#Abridged, Improved Combat System!
Thank you Lance for your work on this. Great job, really.
How about adding profession skills? They don’t have to add new skills for each and every weapon, there are just 8 different professions, so they have less work to do. And it would add something new to the game.
In any case I hope they will make some changes to skill system. The way it is set now it can be tedious.
Ditton,
- No. I want Guild Wars. :P Go back to your social media that contains no skills at all. (Second Life) xD Please do not make dim-witted accusations that you know nothing about.
Btw, even without playing WoW for more than a trial, I can tell you that the game has FAR more than 58 skills. The bar itself is like, what… 30? Please do not make ignorant posts. Keep it productive. Thanks.
- You can change weapons at any time. Just bring them in a bag. Cooldowns can be reduced by runes. Both of your problems have now been solved.
If you have any feedback that is actually productive, feel free to post it. Do not waste space trying to insult me or other players.
(I really do not take kindly to insults. Especially when the insult contains no constructive criticism. You are more than welcome to say that my idea is stupid, that you hate it. But do not assume that you know something. Do not assume that making a snide remake empowers you in any way. Because it does not. And yes, I take it as my personal responsibility to shoot down people trying to troll. Because there are way too many people in this day-in-age trying to get attention from idiotic or otherwise meaningless posts. Do not insult the time I spend to help other players.)
- Any further post you make with insults or otherwise useless information, will be ignored. And I strongly suggest that other members do the same.
And just as a note, I have played Guild Wars since release and am a strong supporter of Anet. Even if I feel they have taken a few turns in the wrong direction. I feel that it is my place as a part of this community to provide constructive feedback why I am against them… and will do so. And I can tell by your post, that you obviously have not played Guild Wars 1 or WoW for that matter. So do not use them in an argument and refrain from trying to insult other members with “L2p, go back to WoW.” You look like a kitten.
(edited by LanceHavenbay.2067)
To Bluestone,
“On the point about new skills for each weapon, it kinda defeats the purpose of having the different types of weapons.”
- Exactly. Weapons no longer limit you. You can play the same roles, but how you want to play them is now up for grabs.
- The whole point of this is to make it so that Weapon does not equal role. So that player chooses Race, which equals look. Player chooses Profession to equal playstyle. Play chooses role freely without being forced to use a weapon.
Many players despise having to not use their favorite looking weapon just because they NEED a specific weapon just to perform a role.Other, simply want to break out of the “If you want this, you must be this” idea. Guild Wars 2 started to break out of this by making all professions equal (for the most part) in meaning that you could make a team of any combination of players and still be effective.
What the game still lacks however, is players ability to be who and what they want to be. The current system in place still drastically limits a players ability to be free.
I hope this cleared things up for you.
Profession = Styles how you perform any role.
Weapon = Styles how you can play a specific role of your choosing.
You would be able to use condition for any weapon. Damage for any weapon. You have now opened the doors for many more hours of enjoyable play, creative skillbars, more-fun-to-commentate-during-sPvP players and you have enabled and empowered players to be unique. Which I feel, is the single most important part in any game.
(edited by LanceHavenbay.2067)
To Symke,
Can you be a little more specific? Are you talking utility skills? Those are class specific. And, I am currently working on that.
To Symke,
Can you be a little more specific? Are you talking utility skills? Those are class specific. And, I am currently working on that.
I was thinking about skills which are not based on a weapon choice. Or are only based on a weapon type. Like certain skills work for with all melee weapons, others work with ranged weapons and the rest are generic.
Something like traits, yes, but on the “left” side of our skill bar.
Considering how Anet is concerned with players being able to identify the skill their opponent is about to unleash on them, they could even add some world generic skills. Something that every profession can use.
I know I am not very helpful with only a basic idea, but you or someone else can maybe use this idea and grow it into something more GW2 appropriate.
Thank you very much for the feedback. I will take that idea in and foster it.
To everyone else, sorry for the slow final step, I’ve been quite busy this time of year. Hopefully I can get this finished sooon.
I always felt like even given the amount of options with different weapon setups, I was being limited. I like your ideas and I really hope something like this happens. It’s exactly what Guild Wars 2 needs.
I dont want 58 skills per character..if you want a game like WoW so much..go play WoW..the most Id want is more weapon slots and less cooldown on swapping weapons
I understand wow as very popular (To some) but it isn’t the ONLY successful MMO to compare to this game. Many others were very well respected and worked great while having dozens of skills, even 100s. FFXI b4 all the abyssea garbage came out was supurb at diversity. Every “Job” as they called them was played because every job offered something different and unique to bring to the table. There was some Jobs that were literlly mixes of 2 other Jobs and yet they were played because of how they combined them offering unique playstyles, skins, and some different “utility” skills. Its ideas like these that dont unbalance the game and break it, rather offer options. You can never have “Balance” in an MMO. If this game was truely “Balanced” there would be 1 profession and all players would have the same kit of skills to choose from. The goal is to make things as close to balance as possible which means it is flexible to a point. Adding new skills doens’t unbalance anything unless you make the skill to be unbalanced.
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
More buttons and skills doesn’t mean the game is better, and it definitely does not mean being more “pro” requires more buttons.
GW2 is a different MMO, and I like how they designed it. Not saying your ideas are wrong or anything… but take some consideration of the players who enjoy GW2 for its differences from other MMOs.
On a side note, if anyone here used to be an old school FPS CS gamer, you’ll agree a game doesn’t have to be fun because it has more buttons.
There’s a pretty understandable reason for having less buttons in a game. It allows the players to expand their skill sets into movement and reaction instead of being focused on having to have the right buttons and stuff at the right spot or having special keybinds and all. The simplified buttons and class mechanics allow us to go back to a time where games were made with less buttons, and lets us focus more on strategy, movement, and reaction.
Personally I don’t think we need a kajillion skills to swap between, going back to a build wars type of game… The current way they have things works just fine, but what they need to do is go back and take a hard look at the flow in combat and how the different weapons work together.
1) Cool Downs
Many of the skills just have ridiculous cool downs that just impede the flow of combat.
2) Off hands
These need to be integrated into combat better than just a skill once in a blue moon. The duel swords, for example, are horribly designed; they should be alternating attacks and working together more than they do….
Taking from that duel swords example a revamp for them could give the duel sword setup two new attacks to replace the current offhand ones; one would be a sort of “light block” (maybe a block/parry and dodge sort of thing) that has a low cool down of like 8-10 seconds, the other would be an attack with a low cool down “Twin strikes” would have the player do a quick strike followed up by another and would have like a 6-8 second cool down.
The shields block would be more active and could be used whenever at the cost of some stamina for each hit taken (or maybe make it have a short cool down between uses and make the no cool down but stamina cost be a trait).
Doing things like the duel sword and shield changes to all the off-hands would integrate them into the flow of combat better.
3). Enemies need to be more dynamic in their attacks…
Keeping combat active and players on their toes is something this game lacks severely… One or two normal attacks and then one or two big attacks that you can see the enemy winding up for (by either actual animation and/or an effect showing the windup and a slight telegraphing just before the actual strike). This one may not be a possible with current enemies, as much as something they could work on in the future when launching new areas and/or enemies.
4). Interrupts, off-balance, etc.
This doesn’t have to be big, but have each weapon have at least one skill that “knocks back” enemies just ever so slightly when used (essentially “knocking them off balance”), interrupting their skill. I personally think they should have this effect for all of the skills (with the exception of the 1 spams), much like how attacking in fighting games and good action based games work.
Save the big dazes/stuns etc. for skills being used in a specific way (like using a shield bash sort of attack from behind an enemy, etc.); those shouldn’t be spammable and based on cool down, but bonus for good positioning and/or catching an enemy off guard.
5) Tone down the auto-targeting to a more precise cone.
It should be a reasonably precise cone area projected from your camera direction, which in my opinion should only be about 40% of the screen in which an enemy would have to be within in order to be selected as a potential target for auto-targeting. I think this would be a good trade-off between actually having to aim a bit, but not so far as going for the twitch reaction aiming that my beloved action games have.
i’ll be honest, this thread is full of posts that are way too long for me to read, much less the devs that have hundreds of topics to go through as well as work on the game. keep it condensed, keep it a core concept. devs aren’t going to copy your posts into the code no matter how amazing they are, so instead you should focus on giving concise suggestions.
my suggestion is not one i particularly think would work, but it’s a nice direction they could go with.
eventually, we’ll run out of weapons to give the players. then comes the time where you need to expand on the existing weapons. how? my idea are actually two, and i think it’s a “one or the other” situation. together, they’d just mess everything up and be too complicated.
the first idea is give alternate skill sets to a weapon. so if a greatsword gives you certain 5 skills, you could opt on the hero panel to use another set of 5. you could pick either one set or another, but not mix and match them. that way you have essentially two weapons in one weapon type. for all practical effects, picking which set to use would function just like picking which weapon to use, so you wouldn’t be able to switch between skills unless you have the same weapon on both weapon sets
.
the second idea is adding weapon traits. if you’ve played diablo 3, think of that. essentially, you can equip each skill with one of a few “traits” that change its properties. for example, a thief’s unload could have a trait that makes the skill fire in a cone, rather than forward. this kind of improvement would add a lot of depth to weapon skills, and could potentially lead to a myriad of new combinations.
of course, the downside here is that a revamp of that magnitude to existing skills would shake the balance heavily, and many weapon skills just aren’t interesting enough to have all these different “flavors” added.
I dont want 58 skills per character..if you want a game like WoW so much..go play WoW..the most Id want is more weapon slots and less cooldown on swapping weapons
I understand wow as very popular (To some) but it isn’t the ONLY successful MMO to compare to this game. Many others were very well respected and worked great while having dozens of skills, even 100s. FFXI b4 all the abyssea garbage came out was supurb at diversity. Every “Job” as they called them was played because every job offered something different and unique to bring to the table. There was some Jobs that were literlly mixes of 2 other Jobs and yet they were played because of how they combined them offering unique playstyles, skins, and some different “utility” skills. Its ideas like these that dont unbalance the game and break it, rather offer options. You can never have “Balance” in an MMO. If this game was truely “Balanced” there would be 1 profession and all players would have the same kit of skills to choose from. The goal is to make things as close to balance as possible which means it is flexible to a point. Adding new skills doens’t unbalance anything unless you make the skill to be unbalanced.
Exactly. Very well put!
More buttons and skills doesn’t mean the game is better, and it definitely does not mean being more “pro” requires more buttons.
GW2 is a different MMO, and I like how they designed it. Not saying your ideas are wrong or anything… but take some consideration of the players who enjoy GW2 for its differences from other MMOs.
On a side note, if anyone here used to be an old school FPS CS gamer, you’ll agree a game doesn’t have to be fun because it has more buttons.
There’s a pretty understandable reason for having less buttons in a game. It allows the players to expand their skill sets into movement and reaction instead of being focused on having to have the right buttons and stuff at the right spot or having special keybinds and all. The simplified buttons and class mechanics allow us to go back to a time where games were made with less buttons, and lets us focus more on strategy, movement, and reaction.
I’m sorry, but simply being able to say yes and no does not mean I am having an intelligent conversation. The realm of having a skill based game has to do with options, it has to do with grey and white and black. It has to deal with more than facerolling. From a programming standpoint, and from the hours I have personally put into taking apart the system, I can tell you with no doubt, that this game falls under “very simplistic” movements. The only outstanding factor is that you are able to move in all directions. The only direction you currently had that you never had before, was a jump function and a swimming function. The skills in this game are limited even more. So far in fact, that you can successful perform just as well as a skill player by meshing nearly all of your buttons.
You are right, number does not determine skill. The quality of the skills do. And the skill quality is inferior at the moment, thus in order to add variety and creativity, and thus playability, the game needs more/better designed skills.
I’d love to sit down more and type but I’m pretty busy at the moment. If you are at all interested in hearing me say more in regards to this, I’m sure I’ve covered it someone in this thread, or it’s previous draft.
Thanks for your time.
i’ll be honest, this thread is full of posts that are way too long for me to read, much less the devs that have hundreds of topics to go through as well as work on the game. keep it condensed, keep it a core concept. devs aren’t going to copy your posts into the code no matter how amazing they are, so instead you should focus on giving concise suggestions.
This made me laugh so hard I actually choked on my drink.
Obviously you did not read the previous draft that led up to this concise version. I am not a politician. I am not here to say “Vote for me” as a shorthand for all of my propositions. I am going to make sure I can list every single point I have in a few characters as I can, and not lose the original focus.
If I was here just to spit words, I would be in the sPvP thread. The developers do read my posts, quite often. I know this for a fact because I have talked with, and been infracted by them for getting overly zealous.
Also. If I say, “Add more skill” people’s response will be “no” or “yes.” Nothing intelligent, no productivity. Although you, and possibly many others may be content with incomplete, or lacking content, I pride myself on doing every bit of research and accumulating it into a concise source.
If this concise version is too large for you, I suggest picking up a novel, or picking up a sport that you are extremely good at and letting the coaches do the reading and tell you what to do.
Part of being well informed is being able and willing to read. If this does not interest you, you are more than welcome to skip the thread. No need for a comment about length. Because many others are happy with the length.
Thanks for the understanding.
my suggestion is not one i particularly think would work, but it’s a nice direction they could go with.
eventually, we’ll run out of weapons to give the players. then comes the time where you need to expand on the existing weapons. how? my idea are actually two, and i think it’s a “one or the other” situation. together, they’d just mess everything up and be too complicated.
the first idea is give alternate skill sets to a weapon. so if a greatsword gives you certain 5 skills, you could opt on the hero panel to use another set of 5. you could pick either one set or another, but not mix and match them. that way you have essentially two weapons in one weapon type. for all practical effects, picking which set to use would function just like picking which weapon to use, so you wouldn’t be able to switch between skills unless you have the same weapon on both weapon sets
.
the second idea is adding weapon traits. if you’ve played diablo 3, think of that. essentially, you can equip each skill with one of a few “traits” that change its properties. for example, a thief’s unload could have a trait that makes the skill fire in a cone, rather than forward. this kind of improvement would add a lot of depth to weapon skills, and could potentially lead to a myriad of new combinations.
of course, the downside here is that a revamp of that magnitude to existing skills would shake the balance heavily, and many weapon skills just aren’t interesting enough to have all these different “flavors” added.
You realize that is basically a dumbed down version of everything on my post, right?
-Cone effect would be an Effect.
-You simply removed mixing and matching from my current setup.
>.> Just saying.
(edited by LanceHavenbay.2067)
my suggestion is not one i particularly think would work, but it’s a nice direction they could go with.
eventually, we’ll run out of weapons to give the players. then comes the time where you need to expand on the existing weapons. how? my idea are actually two, and i think it’s a “one or the other” situation. together, they’d just mess everything up and be too complicated.
the first idea is give alternate skill sets to a weapon. so if a greatsword gives you certain 5 skills, you could opt on the hero panel to use another set of 5. you could pick either one set or another, but not mix and match them. that way you have essentially two weapons in one weapon type. for all practical effects, picking which set to use would function just like picking which weapon to use, so you wouldn’t be able to switch between skills unless you have the same weapon on both weapon sets
.
the second idea is adding weapon traits. if you’ve played diablo 3, think of that. essentially, you can equip each skill with one of a few “traits” that change its properties. for example, a thief’s unload could have a trait that makes the skill fire in a cone, rather than forward. this kind of improvement would add a lot of depth to weapon skills, and could potentially lead to a myriad of new combinations.
of course, the downside here is that a revamp of that magnitude to existing skills would shake the balance heavily, and many weapon skills just aren’t interesting enough to have all these different “flavors” added.
You realize that is basically a dumbed down version of everything on my post, right?
-Cone effect would be an Effect.
-You simply removed mixing and matching from my current setup.>.> Just saying.
read my other post on this thread.
“this thread has too many posts that are too long for me to bother reading, so i won’t read them”, or something like that.
and this isn’t a contest to see who brought up a suggestion that may make it to the game. if your suggestion is like mine, then you should be glad, because it means there is more than one people in favor of your suggestion.
i’ll be honest, this thread is full of posts that are way too long for me to read, much less the devs that have hundreds of topics to go through as well as work on the game. keep it condensed, keep it a core concept. devs aren’t going to copy your posts into the code no matter how amazing they are, so instead you should focus on giving concise suggestions.
This made me laugh so hard I actually choked on my drink.
Obviously you did not read the previous draft that led up to this concise version. I am not a politician. I am not here to say “Vote for me” as a shorthand for all of my propositions. I am going to make sure I can list every single point I have in a few characters as I can, and not lose the original focus.If I was here just to spit words, I would be in the sPvP thread. The developers do read my posts, quite often. I know this for a fact because I have talked with, and been infracted by them for getting overly zealous.
Also. If I say, “Add more skill” people’s response will be “no” or “yes.” Nothing intelligent, no productivity. Although you, and possibly many others may be content with incomplete, or lacking content, I pride myself on doing every bit of research and accumulating it into a concise source.
If this concise version is too large for you, I suggest picking up a novel, or picking up a sport that you are extremely good at and letting the coaches do the reading and tell you what to do.
Part of being well informed is being able and willing to read. If this does not interest you, you are more than welcome to skip the thread. No need for a comment about length. Because many others are happy with the length.
Thanks for the understanding.
you might want to look up the term “concise”, but i digress.
even if this is your “edited and compacted” version of a much longer post, it’s still very long. i’m not telling you to say something as raw as “add new skills”, i’m just asking you to be to the point. you want new skill systems? cool. say how they would work, the reasons it wouldn’t break the balance if properly managed, and why do you think it has to be added. don’t go in too much detail, because on a suggestions board, that’s a waste of digital space.
a perfect example of a combat suggestion thread done right is the one going on about new uses for the endurance bar. every post is one, two paragraphs at most, which means more people are willing to read and discuss the suggestions, and everything is presented in a crystal clear, concise format.
it has nothing to do with not liking to read, it has to do with being good at writing, and not drag for too long. no one likes long winded ramblings, much less when only a fraction of what the rambles are saying (the “core concept”) matter.
you might want to look up the term “concise”, but i digress.
even if this is your “edited and compacted” version of a much longer post, it’s still very long. i’m not telling you to say something as raw as “add new skills”, i’m just asking you to be to the point. you want new skill systems? cool. say how they would work, the reasons it wouldn’t break the balance if properly managed, and why do you think it has to be added. don’t go in too much detail, because on a suggestions board, that’s a waste of digital space.
a perfect example of a combat suggestion thread done right is the one going on about new uses for the endurance bar. every post is one, two paragraphs at most, which means more people are willing to read and discuss the suggestions, and everything is presented in a crystal clear, concise format.
it has nothing to do with not liking to read, it has to do with being good at writing, and not drag for too long. no one likes long winded ramblings, much less when only a fraction of what the rambles are saying (the “core concept”) matter.
Sorry, but I get a bunch of people coming here, who, if not hand fed details, whine and complain. And other the other side, I get those angry Ettins like yourself who come to try and troll me for not being “concise.” There is a difference between “concise and to the point,” and “concise and educated.”
You are right, I’d rather give you some flesh than tell you to chew a bone. If you do not feel like reading it, skip along. I’ve read every single post in this thread multiple times.
“say how they would work, the reasons it wouldn’t break the balance if properly managed,”
Check.
“and why do you think it has to be added.”
Check.
“don’t go in too much detail, because on a suggestions board, that’s a waste of digital space.”
Ignorance. Tell me dear sir, what should be excluded? Since I’m too stupid to figure it out on my own.
As for too much information, I suggest learning skimming. Nobody asked you to read every single inch, and I’d rather you not if you are going to whine about it. I could care less about the lazy people’s commentary.
Foremost though, lack of interest is your only excuse. What you see as a ‘jumble of text’ is simply an idea broken down for those who are interested, to be able to review. The text has progressive complexity …meaning that it has an order that gradually incorporates deeper elements the more you read. Every listed element included, MUST be included, or the whole basis would become misinterpreted. (Which still happens on occasion; not nearly as much as before the abridged version.)
Bullet points, for those only interested in the general idea.
Bold, for those like you who do not care to read the fine details, but are interested in functionality and how the subject applies to them directly.
Unbolded, the fine details, for those willing to read for a little longer.
Do not come here to insult my intelligence, unless you are able to back what you say. Legitimately prove to me that you have backing to your little complaints.
You are right, I do not write to cater toward the ignorant, the lazy, the uneducated. I write with enough information for a person truly interested in game design and mechanics to be able to understand every detail without having to writing a book about it. As that is the type of people I would like commentary from: those who actually, truly care. I have even taken the time to make the text accessible to those with lesser interest. People like you however, simply choose to overlook that and have forgotten the high school basics of looking for key words or ideas pertaining to your interest level.
As for being a waste of digital space:
I’d rather post educated texts than wander about the forums complaining about how long someone’s post is. End point being: You waste both of our time by making such silly claims. If you are uninterested in the design, do not even bother commenting.
This post is not here for you to whine about length.
This post is not here for those with no, lack of, or low interest.
This post is here for those who are deeply interested in the under-workings of the game, it’s mechanics and it’s deeper core.
If you want simple, go to sPvP sub., create a topic, type “this build is OP, fix it.”
If you are not intensely interested in this development, I have little to no interest in what you have to say. I have met up with, discussed, formulated, revised, abridged, improved and implemented countless ideas with a large number of players. In forums and out. All of which have an interest that far surpasses the people, such as yourself who log on simple to complain on a productive thread.
A large reason why many of us do not post here, is because we talk on skype, in game, email or alternative sources of communication. Many people post here simply because we want to keep the topic alive while I work on it. Or, because I ask people to look over new content. Those interested will look, those not, will not. I’m perfectly fine with weeding out the disinterested, the lazy and the trolls.
Length is not present because it is required to understand the topic. (As you seem to think.) Length is present for those who would like to understand more about the topic. You can get the “I think this should change because of, and this is why” simply from looking at the bold or the start of the thread. Everything following it is progressively deeper.
In all seriousness, stop wasting my time and “digital space” with complaints that are entirely invalid. I’d be more than happy to have a friendly conversation with you if you would stop logging in to whine without providing a true cause.
Give and example of how it it “too much.” Show me one item that could be broken down and still retain the elements needed to keep it from being misconstrued.
As a closer: Although this thread is still open, all of the information has been completed, I’ve just yet to post it. I work wild shifts of 2am starts, and midnight finishers. Between 3 jobs I’m pretty busy. I’m actually supposed to be submitting this entire article to someone who is making a video about it. (I’ve been procrastinating on getting the last but of info to him.) xD
Around the same time the video goes out, covering all of this for everyone to see, even those not active on the forums, I will submit the entire volume to Anet, regardless if they accept the idea or not.
If nothing else, it will be made public, the potential flaws of the system. Even just searching youtube, GW2 is nothing but “Ways to farm” and repeated generic pvp builds. Still pointless* grind, still facerolls. Still WoW with a new quest system.
And on top of that, I’m working with some friends on CryEngine to create some stuff for their game design classes. Overall I’ve quit GW2, boycotted it for the most part and moved on to more productive parts of the world. To developers who are against over-simplified formats for people that like free roaming, intellectually excluding games.
If you are in love with current games such as this, more power to you. Do not let me stand in your way. I’ll be here reminiscing about previous games that required thought to play and providing (possibly unwanted) feedback, just because it exercises my mind.
Another fun side project, might be a media push against Anet, in favor of throwing out simplistic gameplay. People who take their time actually designing the game, submitting it, without pay. Just because we can.
Long ago, in Starsiege: Tribes, many people got together and designed Tribes RPG. One of the hugest mods I’ve seen of all times. Since then, I’ve always been in favor of work over promotion. I’d much rather design, or fight for a niche game than a game that appeals to the (in my opinion) ever increasing number of simple minded organisms who would rather press buttons that learn how to play a game.
People have this mindset that everything should be handed to them. No work involved. If you want a healthy, balanced, delicious meal, you learn to cook it yourself, or you get rich. Stop buying the media hyped Yakkington milk and learn to exercise your mind. Learn new skills, take the time to read things every once in a while, learn to play games without using quest markers. Pay attention, be smart, be well.
Get rid of your trolling. You do yourself no kind favor, you simply reduce your iq.
And in case a moderator want to get mad at me:
Ignorance: “Lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about something in particular”
Choosing to define a lack of knowledge as offensive, is you own wrong doing. Nothing wrong with not knowing as long as you are open to learn.
Though I like many of these ideas, I hope we’re all aware that 58 new abilities per class would be very likely unbalancable. And considering we’re already minding the imbalance, we would not be helping it.