Guild Wars 2

There may be other topics like this although I did a basic search and found nothing which addressed this issue.

While I greatly enjoy GW2 and its massive improvement on the fantasy MMO genre, I have a serious disagreement with the way aggro works in this game in its current state and at times it feels like I’m being punished when attempting to outsmart opponents.

In addition, and this doesn’t require elaboration, the respawn rate on almost all creatures is way too high. For a game that advertised in the MMO Manifesto that it would feel as if you were impacting the world around you, it doesn’t when the respawn rate is so fast you can’t clear an area by yourself before things respawn again. Sometimes not even with friends. I kill 10 out of 20 rats. I kill the other 10, 10 more respawn. This makes soloing some areas nearly impossible or at the very least incredibly annoying. That sums up the respawn rate issue.

If you’re lazy and/or don’t have time to continue reading all the way down, even though you really should for completeness, then you should skip down to the second continued post.

Everything has a radius of aggression and leaving that fairly small radius auto-regenerates their HP usually and they auto-path back to their original location. This feels unrealistic, looks unrealistic, and disallows for more strategic planning and overall gameplay. If I want to setup a single trap, set of traps, ambush, etc. and it goes outside of the aggro radius then I’m out of luck and will usually have to start the process all over again.

This doesn’t just force me to play by the person or monster’s rules but punishes me for not doing so because of the auto-regen/immunity while they path back to their location.

Why should we be punished for thinking before engaging in combat? For example I could, as a ranger, attack from an elevated position making it difficult for what I’m fighting to retaliate but not impossible if the person/monster has ranged abilities too.

Instead the game somehow detects that the monster isn’t able to sufficiently walk up and down my corpse and thus they become immune after the first few shots and auto-regen. I’m sorry but this is a completely unintelligent response from the combat system.

I’ve played every single class of character, including during the beta. The warrior/melee oriented classes have it easy as far as I’m concerned. I like that as a melee inclined character I can’t just sit there and ‘tank’ like in other MMO’s, you still have to be careful. But as a warrior with only 5 points in vitality and toughness I have few problems in melee and I also find that I tend to kill things much faster in melee than range meaning I can mop up multiple foes and heart areas pretty quick.

As a ranged character, some more than others, this isn’t nearly as easy and the light armor classes don’t take kindly to a face smashing. Even my necro who does pretty well in double dagger melee has to be quite careful when choosing to enter the melee arena. Otherwise I can go from full HP to no HP in a very short time.

With that said, the primarily ranged classes would greatly benefit from being able to outwit their opponents just as they can in WvW or SPvP. I often find myself already attacking from a significant range from my opponent and I end up pulling farther and farther back or in a radius around what I’m fighting. In which case what I’m fighting says, NOPE! They auto-regen and path back to their starting area forcing me to * sigh * and play by their rules. Endlessly dodging and running in circles around my opponent when I could otherwise simply prevent them from reaching me in the first place.

Continued…

Furthermore, when you engage in a fight the person/monster will quickly run back to its original location as soon as it feels you’re violating the ‘out of my aggro area’ rule. BUT! If you are near death and running away from a person/monster suddenly the aggro rule becomes, “YOU WILL DIE NOW if I have to chase you to the end of the earth!” So basically they can run away from you and auto-regen path back to their location but if you run away from them near death their aggro area doubles or triples. Why?

An example:
About 30 minutes ago I was fighting inquest by myself on my necro, no one else around. I entered the inquest lab and was swarmed by a half dozen or more inquest and ran out of endurance immediately dodging AoE. I knew I was out gunned and headed for the exit. I made it outside but the inquest I had just killed outside had respawned and were chasing me down. I switched to shroud mode and back, slowed the inquest down with cripple, etc. I got pretty far away and this one inquest won’t let me go as I’m almost in downed now. I go into downed mode. I start drawing his HP to heal myself but he’s ranged and doing a good bit more damage to me than I’m taking away from him to heal myself. I cast fear on him hoping to give myself enough time to use my #4 heal ability but it was useless because the fear cast lasted all of 2 seconds. But there was another issue altogether. He was now out of range of my #1 ability but he could still hit me. Why?! Needless to say I died.

So let’s review.

• You are penalized for not staying within your opponents invisible aggro area.
• Yet it seems the game recognizes when you are badly injured and punitively chases you to the ends of the earth to kill you for your insolence! Sounds like a double standard to me!
• Spawn rate is way too high in many areas!

I reported that issue ages ago. Also this is a big issue underwater, due to apparent pathing issues, but not only that.
Yesterday i was aggroed by a crab in queensdale, that crab was invulnerable all the time, but still managed to damage me and even kept following me onto ground, it was invulnerable all the time, and i had to flee the area so it would leave me alone.

Actually what you mentioned is part of a quest where you have to trap the crabs. They made them invulnerable because the only way to complete the quest is to trap them, not kill them.

I had a slight issue with that quest the first time as well until I figured that out. But yes other creatures will go immune if they can’t get to you in order to deal damage. Being practically unable to outwit creatures with strategies other than mashing button combos and dodging is a bit annoying.

Thanks for your reply.

I completely agree with you.

As an Elementalist, I often try to attack enemies from an elevated position so I don’t get face-rolled, but I’m usually met with “INVULNERABLE” popping off the enemy instead of damage. It’s an extremely annoying mechanic and I don’t know why it’s even there.

Exactly. I may have forgotten to mention that. It’s a game mechanic that makes no sense to me and I don’t understand its placement within combat. I highly doubt there’s a legitimate reason when it comes to pure combat sensibility as to why enemies auto-regen when they leave their small combat area or become invulnerable because they’re having a hissy.

Also, engaging an enemy, have them retaliate, you take damage, THEN once they’re at half HP….they decide to auto-regen and go back to their spawn. It’s a big time waster and definitely one of my few but big gripes about the game.

Attacking mobs when they can’t hit back is usually considered an exploit.

I do agree with you though

In conventional MMO’s I would agree that is how it is considered. However, this is supposed to be an MMO that “defies existing conventions.” I figured this would be a good place to improve.

Many enemies have ranged abilities in which case I don’t see how it should be considered an exploit. Although for the ranged creatures I’m pretty sure they don’t go immune since they can hit you back most of the time.

But why you would be penalized for taking advantage of your surroundings I don’t understand. If it’s not done in single player games then why do it in the MMO when it doesn’t adversely affect other players?

Even still you’ll hardly be able to employ sneaky tactics against all your opponents because as frequently as you get to utilize your surroundings to your own benefit, you also don’t always have that option depending on the terrain and type of enemy.

The “I’m invincible” option just feels cheap in an MMO that otherwise flaunts its classiness in the genre.

Attacking from high places was actually encouraged in GW1 as a smart tactic and even rewarded with higher damage for arrows and thrown weapons. This game seems designed to reward mindless fast button mashing instead of smart tactics. Taking the high ground has always been considered a good combat tactic. Rather than making the critters in the valley invulnerable which is a rather lame thing to do, improve the AI so they either move to cover or run away. Or don’t put them there in the first place.

That’s interesting. I either didn’t notice this or was simply unaware. I played GW1 but only made it to level 15-20 or so. Maybe it’s a game mechanic that didn’t feel very pronounced because it seems intuitive for it to be there in the first place, to me anyway.

This issue seems to be getting progressively more annoying. The points made in the OP are all valid and some changes on ANet’s part are really needed.

I disagree on all points.

1. “You are penalized for not staying within your opponents invisible aggro area.”

ArenaNet should raise the aggro range but if there is no aggro area, it can lead to abuse or exploiting. If I can get all enemies to aggro to this glitchy spot, I can decrease the amount of enemies on this area. Therefore no one can kill anything because they get invulnerable.

2. “Yet it seems the game recognizes when you are badly injured and punitively chases you to the ends of the earth to kill you for your insolence! Sounds like a double standard to me!”

I like this. It seems silly that the enemy would let you go when you are dying. It is a free kill for them. Although I never experienced this since I am the one tearing them apart.

3. “Spawn rate is way too high in many areas!”

I think the Spawn rate is fine to me. I tear the enemy apart way too fast and I don’t see many enemies when I leave. However, if the spawn rate is too low, zergs can tear the place apart and I won’t get any kills to complete my heart.

Rofl, you’re not going to pull me into a troll match. You’re the first person I’ve come across to disagree with one or more of my points and the way in which you went about your response tells me you’re not serious about discussing the issues.

“I’m too good, I just steam roll everything in the area so I don’t worry about spawn rate. It’s fine just how it is.”

Except it’s not even how Anet advertised their MMO in the Manifesto. It goes against their basic principals.

I’m of these opinions:

1. Yeah, it’s fairly annoying when even in melee, I’ve ran into mobs that just want to say, “Hold on, I wasn’t ready.” or “I bet you can’t do that much damage a second time” and decide to repath to their spawn point. An easy fix would be similar to waht I say in GW1 when you could attack a mob that really did have no chance to damage you back, run away. It makes sense in a common sense standpoint and should avoid a possible concern to aggro mobs into an area (like what runeblade mentioned), but farm them instead. They run away, and continue to run away until you can’t hit them any more. Then the natural rejuvenation takes over and things are otherwise reset.

2. I do think mobs should chase after one close to death, but they should also realize when they’ve left home. Once they’ve gone a certain distance from their spawn point, they should turn back to avoid a “real world” fear of being ambushed on the pursuit.

3. Here I think the spawn rate is mostly fine. Sometimes I feel it’s a bit too quick, but runeblade has a valid point on timing. Too fast and it overwhelms the player(s), too slow and event x may take too long.

Basically, just change the invuln. and repath into reverse aggro. Have the mob run away until the mob either doesn’t take damage, or until the player moves into attack range/-ability.

I wouldn’t have an issue with the aggro area and auto-pathing back if it weren’t a double standard.

Why is it a double standard?

When a monster whines about the way I engage them in combat they get to go immune and run all the way back to where they came from, usually dragging me with them since my original intention is for them to be dead.

When I’m injured and I know I need to get away to recoup suddenly their programming changes and they will go the ‘extra mile’ to see me dead on the ground. Me? I can’t go immune and run away from combat, yet all of my opponents can? Double standard. Not to mention when they’re out of range of my abilities in downed state yet they can still successfully hit me? That’s a definite problem.

I understand why monsters are locked into specific areas and that they can’t run all over Tyria but their aggro area is still fairly small and I see no valid reason why it shouldn’t be increased. I also don’t think that because some players could abuse the system the entire player base should be punished for this through the way the combat mechanics work.

If this is a serious issue with exploitation abuse then it can be addressed in other ways than making the combat system a double standard and a complete nuisance.

I had not run into anyone until today who thought the respawn rate didn’t need adjusting because it was too quick. However, I should note that the respawn rate is too quick only in certain instances which should be reasonably obvious, maybe not.

For example, if you run in a group then no, you probably wouldn’t notice the annoyance with the quick respawn rate because you’re able to kill a wider variety of creatures at one time increasing the duration before they respawn one by one. Most groups will kill off an area and move on before they see many creatures respawn but that doesn’t mean they don’t respawn within 20 seconds after you leave.

The real issue when this is noticeable is when soloing in an area where there’s few to no other players around. You could probably kill 2-3 monsters before you see the ones you just killed reappear. But I have seen monsters, sometimes, respawn within seconds of being killed. Whether this is intentional or not I don’t know.

Also this respawn rate issue may vary depending on the class of character you play. I’ve noticed that with my warrior, while the issue still exists, it’s much less noticeable. The warrior in my opinion is the easiest character to play both in stats and combat mechanics. Other characters, wearing light armor and specializing in ranged combat are at a much more significant advantage.

So to say this simply isn’t a problem from one perspective is shallow. There have been times when soloing where I have killed all of the minions of a veteran or two and then taken on the vets. But before I can completely take the vets down their minions respawn making the fight twice as difficult because now I’m not just having to dodge one or two but a half dozen. On some characters, like my warrior, this problem may seem insignificant, but on others it is not.

Now you might ask why am I soloing in an MMO? Because sometimes I like to. I do spend a majority of my time probably playing with others but the game is supposed to be able to handle both solo and grouped players. It’s a set of features Anet has boasted about, scaling.

- So to end this post, this is an issue that can’t be looked at from one angle.

I dont know about you guys but being a low hp squishy caster, I feel the effects of this “chase you to the death” mode more than most. And it is exceedingly annoying when the mobs chase you over what appears to be an insanely long distance.

Another thing. I suspect that mobs are programmed to fixate on whoever has the lowest hp. In boss fights often I have noticed sometimes that one player becomes “it”, and the boss mob will just continue chasing that one player round and round until either one dies. If you res that player, or if that player respawns at a wp and come back, he will still have aggro. Not sure if this is a bug or just bad AI.