Guild Wars 2: The One Thread

[Valeron]

Don't agree about the "proper" end game either.

I have some other ideas in which I'd like see them do for high end areas but the typical raiding end game is not one of them.

[rhandric]

Doozer, you mean like a return of UW, FoW, and the like?

[Valeron]

Yeah, I like the idea of elite areas in which they can use their event system.

[draykorinee]

Proper end game will mean slower updates, its just not possible to create meaningful raid environments in a few weeks or even a few months if evidenced by the supposed 'masters' of Pve endgame.

[Fencers]

There are already high end dungeons in GW2. Also the devs are working on a different form of raiding than instanced raiding supposedly. However there are raids in GW2 in the style of open world encounters such as the just revamped Teq fight.

Contextualizing endgame as a form or associated with raiding or dungeons in the abstract is a mistake. Having raids, for example, wouldn't necessarily mean you have added endgame to a game. Raiding != endgame, endgame != type of content.

None of the Guild Wars games have ever had an endgame. Nor is an endgame completely in line with the design and intent of the franchise. The desire or even the discussion of such is reaching back to a previous conversation in this thread about audiences having low or generally ignorant understanding of the games they are playing.

These are faulty notions allowed to proliferate within the medium's base audience.

[Smitzelplix]

Proper end game will mean slower updates, its just not possible to create meaningful raid environments in a few weeks or even a few months if evidenced by the supposed 'masters' of Pve endgame.

Not necessarily, they do after all have teams that are supposed to be working on bigger projects while the living story teams do their own thing.

[Svifnymr]

Proper end game will mean slower updates, its just not possible to create meaningful raid environments in a few weeks or even a few months if evidenced by the supposed 'masters' of Pve endgame.

I'd think most of the "work" for it would be creating new models, which GW2 does more of than others, really.

Lack of a Trinity means a dungeon/raid doesn't work the same, obviously, but if you took the Teqautl encounter and stuck it in an instance limited to 25 players, it'd be a raid boss/encounter, wouldn't it?

[Svifnymr]

While I appreciate the introduction of the revamped Tequatl, it's actually a really good example of how GW2s actual combat mechanics don't really agree with the concept of the sort of complex, detailed raid encounters that people are thinking of. The real mechanics of the fight come down to a little turret mini-game, the rest is just the same old DPS-spam.

removing the tank role, you have dps not standing in stuff and healers healing and cleansing. The turrets are cleansing and debuffing. Sure there's no tank positioning or taunt-swapping, but otherwise it's more about tuning than anything else. It's at least the equivalent of LFR, I'd say. I'm certainly not saying it's a heroic raid boss or anything, but it's surely got more mechanics than many raid bosses do.

[Fencers]

I am not sure it's accurate to say Tequalt has more mechanics than most raid bosses. As a general term.

Perhaps if one is making the comparison to some bastardization of form within the structure of World of Warcraft the statement might make more sense. But it seems somewhat far fetched to claim such in a wider or broader context of instanced raid encounters (i.e. "bosses").

[Fencers]

Teq is a complex encounter. Many components make up the composition of the encounter that are both discrete and interdependent.

Individual player role within the Tequalt encounter is not overly complex. It's actually fairly binary for non-turret users.

These are 2 different aspects requiring analysis and critique of differing design elements in the micro and macro context of GW2.

[Meledelion]

Honestly, from the perspective of everyone not on a turret, what mechanics are there? You stand on his leg and spam damage, then when he's gone you go hit the adds. I'd say it's roughly on the level of Patchwerk in terms of mechanics, but it doesn't even have the role challenges that a fight like Patchwerk would have.

Yeah, the people on the turrets have to make sure Teq's buff stays down, dispel poison and buff/sorta-heal everyone. They pretty much wrapped up all the mechanics into the turrets and didn't really address the question of, "Can you really make complex, interesting raid encounters with this combat system?"

People vastly overestimate the difficulties of fights since they include the difficulties for all roles into one encounter which isn't fair.

Take patchwork. The difficulty is a taunt rotation for tanks for everyone else it's just stand behind him and push buttons.
Most encounters revolve around a clear split in mechanics between tanks and others.

[Svifnymr]

Honestly, from the perspective of everyone not on a turret, what mechanics are there? You stand on his leg and spam damage, then when he's gone you go hit the adds.

Sure, but for a lot of raid bosses through the years, what else did dps do? Don't stand in fire (aka, dodge damage), dps adds when they spawn or don't depending on encounter.

Yeah, the people on the turrets have to make sure Teq's buff stays down, dispel poison and buff/sorta-heal everyone. They pretty much wrapped up all the mechanics into the turrets and didn't really address the question of, "Can you really make complex, interesting raid encounters with this combat system?"

So the turret folks are mashing turret buttons instead of mandatory X number of healers mashing healer buttons. I'm not saying they're equal experiences, but that people really seem to over-represent the intricacy of "raids".

[Meledelion]

I forgot this part. I don't disagree, but if you go this route, then you necessarily have to agree with my point on the cannons and Tequatl.

I agree completely regarding tequatl.

[Svifnymr]

I forgot this part. I don't disagree, but if you go this route, then you necessarily have to agree with my point on the cannons and Tequatl.

I don't think any of us are really disagreeing, just debating over lines in the sand.
An instanced off Tequatl would, I think be a raid boss, more complex than the simplest, less complex than say, the middle of the road, but raid encounters have a huge variety.

I think it really comes down to "no tank" being the core difference. I haven't actually tanked a raid in a few years, but same variety of tasks from "stand still and be hit" to managing all sorts of stuff all over a large room. (And only know LFR second hand.)

If anything, I think it's the length of fights that has bored me, personally.

[lawow74]

It's interesting to see they want to do things for support skills, I just hope that doesn't predicate design around dedicated support in future(in terms of character builds)and start pushing in the trinity when the whole idea was to get away from 'LF <insert role>' in the first place. Kinda like I hope they don't push the whole gear grind/daily CD mess any further.

[draykorinee]

I'd think most of the "work" for it would be creating new models, which GW2 does more of than others, really.

Lack of a Trinity means a dungeon/raid doesn't work the same, obviously, but if you took the Teqautl encounter and stuck it in an instance limited to 25 players, it'd be a raid boss/encounter, wouldn't it?

Balancing and bug testing would take a long time, you could stick tequatl in to a raid and say here is a boss, but you have to design the instance, incorporate trash and storyline and add in some more meaningful boss encounters, adding one boss doesn't make a raid. Just because tanks/healers don't exist I would doubt that makes creating the raid any less challenging from a lore, balance, bugs point of view, they wouldn't hit a raid a month as far as I'm concerned.

[Gray_Matter]

People vastly overestimate the difficulties of fights since they include the difficulties for all roles into one encounter which isn't fair.

Take patchwork. The difficulty is a taunt rotation for tanks for everyone else it's just stand behind him and push buttons.
Most encounters revolve around a clear split in mechanics between tanks and others.

Very few fights actually require any thinking at all. Even fairly complex ones only need each player to watch out for 2 or 3 mechanics for each 2 or 3 phases. Personally I dislike mechanics or fights that have one shot mechanics of any sort whether avoidable or not. I also dislike fights where you have a single point of failure, including so called burn phases which require that all of the group members be present. They can be there for HC type fights but I still don't like them. For me, the best fight I saw was the Faction Champs in TOGC. Not that it was tough, although some combos were. It's more that there was AI in the boss instead of a boss following a set sequence.

If I had to design a boss fight, I would include better AI with the boss using things like avoiding player damage like running out of AOE or blocking some attacks and attacking perceived weaker players. I would also scale down the damage requirements if players die. Not fully, just a reduced amount. So losing a player in a 10 man group might drop the damage requirement by 8%. The rest would need to do better but it wouldn't be a situation where people should quit and start again.

- - - Updated - - -

Balancing and bug testing would take a long time, you could stick tequatl in to a raid and say here is a boss, but you have to design the instance, incorporate trash and storyline and add in some more meaningful boss encounters, adding one boss doesn't make a raid. Just because tanks/healers don't exist I would doubt that makes creating the raid any less challenging from a lore, balance, bugs point of view, they wouldn't hit a raid a month as far as I'm concerned.

The new Tequati would have made good instanced (not raid but an encounter) content. It took less then a week before people stopped doing the new Tequati because it was too tough. I would love to see the world bosses instanced for tougher encounters. The map would be the same, the fight has already been changed. It would give something challenging for guilds to take part in and the easier one would be available to all and sundry.

[Fencers]

They could just create an instance of that part of the game world for Teq. Sort of how Anet does it for PS or the way Rift does it for slivers.

Would be easier to balance and scale if there was a definite # of participants going into the encounter too. For example, many of the times I tried to do Teq 2.0 there was simply not enough people there to complete the encounter. Eventually I ended up doing it on some overflow server on a Sunday evening by luck alone.

Say guilds knew beforehand the encounter was a 10, 20 or 40 man fight they could organize and plan for it easily.

[Karizee]

The new Tequati would have made good instanced (not raid but an encounter) content. It took less then a week before people stopped doing the new Tequati because it was too tough. I would love to see the world bosses instanced for tougher encounters. The map would be the same, the fight has already been changed. It would give something challenging for guilds to take part in and the easier one would be available to all and sundry.

It's too tough for a disorganized group of randoms to kill it, but it's pretty much melting with guild group these days. Groups like Tequatl Terror Squad killing him everyday - they are up to 6 guilds now. Personally I think they need to restrict environmental weapons like the ele powders to give the fight a bit more challenge.

[draykorinee]

Could just be a zone with Tequatl in it alone. Look at the Primal fights from FFXIV, for instance!

yes i don't disagree with tequatl being an instance raid boss, would be great, the novelty of single boss fights would wear off.