Why don't we ever talk about improving the opposition?

Monster skill bars suck, but if you change them you do one of two things: Make them better, or don't.

If they're better, then the game becomes harder for balanced parties (see skeletons of Dhuum). If they aren't (ie, they're specialized to counter a certain gimmick), then all you've managed to do is force players to create another gimmick to counter the new gimmick.

There are just too many things players can do to monsters. No matter how much you change the monsters, they will never be able to counter every overpowered thing a player has, so long as the players have those overpowered things.

As for randomized skill bars, this would either be a terrible idea (if they were truly random, there'd be even less synergy in them than there is now, and 90% of the time they'd still be unable to counter the gimmicks most players use), or require so much time that their likelihood of being implemented is 0 (X possible builds per monster, chosen randomly each instance, each specialized for fighting certain gimmicks). Both of these open up the option of players simply restarting the area until they get monsters with bad bars that can't counter them.

You people do realise that even if Anet did put in this stuff, it wouldn't stop them from balancing out skills. Not that they should stop, mind you.

Skeletons of Dhuum are a bad example, because they didn't exist at all, previously. In fact the OP clearly said that adding new monsters specifically for the purpose of "thwarting" over-powered builds is a bad idea.

Most groups of mobs can be killed by groups of 2-3 players. It was suggested that the skill bars be updated so they are difficult to bring down, UNLESS you run with a larger group 6-8. Making monster builds more cohesive is a far cry from making them invincible and thus impossible to defeat.

Randomizing the bars would be very bad and break any possibilities of synergy. However, randomizing which groups of monsters spawn at various locations and having a diverse pool of these groups to draw from can completely change the tactics required to complete a mission/dungeon/elite area. For instance, if instead of Aatxes and Grasping Darkness at the beginning of UW it was instead say Charged Blackness and Terrorwebs it would be very difficult for me to farm that area with my trapper.

And furthermore if those mobs had their bars updated so they couldn't be killed "easily" by gimmick builds than it would force people to find balanced builds that can cope with ALL sub-areas in the map and could potentially open up game-play to some of the under-used classes.

There is such a thing as Hard Mode. It could be restricted to Hard Mode only, thus allowing Hard Mode to be well...hard.

They already have this, they're called bosses. But yes, they could better implement bosses into the game for exactly this purpose. And give them a skill or two that can penetrate the invincabuilds. This is one facet of GW I always felt could of been better.

Yes, this is the worst possible option for game balance.

But I'd argue that it's no coincidence that Ursan just happened to be from a new expansion with meh sales, or that the SF combo required a skill from each of Factions, Nightfall and EotN.

Sometimes the business model gets in the way of providing us with a quality, balanced game. It sounds like ANet learned their lesson on this one, and will limit the skill set and not attempt to sell copies of expansions through imba skills this time around.

Oh, there would have been a very different tone to my posts if I felt you were just spreading disinformation and weren't worth taking seriously.

Step 1: Release sauce code to public
Step 2: Let us tweak the shit out of it for a few months
????
Hugely improved game

Do it, plox! ANet could honestly set a huge milestone doing this. Plus since they don't really care about the game too much anymore, why not let us mess around with it as much as we want ?

Still, there'd be a way to play the "vanilla-way", since they're doing the transfers via HoM.

Give us an official server emulator and get it over with I say.

I'd put a God Mode in my version. lol

Sup Vigor and Absorption dropped in price the day Anet increased the drop rate ever so slightly. This happened LONG before those 2 things you just mentioned. It happened when we only had 1 campaign (Prophecies). I'll assume you weren't around at the time with the statement you made. So you either didn't know or you forgot. Pick one.

Full random skill bars would be bad and monsters would probably be even dumber, but psuedo-Random would be pretty sweet.

Lets say anet were to create a monster skill like this:

-Healing Prayers Talisman-
Cost: 0, Time: 0, R: 0,
Skill. When you spawn, This skill is permanently replaced by a random non elite Healing Prayers skill.


And repeat the idea for every skill attribute line, then see monster bars like...

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Charr_Overseer

Changed from the laughable shit he has to:

* Bane Signet Bane Signet
* Heal Area Heal Area
* Infuse Health Infuse Health
* Shield of Judgment Shield of Judgment (Elite, Hard Mode only)
* Holy Wrath
* Smiting Prayers Talisman
* Healing Prayers Talisman
* Res sig


Or

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shiverpeak_Longbow

* Distracting Shot Distracting Shot
* Power Shot Power Shot (Hard mode only)
* Serpent's Quickness Serpent's Quickness
* Winter Winter
* Marksmanship Talisman
* Marksmanship Talisman
* Wilderness Survival Talisman

This sort of controlled randomness to fill a skillbar would actually make things a bit more interesting. IMO it would be awesome if they put this in place and then loosened the loot scaling, thus making it harder to farm but better rewards when you did. Too bad it will never happen.

I thought Shadow Form was in this version too? Tut tut learn to play n00b.

Sarcasm.

If they did open up the code to us rather then make us wait 6 months for an update to a game filled with nothing but ragers, e-peeners, and epic retards, I'd like to see what could be made.

Edit: I am still /signed for AI update. If your going to make the game hard as hell for normal pugs, at least make it hard for 123 keyboard bashing farmers too.

You completely missed the point. Bosses are (1) rare, (2) static, and (3) their extra skills are generally NOT invinci-build hosers. My proposal is that every mob could potentially have any of its member monsters upgraded, at random, to possess hoser skills. The key feature is forcing the invinci-build user into the impossible position of planning for every hoser skill that could appear in that area, because they have no way of knowing which ones they'll face, and over the course of several mobs, it's quite likely all will appear.

Example of randomized promotions:

• Mob 1: Ranger gets promoted (D-Shot), Necro gets promoted (Well of the Profane).
• Mob 2: Warrior gets promoted (Dev Hammer), Necro gets promoted (Well of the Profane).
• Mob 3: Ranger gets promoted (D-Shot), Derv gets promoted (Rending Aura).
• Mob 4: None promoted.
• Mob 5: Derv gets promoted (Rending Aura).
• etc.

OK, here's my sauce code. I think it's very tasty on pasta.

Its not the opposition. Take DoA, you fight 4 different areas with a pretty good variety of mobs and area effects in HM. Most teams fail in HM, yet SF can do it in under an hour with the 'nerfed' version.

If every area had mobs like DoA, it'll be a headache. Get rid of SF.

Definitely the way to go right here.

That sauce code was epic.

On Topic, I agree about properly balanced mobs. I've been arguing for ages that this should have been the method for implementing HM. It beats stat-pumping stupidity hands down.

Note : any properly balanced mob should be able to beat solo perma-SF. Whether it will is another issue, but it should have the skills to.

If I remember correctly randomising of mob composition and/or skill bars has been suggested almost since the start of the game. IMHO it's simply much better than the continual cycle of nerf-new OP farm-Nerf we've had since day one.

People want a buff for mesmers in PvE, the best buff they could have ever gotten was randomised mobs.

I too had hoped HM would have been more than just boosting mob stats+a couple of tweeks but it seems that it was too much work.

And that's the problem. Fixing PvE should have been done as soon as it was obvious about power creep (I.e factions) when Anet still had the resources and will to do it. Don't count on it happening now though, but I do hope it has in GW2.

If people are wanting a quick, fix, bigger push towards balanced rather than gimick then either removing consumables or making them work only on yourself would be a big step. I prefer the remove option. Consumables are a bigger reason why gimicks rule PvE, than SF or Ursan ever was.

That is an amazing and tasty looking script, sir.

I'd love to see this suggestion on GW2G implemented: natural selection of skills. That thread also has very tasty sauce.

Natural selection, genetic coding, but used while the game is being played. Interesting. Would improve idea's suggesting randomization, or champions. Maybe restrict it to Hard Mode, though playability could be considered when evaluating the relative success of a mutation.

ArenaNet Read this thread please !

Enemy teams in PvE are not meant to have actual chances to win.
They are just there to be utterly crushed.
If we had a 50% chance to win each fight, with maps that have more than 40 fights, then you'll get... TOO MUCH DEATH PENALTY.

I'm not saying that PvE enemies should be easier, but they should not have the full set of gimmicks since the very beginning of the game.
Eye of the north enemies are fine, but that's not the kind of things that should appear in Ascalon.

That's pretty amazing. Using genetic algorithms to balance the monsters never occurred to me, but now that I see it, I have to agree that it's simply brilliant.

I agree, problem is Anet fix gimmicks with gimmicks. Uhoh 55 monks! let's make dying nightmares. Uhoh people use permaform! let's make skeletons of dhuuuuurrrr.

You know, Anet don't even need to build better bars for their monsters. Remember the henchman skillbar competition? Perhaps they could simply do something similar here, where players improve the skillbars of monsters instead. Honestly I think what the players come up with would be much better anyway.

I agree. That is one very cool idea that I could definitely see working.
Also, something to think about when talking about the "need" to nerf speed clears: they are one of only two situations that PUGs still are easy to find in(the other is Zaishen Missions). Thats why I love them, in addition to the beauty of everybody having a known role and the team work involved. Killing speed clears is a big step towards completely eradicating PUGs.
Just something to consider. Speed clears are one of my favorite aspects of the game, and it is certainly not just because of the money.

I could agree with the topic maker... it's a nice idea... but it can't work alone...

along with a "skill/brain update" for monsters there must be other 2 updates:

lowered the dmg of monsters with normal attacks (it's unbelievable that me monking with a wand i do 2-6 dmg per hit, a monk monster do 50-70 dmg per hit and a monk boss monster do 150-190 dmg per hit... it's just unbelievable)

Incresed of double or triple the drop rate everywhere... because double or triple the challange to complete "whatever" MUST GIVE ME A BETTER AND RICHER DROP!

ps: also think about it... to slow down a speed clear of 30 mins u will CERTAINLY slow down a normal team of 2 hours... (make ur conclusions also about this)

Will you? I think there's precedent to the contrary.
Before the Dhuum update (more specifically, before the Skeleton's of Dhuum were added and the UW mobs got altered), a speed clear team could clear the Underworld in under half an hour.
How long did it take a "normal" or "balanced" team? An hour? 90 minutes? 2 hours?
After the Dhuum update me and a group of friends and guildies have done the UW in around 2 hours (pretty sure we've managed below it, but I can't find the screenshots) and Dhuum himself can take 10-20 minutes. I doubt we would have been much faster before the update (although a couple of the quests might have been easier).
But how much time did it take a Speed Clear team to do it? I don't think they ever managed 30 minutes.

I don't actually know the times, feel free to correct me and potentially rip my argument asunder




I agree that the idea has potential. It is far too late for this game though.
There are problems however, something like that would require a lot of observation, processing power and occasional interference.
The idea itself would also need refining - it currently favours outright damage and self-healing builds. That's not necessarily the sort of thing you want to promote. The survivability of one character/NPC currently depends greatly on the ability of their monks. Strong defensive monk builds don't inflict meaningful amounts of damage on enemy teams and because most players will want to spike a monk down quickly, he probably isn't going to live long enough for the algorithm to have any meaningful affect.
Indeed, all support based builds would generally be eliminated and how do you handle skills like Order of Pain?

I suppose my point is you need to evaluate team builds (enemies are grouped into parties) - so you want to apply the algorithm to the entire team, not just individual bars.
It's crude and messy, but all forms of "evolution" are crude.

I would also recommend that such a method only be applied to a few areas and it would certainly need a lot of trialing. I also doubt it's even viable from a technical point of view.

if making different monsters appear at the same location is difficult, how about randomizing the monster's skill bar?

Before the update of 25th record run was 22 mins, 30mins average, so kinda like 15 mins more than before adding dhuum skeles

Now it's still a work in progress but an SC test is around 1h, when build is completed will probably be under 45 mins again so... and this update was done only to "damage" speed clears without affecting the balanced game

Well then my point still stands, although I am assuming the SC teams don't spend 20 minutes on Dhuum (whereas a normal team is much more likely to).

generally dhuum takes 7-9 mins depends on how many PI the ritu catch on his judgment

I still think restricting campaign specific skills to their respective campaigns (in much the same way the PvE only skills are restricted from PvP) would rectify any imbalances. Then there wouldn't be but a minimal need to revisit skills due to OP builds. I also think that such an approach would be fairly easy to implement. Or at least easier than trying to revamp monster skill bars or adding new content to make things harder. Just an opinion.

Order of Pain counts as 1/2 damage done by the caster and 1/2 damage done by the attacker. For that matter, you should probably count healing and mitigation (as measured by the difference between damage received and damage that would have been received) as equivalent to damage on a different axis.

However, we do seem to be heading into a data gathering operation that is going to cost significant cycles.

i agree with the OP. Personally i don;t find PvE very challenging and can;t be bothered playing PvE much anymore because PvP actually is the only challenge worth left in the game that doesn;t involve grind that is varied.

Let me expand a little; mosters in PvE are noobs. They all run noob bars that are no better than a hamstorm or frenzy-healsig warrior in RA. i agree with one post, a group of iway trolls with pets, ranger-spike spiders, bloodspike scarabs, etc etc would be awesome in PvE. originally GW's PvE was a training ground for PvP (HA, GvG), and thus many of the builds in prophecies reflected skills that the devs at the time thought to be "good builds". however, as we now travel thru guildwars, many of these builds are out-dated and are just plain noob. there is no balance in any of the mobs and many of the monster skills bars are just plain incomplete.

however, the one thing i totally enjoyed about EoTN was the fact that many creatures used some excellent builds with secondary professions. Where do you think the shockwave-spike came from in GvG? I am sure this idea was taken from the Ceratadons as this build came about not long after EoTN was released. I was also happy to see that there were a lot of builds in EoTN that were taken from PvP type builds.

Lets see some more PvE updates with respect to updated builds. That way as players we can start going out into PvE more often with a plan and a balanced team rather than running around discording and speed-clearing everything.

Depending on the area you are talking about a few hundred enemies. Which if packed in groups of 8 are up to several dozen groups. And every one of those should be a "decent challenge". You are asking to force PvE players to fight dozens of semi-hard PvP matches in a row without changing skillbars or being able to save the progress. How long should it take to get from outpost A to outpost B so that the enemies are challenging enough? Because that is what is going to happen: it just takes longer and you might actually fail at it,which makes it even longer.

And the same goes for the randomized skills idea or hard rez skills for every monster: up to 400 enemies in one area. How long should a vanquish take for you to be happy with the difficulty?

But then only characters with core classes could do all campaigns, Rits and Sins could only do Factions and Nightfall, Dervs and Paragons only Nightfall - they might try EotN but with only EotN skills and no elite?

this is the most ***** idea i ever heard.

Wow they did it... kinda.... i cant remember the last time Anet did a big monster skill update.

http://www.guildwars.com/support/gam...es/default.php