Guild Wars 2

Hi! I was chatting with Gaile earlier today in game (You are welcome for the daily JP port, Gaile! ) and She suggested I come here, and post. I was trying to plant the seed… how does everyone feel about developing aerial/gliding combat for all of Tyria? I was so pleasantly pleased when Bloodstone Fen was released, with it’s learn-able/buy-able gliding skills… and thoroughly disappointed with the lack of those abilities for the next 3 LS3 releases. well, except the updraft use, specifically for attacking cannons in Lake Doric. I know it would be a large undertaking, but developing aerial combat would bring a whole new dimension to the central Tyria maps. My thinking is mainly this: – I HATE how, even in Central Tyria, any ground based ranged enemy can target, and HIT you while you are in the air, but you can’t do anything about it…. short of dodge-stealthing and hope they don’t stun you out of gliding.

My suggestions include:
a gliding bomb drop skill, that will stun an enemy back.

we have underwater weapons, maybe develop aerial weapons? ranged equip-able weapons that pop out when you glide, so you can target, and attack enemies from the air.

a specific “gunship” glider… something ascended that you build. similar to spinal blades in nature, that employ mounted weapons that can be used while gliding.

You could add this new unlock as a current event, or playable story, or collections similar to making a Legendary… or consider it a Legendary Glider…. or as simple as everyone gets one, and just make it a part of gliding in general.

anyone else on board with this, or am I crazy? Move this post to where ever it fits best. I tried searching for Aerial combat, and couldn’t find anything similar.

Thanks for listening, Anet!

There’s already something similar for The Shatterer in Open World PvE, so I can see it happening all over Core Tyria as well.

Caveat: I have no idea the amount of work it would entail, or what resources it would take from other, more important areas of development.

I have no real objection to widening the use of the current aerial mastery, although that might risk gating an (albeit entirely optional) part of combat behind both HoT and LS3 for newer players.

As for an all new combat system, I would expect it would had to have been incorporated from the original glider design onwards, although again I’m against the idea. In fact it would gel nicely with idea of airship combat that has been suggested in the past. Glider combat would allow you to dive off your Guild Airship and strafe and bomb and zap from the air individually whilst airship cannons blaze around you.

Of course, that is entirely fanciful and would require insane resources to implement no doubt, but one can dream/imagine

I’d be fine with it in HoT, LS3, and any newer zones. But the older zones are (and I HATE to say this) fine as they are. Yes, it’s annoying that they can hit you while you can’t hit back, but you’re dealing with targets not designed for dealing with gliding in the first place. If you can fight them from the air, they’ll be painfully outclassed and in need of reworking/rebalancing. We simply can’t do that for the entire old world area.

Now, with that said… It’s really mindbreaking that we can’t fight from the air in most areas. Let’s be honest, what’s the first thing a charr or asura would do once they had a glider? Right, mount some kind of weapon onto it. Humans and norn wouldn’t be far behind. And you can’t say it’s too difficult to glide AND fight when we do both in other areas.

As long as its the same aerial skills in BF (to make them feel more worthwhile to buy), I’d be all for it.

I don’t know about aerial weapons specifically, but I would like to see profession specific gliding abilities introduced as long as it didn’t utilise class mechanics (so no mesmer clones/phantasms/shatters, no necromancer shroud etc.). That would be my dream. However they do already have gliding abilities in place, so they at least have a base to work with already.

I’m for the idea and I hope they implement it in some way, but I’m not sure exactly how feasible it is (cost efficiency, balance and all that).

I think they would have to rework all the old mobs to counter that, otherwise people would just perma-glide and grind them down. I did that a few days ago in Bloodstone Fen on a champion, using the bouncing mushroom to get into the air, shoot at it until I land on the mushroom again, and so on, until it was done. It had no chance to hit me except the short moment it takes for the new jump.

We would do that to the Legendary Wyvern in Verdant Brink and lots of others.

It sure is possible, but there are a lot of things that have to be changed to balance it.

I, too, feel like this makes more sense going forward than retrofitted onto everything up to this point. Adding anti-air defenses is possible, but it just kind of works better if you design battles from the start to have that element.

I think I would be more excited about aerial dogfights though – i.e. areas, perhaps in the next expansion, where you’re fighting against other things that fly too and can fight back. In order for updraft use not to be a complete blocker (otherwise you’ll eventually fall), you could always just give people really big griffons as mounts just for that area.

I like this idea.

I have no idea how it would work or how they would balance it, but I like it none the less.