The most "artificial epic" fight because it has to "feel epic"?

[Danny.8596]

Some of the mechanics seem to be designed about making the fights last longer for no reason. Freeing Taimi from her Golem was probably the worst for me in terms of a difficult fight that makes no lore sense. If her Golem is that powerful what am I around for? Just send in 5 of those things to wreck Elder Dragons.

[Vayne.8563]

> @"Danny.8596" said:

> Some of the mechanics seem to be designed about making the fights last longer for no reason. Freeing Taimi from her Golem was probably the worst for me in terms of a difficult fight that makes no lore sense. If her Golem is that powerful what am I around for? Just send in 5 of those things to wreck Elder Dragons.

 

Golem isn't that powerful though. It just is very strongly defensive.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

My guardian had trouble with this one. Then I went through with Deadeye and just cleaned house. Range is super important because of those pieces that need to be destroyed. Guardian has none of that. (Longbow is just so bad.)

[rdfaye.4368]

> @"juhani.5361" said:

>

> Here are a couple I noticed once when I watched a replay of ye olde Big B battle:

> 1) Keeping the camera zoomed out so far you can see the entire field. I don't. I don't think a lot of more casual immersion-oriented people do either. Too much zoom-out and I don't feel connected to my character anymore. Yet, you miss a lot of the safe spots in various battles because you can't see them.

>

> 2) A sense of radical acceptance of whatever happens. It doesn't seem to matter to most raider-oriented people whether a mechanic makes sense or not. It's just there. You just learn it then deal with it. After that, you enjoy pinning down the most efficient way to deal with it. If it's cool and fun and challenging, you love it. Then you do it over and over until you've tweaked your performance to perfection.

>

> ^TBH, #2 is what gets me the most ;) Because I like everything to make story-logical sense. I can't just cultivate radical acceptance. It's not happening. Questions and analysis paralysis are second nature.

>

 

So here's a dumb question. How do you keep the camera zoomed out? I main a norn, and every time I run or dodge near a wall , tree, bush, etc. my camera zooms in and all I see is the back of my head. Zoom out, zoom in all the time, making it hard to see attacks or other stuff that is helpful.

[kharmin.7683]

> @"Astralporing.1957" said:

It really shows the discrepancy between different player groups. And unfortunately, sometimes Anet decides it's good to balance the content meant for everyone around those few top dps players.

>

I get this sense as well. In my opinion, the raiders really only care about raiding and not the story line so much. To me, it seems that ANet has lost touch with the more casual player base (on which GW2 was originally designed?) in favor of the perceived popularity of raiders.

 

/me shrugs

 

[starlinvf.1358]

> @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > @"Dante.1763" said:

> > > @"Vayne.8563" said:

> > > As a person who does stories multiple times on every profession, I can say that these stories are tuned often to be more like raids. I mean not as difficult as raids, obviously, but they're meant to be end game content in a game that has no required end game content except for story. Even then if you have teleports to a friend, you can bypass story.

> > >

> > > The first time, without knowing mechanics, these stories are hard, like a raid or dungeon. But the more you do them, the easier they get...when you learn the mechanics. Ashantara did a good job of describing the mechanics. I repeat the stories because they are challenging to learn and once you learn them, they become easier, giving me a better understanding of how to play the game.

> > >

> > > The one and done crowd are obviously going to find it harder, because they tend to do it once and be done with it.

> > >

> > > A dev recently said that a good player outputs about 500% more damage than an average player. I'm assuming that's one of the reasons there's so much discrepancy in the way people view these stories. There are ways to get better at the game for people who want to.

> > >

> > > Always happy to help people on US servers with learning the game, or story missions they're having trouble wrapping their minds around.

> >

> > 500%? thats a insanely huge difference!!!

> Any open world squad looked at with dps meter shows it clearly. There's the main crowd, doing 2-4k damage. Then there's the "high dps" guys, with 6-8k spikes. Then, there's nothing... and on top 2-3 players doing 15k+ (and probably only that because it's hard to get full buffs in OW environment). It really shows the discrepancy between different player groups. And unfortunately, sometimes Anet decides it's good to balance the content meant for everyone around those few top dps players.

>

 

Its not an entirely weird thought process. When you're top performers are on that high a margin, its usually because of compounded values. In another thread theres a huge argument going on about how long rotations should be rewarded with the best DPS, when having really high DPS is straight up breaking Raid mechanics. The top performers, in an already self selective group, broke the system..... but the results of this aren't just limited to the Raid environment.

 

Consider how before POF's population started falling off, that event tagging wasn't considered a wide spread problem. During the LS 4 chapters, players in both Core and LS4 maps are generating so much damage, that its legitimately difficult to get tags in for kill credit. Power creep is only part of that equation.... now we're also facing a player population thats started to get greedy and apathetic toward other players, and won't even do something as simple as slow DPS to give players time to get in range for a tag. Even with Dragon Stand's well established protocols, there are at least half dozen people moving ahead of the zerg and unloading Max DPS in treasure mushrooms on one side of the map, while the rest of map is starting on the first one. And even within the zerg, the first few that show up go max DPS non-stop, regardless of other people still trying to catch up. Its not uncommon to have the the thing down to 50% health before the zerg has a chance to scale it up.... and many in the zerg cuts through that remaining health while theres still people clearly trying to run in and get their tags. The tagging rules are so relaxed, theres no valid reason to behave like that other then ignorance... and given its pointed out by EVERY hosting commander, I can't presume that large a % fails to understand that concept in EVERY DS run.

 

The conflict here is that the ultimate goal for sane damage balance revolves heavily around narrowing the range of damage output, so top players and bottom players aren't that far apart. For any other type of game design, the difference would be augmented by strategic approaches...... but given how basic and potato the game's AI behavior is, theres not a lot of strategy you can fit into encounter designs without adding explicit mechanics. But given how lazy some players are, adding new mechanics is like adding a wall of difficulty that proves too challenging for them; and this is making people "uncomfortable". In a Raid environment, mechanics get figured out pretty quickly, and exploited in every way possible.... that leaves the only reliable vector for artificial difficulty the DPS check and Rage timers. And even then, those folks are getting lazy and complacent; only they take it out on the community (other 'terribad players) rather then the design.

 

So realistically, shrinking the range of damage performance should resolve most of these issues. But players notice, and many don't want to feel any real struggle at all, yet are insulted if they think its made too easy. Most also want to feel a disparity between a trash build and a high damage one, since thats generally what justifies the effort in the first place. Plus they aren't balancing the content around the top players...... generally they nerf the buildcraft because of the top players, and have to balance around the worst players to make sure its doable. What we really need is something to make the buildcraft engaging within the game context, and not just the meta; but theres no incentive unless you punish players for bad builds, and make it obvious that builds are the solution. Thats were I feel our bigger problem is..... buildcraft isn't well normalized within the community, so you only get 2 extremes of ignorance and meta (and a few cases a mix of both).

 

I think is was less of a problem in GW1, due to the Skills being front and center, and there being no traits in the background obscuring things. Given how much more complex and power loaded our trait system is compared to the standard talent tree model (even after substantial simplification), steering casual players into the buildcraft is the only real way these issues are ultimately going to be addressed. But how do you get a player base whose largely "passive" in their play styles to leverage a system based on thoughtful interaction, and nuanced mechanical properties?

[Astralporing.1957]

> @"starlinvf.1358" said:

> The conflict here is that the ultimate goal for sane damage balance revolves heavily around narrowing the range of damage output, so top players and bottom players aren't that far apart. For any other type of game design, the difference would be augmented by strategic approaches......

Nah, not by "strategic approaches" but by a much different factor - gear. Other games are usually much more gear-focused, and its impact compared to other factors is much greater.

 

Here, it is important, but traits, weapons , skills selected, proper positioning and rotation, perfect execution (better timing) with said rotation, or even tricks like weapon stow aftercast cancelling can result in sometimes ridiculously high dps differences.