Guild Wars 2

Greetings!

In the spirit of ‘top 5’ lists that seem to be all the rage today, here’s my list of things that I think GW2 needs to stop doing. I preface this by saying that I don’t expect everyone or even anyone to agree with me; this is not an ultimatum, it’s an opinion.

1) Stop changing my targets. I’m not talking about losing sight of a mob during a tumble or roll, or even if a mob tunnels; that’s understandable if also silly. I mean that in the middle of a battle, with a continuous attack and an unmoving target, the game will often drop my target or even switch it to a completely different mob for no reason at all. This needs to stop.

2) Stop moving my character. If I’m facing a particular way when I stop to mine or gather than that’s the way I want to be facing when I’m done. Annoying as it is when a game won’t let you do something unless you you’re at the proper distance and facing the proper direction, I would rather have that happen than to press a directional button only to have my character spin around and run a different way because the game for some bizarre takes control and forces it.

Likewise, if I hit dodge backwards than that’s the way I want to go, and I honestly don’t care which way the character is facing at the time. In the middle of a mass melee when you’re lucky to be able to see the ground in front of you and have enemies knocking you around like a golf ball, moving a character in the direction it’s facing regardless of what direction key is use is stupid.

3) Stop letting mobs do things players can’t do. There are too many examples of this to list, so I’ll just use my top choice: if I can’t kick a mob off of a cliff and watch it fall to its death, then there is no way that a mob should be able to do that to me. If they have invisible guardrails, then the players should have them too.

4) Stop giving mobs permanent buffs. Sure, if you have something that’s the size of an elephant it’s logical that it has a ton of stability bonuses, but don’t but a 5 foot Sylvari in front of me who weighs maybe 150 soaking wet and tell me that he is absolutely immune to crowd control. If the mobs can get a 10 hour stability buff, the players should have one too. Saying that the mobs need this sort of thing to compensate for their limited AI demonstrates nothing but poor design, just as giving boss mobs a truckload of health does nothing but make the fight more tedious. In just about every game I’ve ever played the devs all assume that more health = more challenge when in fact it means nothing but useless boredom.

5) Stop giving mobs abilities that players don’t have. If a boss mob can teleport at will and spam AE attacks with almost no cooldown between them players should be able to do it too. In that same vein, there should never be a mob ability that players have no remedy for, and that includes being able to spam knockdown attacks so rapidly that no ability lineup can handle it. Saying, ‘that class is tanky’ when it can be knocked down, stunned, dazed, rooted, and basically kicked around like a soccer ball is silly; more health does not equal tanky. When a class has the ability to ignore knockdowns and stuns, then it’s a tank. At the very least stability needs to be a percentage for some classes that can be trained up to or very near 100% and not a 2 second ability with a 90 second cooldown trying to cope with spam that happens every 5 seconds for minutes on end.

Also, there needs to be an immunity timer for every knockdown, stun, daze, blind, or what-the-heck-ever so that debuffs can’t be chained or stacked. It is absolutely not acceptable under any circumstances to have a player stand around with his or her thumb up their butt as their characters are killed without being able to respond because of CC lockdowns by multiple mobs.

I could go on but this is probably sufficient flame fodder for now; I want to reiterate that these are opinions, not demands. Your mileage may obviously vary.

BB!
C

I agree- but I will add stop giving us useless NPCs that can do things 200000 times better than our own profession can- like Kasmeer casting 3 timewarps seconds apart.
Or Countess Anise casting 10 illusions while mesmer can only cast 3.

1. Have you turned off your auto target in options?
3. This is a necessary evil. You could trivialize half the encounters in the game knocking NPCs off cliffs. You wouldn’t even have to fight them, just have a necro with fear and boom all 7 guys you’re fighting are dead. Might be fun for you but what about the other seven guys that don’t then get a chance to hit them. It would provide far too much opportunity for grief.
5. Bosses should have skills players don’t have. They were called Monster only skills in Guild Wars 1. I don’t know why it shouldn’t be that way.

Times were better when mobs had the same skills as players.

Now they are just generic mmo monsters.

blakdoxa.7520:

Times were better when mobs had the same skills as players.

Now they are just generic mmo monsters.

I liked it in GW with the release of Nightfall and the mobs having some of the same builds that we used and the Bosses had the Monster skills also. The mobs also consisted of different “types” of builds. Some were healers, some tanks, some CC, some interupters, etc. Made for a much more fun game.

@Vayne

re #3: I’m not saying we should be able to knock them off cliffs, I’m saying that if we can’t, they shouldn’t either. One or the other.

As for #5, you can call the skills whatever you want and I don’t care if they’re exclusive, what I care about is that mobs can do things players can’t counter. Damage is damage and CC is CC, but if they do something we can’t we need to be able to respond appropriately.

Also, to add another: GW2 needs to take the time to scale instances to the class and number of players entering them, even if that means you can’t have a new player join the group without restarting the instance. I’m getting sick of having a storyline encounter that is easy for one class but kicks the spit out of another, as well as instances that are on level and still next to impossible to do. When an encounter is nothing but an endless string of deaths to whittle down one mob, it’s time to scale the difficulty.

BB!
C

last one makes no sense…the whole idea of bosses is to have abilities players don’t…isn’kitten That’s why they’re hard.

Cionn.3415:

@Vayne

re #3: I’m not saying we should be able to knock them off cliffs, I’m saying that if we can’t, they shouldn’t either. One or the other.

As for #5, you can call the skills whatever you want and I don’t care if they’re exclusive, what I care about is that mobs can do things players can’t counter. Damage is damage and CC is CC, but if they do something we can’t we need to be able to respond appropriately.

Also, to add another: GW2 needs to take the time to scale instances to the class and number of players entering them, even if that means you can’t have a new player join the group without restarting the instance. I’m getting sick of having a storyline encounter that is easy for one class but kicks the spit out of another, as well as instances that are on level and still next to impossible to do. When an encounter is nothing but an endless string of deaths to whittle down one mob, it’s time to scale the difficulty.

BB!
C

Okay so I just disagree with you about point 3, then. I do think it’s okay to give creatures skills and abilities we don’t have. That game is too easy now to begin with. You start making this a thing and it’ll be laughable. Being knocked off is another think you have to watch for.

The entire purpose of this kind of game is to give you encounters you need to react to and think about. It’s a pretty small ask.