Guild Wars 2

TLDR Give monsters player quality skills that do more than just damage Cleaving attacks and combo fields. In new challenge mode content. Do not be afraid of the QQ it will bring about.

Two parts: Part 1 why GW1 combat was fun and stayed fun and Part 2 how to apply this to GW2 for new difficult but fair content.

It finally dawned on me why GW1>GW2 combat stayed fun in PvE and PvP while GW2 already is stale. In GW1 enemies used the same skills available to players. In difficult zones enemies had skill bars with great synergy. Best Examples found late GW1 in Slavers Exile, White Mantle, and ministry of Purity.

Small examples of how GW1 AI was dangerous: Enemies did not stand in AoE for more than 3 seconds if not body blocked. Melee enemies would not all attack the same target. If enemy had a knock down skill they would chain it rather than spam that skill for no effect. sometimes knocking down half the party for 6-8 seconds in the right conditions.

Part 2

Simple Example: In PvP you do not stack on your enemies here is why. Player skill auto attacks often cleave and cause various other effects where as current AI Skills rarely do.

Below a few thought experiment with just one enemy with player skill sets, to show how giving AI good skills even player ones would improve the game. You are against a pack of Ham-Bow Veterans. You decide to stack against them around a corner, but these have skills similar to warriors players. Your party gets repetitively hit by Earth shakers in fire fields. Your party is constantly being stunned inside fire fields while the Ham-Bows are building might and putting the hurt. You are punished for using bad tactics Vs. a enemy pack with skill synergy.

This scenario gets more complex as you give Ham-Bow Veterans all the skills players

have and even more complex if they get certain traits. What if they had Balanced and Berserker stance coupled with endure pain and defiant stance. Players spiking down Ham-Bow with extreme burst no longer workers. Zerker party with stability attempts to stack and spike Ham-Bow pack Ham-Bows use endure pain and over power your party with raw area of effect damage causing death, forced scatter. Your zerker party is smart and does not stand in damage while Ham-Bow have Endure Pain. It is time to attempt another spike on the Ham-Bow you corner them again and Burst them down but they use Defiant Stance to heal back to full you face palm and burn your last defensive cool downs to burst down the Ham-Bows for good.

Your party has learned a great deal from fighting against these Ham-Bow Veterans and you meet another pack. This time your party strips their stability and activates its own stability around a corner the Ham-Bows rush, using your own stuns and damage skills. The Ham-Bow were unable to shoot their fire fields and their CC was not effective. The Ham-Bows activate their defensive cool down you are forced to play defensively for a few seconds. You stack and this time do not burst but throttle your damage to not trigger defiant stance healing. The Ham-Bows have used all their tricks and get burst you win a rewarding battle that involved tactics, awareness, skill synergy and positioning.

Battles get even more complex if enemies have skill bars of multiple classes and builds in one group.

You meet a monster pack containing: A couple of Ham-Bows and a Hammer guardian and Greatsword Guardian and a couple of melee necromancers with wells and a pull skill. Your party decides to use the tried and true stack method they developed before against the pack. To their surprise they wipe. The Necromancer well of corruption removed all your boons the Hammer guard trapped your entire party inside a bubble. With nowhere to escape trapped in fire fields, symbols and frequent CC. Your Party crumbles. Your party decides it is suicidal to stack and using a combination of melee and ranged attacks you come out victorious even though the a few people got downed because they got pulled in and spiked by your enemies you were able to rez them with your rallying skills.

Fallout of creating well designed encounters:

You thought wow that was a fun engaging difficult fight that forced me to use every tool available to me to be victorious. You log into the forum to see other peoples opinions. You see 5 different thread how OP the new challenge modes are everyone is crying for a nerf. The dungeon forum regulars still say the game is too easy and zerker gear is still the best. They somehow are still able to stack frequently and kill the new OP monsters in record times. The solo players attempt to solo this content in an attempt to sell it for profit but are incapable due to the varied strong skill bars and lack of dodge or die bosses that they are used to memorizing patterns of, they keep trying and fail because compulsory fights have too many abilities for one person to avoid while still being able to out DPS their healing skills.

Solo farmers decide there is no profit in selling these dungeons compared to selling Arah. Regular groups begin to say the zone is not rewarding enough and stop playing. SC community continues to run it from time to time. People who enjoy actual good content still play this zone becomes like how high level fractals is. Not super popular with some regulars that continue to play because they enjoy the content.

I read like one paragraph and decided it wasn’t worth reading the rest. Something about hambow veterans and learning from them or something.

All I know is that I still think of Hambow as a Ranger with a pig pet.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I read like one paragraph and decided it wasn’t worth reading the rest. Something about hambow veterans and learning from them or something.

My exact sentiments.

@OP: This game could use some actual challenging content, I agree, but the reality is the majority of the player base doesn’t want that. Most of the people want to log in, spam 1, collect their reward and log off. It’s a sad reality.

“In GW1 enemies used the same skills available to players. "

So do the GW2 mobs. I’m guessing you haven’t noticed. Most humanoid mobs have about 5 skills that are the same as class skills, or in many cases slight improvements. Most mobs will not cleanse conditions but conditions are not a problem in PvE at all.

cranked.3812:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I read like one paragraph and decided it wasn’t worth reading the rest. Something about hambow veterans and learning from them or something.

My exact sentiments.

@OP: This game could use some actual challenging content, I agree, but the reality is the majority of the player base doesn’t want that. Most of the people want to log in, spam 1, collect their reward and log off. It’s a sad reality.

If you read it through, the OP wrote this well aware of that. He means for content for the players who find the reward in the challenge rather than the reward.

Personally, I’d just like a few dungeons where you couldn’t play like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHQQ3ABebbw

Dual.8953:

cranked.3812:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I read like one paragraph and decided it wasn’t worth reading the rest. Something about hambow veterans and learning from them or something.

My exact sentiments.

@OP: This game could use some actual challenging content, I agree, but the reality is the majority of the player base doesn’t want that. Most of the people want to log in, spam 1, collect their reward and log off. It’s a sad reality.

If you read it through, the OP wrote this well aware of that. He means for content for the players who find the reward in the challenge rather than the reward.

Personally, I’d just like a few dungeons where you couldn’t play like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHQQ3ABebbw

OK, but what I said was the majority of the player base doesn’t want that. From anet’s perspective, they aren’t going to add content for a small section of people, most of which likely don’t spend money in the gem store to support the game anyway. (Not to mean that in a bad way) I don’t like it anymore than the next guy/gal here, but sadly, they aren’t likely to add said content any time soon, if ever.

How about mobs that los players instead of the other way around? Then they fgs them.

robertul.3679:

How about mobs that los players instead of the other way around? Then they fgs them.

l0l this made me laugh irl.

I’m visualizing a charr warrior in full CoF with a rifle getting FGS rushed by Subject Alpha and it’s a really satisfying image.

during scarlet LA invasion, the elite blade charr did that to me… 5 times

THEY DO IT!!!!!!!

I have been LoS’ed by open world mobs.

and… AND, “firey rushed” by that kitten able champion knight in malchors leap AGAINST THE WALL!!!!!!! needless to say i was utterly obliterated….

If they just gave normal mobs the AI of the class training dummies from PvP then dungeons would be much more fun.

I like the way you think, OP.

It’s fun to dream, isn’t .kittenbreak. it?

Groups of these guys and Flame Djin were a nightmare for VQ

Yes, pls.

Just make it a challenge mode. The people who don’t like hard content can do the normal things, the people that do can use the new mode

tl;dr: Monsters are easy, make them harder and more varied.

I agree.

I was playing LS: I noticed the new Inquest assassin enemies actually use thief skills. They use stealth and evading skills. I was on my warrior and was very annoyed how they were constantly dodging and blinding me at the same time impressed. I actually chose to just camp my axe for high hit frequency through blinds and ability to DPS while on the move. See complexity forces me to make decisions because monsters are doing reactive things. if I had a immobilize, zerker stance or longbow i could have dropped a fire field and immobilize and swapped to melee weapon to efficiently kill the assassins one by one.

What I am looking for is complexity. It is easy to make hard fights that are not complex. The game does not necessarily need to get harder although it may be a side effect of added complexity.

Complexity implies that there is no true one right answer to a encounter due to enemies having the capability to react to the player. If monsters had defensive cool downs, heals and skill synergies the path to victory can have deviations from the norm which would be good for the game. developers would not need to give them 100k HP because they are no longer punching bags but DANGEROUS foes. Fights become shorter but more heated.

Most important things we can gain. Control effects matter interrupting a heal or key skill increases your chance of success or speed of winning stopping 15k heal=deal 10k damage. Monster use of boons such as protection provide value to boons trips or condition builds. Support matters more because a team mate who gets focused will likely down if the party does not work together.

PS: Esurge spike was so lame from those roaring eathers. I always manually protted myself and a hero with some AoE interrupt to stop those big damage spikes

I just grenaded them all in place.

There’s a difference between “dynamic” mobs and “annoying mobs who constantly run away.” I don’t think anyone really wants the latter despite what they say.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I just grenaded them all in place.

There’s a difference between “dynamic” mobs and “annoying mobs who constantly run away.” I don’t think anyone really wants the latter despite what they say.

Isn’t that what the first implementation of the AI did, back in early beta, and everyone complained and so they changed it?

Yes, new mobs are annoying but guess what? I rather have this annoying mobs moving around than the ones we are used. I’m getting tired of fighting amoebas.

Mesket.5728:

Yes, new mobs are annoying but guess what? I rather have this annoying mobs moving around than the ones we are used. I’m getting tired of fighting amoebas.

Eventually these aren’t better. If you just stand still they come back to the meatgrinder. Losing ranged ones will do the same. Its just another smart move to please the phiw crowd with “challanging” mobs.

Dalanor.5387:

Mesket.5728:

Yes, new mobs are annoying but guess what? I rather have this annoying mobs moving around than the ones we are used. I’m getting tired of fighting amoebas.

Eventually these aren’t better. If you just stand still they come back to the meatgrinder. Losing ranged ones will do the same. Its just another smart move to please the phiw crowd with “challanging” mobs.

But in the meantime they dodge some of my attacks making me waste cool downs. I’m not saying they are velociraptors learning to open doors but at least they are not the mind numbing mobs we can just stand spamming 1.

They even gave us a nice canoe to LoS that group of assassin’s in the second instance, thanks ANet!

How do the Golems affect stacks? I’m curious. I’m sure you just Stability the cc one, but what about the Retal on the other one?

maxinion.8396:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I just grenaded them all in place.

There’s a difference between “dynamic” mobs and “annoying mobs who constantly run away.” I don’t think anyone really wants the latter despite what they say.

Isn’t that what the first implementation of the AI did, back in early beta, and everyone complained and so they changed it?

Yes that is exactly what happened. Now people forgot how dumb it was and want it back apparently.

Have you considered going back to PvP?