Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
GW2's Downed mode: Is this a gameplay element you MMO gamers would like to see more of in future MMO
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,400
GW2's Downed mode: Is this a gameplay element you MMO gamers would like to see more of in future MMOs?
If so, what would make it better.
If not, explain why, and what would change your mind.
For those that dont know what this is, here is a link that explains it
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Comments
What are you talking about? So many times between two even opponents, it all come downs to a hairs breath in downed state. Most def makes for some very intense encounters that exciting. Of course it's also mixed with a general sense of annoyance and unfairness when the enemy manages to get up in the last second.
Particularly some build specs for more health, and buffs upon getting up from other downed state, while others (Warrior) can opt for a last 10 seconds of immeditate return to action at the cost of certain death. Others can use their pets to fight, thiefs to hide themselfs from downed, mesmers to create downed clones.
It has a lot of strategy to it.
My problem with downed state is that I would just like more skills. Just like I want more weapons for the rest of the game, downed state only gives you 4 skills and they don't evolve. Besides downed state I would love the ability so slowly crawl. I feel its annoying to have to be stationary, but if I could crawl carefully out of the action, it would give more chances to use the maps layout to get to safety. Of course you would have to crawl very slow, much like how downed state works under water.
But I really like Downed state otherwise. I hated it during release, but ever since the marts 15 feature pvp overhaul, it has actually grown on me. What downed state ultimately gives to the game is a moment of focus. enemies will have to be more skilled to finish an attacker, while defenders need to fend off attackers as well as heal their ally. It's a meta game within the pvp.. and its one of the reasons why I dont understand they stick with just conquest.
The hole idea of conquest is to force players around the map instead of every Free-For-All encounter being the exact same heads-on-heads match. With conquest you get spread out and get these choke points of defense, hold and attack. I think downed states is a bit like that. Particularly if it's designed like Counter-Strike with no respawns. Then it is really crazy intense.
I don't think downed states would work for a lot of MMOs though. It works for GW2, but look at how conservative they are with stats and gear and skills. Compare it to WoW which just throws tons of skills, abillities and stats with overpowered gear after the players, that make 1-shotting people a reality. I dont think Downed would work in that type of game!
In PvE it's a fantastic gameplay element. Promotes teamwork and shifting focus to a different mob to kill it to cause a rally.
In PvP it's the most annoying feature ever. The negatives outweigh the few times it actually creates a cool dynamic shift in momentum.
It seems to put an outnumbered force at unnecessary (additional) disadvantage while trying to hold a point in AvA as they can't very well stop to execute enemies, and thus have to resort to hit and runs that do no lasting damage even if they play significantly better than the zerg (exceptions apply, obviously, such as total annihilation). But it's going to be much rarer to see that 8-man pbaoe that 100 man army of albs transitioning through the gate.
On zerg vs zerg fights waving arms in the air is simply the sign to pour on more aoe until the bodies of your enemies stop moving. Little effect whatsoever except to give the up-levels something to do, I suppose.
No. Never, ever, ever, eeeeever again. This idea should be taken out onto a desolate moon, shot with a multi kilometer wide diamond projectile traveling at near lightspeeds, then thrown into a star, then thrown into a blackhole to ensure that this idea never sees ANY light whatsoever again.
This mode made you feel like you were a springboard bouncing between standing and falling on the ground and made the whole 'idea' of death cheap. It made all the work involved to get a player 'killed' to be a moot point, heavily favoring the group with a larger amount of players in a pvp situation. It also forces content to be balanced around the idea that a 'dead' player can jump back into the fight again.
From a PvE perspective, dying should be a punishment. You screwed up, your group screwed up, etc. The 'only' way I can see this being somewhat useful, is if we bring back an XP penalty system like Old EQ. Give players a 'Bleeding' out state that can allow a negative health value of 10% their maximum before they die, during which if they are healed by another player they can get back up again. But during that stage of bleeding out, you are 100% useless. You now rely on other players to save your butt.
From a PvP perspective. This shouldn't exist. You either did something dumb to get yourself killed, or you have been outskilled/damaged/lost/etc against another player. Go wait for your respawn and try again when you're back up.
In PvP, no.
In PvE, it depends on the content. Quite a bit of the Guild Wars 2 experience is difficult enough (in theory) to warrant it.
I'm rather indifferent to it.
In PVE, it's a good idea. It shows you that, unlike a game like WoW where you pretty much can't be killed leveling from 1 to 90, that enemies in the game actually mean business and if you're solo'ing you have to pay attention, not just headbutt your way to victory with the only downside being key marks on your forehead.
Being able to rally against a champion who cheap-shotted you is a good feeling.
It works fine in PvE and small scale PvP but it tends to get annoying in WWW.
But I rather have a sliding system where being very hurt affect your characters speed and might take away (and give) some skills.Say that you start sliding when you hit 25% and then get in worse shape the more hits you take.
This is tough to answer. The way GW2 implemented it sucked, in my opinion. It just delayed the inevitable.
However, something similar that can emulate some kind of "heroic action", some kind of adrenaline kicking in when a player goes down would be interesting. Not a recovery of health, but some kind of increase in offensive abilities where if you can just get another shot or two more in, the opponent is defeated.
CoH tried something like I described with Blasters. If their health fell below 20% (I think), their offensive abilities got a 25% (I think) boost. Unfortunately, that lead to parties yelling, "DON'T HEAL THE BLASTER!" and resulted in an influx of Blaster deaths
So neither yes or no for me.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
I love that GW2 has this feature!
It is one of many features that shows how Arena net really went out of the box and built the game they loved--- with very little compromise!
That said its not a feature I'm sure want to become standard to all mmorpg's because while it works well in PVE I'm not sure about PVP and lets face it Arena net is an extraordinary developer.
All in all i love that Arena Net pulled it off in GW2 but its not something I want in all my games!
(Edited for spelling.)
if its not there i wouldnt mind it, but if its there i would really love it a lot.
If its done in a way that makes sense then sure i welcome it. If it only postpones the innevitable death, like another poster said, then its not necessary. Not sure how to improve it exactly, but there may be a lot of ways to improve it really. Blade & Soul has a similar downed mechanic but in that game you can actually crawl so you can try and move out of range if another person joined to help to fight the mob. I like that.
But it doesn't. It really doesn't mate! Maybe some classes do it better than other, but by god I have induced rage in people when they thought they had me, and I just managed to turn the table in downed state.
I agree that it feels frustrating in sPvP, but it comes from a desire to add more skill to the act of killing. I've seen the same argument between fans of Halo and fans of Call of Duty. Call of Duty fans sometimes feel that the Halo-type gameplay of lots of health and rechargeable Shields is a joke and that 1-shot-1-kill is the king. Halo fans argue that the element of it being more difficult to take down an opponent increases the excitement.
I really find it both frustrating and unfair, yet also very exciting in sPvP. It comes from a place of feeling unfair when I feel I legitimately killed an enemy, but he gets me downed as well, and then a body comes and rezzes him and nobody came and helped me, so even fi I got him down first, the tables changed. These encounters are standard in GW2 sPvP. It's a dualistic situation.
I agree in WvW it sometimes feels strange, and even pointless (big battles), but in small skirmishes and when getting ganked by a thief, it really adds drama. I've had some intense 20-minutes battles with thiefs who kept running away and attacking, strifing, to get me downed, to almost kill me, to let me get up, to take the thief down, for him to get up. It's exhausting, but still exciting.
Prolly one of the reason I stopped playing GW2.
It has been like 1 year ago, so maybe it changed since then.
But as a Solo/small group roamers in WvW, downed state really punished me and my group hard.
We could fight 2v6, drop all of them and still lose because they would come back up.
Especially since my main was an engineer, and during that time we had the worse tier downed state skill.
I hope to never see this again in another MMO. Maybe in pve, but please not in pvp!
GW2 still was one of the greatest game tho.
I wasn't impressed with down mode. I played around launch time and maybe they fixed it since.
People were unfamiliar with down mode at launch so oftentimes you'd think you killed someone only to have them get back up. After people got used to it, they would make sure they finished you off. In the end it didn't matter much.
http://gnomophobia.com
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
DAoC - Excalibur & Camlann
Spot on.
I voted 'no' but truthfully, downed state is pretty cool in PvE. It's dreadful in PvP and almost completely ruins the experience.
There are other games out there with this mode so it isnt GW2 exclusive.
Darkfall Unholy Wars for example, a Full Loot PvP MMORPG
The mechanic that makes GW2 PvP non competitive? No thank you.
Not a bad PvE mechanic though.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
Needed a "I like cake" option in the poll for those of us who know what it is, but don't really care either way whether a game includes it.
Only played a very small amount of time in GW2 (got one character up to level 15) and ran into this downed state more than a few times, and it was interesting enough (PVE only of course), so I can't speak to its impact in PVP.
I'd have to play another game for a bit of time before deciding whether I really liked it, so I chose no for this poll.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I like the downed state in PvE as long as the NPC abilities that instantly force downed states are kept to a minimum. I like that it represents my character being injured - like the negative health that tabletop D&D had.
I do agree that the downed state abilities could be reworked/evolved - some are very... unuseful. Crawling would be nice.
I don't currently do much PvP at this point - so I can't speak to that.