Guild Wars 2

I have been thinking about how the combat in this game can be more challenging, strategic, and promote more build diversity, and I think I’ve come up with some simple, fundamental changes that can make this happen. Now, I don’t know whether these should be implemented game wide, or for an optional “hard mode”, as some of the player demographic might not like these changes if they were implemented globally.

1. Dodge roll doesn’t make you invincible. Dodge roll would be used for getting away from incoming damage, not for allowing anyone to stand in damage. I’m specifically thinking of the current strategy most speed groups use for the Subject Alpha fight. With this change, players would have to actually think to maneuver around the fight, instead of just all dodging 1.5-2 seconds after the AoE circles appear. My inspiration for this came after playing Monster Hunter. In that game you have to get out of the way of giant monster’s attacks with the dodge roll, because you can still get hit and sent flying mid dodge. I’m not sure whether this style of dodge roll would work well in this game or not, but I believe it is worth a try.

2. If every member of a group dies in an instance, then all members are kicked out and they have to try again. This would discourage the current meta of everyone running berzerker gear with no support and stacking on the enemy. With this change there would be a much greater risk of using this strategy because if something goes wrong everyone can be dead really fast and the whole instance would have to be restarted. This would encourage more use of support and tank builds.

3. Don’t allow skills or weapons to be changed once an instance is started. This would discourage running through content, since most builds can’t be effective at both running and doing damage. This would also encourage more strategizing before entering an instance, since different people would have to get set up for different roles at the beginning. This would be especially true if this were implemented with #2.

4. Take waypoints out of instances. Combined with #2 this would make for interesting and tactical plays to try and res someone who died in a difficult spot. This also discourages running through content, since the risk of someone dying in a bad spot is much greater when running. However, there would have to be a way to discourage pug groups from kicking the player who died and finding someone else who could enter fully alive. Also, the issue of mesmer portals would have to be addressed. These changes could encourage groups to require a mesmer to run through content and portal them.

5. Don’t allow players to leave an instance and come back. This is required for #2 and #3 to work at all. Right now players can go to town to use commodities, like armor repair, from fractals, where you are only meant to repair after a full set. It would also stop players from switching characters during an instance which would help encourage strategizing beforehand. Of course there needs to be an exception for allowing players to rejoin after a disconnect, but they should somehow be kept from going back to town or changing characters. Otherwise people could pull the ethernet cable from their computers to force a disconnect so they can repair.

6. Allow collision between enemies and players. This allows for tanking strategies to actually work without a taunt system. If enemies can be body blocked on a corner of a wall, then they can be held there by a tank. This allows for more varied group strategy and composition.

I know there was a goal in this game to remove the holy trinity so that groups don’t have to rely on any one class for anything. That goal has mostly been achieved. My Necromancer can do damage, heal/support and tank. I’m not as familiar with every other class, but I’m confident they can all be set up for every role as well. Currently the game has removed the holy trinity all together and replaced it with the Monarchy of the Berzerker. All the content can be completed with 5 of any class running berzerker gear in a stacking formation, using the principle of kill before you are killed. Defensive builds have no role in PvE currently. This lack of diversity in builds and strategies has made the game boring and stale for a lot of players, and I believe changes along the lines of what I have proposed can help to change that.

Most of these changes were inspired after thinking about Guild Wars and what made the content in places like Fissure of Woe and Underworld so fun and rewarding. (In before the speed run counter point: I’m talking about earlier in the game before speed runs were a thing and balanced groups could spend all night having fun together clearing the place.) Specifically I was trying to think of why we never even thought of running through enemies to get to quest objectives there. I’m thinking it was because the risk of failure was too high, and we couldn’t build to survive the run and be able to fight later. We couldn’t waypoint or res ourselves, we couldn’t change builds once inside, and we couldn’t leave and come back on a different character. So we had to kill everything that was in our way, and we had fun doing it. Also, even the “trash mobs” had a chance to drop valuable loot that was unique to the instance, which was the whole reason we were there. FoW and UW continued to be my favorite places for both group and solo content long after all the expansions were released. Guild Wars 2 has yet to offer me content that gives me a similar experience and bring about similar emotions.

Also, as a side note to go along with the goal of not requiring any specific class for group content, there is an issue with some class specific skills. But this is a little out of the scope of this post, so I’ll try to keep it brief. Some of these changes could make people rely on mesmers to portal them through content. If we want to encourage people to fight their way through instances, instead of running from boss to boss, then mesmer portals need to be addressed somehow. I don’t have a solution for that, short of removing them or making them useless, but I believe that should be avoided. Also, certain mechanics, like projectile reflection and stealth are much more useful and valued higher than other mechanics. The problem is that only certain classes can use these mechanics, which encourages groups to require and value certain classes over others. I don’t have a good solution for this issue either. I don’t think that reflection should be removed or rendered useless, but I don’t think it should be given to every class either as that muddles the lines that make each class unique. In short, these two mechanics specifically go against the stated goal of Guild Wars 2 to not encourage groups to require any specific class in order to complete content.

2. So you spend a few hours in a dungeon being careful and you get bad luck on the final boss and all wipe to get kicked out. That would personally kitten me off. I don’t know about others.

3. So as an elementalist I can’t have a 2nd weapon set in my inventory to swap into when keeping range is critical? How many dungeons out there have a part where ranged is king and a part where melee is king? You’re solution will mean any class that doesn’t have the ability to swap weapons like the warriors do aren’t wanted if all of your suggestions are put in place.

4. So the one player who falls off and doesn’t die but can’t get back up is hosed? Can’t waypoint up and no one can get him up unless one of the other party members is a mesmer and they can get to where the player is and happens to have or able & willing to get the portal skill?

5. So the player whose power blips and they lose connection can’t get back in? I’d be kitten ed if that happened 2 seconds before the final boss got killed.

6. That would require too much reworking of things and grief on jumping puzzles where people are high enough to fall to their death. Players would push players off of the ledge just to cause them trouble.

Your ideas sound good on paper, but the solutions provided won’t promote build variety and will cause problems. Now, if they implement a hard mode dungeon with greater rewards, then I’m all for all but #6 (just because that one would affect more than just dungeons).

Like I said, not all of these should be implemented for all content.

2. That is a valid criticism, but some people like that element to the challenge.

3. Maybe swapping weapons should be allowed, but not utilities. Maybe an elementalist needs to consider the encounters in the instance they are entering and decide whether it is more important to have the range when they need it or whether they can stay melee the whole time. Perhaps the other party members can compensate for when the encounter is out of range for the ele, or the whole strategy could be reconsidered.

4. This needs to be addressed in the level design. Points of no return should either not be accessible, or should kill you and teleport your body to someplace accessible like in many dungeons where there is lava.

5. I did mention that players who disconnect should be able to join back in, but they shouldn’t be able to abuse that to access commodities not available in the instance.

6. I didn’t necessarily intend on this change to affect pvp. I’m not even sure if this change should affect open world content either. It works best in small group instanced content. Although this did bring an interesting element to pvp in GW1. I don’t think it would be appropriate in WvW because of the shear numbers. However, it could create interesting lines of skirmish that you don’t see right now. Currently when two zergs meet they run straight through each other trying to do as much damage through the ranks as they can. If collision was turned on between enemies then heavies could hold the front line while mid lines and back lines nuke the other side. But that is a discussion for another day. Also, lets not discuss how much reworking anything needs. We don’t have enough insight on how the game is made to make that call, and bringing up technical limitations too early in the creative process stifles creativity.

2. Some people do and they can manually implement that design on their own. No need to force on it on the people who do not want that level of difficulty.

3. Utility swapping I can see except for Fractals since it’s random. It’s one thing to do it for a regular dungeon where you know what you’re going up against. But fractals you don’t. And since we elementalists can’t switch during combat we already have to do what you say. I tend to run staff in dungeons since for me, range is best since I haven’t quite perfected moving while fighting.

4. If the redesigned dungeons one could argue for it, I suppose. But as it stands now, the levels aren’t designed for it.

5. Fair enough but how are you going to differentiate between the player who lost power due to a power surge vs the player who purposely turns his power off via power cord or button? Or purposely cuts their internet? It would be too problematic to stop the people who abuse it just to implement something that would make dungeons out of the realm of possibility even for a group of very determined casuals, which in regular dungeons can repair while in there without having to have the instant repair cans.

6. The thing is, it’s probably something that’s either in all areas or no areas. Due to the mechanics of it.

Plus, not to mention that ANet doesn’t want any major differences between races so that would make that hard to implement given the size differences between Charr and Asuran.

Not bringing it up early lets people get really attached to a particular idea when it would not be feasible and time could be better spent on other ideas.

Like I said, your idea sound good. But we already have a sense of dungeon players being elitist and making the dungeons harder will only make that issue worse, either in actuality or the perception of it.

Adding a hard mode that would take your ideas and run with them, could possibly revitalize dungeons if the rewards were actually decent to the effort.

Yeah, I don’t know whether these ideas can or should be implemented in current content. Adding a hard mode to current dungeons that implement these ideas would probably be prefered over changing what is currently there. Making new content that would be based off of these ideas would also be a good route. I purposefully used the term instance instead of dungeon because I didn’t necessarily mean that this should be implemented in current content.

5. The thing is you wouldn’t have to differentiate. As soon as a player who has disconnected comes back, they should load into the instance, instead of loading into wherever they entered the instance from originally with a prompt waiting for them to enter with. The latter allows them to do whatever they want before they accept the prompt. This way the system cannot be abused.

6. Again that cannot be determined without knowing how the game is coded. I’ll leave it up to the ArenaNet engineers to determine what is and isn’t possible. But I’m sure that it would be possible to design a system with different rules for different zones on how collision is applied. Also, the collision issues that the different sized races provide have already been taken care of. They already had to deal with them getting hit with AoE and projectiles equally, for example.