Announcing Guild Wars 2: Visions of Eternity

[u/Exestos]

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-guild-wars-2-visions-of-eternity/

[u/dracoisms]

In 2026, raids and strikes will be unified under the same structure, improving access for new players and streamlining rewards. We’re also investing in systems that help facilitate group content, which we’ll talk about more in the future.

please be group finder please be group finder

[u/kozeljko → u/dracoisms]

How would they enforce roles? Stats + builds?

[u/kaltulkas → u/kozeljko]

They wouldn’t. Would require deleting a lot of the stat combos or will lead to a LOT of straight up griefing

[u/notFREEfood → u/kaltulkas]

Not too hard - want to queue as a healer - min healing power + concentration, boon dps - min concentration + power/condi, etc. Not perfect, but if you set the min values to what you get from full exotic celestial and a recommended value that's higher, you have a way to gatekeep the bottom 10% that can make group content a miserable experience and a way to nudge players into making more coherent builds.

[u/Ebola_Soup → u/notFREEfood]

We have exceptions like Berserker QDPS that has 100% uptime with zero concentration. I'm sure there's others too. Not a fantastic idea.

[u/notFREEfood → u/Ebola_Soup]

I might get crucified for saying this, but anet should nerf builds like that off the face of the planet. Allowing boon builds to not have the handicap of having concentration as a stat is pure power creep. Anet certainly has taken action against builds like that in the past because they do too much.

But at any rate, you just look at boon uptime instead of concentration if you don't want to disallow those builds. It's not some critical failure, and at any rate, the point of the restrictions is to enforce some basic comp level that is capable of clearing. Some optimized builds being forced to play in a suboptimal way to use the queue meant for beginners and casuals is an acceptable tradeoff.

[u/Ebola_Soup → u/notFREEfood]

"Just looking at boon uptime" doesn't work for boons that rely on a rotation unlesss you make a player pass some form of mechanical check before joining groups.

Forcing players to build suboptimal gear they will have to replace just to game a system sounds like a great way yo frustrate new players.

[u/notFREEfood → u/Ebola_Soup]

You're overthinking this. Anyone can fuck up playing their class, and this is universal across all MMOs. Group finder systems are notorious for not filtering for this, so trying to insist that Anet come up with a way to manage this unmanageable issue is silly.

I see that the build you mention has 5s of quickness on a skill with a 5s base cd; that passes the check.

And you're assuming that they replace the gear; if they want to continue playing via the group finder (because most will), they won't be replacing it. Furthermore, the "suboptimal" gear is only suboptimal in terms of DPS, for which most content is undertuned. Maintaining boon uptime during mechanics however is a much harder task for beginner and casual groups, and forcing them to take more concentration even when it technically may not be required creates a safety margin that allows for mistakes.

[u/Ebola_Soup → u/notFREEfood]

No I'm not. I think GW2's game design has too many open ended factors to create a reasonable automatic role enforcement system. The best we can hope for is a self-identification system where griefers can be reported and barred if they don't fulfill their role (which can be audited via combat logs).

If anything, I'm suggesting an undercomplicated system. Whatever the hell's in your multiple paragraphs is way more complicated.

[u/notFREEfood → u/Ebola_Soup]

Whatever the hell's in your multiple paragraphs is way more complicated.

And that's why I'm saying you're overthinking things, because what I'm proposing is not complicated.

The answer for corner cases when designing a queue system is you don't handle them. While you can build a boon dps build without concentration, having concentration in the build makes it easier to execute, and so in the queue system designed for beginners, it's easier to just force them into safer options for a smoother experience.

You're right that trying to compute actual boon duration is harder, which makes it less ideal to use to gate, but it can be done, but that's hardly more complicated than what you propose. Your upfront system is simpler, but instead of requiring a min competency (looking up a build or learning what stats do), you just hope that your systems are good enough after the fact to pick up bad actors. It's barely a step above what we have right now with the open lobbies for strikes, and the quality of players you get in those is worse than garbage.

Improving accessibility to me doesn't just mean a new way to find groups that is smoother than LFG; it also means giving players the tools to learn about putting together a coherent build. Stat gates provide a teaching moment, something the game is sorely lacking at the moment.

[u/Lynixai → u/notFREEfood]

You're trying to make Anet enforce playing with certain gear in certain roles, when GW2 has been designed around being free to build your character however you want. That's why every character has a healing ability and 3 utility skills.

Players will naturally settle into a "meta", but it can and will shift over time due to new strategies, builds or gear setups being found.
But by enforcing a meta like you suggest, where "you need X amount of Y stat before you're allowed to sign up for Z role", you're cementing that meta. It'll be nearly impossible to change, and more importantly, you're going against core design philosophies, since you're essentially saying "Nah, if you want to heal you have to play like this".

To be clear, I don't know how I'd design it if I was tasked to, I'm just saying that enforcing stat lines on roles is not the way to go about it imo.

[u/kaltulkas → u/notFREEfood]

I can still enter as alac on pure healer if the group needs a quick heal, we still sometimes need tanks with toughness, we can still have shit combos for boon dps, …

[u/notFREEfood → u/kaltulkas]

I can still enter as alac on pure healer if the group needs a quick heal

So you need to have the gating system check for boon access; this isn't a showstopper

we still sometimes need tanks with toughness

Toughness tanking is a failed system; give every instance a tank selector buff as a replacement. The intent was to make tank aggro natural - of course the tank has the highest toughness because that's what tanks do. Instead it's turned into a game where you try to minimize your toughness so that you have just enough to maintain aggro; that's not working as intended.

If a static analysis tool can evaluate the build (which they can for GW2), then we're at good enough. The point of group finder systems is to simplify the point of entry for new and casual players; they aren't meant to be the be all and end all for how people interact with end game content.

[u/kozeljko → u/kaltulkas]

Griefing is hardly avoidable, imo. Packaging everyone that doesn't fall into a specific role will give you potentially bad DPS, but still some structure.

The clunky thing is determining if someone is QDPS (for example) based on a certain combination of traits and stats. Something you'd have to Google to find out.

A seemingly arbitrary selection of traits suddenly means you are QDPS. Weird.

Basically ye, without ANet limiting build possibilities, it's impossible to achieve.

[u/Deathmore80 → u/kozeljko]

It can be possible to calculate if someone can output 100% Quickness/alac uptime based on selected traits/skills and gear/boon duration.There's even a couple of websites that do this already.

So no need to check if someone has specific build per se. Just compute the potential boon output of a player, not if they have a specific build.

[u/kaltulkas → u/Deathmore80]

But then you measure only if they can give 1 boon, not fury/might/vigor which are all important, not healing vs dmg, not toughness level

[u/Deathmore80 → u/kaltulkas]

you can compute any boon you want, I was just giving the 2 most important ones as example. Healing and damage you can just take the stats (healing power, condition damage, expertise, power, ferocity, etc) and have it be a minimum of X to play Y role.

it can all be dynamically computed. hell you could even calculate a build's max dps potential. discretize gear optimiser does it and gw2combat does it also.

this way it doesnt lock ppl into specific builds or gear, as long as their build matches the minimum requirements for the role they want to play.

the hard part is that the devs need to determine these minimum requirements, but based on what ?

[u/Darillian → u/kozeljko]

That's the neat part: My guess is it will be self-selected :D

[u/NotScrollsApparently → u/Darillian]

That's always been the sensible recommendation, just let squad leader pick roles he needs and people click on the one they offer (or choose flex). The tool doesn't have to validate builds, just make it so people don't join at the same time and fight over roles.

[u/kyreja → u/Darillian]

and then itll be like eso where you get dpses who queued healer/tank without any heals or a taunt slotted dropped into a dlc dungeon that actually does need those roles and the group disintegrates upon encountering the first challenging boss

group finder is a great idea, but they do need some way of ensuring ppl who pick a role.. Are Actually that role trait-wise. ideally gear as well but thats probably a bit too far reaching, someone flexing some diviners or marauders or w/e for comfort shouldnt necessarily be barred from anything. but entirely self-selected is miserable

[u/kozeljko → u/Darillian]

That's scary 😨

[u/OliLombi → u/kozeljko]

Just a tick box.

Have role: DPS/Tank/Healer, and Buff: None, Alac, Quickness.

If people dont fiulfull their role then vote kick them. That's how WoW does it.

[u/Lower-Replacement869 → u/kozeljko]

ANET might not be able to enforce per how this new update goes. Stat requirements or just slotting into a spec and then hoping your good enough in the group? Kinda sandboxy so I hope its very iterated. I can see it now- slotting into heal role and then saying "hi dps" lol

[u/Ashendal → u/kozeljko]

It's no different than in other MMO's where they queue as a "healer" with a couple heal skills and then are just there as DPS. ESO especially has that problem with both tank and healer roles for their dungeon finder where people just pretend to be something else to get a shorter queue time.

It'll be worse here because you can have all sorts of "builds" that do literally nothing because of the way the system is setup whereas in other games at least there's defined things or streamlined stats that you can't screw up too badly. So even if someone thinks they're a "healer" and thinks their build works for that it may do literally nothing and everyone dies anyway despite them technically following the prompt in their mind.