I don’t think it’s any secret how unpopular underwater combat is, and I think one of the main reasons is how your build dosn’t work there. RPGs like this is all about building your character with both look and abilities and then taking on the challanges the world posseses with it. But underwater cuts out half of your skills, replaces your weapons and replace your helmet. And for what?
I belive Arenanet have two problems that force them to make Underwater combat diffrent from surface combat:
1. Logic, because flamethrowers underwater dosn’t make much sence.
2. Ground targeting skills, a third direction makes it difficuls to work.
I’m not going to talk much about the first problem as I don’t think Logic should be prioritised over gameplay. Logic should serve the narrative, and the narrative should serve the gameplay, if you constrain or limit the gameplay functionalities in order to have more logic in your fantasy game then you are doing something wrong.
Also the logic fails in most cases anyway, you don’t die if you remove your breathing mask. And NPCs can place flameturrets underwater, but I can’t…. There are many more examples on how the logic fails underwater.
So now for the meat:
How to make ground targeting skills work underwater
Basically, while you have your ground targeting currsor (assuming fast cast is off), a grid will apear just under your character going into the horrizon.
Tilting the camera also tilts the grid, so by tilting your camera to look down, the grid will also tilt downward. You already tilt your camera to look at enemies anyway, so why not use that control to aim ground target skills?
Here is a simple concept screenshoot showing how the grid could possibly look:
!http://i.imgur.com/JtJOpjE.jpg!
This might or might not work well, but I do encourage Arenanet to make a prototype and then see if it have the potetial to become a viable ground target mecanic for underwater combat.
Back to logic
If they still belive they need to apply logic underwater then at least make skills that function the same as their surface counterpart, but look diffrently and have a more underwater theme to them:
Flamethrowers flamejet ability could spit hot boiling oil instead of flames, Flameblast could be an underwater mine. Use your imagination, but keep the skills mecanic similar so any surface build that players use hours to design, gear up and practice with works in every aspect of the game. Players will be a lot more encuraged to fight big underwater fights if they are able to use the build they are so conected with.
The old underwater weapons
But wait, if surface weapons start working underwater… what happens to the 3 existing underwater weapons? Many people have invested a lot of gold on their underwater weapons and some even have legendary versions of them!
Well this is a great opportunity to bring new weapons to all the classes, a lot of people have asked for polearms so this would solve that. Also, all the underwater weapons have tons of skins so they wont have to do much work in the modeling department.
And how amazing would it not be to run around on the surface with a harpoon gun?