Guild Wars 2

Ok so anyone who knows me knows I’m an exploration nut, in and out of games. I have always wanted to see where my boundaries are, how high can I fly, how deep can I dive and so on.

If any devs read this I just want to say how blown away I have been with the amount of unique places I’ve found in Guild Wars 2. It’s especially impressive as most of these seem to be out of the way, to serve only to make the gaming world a richer experience and give you that ‘wow I never expected to find this here’ feeling.

Anyway I digress, my suggestion is realism, or at least a few nods to a few more realistic systems. As stated above I love diving in games and there has been something really niggling me since Guild Wars 2 launched, that is the infinite breath of air (rebreathers).

I’ve heard this being addressed by devs, saying that they didn’t want players to miss underwater areas by constantly having to swim to the surface, I get this idea and agree to a point but to just remove the requirement for air seems to be uncharacteristically lacking in imagination for ArenaNet.

To me part of what makes diving really deep is the fear of ‘will I be able to get back’ and the requirement for air is the principle factor here. I’m not looking for over the top realism here ie deeper zones cause pressure problems etc but just by adding a need to return to the surface you add so much more to the whole experience, this can’t be a bad thing right?

If you wanted deeper areas to be more interesting there are a number of ways to do this, cracks in the ocean floor venting bubbles, underwater caves with air pockets and even NPC structures like Quaggan villages which could have air pockets.

So what I’m saying is the underwater areas in this game are so well designed wouldn’t it be justice to give them context, like ’wow I really went deep today and found that amazing sunken graveyard (or whatever)

I look forward to hearing what you guys think and as always a word from the devs would be champion!

This can indeed be a bad thing. Underwater combat is already held in disdain, adding breath limits would make underwater travel utterly avoided.

It sounds nice on paper for exploration purposes, but in practice I think it’d just end up being infuriating to an already annoying experience.

whats unrealistic about a mask that siphons oxygen from the water?

i was so happy when the first time i went underwater i realized there was no breath system that i would be utterly disappointed in a mechanic change.
there are some poi and skill point under water that with the mechanic you suggest would be an hell experience especially if you add krait or risen to that formula.

Imagine fighting the underwater end-bosses of HotW if you had a breath gauge.

The HORROR!

From what I get from your post, you want to have special underwater areas that are deep and difficult to reach and require a bit of skill such as the use of air pockets. Removing breathers would cause a kittenstorm. So why not use water pressure? Going to deep could give you problems and in real life if you surface too fast you’ll get decompression sickness. This could easily make for deep underwater strategic puzzles where players have to properly time what they do, balance between deep and shallow and only reach those special secrets if they do it right.

But if they make it more realistic, how will they defend Warriors/Guardians in full platemail having neutral buoyancy?

Oh I know rebreathers do actually exist but they do eventually run out

I think it’s important to address the timing here, if I was talking abouts a very limiting amount of air (time) then yes, this would lead to problems, lots of frustration and ultimately take away from the game.

What I am talking about is a very long time limit, one that takes into account you your wearing a rebreather (assuming its a closed air system). In terms of actual time underwater I’m thinking fifteen minutes (sorry I should have said this in the first post).

With fifteen minutes of air (time) you could swim around Orr, ML and the Straights and still have time to nip off and make a cup of tea

I guess what I’m saying is this, not to make the actual task of getting down there more difficult. I think just by adding a time limit, even a really long one, straight away adds that feeling of danger. That danger is needed in order to make the deep places of these water areas feel like what they are.

Of course I’m hoping the devs consider this change but I’d also be interested to know was this ever considered in the early days of the games development?

Thanks,
Genophix

Star Wars – The Old Republic has been the only MMO I have played that has done underwater combat right. But in terms of realism underwater combat would be even more tedious if we had to deal with breathing too.