holds the boss up while 4 others run back, how is that bad game play? Your group successfully managed to get back on their feet after nearly wiping, to me that sounds like good play. What would have happened in a well design game, would have been that last player dieing and you having to reset, however instead they exploited the poor design and gave themself a second chance. You seem to think dieing in PvE means you played bad, obviously you have no idea what people are actually looking for, we want fights that will kill us , we just don't want death to be meaningless in those fights

---------- Post added 2012-11-09 at 03:40 PM ----------

Isn't it like 3 downs and you're basically dead for good?

Last time i played it seemed to be on a timer, you could die twice, get back up, last say a minute and then the 3rd death would allow you to go through a full down phase again, rather then a insta kill, but I might be wrong, 2 months since I last played

[Bugg]

In normal PvE I find the combat ok.
In dungeons, I find most of the combat non-melee friendly. The tactics for most of the bosses are crap. There are some packs(like the knights from TA that smash your face) and some mini-events (like the one in CoF path 2 where before the last boss you must run around and die until the NPC blows up the thing) and more stuff that makes me wonder what the fuck were they thinking? They could have learned alot of nice things from WoW or they could have hired smart people to design better encounters.
But no: Scale up the mob`s HP and the AOE damage. Good job.

[WorldofWorkcraft]

In normal PvE I find the combat ok.
In dungeons, I find most of the combat non-melee friendly. The tactics for most of the bosses are crap. There are some packs(like the knights from TA that smash your face) and some mini-events (like the one in CoF path 2 where before the last boss you must run around and die until the NPC blows up the thing) and more stuff that makes me wonder what the fuck were they thinking? They could have learned alot of nice things from WoW or they could have hired smart people to design better encounters.
But no: Scale up the mob`s HP and the AOE damage. Good job.

I agree combat and mechanics can be looked into to make them more fun. In essence, there's a cutoff amount of time you should realize and say "Okay, this boss needs to die sooner because it's now just boring." Unfortunately, that happens with a lot of them. I honestly don't think it'd be very hard, either, to make some of these fights more interesting.

Take HotW P1 final boss, for instance. There's 3 totems or whatever he spawns that give him certain buffs. He also has an AoE spin that reflects projectiles and owns anyone near him. For the fight, you just kite him around and survive while mainly taking out the restoration and protection totems, but you can almost ignore them sometimes. The totems also respawn very fast, so it's just a weird fight that doesn't seem to have much fun about it. If GW2 is all about choices and innovation, why not just implement some cool changes to it? Bosses with phases/transformations, bosses that use cool abilities or have little but neat mechanics, bosses that make us think on our feet rather than stay at ranged and shoot...that's what I'd rather see.

Even something like...I don't know, a boss where if you run around him x times within x seconds (swiftness needed maybe?), he gets dizzy and is dazed or stunned for 10 seconds and takes 100% more damage. I'd rather them have fun with the bosses mobs and have them have players use creative ways to kill them. Is it really that hard?

[Sackman]

You are merely talking about the in-game disavantages of the downed state when he is talking about the design disavantages of it, two very different things...

although I will say that there is nothing wrong with the fact that you can 'heal' up a person in a 'downed'/close-to-death state both mechanically and flavor wise.

However I totally agree that the mechanic encourages the use of one-shots mechanics as a way to effectively challenge players that get a free get-out-of-death card that has very few disavantages, even the loss of dps (which is faaarr from mattering anyway) and the dangerous position you put yourself in when you revive someone aren't that bad when it comes to a mechanic that can indefinitely prevent you from 'failing'.

We are both talking about the same thing lol. He says it's a glorified heal. I am stating that it isn't, it's a glorified combat res.

Alongside that, it isn't to prevent you from failing, it's another fun feature of their chaotic combat. I sincerely disagree about the failing, it punishes you for your mistakes, and allows hits to be more "realistically" painful. Getting smashed by a dragon, or ettin or whatever, feels dangerous, rather than like being tickled. I think the feature is good, from a design perspective we disagree, but the feature is not designed to permit failure - the fact you can run back from the graveyard however, is.

I would say a loss of dps is worthwhile, not on whether or not you do the encounter or not because of no enrage timers, but I don't want to spend all day doing an instance lol. It doesn't matter to you but it certainly matters to me.

It seems to me you are complaining about the content being made too hard, but then also made too easy. I am not sure what you are getting at, you prefer an encounter to not be one shot mechanics but permanent death? Essentially... you want the game to play as every other MMO? I think that goes against the philosophy. Alternatively, do you want it to be one shot mechanics but no downed state? I think that might be more tedious than what many are complaining about already. Alternatively, including the downed state and not being one shot mechanics? I think that would work if they removed the graveyard like zerging that currently exists.

Personally, I think the downed state is cool, and makes the fight feel more like a struggle against bosses which imo is what it should be. Feels a lot more visceral.

However I do not like the fact you can just run back from the "graveyard" that doesn't feel epic or visceral. I would remove that in any incarnation of future changes to combat.

---------- Post added 2012-11-09 at 05:47 PM ----------

Huh? When you get someone up from being downed they come up with 50% of their HP (not including certain possible traits) and it takes like 5 seconds at most for one person to get you up. Add in any more people and it's damn near instantaneous, even with someone hitting you.



It's not hyperbole, it's fact. The heal when reviving a downed person is huge. It's even more tremendous when more than one person starts reviving.



Depends on how much time is between them. There seems to be a pretty short duration on the downed penalty.

That's not a massive heal, because it's just pushing you up from being downed, you are not necessarily being healed, unless you consider the downed state to be like "being alive". I consider it to be something in between alive and dead, and more like a combat res. I suppose you could consider a combat res "healing" too, but I consider them separate mechanics. It's also 25% penalty per, hence 5th down is insta death.

[rhandric]

How is it a weird shift in mechanics? There's no dedicated heal role, you can (and should) help others, you don't need to be in a party to help revive someone....seems self-consistent to me.

[Fencers]

There isn't any shift in mechanics. The downed state is right in line with every element of combat. From bar flip to the idea of purely cooperative play.

Downed state is in conflict with no aspect of the game. Even having a downed state in the first place reinforces the notion of mobility & active avoidance being paramount.

That is not the claim to make w/r/t downed state.

[Fencers]

When Anet talked about no targeted healing they effectively were saying you can't spam a heal skill as a Cleric would. A lot of the concepts the devs spoke on in interviews, press releases and the like were brief and somewhat inaccurate. Mainly because Anet were trying to communicate an idea without full deconstruction of the concept(s).

It's like the "whole game is endgame" spiel. In one sense it is true. Though it's not what Anet were really trying to say in that the bandits attacking the farm is the same as a epic raid. It was a statement contra to bimodal play schemes. But I'll leave the better part of one's logic to decide which of the two is easier to rattle off in a soundbite or lunch time interview with ONRPG.com.

[Sackman]

I guess I don't get how it's NOT a shift. Hell, one of the big things that the developers talked about in beta videos was that you couldn't even target another player with a heal. Wasn't even possible, no way to target Bob when he's in trouble and heal him. It wasn't just a lack of "dedicated healers" it's a lack of targeted healing altogether. You can support Bob, but when it comes to his HP pool he's on his own, except for a few AE heals that some classes can use and those generally won't be enough healing to carry him through significant incoming damage.

Then suddenly, you can. It's completely night and day the difference in what you can and cannot do for another player. The moment someone is down, the game changes and you can in fact simply walk over and target Bob and heal him. Not only that, but the healing that you can do shifts from a small amount that won't really negate incoming damage to a very significant amount that can heal Bob right back up even through the same amount of incoming damage that downed him in the first place.

From a PvE perspective, it just seems like another weak design decision from a group of developers that are clearly having a hard time designing content around anything other than constant dodge rolls out of one-shot mechanics and a sudden presence of healing mechanics when you do fail to dodge one of them.

Can't help feel that you are being real persnickety. Your disliking of the downed system duly noted, our arbitrary definitions of it aside, what had you actually envisioned the game being and why do you yield so much hate for the company - to the point where I make the assumption you feel they have wronged you?

And I really don't think the dungeon mechanics are THAT bad, I mean, they are by no means groundbreaking but, does everything in the game have to be groundbreaking? Let's see what they do with the next released dungeon (presumably, coming within the next 2 weeks with Lost Shores), and then the next, and see what happens. See if they make improvements or changes.

Arguably however - you will never like the game, because it seems you are against the combat and game dynamics in general.

[thewallofsleep]

@Fencers: I agree that GW2 fights are really mobile and it is one thing I really like about the game, what I was trying to say with that sentence was that there was too much emphasis on movement and not enough on the more "RPG" parts like DPS, Sustainability, Defense ect.... (NOT saying there isn't elements of that of course).

Oh well, nevermind that, everything is fine in GW2 PvE, people should just stop being bad. Got it!

It's weird, it feels like I heard that in plenty others MMOs. Oh well, must be me.

Also, I disagree that a trinity is needed for boss fight mechanics, however roles are needed or else you end up with bare Action/FPS gameplay.

Despite being an MMO and having a fantasy setting, I don't really find GW2 to be that RPG like. It certainly has less RPG elements (in my opinion) than a game like WoW or Rift, and that's saying a lot. This is not a shortcoming or a negative thing though. I like lots of different types of games, and GW2 is pretty damn cool, so long as you don't get the mindset that it's supposed to run your life like the aforementioned have the power to do.

[ControlBlue]

There isn't any shift in mechanics. The downed state is right in line with every element of combat. From bar flip to the idea of purely cooperative play.

Downed state is in conflict with no aspect of the game. Even having a downed state in the first place reinforces the notion of mobility & active avoidance being paramount.

That is not the claim to make w/r/t downed state.

How can a state that forces immobilization (even though you can teleport with some classes) reinforce the notion of mobility and active avoidance??? Seems to me like a VERY long stretch.

Although I will agree that it doesn't contradict those notions and the overall philosophy of Anet.

@Bovinity: Personally I think it isn't that big of a deal that you actually get to heal people for massive amount, Anet goals isn't to have no healing or massive heals, it is break the exclusivity of healing and prevent over-specialization in it. Therefore the fact that everybody can do that massive "heal" is okay.

[Fencers]

How can a state that forces immobilization (even though you can teleport with some classes) reinforce the notion of mobility and active avoidance??? Seems to me like a VERY long stretch.

Don't get hit.

The downed state is a second chance or glimpse at the mechanics.

"Oh so that's his tell to GTFO."
*rally!*


I said earlier that there was really awful communication of those tells and mechanics. That's the real problem. The downed state would work well if Anet did a better job of communicating attacks.

There are a few bosses where the downed state does work perfectly with an encounter's mechanics. But for the most part inconsistency is the actual issue.

[Meledelion]

@Zito , when you say 1 person holds the boss up while 4 others run back, how is that bad game play? Your group successfully managed to get back on their feet after nearly wiping, to me that sounds like good play.[COLOR="red"]

It is good play by one person of a 5man "team". Meaning that inorder to do any dungeon you can have 4cats walking across the keyboard randomly whilst one person does all the hardwork and everyone is rewarded equally.

[Awe]

Despite being an MMO and having a fantasy setting, I don't really find GW2 to be that RPG like. It certainly has less RPG elements (in my opinion) than a game like WoW or Rift, and that's saying a lot. This is not a shortcoming or a negative thing though. I like lots of different types of games, and GW2 is pretty damn cool, so long as you don't get the mindset that it's supposed to run your life like the aforementioned have the power to do.

But what is your definition of an RPG? I guess this varies from person to person but according to what I feel, WoW or Rift is no way more "RPG-ish" than GW2. Is gear progression something that defines RPG?

[Deleted]

Gw2 seems a lot like wow tbh

[Fencers]

But what is your definition of an RPG? I guess this varies from person to person but according to what I feel, WoW or Rift is no way more "RPG-ish" than GW2. Is gear progression something that defines RPG?

If the R in pg is being used as Roll or Role playing game, then yes.

If being used as a Role playing game, then no.

Stat manipulation and defined roles are implicit to Roll and Role playing games. Respectively.

Some RPGs are about playing a character [role], some are designed around the dice being thrown [roll], others are about what you are mechanically speaking [Role].