The Effects Of No-Downstate in WvW - Why Players Feel The Way They Do <- ARENANET READ THIS

[XenesisII.1540]

> @"KryTiKaL.3125" said:

> @"XenesisII.1540" I mean if you think that would turn it into a shooter then you haven't played many shooters have you? Rewarding PvP tends to be much more fast paced, not slow. I'd rather not fall asleep while fighting another player. If the concern is about burst builds, again they have always existed, removing the downed state didn't just make them suddenly appear again you just notice it more because other players can't just pick you back up or get you rallied. Balance can be a bit wonky, I don't disagree with that and there are classes that are definitely a problem in that department. They have overtuned a number of them quite a bit, Mesmer and Scourge being prime suspects and mostly just anything condi in general. There are ways to avoid burst, if you have fought any Plat 2+ division players then you'd know that they are the kinds of players that pretty frequently can just avoid your burst and take you down afterwards.

 

I've played a lot of old school shooters thanks, I don't play the new school stuff because I'm no longer interested in arena shooters. As for gw2 I currently play a fast paced mesmer build with no stealth, it's risky and I can still one shot combo mara/zerk builds, I've done my share of mowing down out of position players this weekend. The enjoyable kills are the ones you have to work for, not the immunity bs fights, and not the 1s fights which the stealth shatter builds do, but the fights in between where people actually use a dodge or skill to negate your attack. To me there needs to be a better balance from the extremes they have now of either one shot skills or combos or plain damage immunity, the balance needs to be in the middle. 1v1 fights to me should last around 30s-1min, fights these days can end in 1-5s.

 

There are a lot of zerglings that need to learn to better position themselves, and to use the tools they have for their classes because a lot of them just blindly follow a tag around and deserve to be killed easily. But you cannot keep increasing damage and pace of combat without giving back people defensive tools to deal with that. That's the difference of mmorpg to mmofps combat, the slower combat is suppose to be more tactical with more back and forth with counters, we are losing that every damn expansion.

 

Lastly I'm not totally against removing downed state, but I think other things need to be look at before that happens.

 

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

"No downstate" was successful in its goal of breathing a short bit of excitement for a game mode that doesn't often get changes to its mechanics. It seems unlikely that ANet would make it a permanent feature. It also seems unlikely that ANet wouldn't bring it back for another weekend or two.

 

As I've said every time ANet has offered us a temporary gimmick: I'd like to see more of these, as many as possible. The more we see, the more we start to understand what we really like — and dislike — about WvW. And the better we'll be able to articulate it to ANet.

[MithranArkanere.8957]

Not having downstate isn't a problem. The problem is the pace.

 

Things just go too fast for new players. Too many builds can take down someone in full nomad ascended gear as if they were wearing berserker gear, so imagine a random newbie that entered with a mix or fine. master and rare.

 

People should not go down as fast as they are going down.

[cobracommander.5861]

Nice op post. In short: the game is rewarding skilled play, it’s helping level the field against scourge, and it’s REWARDING COMPING AND TEAM PLAY. It needs to be kept.

[DemonSeed.3528]

For me I don't personally mind if I don't have a downed state - but it is boring to fight enemies with no challenge, it's like fish in a barrel. I'm also surprised that some are suddenly fine with dying and not talking about how how op this and that is like what usually happens or getting frustrated that they have to run back to zerg (I'm assuming because maybe they are getting kills now so they are happy). I had no problem with the downed state because it was always unpredictable and fun to manage the downs and felt way more rewarding to get those stomps and kills (for me), but I think that is the allure to many, they just want a faster kill which this can provide. Maybe we just need to up the dps on everything and lower survival for all XD

 

[Swagger.1459]

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> "No downstate" was successful in its goal of breathing a short bit of excitement for a game mode that doesn't often get changes to its mechanics. It seems unlikely that ANet would make it a permanent feature. It also seems unlikely that ANet wouldn't bring it back for another weekend or two.

>

> As I've said every time ANet has offered us a temporary gimmick: I'd like to see more of these, as many as possible. The more we see, the more we start to understand what we really like — and dislike — about WvW. And the better we'll be able to articulate it to ANet.

 

How do any of us know if “no downstate” was successful at bringing excitement? The “no down state” was coupled with reward and xp bonuses, so it wasn’t a stand alone variant. The community seems pretty polarized on the forums about it too.

 

I have a feeling individual players already know what they like and dislike about wvw. Players have also articulated a plethora of thoughts and feelings on the subject of wvw, professions, combat mechanics, balance... I’m feeling like the devs could easily pop off a top issues and concerns list easily from over the past 6 years of feedback. I also feel players want “action”, not more exchanging of words from both sides, and that gimmick weekend events won’t move that process along.

 

I, personally, view this gimmick “no downstate” week as more of a community distraction because nothing substantial has gone on for a long while.

[Blue.1207]

Downstate has been a PvE centered meme since the game came out. Rallying in PvE? Sure. Rallying in PvP/WvW? Absurdly annoying. The whole mechanic revolves around the downed player getting outplayed. They could have disengaged, positioned themselves better, ran more defensive stats - the fact of the matter is that they died. They were killed, and they deserve to respawn and get back into the action, or hey, wait for your group to win the engagement and get manually rezzed.

 

This weekend favours team play, individual skill and not over tuned and quite frankly boring mechanics. Is it such an absurd idea that people actually have to consider if they want to humpsiege for 4 hours straight without fear of actually dying (take note eles). Being able to pull a stupid maneuver and get immediately rezzed by MI, IoL, or Banner or even just 5 people mass rezzing is an absolute joke, and this weekend proved it.

[SteepledHat.1345]

I find the "pirate ship" arguments ridiculous being that the alternative is smashing into each other as one side either spreads rally bait and snowballs the other or just straight up crushes the opposition. The "pirate ship" is more engaging as you have to worry about your positioning and attempts to split your group. There are more tactics involved generally and all in all it's less decided from the start.

[DeadlySynz.3471]

I've found the change to be much better; however, I'm one of the veterans (as you say), know the mechanics, and at least the mechanics of the classes I play.

 

I've heard people say ele's won't be able to do this or that, I mainly play as a zerker ele yet havn't diet yet. Rangers are useless but suddenly we will see an influx of them. Yes this is true, but the Rangers I've generally seen cannot figure out how to position themselves as to not get run over (or picked off by another ranger.. aka me, because they havn't paid attention to their surroundings).

 

I've found necros to be sitting ducks even more so now because there is absolutely no way they can advance in the presence of ranged. This is funny though because this is no different than having downed state; they are completely vulnerable to ranged.

 

If WvW was mainly comprised of veterans then I think the change is healthy, but because I believe WvW is filled with more newer players now who tend to go down easier, the change isn't going to work at least in the interim. I do welcome random future no downed state weeks though.

 

What I hope comes from this is that players do realize there are other classes other than melee and they are extremely effective in zerg play.

 

What I would like to see is there be a 50/50 chance a player is outright killed upon death. Or maybe this can tie into how much damage the player takes as the final blow before dying (in other words, being obliterated by a zerker build as the final blow, whereas a hit from a tankier build would result in downed state. Or even perhaps the amount of damage someone takes as the final blow depends on how much hp they have in downstate or just outright killed. That is something I'd actually like to see because they maybe some players will get off their toxic front-line tanky builds and start forgoing some of their toughness for a dps stat. As a final blow from a whimpy hit would result in a mass-hp downstate. This may also work to reduce scourges because conditions don't tend to tick high, so a death blow from scourge will almost always result in a large hp downed state.

 

Either or, I hope they do something to implement a no downed state mechanic.

[eldenbri.1059]

Nice summary, OP. I appreciate Anet creating this week. It feels like there are more people in wvw.

 

I'm fine either way if it's kept or not. As someone who roams solo a lot, it helps me a ton because the outnumbered fights are so much easier. Once I kill one opponent, I don't have to worry about them coming back.

 

When I first started in wvw, I remember getting crushed by good players when I was by myself. For that scenario, I don't think having a downstate mattered - when I went down, I was going to die.

 

Anyway, I mostly wanted to say thanks to the folks who put in the effort to let us play this way at least for a week.

 

Cheers!

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

Let's keep it clean, otherwise players stop posting productive feedback and I'm sure devs stop listening.

[Hyper Cutter.9376]

Downed state is a way for players to support each other, baked right into the game design. That's the whole point of it. If you can't finish off the downed players before their allies revive them (or manage to kill one of your allies), you didn't beat them.

 

Removing it is like tying one hand behind everyone's backs. The only people who like this are the ones who weren't using that hand anyway and are really angry about other people doing it. _Especially_ people who specifically built for reviving others, which is something they otherwise keep telling people to do (see also: movement speed).

[intox.6347]

> @"Hyper Cutter.9376" said:

> Downed state is a way for players to support each other, baked right into the game design. That's the whole point of it. If you can't finish off the downed players before their allies revive them (or manage to kill one of your allies), you didn't beat them.

>

> Removing it is like tying one hand behind everyone's backs. The only people who like this are the ones who weren't using that hand anyway and are really angry about other people doing it. _Especially_ people who specifically built for reviving others, which is something they otherwise keep telling people to do (see also: movement speed).

 

Exactly, dowstate is part of the game, also part of tactics... it gives option to classes who are not just dps spam, to make something.

 

As i say in every topic, downstate is not problem, rally is.

[babazhook.6805]

I play on a smaller server and have not seen as much "action" on the maps through all hours of the day for some time. There are a whole lot of people that are being pulled in by the fights and in particular 10 aside type engagements and these fights will go on for literally hours. You die, you come back, you kill , the person you kill comes back. I just got out of the game and spent several hours in a back and forth fighting outside one camp. No large zergs few 1v1's and lots of mini engagements.

 

Now to my opinion. I am not sure how long this feeling of "newness" will last but I do think people are being drawn into these types of fights. In the past if a side was outnumbered it would eventually see people leave the map as there the feeling you were not accomplishing anything. Down someone and he instant rezzed and eventually you get downed. NOW there an instant reward, even if you lose a given FIGHT you can still make kills and feel you are having an impact. It sort of has a "casino" feel where if you lost every hand dealt you get up and leave but if you win now and then you stick around longer.

 

 

[Dawdler.8521]

You know, the OP will probably be the only post I thumbs up on the subject. I mean its the exact same thing I knew before the event even started and have been stating, but still its a well formulated post instead of those filling it with quick threads of "I want this, now discuss".

 

In terms of compromises to tweak it, there are plenty of options. I wouldnt mind removing death rally completely.

[Aiga.3075]

I think no down state double hp would be fun to make fights last longer. It would also help against all the one hit kills that has been going on.

[Joao.3410]

This is a really well thought out and well written post. I hope Anet will give this a serious read.

 

Also, people need to remember having a downstate doesn't prevent you from getting one shot. People just need to invest in some defense.

[Spurnshadow.3678]

> @"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:

 

> I did also wonder if the answer wasn't either "Yes" or "No" to Downstate or No-Downstate, but rather something in between. Maybe downstate could function as normal, but cleave damage to the downed player was double or maybe even tripled, for power and condi. This would make downed players easy to cleave and kill during zerg vs. zerg, nearly as easy as instant death, but also still provide groups of 2 or 3 players a chance to rally and better defend against veteran players.

>

> ~ But at the end of the day, these are just my personal opinions from my personal experience.

 

While I agree with your assessments of the current week and general overall feeling, this is what really sums it up. People are going to the extreme here saying yes or no. I reject that premise. The real issue here is the rally system.

 

It's super frustrating (or lucky depending on your perspective) when trying to defend a camp and the enemy already got the guards low, but now goes into down state. Instead of being able to finish him off, he rallies off a guard that was low. This can happen multiple times. That's infuriating and unfair. Large group combat is worse as there are many guild groups that run transfusion or illusion of life. Used to be banner, but now, that's dropped for bubble. Why is it that with one key press, the enemy can rally 3 of their allies? You already had a coordinated bomb, out maneuvered them, and they got punished. Well, not really.

 

The whole point of down state is to make a tough choice to stay in one spot to res an ally and risk exposing yourself to damage. But these traits / skills negate that risk / reward. Anet acknowledges this as they've made multiple changes over the years. It used to be one dead player would rally 5, now it's 1 to 1. It used to be that you could res full dead while in combat. They got rid of that. It used to be that you could rally off ambient creatures, got rid of that, then npcs still, no more, now it's juct vets.

 

The rally mechanic makes sense in PvE. It sort of makes sense in WvW, but just to go along with the theme of GW2 mechanics. However, I think this week has shown lots of people love no down state. Keep in mind that there's been a small, but not too small population that have been asking for a no rally state in WvW since launch. This is very old news. But I think having a no down state goes too far as it is an interesting game mechanic. A simple solution would just be to eliminate the rally mechanic and severely nerf the instant res skills.

 

I personally am enjoying this week and would like to see this return on a regular basis, like once a month, longer if other themes were introduced.

[road range.6293]

interesting OP.

At almost 4K, obviously, I usually play enough of the week to at least finish the Diamond chest. But, FWIW, I've quit the game for the rest of this week at Bronze 3 chest. I've never seen so much cancerous, hostile, and arrogant in game chat, in what became a shortened "bye week" for myself (And others that stated so here). (Not to mention the clear divisions it's created here). Invisible snipers with one shot builds, and invulnerable tank builds are acting like complete arrogant jerks. Because they can suddenly play GW2 like a FPS game now. They can blow all cool downs (especially in stealth/snipe builds/gank groups) in one volley (or one macro key), and not have to worry about what happens if the opposition gets back up and still has all their cool downs. And, half of the classes are inherently missing important build traits, while others are not.

 

These one shot players are so happy the fight is over so fast. Instant gratification. So, why even play this game at all, when "downed state" is one of the primary fighting and strategic mechanics of the game since day one? And protracted fighting with dozens of keystroke skills is what you are in GW2 to do! Yet, they just want the fight to be over instantly in one trigger pull, FPS sniper style. I say: Go play a FPS if you want instant gratification without any protracted complex MMO style fights.

 

This should have never been more than a weekend event. Or, it should have just been an April Fools 24 hour build. And, should absolutely NOT have been tied to a 2xp week. It didn't take long to see hostility, vitriol, bravado, id, and outright chat cancer, especially apparent to potential new players drawn there for the 2xp. And, also causing some to forfeit the 2XP week, just to escape this metaphysically charged drama event week.

 

 

[Israel.7056]

> @"road range.6293" said:

> interesting OP.

> At almost 4K, obviously, I usually play enough of the week to at least finish the Diamond chest. But, FWIW, I've quit the game for the rest of this week at Bronze 3 chest. I've never seen so much cancerous, hostile, and arrogant in game chat, in what became a shortened "bye week" for myself (And others that stated so here). (Not to mention the clear divisions it's created here). Invisible snipers with one shot builds, and invulnerable tank builds are acting like complete arrogant jerks. Because they can suddenly play GW2 like a FPS game now. They can blow all cool downs (especially in stealth/snipe builds/gank groups) in one volley (or one macro key), and not have to worry about what happens if the opposition gets back up and still has all their cool downs. And, half of the classes are inherently missing important build traits, while others are not.

>

> These one shot players are so happy the fight is over so fast. Instant gratification. So, why even play this game at all, when "downed state" is one of the primary fighting and strategic mechanics of the game since day one? And protracted fighting with dozens of keystroke skills is what you are in GW2 to do! Yet, they just want the fight to be over instantly in one trigger pull, FPS sniper style. I say: Go play a FPS if you want instant gratification without any protracted complex MMO style fights.

>

> This should have never been more than a weekend event. Or, it should have just been an April Fools 24 hour build. And, should absolutely NOT have been tied to a 2xp week. It didn't take long to see hostility, vitriol, bravado, id, and outright chat cancer, especially apparent to potential new players drawn there for the 2xp. And, also causing some to forfeit the 2XP week, just to escape this metaphysically charged drama event week.

>

>

 

So to be clear you're complaining about getting one shot by one guy or groups of people?

[saerni.2584]

I think it’s a bit of an illusion.

 

There are only a couple of fights where the new system made a difference in outcome.

 

Before, if I downed a target or got downed that was going to mean a kill or a death in most cases. The same is true here.

 

The difference is that I can fight against two people solo and manage to kill at least one before I get killed. Sometimes, I get to kill both of them. Before, those situations would have been “I down one -> the other downs me as I whittle away at the down’s hp -> I get finished off and the downed rallies.”

 

As pointed out it keeps players interested in maps where they might be constantly fighting outnumbered because even a single kill to their death is a net gain.

[Gop.8713]

First off, this thread has some of the first thoughtful, valuable posts I've seen all week, with ppl actually considering the effect the change has on the game rather than just whether they personally like or dislike it, so great job there . . .

 

Second, my personal perspective is that the no downstate has some real upsides but a lot of the same objectives could be met just by eliminating rallying off kills, while retaining a lot of the current value the downstate brings to gameplay . . .

 

Finally, I'll say it doesn't really matter whether the change reverts or becomes permanent. It's great fun to bring this into wvw for the week bc it's new and different, but if the change was permanent -- and I'll say there's close to a zero chance of that happening -- then players would just adapt to the new normal. Then in a couple of years if they wanted to do a 'downed state week' in wvw that would be great fun too bc it would be the new and different thing that shook things up a little . . .

[Israel.7056]

The only thing that changes with no downed state is how hard you can get punished for mistakes. That's it. Ordinarily you make a mistake and if you get punished you go down. If you have enough people around you they can quickly res you and you get back up, mistake doesn't matter. This is a big part of the reason why blobs run all bunched up; they are all in position to quickly fix each other's mistakes. With no downed state if you make a mistake and you get punished for it you're done, one mistake is all it takes, regardless of how many other people are around you. No one can undo that mistake for you, you have to run back and try not to make that same mistake twice. No downed state is a much harsher filter for bad play at every level of play and that's where the division of player sentiment comes in.

 

I have died probably 50 times this week since reset which is like 5 times more than I usually do and every time it has been my fault. Every single time. There are so many sloppy aspects of my game that no downed state has helped me to see. Give me a couple months of this and I will be a much much much better player because I won't make those mistakes anymore.

[mortrialus.3062]

I'm not much of a WvWer to be honest. If I'm going to PvP in this game I'll usually stick to conquest and really only ever do WvW to get Gifts of Battle. But with the No Downstate Weekend I had to see how GW2's combat feels without the downstate and I love it. PvP feels so snappy and decisive and I find myself winning 1vxs frequently. I know the idea of permanent No Downstate is controversial to say the least to Dedicated WvWers. I didn't hang out with zergs to much. Mostly smaller scale roaming and ganking players. But I really, really loved it. I spent more time in WvW just to play it this weekend than throughout the entirety of GW2. It made the combat feel really fresh.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

The worst of my experience with the no-downstate are stealth attacks which kill me celestial Elly in two seconds. Stealth attack critting for 2-3k Vault critting for 10k and a third crit attack to finish me off. At which I'm like Huh? Wut? and can listen to the all too familiar death soundtrack. Okies then.

 

No vapor form to bring me to safety of a tower and no quick rez from downed. And in zergs I just explode. Poof.

 

Sure, I may be too slow to your standards. Sure, Ellies are very fragile. But this no-downed state does not help me a bit.

 

I still like the week tho, because of the WXP bonus. I've been gaining 20-25 levels per day with boosters on but I focus on capping and avoiding zergs now.