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Originally Posted by Alderin
Why is it you think the game has degraded into mostly the same skill sets being used? Is it because of the poorly done and painfully slow 'balancing' that kills decent skills rather than bringing it in par with the rest? Or is it something else in entirely?
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A lot of it comes from the design stages, when they're creating skill concepts, character concepts, without any numbers. The number of skills that come out of this stage with the potential for stimulating play is pretty low. So many of the concepts are along the lines of 'wouldn't it be cool if there was a skill that did (some odd thing)' - which gives you skills and characters that are 'fun' for like an hour in random arena but don't have any potential in serious PvP - because those skills do odd things, and warp characters into horribly limited toons that can't make core plays.
I shouldn't say don't, but should, because some of those gimmicks end up being so strong that they get run despite being horribly limited - that's responsible for junk like Steady Stance Warriors or Searing Flames, or Assassins in general. Then there are concepts that are just broken, like piles of stacking passive defense, or spirit forests. Those simply shouldn't exist but they do, and they represent failures all throughout the system - starting with the design team for concepting such limited skills so frequently, to the aftermarket support where they're allowed to dominate and stagnate for month after month.
If you take away the dumb gimmicks, you're left with a small set of similar looking characters, simply because the skillset conductive to interesting gameplay is so small. When the game is at its best, the skills are just tools, not the determinant themselves, tools that let you make plays that ultimately win the game. While every skill does something, there are only a handful that let the player make a variety of plays that can ultimately win you a match. Taking a second pass, there are only so many tools that deal with common game situations, and that limited skillset pushes you into an increasingly limited skillset.
(Quick examples. In the current climate every team needs a party heal to clean up damage in a big fight, and you can't split that off anymore [ala E/Mo Partybots] without being punished. How many options are there for that? There are enough strong condition-stacking plays that you need some sort of solution to those, so RC is neccessary if you don't want a bunch of lingering cripples and deep wounds wrecking your team. You need reliable snares if you don't want to be run around on forever - and ones that work even when your opponent has Mending Touch. You need some way to deal with enchantments, including Aegis and targeted prot. You really want some way to interrupt. Then there's the whole two melee thing that would take an entire article to explain.)
At least if everyone were running the few robust templates that there were, the game would be more about dynamic tactics. But that's fairly rare, due largely to the number of really strong gimmicks. In those games the tactics are set, because their build can't adapt. Instead, you have a game of "can you pick through the zergway team before they land a DChop on something important" or "can you stall Recall gank for 20 minutes until they lose at VoD?" It's very rare that a team asks you a new question after the game has started. For the most part, they show you some overpowered gimmick, ask if you can beat it, and go home if you can.
I still play for the good games, against the good teams who do at least try and execute. Those are still amazing and blow everything else out there out of the water. But most nights are spent waiting for matches against teams that don't want to be any good and are just looking for a quick win, or if it's an automated tournament, waiting quasi-AFK while collecting resign wins. Is that the vibrant PvP future that Arena.net envisioned?
Peace,
-CxE
I still remember loving them but have no idea why.
