The Problem of GW2 PvE

[Valeron]

Hence why GW1 was a niche game that was mocked constantly by the gaming world.

Is this sarcasm? I can't quite tell on the internet.

[Fencers]

Hence why GW1 was a niche game that was mocked constantly by the gaming world.

It was consistent seller. So much so it funded the development of Guild Wars 2 to spare.

I never heard any mockery toward Guild Wars 1 till your post right here. At worst I heard ppl say, "Not the game for me."

Which a lot more hysterical naysayers should be saying about Guild Wars 2-- "not the game for me"

Risk >90000 Reward: some silver, maybe a gold if your fckin lucky

Not sure what you mean here. The death penalty in GW2 for being bad is reduced $.

If clearing a dungeon or DE effectively then it's a net profit.

Another thing people have mentioned above is the trinity, I don't see why this is classed as a bad thing

Pretty sure only a small number of people classify role trinity as a "bad" thing. It more likely you'll find people saying it is a "different" thing.

Lack or or inclusion of a role trinity is neither good or bad. They are both design decisions. Game design in objective. Your enjoyment is not.

Took me a week to fully understand my class / get the best gearset / spell combo ect. Takes you months to do that in any MMO on the market.

Dubious, personal and subjective statement. There is no rational way to discuss this claim.

I can't think of a single MMO since 2007's Vanguard where it took "months" or even a week to learn a class. The older MMOs such as EQ and UO did take months. But it was due to the fact level gains were purposefully slow and you very well might be auto attacking for 20 levels [4 weeks /played] before EQ gave you an ability to put on the hotbar.

Your statement here is really shaky.

[Fencers]

GW1 was a niche game dont try and deny that, only a handful of gamers enjoyed it due to how different it was. Bear in mind different doesnt always mean better.

I deny that GW1 was only enjoyed by a handful of a players. It had [still] active communities galore. Also sold extremely well.

What Arena.net are is a small developer. I think of them as a boutique. They were never on the level of Blizzard, EA or even Turbine when it came to marketing & $ muscle.

I played tons of MMO's and never once was GW1 regarded highly by any community I met, bar its own. It was always considered a meh game and I got to see that once I actually tried playing it, it wasnt something special.

You mean to say, you consider it a "meh" game. Where is this intelligentsia that proclaims GW1 universally "meh"?

Where is the sales proof of a failed concept?

Where is the logical proof that the GW franchise was unable to garner funding for a sequel much more costly than the previous?

These claims are 100% stuff you made up or simply think. I am sorry to be so blunt.

[Deleted]

Oh yeah it took me 25 years to master healing, tanking and dps with my druid in that 50 trillion sub MMO, also it took me about 6 months 2 days to master the art of a jedi in swtor, tried rift played for 33.3 seconds wasnt the game for me.

You aint serious with that months to master arent you?

[Deleted]

I played tons of MMO's and never once was GW1 regarded highly by any community I met, bar its own. It was always considered a meh game and I got to see that once I actually tried playing it, it wasnt something special.

Might wanna be more assertive than "meh"...

[Whitepepper]

GW2 is plenty popular, numbers speak for themselves:

The only number that I see in your entire post is the two in GW2. What speaks for the numbers if there are no numbers present?

[Valeron]

Right, but the gaming world doesn't revolve around you Tommo. So just because you think it is shit and it shouldn't be recognized anywhere doesn't make that actually true.

[barackopala]

Oh yeah it took me 25 years to master healing, tanking and dps with my druid in that 50 trillion sub MMO, also it took me about 6 months 2 days to master the art of a jedi in swtor, tried rift played for 33.3 seconds wasnt the game for me.

You aint serious with that months to master arent you?

Ever played mmo's to a competitive standpoint? <pvp focused post mostly>

-Ragnarok online: Extremely basic yet deep and complex stat/skill/mechanics system, that game took literally months for somebody who was new to the game to really master and get to develop the metagame with the LP WoE system, it was complex and always in development due to new meta-shifts (like sharpshooting snipers, trapping snipers that weren't too known but extremely powerful with claymores). Hell I even praised this game for being extremely deep once the WoE2.0 came along, was on one of the most competitive guilds among latin america / europe concerning private servers, the server I played was known for hosting amazing tournaments that would last weeks/months just for the glory of it, after a few weeks doing a certain strategy a team or two would swap the meta and bring a new thing to the table making our dominant method a complete trash, it was back and forth game with deep reasoning on everything you did.


-League of legends or any MOBA: "4 buttons for spells? pfff anyone can play this sh*t even an ape!", and there goes the NA scene flushed out by korean players that have a huuuuuuge skillgap over NA, same goes for EU>NA.


-SC2/BW: Learn how each unit is played = Easy and simple, trully master each setup? Nearly impossible, even the almighty flash has fallen before.

On the PvE side, no game takes too long to master.

[Deleted]

I stumbled upon that post while browsing the GW2 Dungeons forums and I have to say that was the only that actually had a clue what was the real downfall of GW2's PvE, not just dungeons!

They used the absence of a trinity as an excuse to not have roles in a fight.

To put it simply, I suppose that they got so focused around the idea that they had to get rid of the Trinity that they decided to make PvE encounters purely "action", a bit like a FPS fight.

Then they went the "Action" route so much that they ended up with a "headshot" gameplay, one mistake and you are dead. How do you create a PvE challenge out of a gameplay like that? Runbacks! You make death a part of the encounter instead of an end to it! No problems if the effects thrown at you are lethal, you can come back right? Of course as a punishment for "failing" you take Armor damage.

I also think that the Downed mechanic played a pretty big role in convincing Anet that death was an acceptable mechanic to use, after all you shouldn't ever die even if the effects are lethal since you can be revived!....

Instead of a direct failure signal, Death becomes a mechanic to get you closer to failure.
The problem with that is that people don't like dying! For evident reasons and after decades of games telling you that dying is bad, you kinda get it hardwired in your head.

This end with two really bad things for the game:
- Encounters that need no coordination to down. All you have to do is survive. You have no enrage, no responsibilities, just keep moving and keep firing like in a FPS!
- Encounters that are infuriatingly frustrating because you have to go through that very very negative signal that death is, countless of times.

Personally, at first I thought PvE would be focused on "surviving" the attacks of the Big Bad Boss until your self-heal was off-cooldown. Supports would ensure that you could last a little longer without popping your self-heal, Controllers would debuff and control him, and the Damage would do.... damage, but still be responsible for their own well-being (no 'HEAL ME!!!'). You wouldn't need the Trinity to create tense and interesting fights.

I think the only hope for the PvE is to have encounter resets when everyone dies. It might seems like an horrible thing to do as it would make dungeons INSANELY difficult to complete!
Yep it would, IF the system is kept as it is.

Doing that change would force them to challenge people through a different mechanic than death and runbacks. They would have to use enrages, they would have to force roles and responsibilities, and they would have to fix the way aggro is managed.

It would also force them to bring those health bars back to reasonable proportions.

What do you think? Am I just being stupid? are GW2 dungeons and PvE encounters just fine?

The biggest lie that Anet cooked up was that GW2 would require skill. When infact the only times I died while leveling was when we didn't have enough people to manage an event or when I was simply zerged by mobs.
Dungeons were very boring, took several hours to do and involved no progression. Combat was about running around or rolling left and right. Ranged class? Run around in a circle until a mob is dead. Not fun. I'm sure there's people out there that for some reason don't see it that way and beyond all logic I can muster, actually like it.

[Deleted]

To be fair, everyone claimed to be a "master" at their class/spec/role in that other MMO, but somehow the overwhelming majority couldn't move out of fire, follow instructions, burn an add down in a timely manner, or keep a raid healed worth a darn.

You could say the same about GW2 I guess...if any of that mattered in the PvE. Any derpy Sally Standsinfire (Thanks, Fencers) that got vote-kicked from a Zul'Gurub 5-man could replace me in a GW2 dungeon and no one would be able to tell the difference.

While I agree with you, (some people still stand in the same fire after 35 trillion tries) I think you understood the point that I was making, mastering a class for pve aint hard it certainly didnt take months. However PVP is another story but we are talking about pve here.

Honestly while dungeons need to be much harder IMO and with much more mechanics, I still feel useful with more guardian throwing protection and heals + blinds, but thtas just me though. I understand and agree that most fights are too chaotic and feels like grinding a huge chunk of Hp instead off a real boss fight.

[Valeron]

. I'm sure there's people out there that for some reason don't see it that way and beyond all logic I can muster, actually like it.

OMG, someone likes something I don't! There must be something wrong with that person.

[Deleted]

Dunno but while PVE is a total snore fest PVP is much more skill based than most (if not all) MMOs.

[Fencers]

Well Im glad you took bugger all from my original post about PvE, as in the topic discussion. Im not going to bother looking up figures for a game I couldnt spend more than a day playing so take that how you will.

Riiiight.

As I correctly pointed out: a dubious and at best personal statement.

It's totally fine if you disliked the game(s). But it's pretty silly to make claims as you did a page ago.

And no, I heard about GW1 when nightfall was released, rather than when it was released which I should have if it was a triple A game like WoW / EQ ect

GW1 isn't a triple AA MMO. They are a small developer. If it weren't for their publishing agreement with NCSoft they'd be borderline indie.

maybe I got unlucky but I never once heard people mention it until my friend bought the game and convinced me to try it.

GW1 always had coverage in gaming magazines and on sites. Every campaign was on the front cover of PC Gamer, iirc.

The cumulative total of Guild Wars 1 titles is one of the best selling PC games of all time. Link.

They still sell GW1 sets consistently too. Via their store and the deep discount 'battlechest' like packages. Similar to Diablo 2 and World of Warcraft. Also consistent sellers in PC gaming.

[Valeron]

Look Tommo, I don't have a problem with constructive criticism. My point isn't about that at all. My issue is all encompassing statements like yours in post 284

was mocked constantly by the gaming world

[barackopala]

Riiiight.

As I correctly pointed out: a dubious and at best personal statement.

It's totally fine if you disliked the game(s). But it's pretty silly to make claims as you did a page ago.

GW1 isn't a triple AA MMO. They are a small developer. If it weren't for their publishing agreement with NCSoft they'd be borderline indie.

GW1 always had coverage in gaming magazines and on sites. Every campaign was on the front cover of PC Gamer, iirc.

The cumulative total of Guild Wars 1 titles is one of the best selling PC games of all time. Link.

They still sell GW1 sets consistently too. Via their store and the deep discount 'battlechest' like packages. Similar to Diablo 2 and World of Warcraft. Also consistent sellers in PC gaming.

Holy shit 6million solds? interesting o:

[rhandric]

OMG, someone likes something I don't! There must be something wrong with that person.

Logic has no place on the internet!

[Deleted]

Ah I see you are still pissed off at the Halloween "scam" as you call it, I opened 50 chests combined, what I got nothing 0 nada still my care cup is totally empty. They are just cool items thats all no need to throw tantrums and crap about it.

Yeah there some great ideas and good constructive criticism flowing around but there are also way too many kids around stomping their feet because they get to do soemthing/get something. Oh the amount of cries because of the puzzle, it took me 8 friggin hours if not more to do it and I still believe it was awesome.

[Edge-]

This is getting dangerously close to being closed. There's a lot of not so on-topic bickering that's neither productive or friendly. Start being friendly and posting on-topic again or I'm going to turn this car around.

[Thelxi]

Not to mention, there is no carrot, and carrots are important.

[Kildragon]

After a few failed attempts at putting my thoughts into a clear argument, here goes.

Currently there are two ways of having a hotkey MMO work. You can have the Holy Trinity system of WoW, SWTOR, etc. or you can have the "undefined roles" system of GW2. The Holy Trinity system works, and it works well, especially in PvE. The GW2 system works, and it works well, especially in PvP. Here's why:

Encounters are 100% scripted events. No matter what you do, the encounter follows a very set path, that can be influenced by players to achieve victory, but it still falls into a defined set of rules. At X time, Y will happen and you can deal with it. If player N does this, the encounter will always react with Z. The Holy Trinity works very well for this because it is also follows a defined set of rules that compliments scripted events and AI. X happens, send player with Y spec to deal with it. There is a counter for things and those counters are well defined. Probably the most important set of rules is the expectation of having a tank and dedicated healers.

This holy trinity system doesn't work for PvP though, which is why you never see any tanks in serious PvP. Dedicated healers work very well because triage and PvP are very easy to work with. The primary purpose of tanks though is to have aggro and take damage, something that while working well with scripted events tends to not work well with actual players. Without the artificial mechanic called aggro, no player in their right mind would take someone that does little damage AND takes little damage serious. They ignore them or CC them and that's the end of it. Luckily games like WoW don't have dedicated tank classes so people can still PvP as a DPS or healing spec.

On to the GW2 system. In the GW2 system there are no defined roles and no ways of becoming a defined role, even for a limited amount of time. Encounters, as mentioned earlier, follow a script within a defined set of rules. Scripts and undefined roles tend to not mix so well, which is why boss fights in many single player games such as shooters or Skyrim tend to involve a lot of dodging obvious stuff coming at you while doing damage and kiting. Since there is no way to fill other roles the only way to increase difficulty is to increase damage taken or throw more shit at you making it harder to dodge. The third option is to make enemies behave more like real humans, which is the core of the issue. You can either increase damage taken and throw more shit at players, or make AI smart enough to essentially turn PvE into PvP just with computers. The only way to make GW2 PvE more engaging without just turning your monitor into a big clusterfuck of spell effects is to make the AI less scripted and give it the ability to react on its own terms.

On the other hand, the GW2 system works extremely well with PvP, where dodging spells and reacting to enemy actions is the core of gameplay. Smart ability usage and positioning have always been more important in PvP than pure damage or pure healing output and that is essentially what GW2 was designed to do.

I think the only way that ANet can make PvE more engaging without the clusterfuck of spells thrown your way, is to give players a way to temporarily become a role rather than giving you a way to perform as a poor excuse of a role most of the time. Temporary tanks and healers might be the way to go simply because you need some rules that the encounters can follow. This would mostly look like people rotating in the roles of healing, tanking and DPS based on CD's available and encounter needs, in a dynamic manner.