Exactly.Originally Posted by Fey
Exactly.
I didn't notice you had complaints. At the time I wrote that post I was referring to the OP and Jim Hunter. People have a right to complain. It's just hard for me to understand people driving a Ferrari and complaining that is too slow.
Well then....carry on!
Meh, it is what it is. The dodge ability is great but it would be more fun if that wasn't the only thing you needed to do to fight bosses in this game.
I know Fey says bosses would be too easy if you could CC them but that's only because most of them are donkey brain stupid. I wish they would up the AI on them a little, give them different abilities the closer they are to death and maybe let them spawn more trash mobs. Then they could let you CC or try to draw aggro off of teammates.
Right now I can solo a bunch of melee champs because all you have to do is kite and dodge when they do their big telegraph for their power move. This also means heavy damage builds are far superior to any kind of support or tanky build especially in fractals where there's a lot less trash mobs and you just run from 1 boss to the next.
I could almost agree with you except that I run fractals a lot and glass cannon builds for the most part do not cut it. Ive mentioned this in other posts. Eventually they mistep and then they are downed. Another player has to spend time rezzing when they themselves could be doing damage. This whole process brings the entire parties damage output down because of just one glassy. Balance builds are king imo.
Developing actual progressive AI that responds differently depending on what's happening is VERY expensive. They do however, need to incorporate phases for bosses. They've successfully made content that requires no dedicated healer and no dedicated tank. But because of that, bosses don't freaking do ANYTHING.
They need phases and they need actual abilities to use as tools. But even if they had advanced AI, being able to CC a boss and completely lock them down wouldn't be fun unless said boss will one shot everyone otherwise. Which even then, that's an equally bad idea. Because then you'd need a specific group comp to be able to do so.
In another game I remember a party of 5 had one tank one healer and 3 DPS. There were large pulls of 5 to 8 mobs that had to be orchestrated because the tank could only hold 2 mobs at most, the rest would run loose and wipe the rest. That is very similar to what you describe; a raid boss that does not require a dedicated tank. In those pulls I remember things would go wrong, and then you had to be quick and improvise. The healer needed to know how to drop aggro, how to run to the tank if he pulled aggro, the CC had to be perfect, the DPS had to know when to switch targets and all that without threat meters. I do not know much about GW2 not even if it is aggro based. But there are definitely many ways to create encounters that require kiting/CC/skill rather than dedicated tanks.
The problem with the above is, as someone else mentioned here, how do you categorically measure someone's contribution? Being AFK is the obvious giveaway, but there are many ways to underperform undetected and cause wipes. Without very rigid roles and tools to feedback on performance it might be hard to identify and remove the slackers.
I don't think anyones mentioned the change Anet just made for Fractals. I was gonna make a whole new post about it but thought that posting it on here will do.
Anet fixed Fractals so that you can create a party of different levels and have it so (mostly) everyone will still progress. Here's the example Anet gave in their article: Say if you have someone on lvl2, 3 party members all on lvl 21 and someone on lvl 53. Now say that a lvl 21 party member starts up Fractals at the level 21 stage and you complete it, everyone will gain a level aside from the lvl 53. So the level 2 person WILL go up to lvl 3 and the lvl 21 members WILL go up to lvl 22! But the lvl 53 will stay at lvl 53 because the dungeon was initiated as a lvl21 dungeon.
But theoretically, you could have the lvl53 start the dungeon as a lvl53 dungeon so EVERYONE gains a level but I couldn't tell you if it would be hard to complete with people at the level 2 and level 21 stage or not...do the Fractals really get that much harder from level 2 to level 53? lol
But as far as rewards are concerned, they will be scaled to your Fractal level. So if your at a Fractal lvl 2 running a lvl 21 Fractal, you will still get lvl 2 rewards while your lvl 21 (and higher) members will get lvl 21 rewards.
At any rate, this is a HUGE change that will make Fractals sooo much better now...at least for me. :-D
Last edited by Velox; 12-26-2012 at 11:35 AM.
@Velox: These changes have just been announced, but have not been implemented, yet. The ETA in the announcement was end of january. So you'll have to wait for some time.
I was also wondering how that would work out in their example. Especially as the lvl 1 person would naturally have no agony resistance because he wouldn't have had any chance to get them.
Probably this is an indication that they'll also finally introduce the alternative ways to obtain the advanced armour pieces at that point.(forgot the name for that tier).
Otherwise either agony is not that big a deal, or groups with lowlvl players will have virtually no chance of finishing the dungeon if they choose a fractal of too high lvl.
No see that's all scripted. Fights are designed to be that chaotic. If a boss had progressive AI then every time you encounter that boss the fight would be different. You wouldn't be able to follow a sequence or a specific strategy to down it.
The encounter you describe requires improvisation when something goes wrong, but if nothing goes wrong and your group does everything perfect you just follow the same sequence every time. The boss doesn't adapt to your group and do things specifically to counter you. It does the same thing vs every group. It's scripted.
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