GW2 and SW:TOR at the forefront of MMORPG?

[raspberry jam]

Even though my forehead does not move, the facepalm is epic.

Every schoolteacher in the entire world is arrogant, then? And you are not, surely?

[Skyy High]

For the second point, he takes as an example Zelda and Star Fox 64, which are of course entirely different games from GW2. Whereupon the ****bag in question accuses me of "absurd reductionism".

Yes, your original point is an absurd reductionism, because you stated with no qualifiers that any boss that is stationary is "retarded", and therefore couldn't be "epic". Oh, you don't like that I pulled examples from "entirely different games"? Tough luck, because you didn't say anything about what genre you were talking about, therefore I'm not constrained by a specific genre when providing counter-examples. Your statement was absurd specifically because of its sweeping generality, and it's completely logical to explore all aspects of a generalization when refuting it. In other words: don't make sweeping generalizations you can't support.

I'm going to completely sidestep the fact that you went into a long and detailed discussion about why stationary bosses "work" in Freespace, but apparently a Zelda game is just too different from GW2 to bother talking about (in other words, you're shoveling BS to avoid conceding the point), because at least now we can agree that you're revising your opinion to be limited to just bosses in GW2. So, now I can safely put you down for the amended opinion of "stationary bosses don't work in GW2", yes? Good. Actually, as we'll see in a moment, I'm going to have to revise this summary again. Now, let's explore your complaint in more detail:

The problem at hand is: The Shatterer is in a position where he could kill a hundred players by landing on them (the same as charr being in the middle of Ascalon City: not that they can kill a hundred players, but that they can do things that are not supposed to be done), yet he does not. He does not have a good reason to not do so. This breaks immersion. The problem, though, is not that he doesn't do it (because that can be explained away by lore), but that he is in a position to do something that he by all common sense should do, yet choose not to.

There's a huge difference between lore and common sense. Fixing a normal lore violation is a matter of writing more lore, that's why "it's a lore issue" is not a good reason for anything. However, fixing a common sense violation is much harder: it involves coming up with a very good explanation, or else immersion is lost. And that makes it feel as if you are fighting a retard.

Your complaint seems to be (if I can manage to nail it down before you move it again) that the Shatterer isn't using his massive size to just squash everyone who's fighting him. In other words: we shouldn't even have a chance in this fight. Hey, I can see that. We're about the size of one of his claws, how the hell are we realistically supposed to fight him? But, that's really not something that's going to be fixed by him moving. Hell, it'd be exacerbated by it: if the Shatterer were able to fly up and drop straight down on the field of players squashing everyone, and everyone didn't die, that'd be a pretty big "WTF?" moment. Obviously, you can't have him actually do such a huge AoE instagib attack (at least I hope that'd be obvious to you...). As it is, you can at least assume that he doesn't physically attack the players like that because he's really not that physically strong (body slamming a rock covered with tiny ants with sharp sticks would be very painful, I'd imagine), in spite of how large he is.

I conclude that, mechanically, the stationary fight works just fine. Such fights works fine in other games, and you haven't given a single reason why it couldn't possibly work in GW2. He does need to feel more dangerous, but as I said in my first post, that's a matter of giving him a few more attacks and speeding up the rate at which he uses them (and their damage, possibly). What you, apparently, really wanted to talk about was not the fact that the Shatterer is too easy, or too immobile, but that he's too big for the players to logically fight, and too big to act hesitant about just stepping on us. That is a completely separate argument to have. Mechanically, he doesn't do it because no one wants to fight a boss like that. Melee characters would be useless, and insta-gibs aren't very fun either. Lore-wise, he doesn't do it because we're a mob of 100 frickin demon slayers with magic and advanced siege weaponry, and even if we are small we still pose a threat. Do you kill a colony of fire ants by belly flopping on their ant hill, or do you grab a can of Raid?

This separation between "lore" explanations and "common sense" errors is ridiculous. If something is explainable by lore, and it's logically consistent with how the world works, there shouldn't be a "common sense" issue, because "common sense" is dictated by the rules of the world we're inhabiting in the game, not our reality. "Common sense" says that people can't fling fireballs with their bare hands, and that pounding the ground in the middle of a smoke cloud won't make you turn invisible. Lore says otherwise, and lore trumps our reality's "common sense".

About this gem:

I can't help if it you think of "not epic" as "not challenging".

Uh, let's see, I can't imagine why we'd think that you think that...oh wait, you even quoted yourself:

Apart from his size, he is less scary than GW1's Glint! He should be killing PCs like flies, but he doesn't.

That's why. You are the one who stated that he's not scary because he's not killing people. If that wasn't what you meant by putting these sentences next to each other, congrats, you don't know how to communicate in written English, because that is the implication here. You have, in the past page or so, revealed your true position, which is not that the Shatterer is "retarded" because he doesn't move, but that he's "retarded" because he's huge and yet chooses to hang back and hurl fireballs at us. That is not what you initially said, at all.

If you really want to continue whining about how it's unrealistic it is that the Shatterer isn't stomping on us little twerps, and is instead trying to summon his armies to beat us back while breathing blue fire and crystals, I just have to say...Hi, I'm a video game! Does killing this thing 1 on 1 make any more sense:
Venusflylizard.jpg

No. No it does not. A fun fight against an opponent that looks way too hard for you to defeat: that's what makes for an epic battle. There are ample lore reasons for why the Shatterer doesn't behave the way you want him to behave; pick one and be happy, because it's pretty clear now that this really is a problem with your suspension of disbelief, not any inherent mechanical issue with stationary boss fights that we can argue with you about.


TL;DR:

Now, if you want to say that dragons staying there is retarded and breaks immersion, I can see why you'd argue that. But that was not the argument that started this debate. You were arguing about challenge originally, and now you're turning this into an immersion issue. My immersion was not broken until you brought it up, and even now I could get into that fight and have lots of fun not thinking twice about that. But I understand that different people might react differently to this, and it's a valid point.

The valid point you make now about immersion is not one that anyone has argued against, by the way. We argued about your point back when it was still about movement being required for a fight to be challenging.

DING DING DING! Alaris hit the nail on the head here: you started this by complaining about the mechanics of the fight, and somewhere in the last couple of pages you shifted to talking about immersion. That is on you, because it was your complaint initially.

[Alaris]

The very reason I debate is to learn. Once you understand that, you will understand why I cannot be arrogant.

[Giggles]

[Skyy High]

Not sure what that has to do with this, but ok.

Big discussion going on at GW2Guru, but to post my thoughts here: TB's way off. He says that:
* the idea that they're getting rid of the holy trinity is "marketing fluff"
* the holy trinity is not "tank, healer, dps" but "tanking, healing, dps"; ie, these are roles that must be filled during combat, not labels for entire classes.
* he wishes there were more damage mitigation in MMOs and less healing
* GW2's only change is to have everyone be a hybrid that can do everything
* people will still find out which classes are the best healers / tanks / dps and min/max those, and elitism will keep anyone from doing anything else, because:
* it will not be balanced.

The problem here is, of course, that everyone is only a good healer of themselves. It's been pretty extensively recorded that healing of other allies is pathetic in GW2. There are also no aggro skills, and you're very limited in your "tanking" skills because half your bar is fixed. We know most skills for most professions. We can confidently state that there will be no situation where you can build your character in such a way that you can act as the healer for your group. This is not RIFT, where all classes can do all roles (mostly), but when you're in a role you only do that role and everyone else does something else. It's not that you can swap between healer, tank, and dps at will, because those roles simply do not exist.

His argument seems predicated on the notion that the holy trinity "has" to be there, because "the technology simply doesn't exist yet." He says that AI isn't good enough yet to "dynamically switch targets", and if it does, then you have no way to stop him from hurting you. This is, obviously, ********, as he would say. GW1 basically already did this aggro system. GW2 is just taking that aggro system, stripping out the ridiculously powerful healing and mitigation that we had, and distributing that among all the other classes with the limitation that the most powerful heals can only be used on oneself.

[edit]LOL the video was removed by user

I think he must've gotten a lot of negative feedback.

[sorudo]

if you listen to someone who is not even following the game then how can you trust the opinion, it's just blind mumbo jumbo.

[Alaris]

I agree, Skyy, that it'd be pretty hard to play the traditional trinity in GW2.

1) The best scenario imo would be where everybody is fairly hybrid, but some players may shift more heal/prot, others more shutdown, or more dps. But these will be rather small deviations around the hybrid norm rather than a trinity. For optimal play anyway. I think it'd be feasible to make a fairly trinity-like group, but it'd be far from optimal imo.

2) GW also has a quadnity. DPS remains of course. Tanking is replaced by getting your foe to waste his attacks whether on clones, minions, pets, or bubbles. Healing is actually heal/prot + self-heal + dodge. And finally, shutdown. Shutdown is a big part of the gameplay in GW and will be as well in GW2. Most MMOs don't have much shutdown, but it'd be debuffers if anything.

3) No new game is ever balanced. SWTOR, despite heavily copying WoW, is apparently unbalanced. Big deal. At least we know ANet will work hard to make it pretty close to balanced.

I think though that even though he's a bit off the mark on some points, he does raise some good points. First, put aside the fact that tanking is done differently, it's still possible to have a frontline who's primary role is to make sure the opponent wastes his attacks. You'll in fact likely have that "role" in GW2.

The trinity is thus much more situational and gameplay than build. You have the frontline focused on making foes waste their attacks. You have the midline doing damage. And you have the backline providing support in the form of heals, buffs, enemy shutdown, and combo effects.

People will minmax the best group composition, especially that which works best with pre-existing roles... because if you know your role in a team, it's easier to coordinate with PUGs. Although the tank gameplay changed, they'll still be called tank, and will still be frontlining trying to get the boss' attention and distracting it. The nukes will come in and do their damage (and other effects). And so on.

What I am saying is that even though the game is different, players can still adapt themselves with their given roles.

[Giggles]

well it doesn't matter anymore. he's pulled the video.

[Alaris]

lolwut? He pulled it! Why?

Anyway, I thought he followed GW2 fairly well, it's somewhat surprising actually what he said given that he's said more accurate things about GW2 in the past.

Maybe he posted it, people went wtf, so he decided to remove it and explain himself better?

[RD]

That assessment of the trinity is pretty silly, in my opinion.