Why nerf the fun factor as a solution?

[Virgil.2634]

If an enemy can see a sand shade before it has damage, then they should be punished when they walk into it and explode. No dance dance revolution "visual ques" necessary. But since sPvP is your wallet, i mean "e-sport", their screams are loudest so go ahead and implement those changes because I wouldn't want devs losing any sleep...

I'm being sarcastic and salty but i feel like i deserve to be. I have played this game since the beginning, and decided to come back recently and have enjoyed the Scourge class in PvE while i play with my gf who isn't so great. I raid in WvW for guild and group fighting in general. The high risk and high reward has always appealed to me. Big damage with long cooldowns on wells and no mobility to speak of. So naturally the scourge felt fun to me and i enjoyed it. I had wells without waiting a year for cooldowns and losing utilities in PvE. Now the chunkiness of what is essentially a cast time on shroud 2-5 feels terrible. I see enemies in my shades, i hit buttons for the damage they deserve for walking into them and nothing happens for half a second before i see numbers and ill be lucky if i see 1 tick before they pass through sometimes. Barriers are delayed which has gotten me killed 3 times since it was patched. I may have died with the barrier but atleast it would have casted. Now the fun is GONE. You took the slowest class and made it feel more clunky and gross. Now it's no longer fun. So in the skill description for the shades it should say "nothing is going to happen for .5 seconds" for the sake of clarity. I'm going to give my Ele a shot at Weaver before finding another MMO for PvE to play with my more casual friends because the Anet development process is something i'm already overly familiar with. They pissed me off again in less than 2 weeks of being back and they still have no idea what their WvW community has wanted for YEARS. I know this is very negative, but i have found that my reactions to Anet patches almost always usually are.

 

TL;DR Nerf classes if necessary, but make changes that effect damage and not FUN!

[Dadnir.5038]

Well there was a need for the tells that have been implemented because each shade skill pack to much power in the form of layers upon layers of additionnal effect. Now I agree with you, the proper way to deal with it should have been to touch this "power". However, in the case of the necromancer touching this for scourge would mean touching an already weak core profession and breaking it while they desperatly try to stick to it's original design.

 

The very first issue of the scourge is the sand shade. Simply put, the concept was going against to many traits on the necromancer. So they tweeked it to create this horrible design that we got now. Anet's very mistake is that they chose to go for an ambitious concept without first trying concepts that are more manageable and "safe" from a balance point of view. Breaking away from the shroud was a good idea, going directly to the shade which was, dixit, a dangerous mechanism, was a bad idea.

 

They should have slowly experimented with more conventionnal spec with no shroud, progressively bent the core necromancer to also fit with this kind of design but, they just rushed thing, trying clumsily to release a "support" spec that fit their view of the support that a necromancer should provide. From a player point of view, it feel like they listen to the first part of what we asked but ignored the most important second part. Players wanted support, but players didn't want this useless support that they view as the necromancer's support. This support had already proven to be useless where the necromancer needed help which is PvE.

 

Honestly there is no way to correct this situation unless anet's devs admit their mistakes and start at least an in depth rework of the necromancer. Now based on what we experienced so far these 5 years, there will only be bandaid fixs which will remove the "fun factor".

[Dragoth.7153]

Lets compare Shades to traps and stealth.

Traps are invisible, can be stacked in control point and stay there for a long time. If traited/geared properly they are deadly. Trapper DH with bow is most powerful trap user.

Stealth gives invisibility. Can sneak up and unleash a burst of instane dmg before we can react. It work as defensive mechanism as well.

 

Shades, unlike traps or stealth are visible and not active before scourge activate it, paying with LF. Even full burst of F2 to F5 wont kill in any scenario. They telegraph their attacks clearly and can be countered with condi cleanse. Whats more, shades are far from being defensive or bursty. Now with reduced condi cleanse they don't support as well. Shades last only 10 seconds.

 

Summary:

Traps - invisible, long-lasting, deadly, almost no way to avoid

Stealth - invisible, deadly, defensive, no way to reveal enemy (there are few skills accessible by only couple of classes)

Shades - visible, short lifespan, weak, delayed and telegraphed activation.

 

Possible fixes:

Reduce duration of traps to 10sec. Make them visible. Put a 0.5s delay after stepping in to avoid.

Stealth - give access to reveal skill to all classes, spread between weapon skills, mechanics and utilities, daze stealth-users when exiting stealth for 0.5s, Make a graphical information when player leave stealth (big red circles going inward player locaton).

Bonus:

All AoE skills need to be put on minimum 0.5s delay with visible activation location (lava fonts, glyph of storms, arrows barrage etc). They are more powerful than unavioided shade anyway.

 

[DeceiverX.8361]

Because the "fun factor" is what has broken this game's profession balance and design to begin with, and is the sole reason why the entire competitive PvP scene dissolved, failed, and quit taking GW2's systems seriously. Livestreams of pro players repeatedly insulted ANet for catering towards "fun factor" and removing visual tells, cooldowns, animations, counterplay, etc.

 

In the case of shades, they were completely busted and in all honesty, scourge is still overtuned in a lot of regards in the PvP formats.

 

The game right now has way too much "fun factor" and "rule of cool." Just because you feel good in a power fantasy does not mean it's healthy for the entire rest of the game.

 

As far as traps go, all core-game traps have a 1/2s animation setting them and some aftercast delay as well. DH is the lone counterexample. Like I said, the game is losing its tells and counterplay which is what makes PvP fun for everyone.

 

Stealth is a problem from stacking stealth from range, rather than the mechanic of being stealthed itself. Builds which can't stealth from range/OOC are often very predictable and generally pretty weak if you know how to play against them.

[Adenin.5973]

> @"DeceiverX.8361" said:

> Because the "fun factor" is what has broken this game's profession balance and design to begin with, and is the sole reason why the entire competitive PvP scene dissolved, failed, and quit taking GW2's systems seriously. Livestreams of pro players repeatedly insulted ANet for catering towards "fun factor" and removing visual tells, cooldowns, animations, counterplay, etc.

>

> In the case of shades, they were completely busted and in all honesty, scourge is still overtuned in a lot of regards in the PvP formats.

>

> The game right now has way too much "fun factor" and "rule of cool." Just because you feel good in a power fantasy does not mean it's healthy for the entire rest of the game.

>

> As far as traps go, all core-game traps have a 1/2s animation setting them and some aftercast delay as well. DH is the lone counterexample. Like I said, the game is losing its tells and counterplay which is what makes PvP fun for everyone.

>

> Stealth is a problem from stacking stealth from range, rather than the mechanic of being stealthed itself. Builds which can't stealth from range/OOC are often very predictable and generally pretty weak if you know how to play against them.

 

That's a pretty weird logic. Also, how many people play the game for something else than having fun? I've played tons of games that didn't care at all about balance and it was super fun. I never stopped playing because I told myself that "Yeah, this is really a fun game but it's somehow not balanced and has no counterplay and visual tells, therefore I will now stop playing!". No one reacts like that when he has fun playing the game.

 

Problems only start if you have a PvP mode or actually start caring about competitive gameplay, then most of the time half of the players have fun and the other half gets frustrated. Because that's the essence and bane of PvP. Whenever someone wins, someone has to lose. Even if you balance your game on paper 100%, the PvP forums will still be filled with endless complaints, there will still be ragequitting, insults and toxic behavior.

 

I mean look at the forums now. Some ppl say Scourge is completely trash now, some ppl say it's still op, the rest already complains about mesmers and druids. All that Anet really achieved is messing with the fun factor of scourge in PvE. A game mode where balance, counterplay, visual tells for player classes doesn't even matter.

 

So, if you have to balance skills for PvP, then only there pls. PvE shouldn't care about balance but about fun. That's also why raids are such a huge mistake imo. Half of a raid is cooperative gameplay and half of it is competitive gameplay, since everyone looks at the dps meter and starts kicking ppl or no longer inviting certain build/classes. That's why raids taken seriously would require another skill split from the rest of the game, because they have an competitive element the core experience of GW2 never had and never should have.

[Morde.3158]

I can see what hes getting into but I don't like scourge but, I want my fun factors for my shroud traits but anet took that away.

[DeceiverX.8361]

> @"Adenin.5973" said:

> > @"DeceiverX.8361" said:

> > Because the "fun factor" is what has broken this game's profession balance and design to begin with, and is the sole reason why the entire competitive PvP scene dissolved, failed, and quit taking GW2's systems seriously. Livestreams of pro players repeatedly insulted ANet for catering towards "fun factor" and removing visual tells, cooldowns, animations, counterplay, etc.

> >

> > In the case of shades, they were completely busted and in all honesty, scourge is still overtuned in a lot of regards in the PvP formats.

> >

> > The game right now has way too much "fun factor" and "rule of cool." Just because you feel good in a power fantasy does not mean it's healthy for the entire rest of the game.

> >

> > As far as traps go, all core-game traps have a 1/2s animation setting them and some aftercast delay as well. DH is the lone counterexample. Like I said, the game is losing its tells and counterplay which is what makes PvP fun for everyone.

> >

> > Stealth is a problem from stacking stealth from range, rather than the mechanic of being stealthed itself. Builds which can't stealth from range/OOC are often very predictable and generally pretty weak if you know how to play against them.

>

> That's a pretty weird logic. Also, how many people play the game for something else than having fun? I've played tons of games that didn't care at all about balance and it was super fun. I never stopped playing because I told myself that "Yeah, this is really a fun game but it's somehow not balanced and has no counterplay and visual tells, therefore I will now stop playing!". No one reacts like that when he has fun playing the game.

>

> Problems only start if you have a PvP mode or actually start caring about competitive gameplay, then most of the time half of the players have fun and the other half gets frustrated. Because that's the essence and bane of PvP. Whenever someone wins, someone has to lose. Even if you balance your game on paper 100%, the PvP forums will still be filled with endless complaints, there will still be ragequitting, insults and toxic behavior.

>

> I mean look at the forums now. Some ppl say Scourge is completely trash now, some ppl say it's still op, the rest already complains about mesmers and druids. All that Anet really achieved is messing with the fun factor of scourge in PvE. A game mode where balance, counterplay, visual tells for player classes doesn't even matter.

>

> So, if you have to balance skills for PvP, then only there pls. PvE shouldn't care about balance but about fun. That's also why raids are such a huge mistake imo. Half of a raid is cooperative gameplay and half of it is competitive gameplay, since everyone looks at the dps meter and starts kicking ppl or no longer inviting certain build/classes. That's why raids taken seriously would require another skill split from the rest of the game, because they have an competitive element the core experience of GW2 never had and never should have.

 

Most of the things like what scourge does, in particular with area denial, are anti-fun, though. As far as people quitting goes... a lot did. Literally all of the competitive sPvP teams left based on this statement, and a lot of serious PvP and WvW players did with outraged expressions with HoT. Being on the receiving end of scourge is absolutely anti-fun. For a lot of kits and styles of play, it'd be akin to simply having desert shroud suffer a debuff that caused all incoming ranged damage to be tripled. Possible to play around, but extremely frustrating by its existence. That's why counterplay is necessary; it's not about you - it's about people playing *against* you.

 

Most of the "x is underpowered" topics of overpowered specs/classes come from the PvE scene because people are trying to make a class do something that some other class is better at. The encounter can still be won. It's just people do not want anything less than optimal. You can't make a perfectly-balanced game in terms of numbers for content like what we have in PvE in GW2 when you have inter-player diversity, either. The former can't be achieved in an MMO, so forget looking at "X doesn't deal enough damage" as any means of viability. Further, damage and utility do not depend on having no tells or counterplay. D/D power thief is one of the easiest kits to beat in the PvP formats in the game because of how much counterplay surrounds it, yet one of the strongest in PvE because the damage is the only thing that matters.

 

GW2 was still fun prior to most of the powercreep in HoT. Skills like Hundred Blades felt impactful and awesome to use. These days, the damage is negligible and is relegated to stacking might while the thief's AA chain deals more damage. That's not fun, nor is it engaging gameplay or good game design in practice. No-tell damage and the likes ultimately makes for rotation-based play which generally most people find less-engaging because it can all be macro'd out. It starts begging questions as to what the game honestly is at that point.

 

You can't stop all criticism, because not all criticism is well-defended; but there are very obviously major imbalances and most notably, most of what's strong is anti-fun for your opponents, particularly so with scourge, holosmith, and firebrand. Not being able to react in any form to incoming damage and being punished for simply being next to your foe is just frustrating, particularly if you're playing something that just happens to not be on the top-end of things or if your preferred playstyle is simply not catered towards.

 

The scourge changes in terms of the tells have no effect in PvE because mobs do not dodge them. So your argument about PvE is totally baseless. You were playing something that was not fun for your opponents and was systematically overpowered. Period. There's nothing to refute there because the visual tells were added because people were dying without even knowing why they were dying or what they were dying to. Imagine if thieves did not leave stealth when attacking. That's effectively what desert shroud skills were like to fight against.

 

Your complaints about PvE are also only logically founded on the numbers based on the criteria that people have deemed optimal for completing the content you're doing in minimal time and/or highest success chance. If scourge does not provide optimally in some respect to the existing encounter design, it is not deemed worthy of bringing in a raid in PvE. It's that simple, and it exists for most builds and kits on every profession. This problem is based in encounter design and nothing more.

 

That's why there is no PvE metagame. I'm speaking objectively here from a game design perspective; a metagame in PvE simply cannot exist unless high-end AI that simulates other players, notably in the pre-game/pre-fight stages of a combat encounter, is utilized. If you're not understanding this, I suggest you do some research on game design and look up the actual definition of what a metagame is. The "meta" in PvE is a complete myth and total misnomer and no amount of numbers tweaking will change optimization strategies. Only a redefined encounter space will.

 

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

Guys don't be ridicilous here, and i say this as necro main. Shades needed a nerfbat bigtime, and the delay is well deserved in spvp.

 

On shades vs traps:

Traps go away after triggering, shade doesn't.

Each trap does one thing, while a shade can do any of 4 skills.

Traps aren't full capture point sized shade is.

Traps can't follow you while shade can be repositioned easy.

If you avoid/trigger the trap without falling into it - you just cost your enemy huge chunk of damage and wasted slot skills. Shades? The necro counts as shade himself, so catching him away from it won't do no good, and they're his F-skills, he didn't lose any of his utilities just cause you dodged that shade.

 

And let's not forget the barriers. Before they were a running joke of necro "support" so the OP shades carried the scourge. But now barriers are a real, viable thing (as they should be), so it's fair the shade brokeness gets some nerfbatting, now that the scourge is no longer a 2 hit kill.

[KrHome.1920]

"walking into shades" ...I stopped reading at this point.

 

Get good on Scourge! Seriously! If you have to rely on targets walking into your shades you are playing the class wrong.

 

If you have some skill your opponent has zero chance not getting hit by your huge AOEs and CC - that includes staff marks, shades and yourself. Now he has at least the chance to dodge some of them. And have you ever heard of baiting dodges/blocks with telegraphs to make sure your big hits won't miss?

 

The Scourge telegraph was the best part of the whole balance patch.

[jbrother.1340]

> @"Virgil.2634" said:

> If an enemy can see a sand shade before it has damage, then they should be punished when they walk into it and explode. No dance dance revolution "visual ques" necessary. But since sPvP is your wallet, i mean "e-sport", their screams are loudest so go ahead and implement those changes because I wouldn't want devs losing any sleep...

> I'm being sarcastic and salty but i feel like i deserve to be. I have played this game since the beginning, and decided to come back recently and have enjoyed the Scourge class in PvE while i play with my gf who isn't so great. I raid in WvW for guild and group fighting in general. The high risk and high reward has always appealed to me. Big damage with long cooldowns on wells and no mobility to speak of. So naturally the scourge felt fun to me and i enjoyed it. I had wells without waiting a year for cooldowns and losing utilities in PvE. Now the chunkiness of what is essentially a cast time on shroud 2-5 feels terrible. I see enemies in my shades, i hit buttons for the damage they deserve for walking into them and nothing happens for half a second before i see numbers and ill be lucky if i see 1 tick before they pass through sometimes. Barriers are delayed which has gotten me killed 3 times since it was patched. I may have died with the barrier but atleast it would have casted. Now the fun is GONE. You took the slowest class and made it feel more clunky and gross. Now it's no longer fun. So in the skill description for the shades it should say "nothing is going to happen for .5 seconds" for the sake of clarity. I'm going to give my Ele a shot at Weaver before finding another MMO for PvE to play with my more casual friends because the Anet development process is something i'm already overly familiar with. They pissed me off again in less than 2 weeks of being back and they still have no idea what their WvW community has wanted for YEARS. I know this is very negative, but i have found that my reactions to Anet patches almost always usually are.

>

> TL;DR Nerf classes if necessary, but make changes that effect damage and not FUN!

 

When damaged is not on par with anyone else how is that fun? Affecting damage is affecting FUN for many. Having a desired class is fun for many. Having a company that seems disconnected and wildly arrogant about what they think their customers want is not so FUN.