Guild Wars 2

It really depends on the class and setup honestly. As a mesmer main, I tend to go on auto pilot when I have to AoE (Sword, auto attack spam, blurred frenzy when it’s up. two rolls into leap to quickly shatter bomb. Mesmer AoE is terrible and mindless)

Actual battles as a mesmer on the other hand, with me taking illusion of life in teamplay, are typically chaotic, and transition styles and tactics based on the flow of battle constantly.

It’s deep when it wants to be, but honestly, some of the classes have moments where auto attacking is your best bet.

Honestly they should have a beta process and communicate with the community with patch progression. This way is rather rude and not working well.

Careful with the term autopilot that usually gets stuff nerfed. Because most developers say omg its that easy? And yep faceroll goes to oblivion if that is the case of it was.

I really think the lack of roles is what’s hurting the cooperative aspect of this game. It just doesn’t do anything for me to have such an important element of the genre homogenized into a casual-hand-holding design philosophy. I would really like to see a monk class introduced with a Cantha / Tengu Expansion…They could allow certain classes to have regeneration and protection and then the monk could directly heal, but would not have access to those buffs, but also had ways to integrate damage into the build, that way we would have more of a defined role for those who want to play healer without damaging the integrity of the system where you don’t NEED a healer to play. I think it would create more interesting team comps if they were to design and synergize classes based on skills. I just feel like the way this game is designed is a complete lazy cop-out to how they could have made it deeper and more engaging. They need to create more tangible, palpable options for players to specialize into and fix the buff / debuff system. Right now it’s just a clusterbomb, you mob up, every boon and their mother is on everyone, little to no strategy or depth to it. They tried too hard to remove the traditional feeling of the MMO and what we have is worse. By default, everything from encounters to content delivery suffers because they decided to remove a large bone from the genre without adequately replacing it.

Keep this topic on the front page, developers need to take a macroscope to the fundamentals of the gameplay.

We have 5 abilitys on each weapon or rather 4 since 1 is autoattack. Sure its great with linkers, finishers, crosscombo and all that. But we do need more unique abilitys and more abilitys per weapon, maybe 8-10 atleast. IMO

My suggestions for adding combat depth:

1) Adding more skills to each player’s skill pool.
2) Have conditions/boons last longer or have a greater impact.
3) Add a 3rd layer to combos… think Chronotrigger
4) Different combo interations… maybe combo fields could interact with each other.
5) Stronger environmental weapons
6) Diverse boss fight mechanics

So much props @Jsmooth for even typing Chronotrigger lol. But I agree something like a limit break mechanic would be awesome. Maybe even a actual stylish finish system would be in order.

nerva.7940:

Zeldain.5710:

I personally don’t think there’s enough practical depth.

my hammer guardian would like to disagree with you.
- slam fire field – 3 stacks of might
- slam dark – aoe blind
- slam ethereal – aoe chaos armor (overpowered)
- slam poison – aoe weakness
- slam water – regen

my ranger would like to disagree with you.
- shoot ethereal – several confusion stacks
- shoot ice – chill
- shoot water – regen
- shoot smoke – constant blindness

i can keep going. anyway, you could not do any of the above and it would not have a huge effect on the fight, but if you choose to do the combos, you will win faster and easier. make sense?

How is it you think that 5 abilities is depth? That is quite opposite unless you are playing a solo or console game. After reading so many posts on here, it leads me to believe that GW2 is a lot of folks first MMO.

Keep in mind, that is 5 abilities for 80 levels. You won’t do much more than that….forever.

nofo.8469:

It’s not particularly bad, its designed for solo play and it is far from revolutionary.

The classes vary a lot in terms of depth of play, but even the more complex classes aren’t overly deep.

Not so much I run alot of dungeons and YES it is built in a way that serviceability is left much more to each player in this game than in many others, the group I run with has all built there characters to play off of each other’s strength and weekness’s.

and were we can still servive and do well in pugs We crush and face role when we run together.

we know each other’s abuilatys and we trate and gear in such a way to play off each other

ZaiTh.6378:

nerva.7940:

Zeldain.5710:

I personally don’t think there’s enough practical depth.

my hammer guardian would like to disagree with you.
- slam fire field – 3 stacks of might
- slam dark – aoe blind
- slam ethereal – aoe chaos armor (overpowered)
- slam poison – aoe weakness
- slam water – regen

my ranger would like to disagree with you.
- shoot ethereal – several confusion stacks
- shoot ice – chill
- shoot water – regen
- shoot smoke – constant blindness

i can keep going. anyway, you could not do any of the above and it would not have a huge effect on the fight, but if you choose to do the combos, you will win faster and easier. make sense?

How is it you think that 5 abilities is depth? That is quite opposite unless you are playing a solo or console game. After reading so many posts on here, it leads me to believe that GW2 is a lot of folks first MMO.

Keep in mind, that is 5 abilities for 80 levels. You won’t do much more than that….forever.

people seem to forget how grouping and group play work in this game, and why exactly the game is balanced for 5 player combat.

your stronger as a group ((not just because of DPS)) skills play off of each other and you have to facter that into your build ((who your playing with and What there running))

as a warrior should i really be useing Frenzy if i get grouped with to mezzmers each useing that time vortex thing

ZaiTh.6378:

How is it you think that 5 abilities is depth? That is quite opposite unless you are playing a solo or console game. After reading so many posts on here, it leads me to believe that GW2 is a lot of folks first MMO.

Keep in mind, that is 5 abilities for 80 levels. You won’t do much more than that….forever.

It’s not so much the number of abilities you have but rather the number of options you have to consider. For example, my friend was yelling at me for not doing a blast finisher in his smoke field to set him up for a stealth stomp in a WvW skirmish.

I played EQ2 for years, by the way, which has dozens and dozens of abilities for each class., but more abilities does not necessarily mean more depth.

I made a whole reddit post about this, suggested the ability to add different auto attack weapon skills and chains. Read it guys! and share what u think!

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/14eg4a/my_idea_to_improve_the_depth_of_combat_in_gw2/

I fully agree with what you all are saying, the combat is shallow with very little depth at all. The combo system is poorly implemented, as well as the boons and conditions.
IMO the boons are terrible, having the same timed/stacking buffs for every class in game is not only making combat depth mind numbing simple it.

Take Might for example which increases condition and output damage, this game doesn’t have magical or physical damage, just output damage as a whole meaning all classes dealing damage are forced to use the same Might buff but on different durations or different stacks. Not only that but some of the buffs are so poor that they are beyond useless, e.g Retaliation, it really needs to be fleshed out.

I’m worried by March/April next year people will be burned out by the same 9 skills they’ve been using or 8 months, I got bored of the simple, console like action combat after 2 months.

You guys do realize most mmorpg’s you only use 5 buttons anyway. Take wow and rift for example. You may have 100 skills but you at the end of the day in fighting a boss. Only use on average 3-7 buttons if that. Only thing GW2 did was get rid of the useless skills. Say like If you had Lightning Bolt 1. Then when you hit max level you get Grand Lightning. Which is just Lightning Bolt 1 max level.

Don’t confuse depth with a over abundance a million buttons. I’ll give you another classic example. I play rift a cleric in the game. Rotation Bolt of Judgement,Vex, Sanction Heretic etc..The new max level came along BOJ was replaced with another bolt. Vex was replaced with another spells named scourge. What really happen there is the old skills got replace but you still have them. Which gives you a false thinking that you have a lot of choices. Almost every mmo is like that. Like I said GW2 is the first game not to smoke and mirrors it.

Silentstorm.7531:

You guys do realize most mmorpg’s you only use 5 buttons anyway. Take wow and rift for example. You may have 100 skills but you at the end of the day in fighting a boss. Only use on average 3-7 buttons if that. Only thing GW2 did was get rid of the useless skills. Say like If you had Lightning Bolt 1. Then when you hit max level you get Grand Lightning. Which is just Lightning Bolt 1 max level.

Don’t confuse depth with a over abundance a million buttons. I’ll give you another classic example. I play rift a cleric in the game. Rotation Bolt of Judgement,Vex, Sanction Heretic etc..The new max level came along BOJ was replaced with another bolt. Vex was replaced with another spells named scourge. What really happen there is the old skills got replace but you still have them. Which gives you a false thinking that you have a lot of choices. Almost every mmo is like that. Like I said GW2 is the first game not to smoke and mirrors it.

Its not so much how many you will use in a fight, as how many there are to choose from and how many unique mechanics that are available. IN most other games you get hundreds of times more skill variety than Gw2 and that is before you get into roles in the trinity.

Silentstorm.7531:

You guys do realize most mmorpg’s you only use 5 buttons anyway. Take wow and rift for example. You may have 100 skills but you at the end of the day in fighting a boss. Only use on average 3-7 buttons if that. Only thing GW2 did was get rid of the useless skills. Say like If you had Lightning Bolt 1. Then when you hit max level you get Grand Lightning. Which is just Lightning Bolt 1 max level.

Don’t confuse depth with a over abundance a million buttons. I’ll give you another classic example. I play rift a cleric in the game. Rotation Bolt of Judgement,Vex, Sanction Heretic etc..The new max level came along BOJ was replaced with another bolt. Vex was replaced with another spells named scourge. What really happen there is the old skills got replace but you still have them. Which gives you a false thinking that you have a lot of choices. Almost every mmo is like that. Like I said GW2 is the first game not to smoke and mirrors it.

Umm… There was actually a great level of complexity in WoW raids not only from a “learning the tactics” standpoint, but even from a build/gearing standpoint (at least prior to Wrath o’ LK). It wasn’t just sitting there spamming taunts and aggro generators and heals and dps. Do you use a warrior tank, a prot pally, or a bear druid? If I’m a warrior tank, what’s the right mix of mitigation to have while generating the rage I need to actually tank? I’m a holy/disc hybrid priest (which in itself is a build choice of mana efficiency over powerful heals), since I don’t have circle of healing, what do I need to do to compensate without absolutely draining my mana pool within a minute? What’s my healing rotation since using max rank heals all the time is also going to zap away my mana bar (which varies depending on your healing assignment)?

Really, there a very few fights in GW2 that demand this level of thought. I do like the more action-style and pacing, but most encounters don’t really cause me to think about my setup (except when I play my necro, I might swap epidemic out for something a little more useful against a single target encounter or well of darkness for well of power since the fight might demand more condition removal rather than a condition that gets nerfed to oblivion against a boss).

Lymain.6723:

ZaiTh.6378:

How is it you think that 5 abilities is depth? That is quite opposite unless you are playing a solo or console game. After reading so many posts on here, it leads me to believe that GW2 is a lot of folks first MMO.

Keep in mind, that is 5 abilities for 80 levels. You won’t do much more than that….forever.

It’s not so much the number of abilities you have but rather the number of options you have to consider. For example, my friend was yelling at me for not doing a blast finisher in his smoke field to set him up for a stealth stomp in a WvW skirmish.

I played EQ2 for years, by the way, which has dozens and dozens of abilities for each class., but more abilities does not necessarily mean more depth.

I also played EQ2 on Nagafen. I was in the Top 5 for Kills on my Warlock. Also a top raiding guild on the Server. When I raided, I either Dps’s or in the MT Group with my Dirge. I cannot believe you suggested that GW2 has more of a variety and depth of game play. More abilities does mean more depth, how can you say the opposite? If I created a game that had 3 abilities instead of 5, would that have more depth? The what if someone made a game that only had 1 ability? Omg Depth Incarnate!

Bruno is also 100% correct. Gear selection should be a mitigating factor when trudging through the world. You should have some degree of fear that you will actually die if you are not careful. This is not the case here. I mean the Game has a beautiful gd shell in place. It could be the current MMO leader but decides to take the Fisher Price way out and it bugs me to no end…….

When it comes to the gaming community, I think the term Casual should be re-defined. Casual folks want some kind of depth and risk vs reward. Name 1 thing in GW2 that has a great reward vs the Risk, Name me 1.

UnderdogSMO.9428:

ZaiTh.6378:

nerva.7940:

Zeldain.5710:

I personally don’t think there’s enough practical depth.

my hammer guardian would like to disagree with you.
- slam fire field – 3 stacks of might
- slam dark – aoe blind
- slam ethereal – aoe chaos armor (overpowered)
- slam poison – aoe weakness
- slam water – regen

my ranger would like to disagree with you.
- shoot ethereal – several confusion stacks
- shoot ice – chill
- shoot water – regen
- shoot smoke – constant blindness

i can keep going. anyway, you could not do any of the above and it would not have a huge effect on the fight, but if you choose to do the combos, you will win faster and easier. make sense?

How is it you think that 5 abilities is depth? That is quite opposite unless you are playing a solo or console game. After reading so many posts on here, it leads me to believe that GW2 is a lot of folks first MMO.

Keep in mind, that is 5 abilities for 80 levels. You won’t do much more than that….forever.

people seem to forget how grouping and group play work in this game, and why exactly the game is balanced for 5 player combat.

your stronger as a group ((not just because of DPS)) skills play off of each other and you have to facter that into your build ((who your playing with and What there running))

as a warrior should i really be useing Frenzy if i get grouped with to mezzmers each useing that time vortex thing

What you said is true for Every MMO w/exception of the last part. All you have to do is spam and dodge to win every fight. If you die rez and zerg lol. It is so simplistic that it is not fun and that saddens me =(

Those who think GW2 combat isn’t deep or special… then what about the other combats in all other MMOs that are miles below GW2?
Evolution is done step by step.
GW2 already went ten steps forward with combat compared to other MMOs, give it time and it’ll become even better.

Truth be told tho, GW2 lacks combat variety due to very shallow skill/character depth.
This is ok for a release, but we’re 4 months in now. Time to stop adding world depth and start adding character depth.

Silentstorm.7531:

You guys do realize most mmorpg’s you only use 5 buttons anyway. Take wow and rift for example. You may have 100 skills but you at the end of the day in fighting a boss. Only use on average 3-7 buttons if that. Only thing GW2 did was get rid of the useless skills. Say like If you had Lightning Bolt 1. Then when you hit max level you get Grand Lightning. Which is just Lightning Bolt 1 max level.

Don’t confuse depth with a over abundance a million buttons. I’ll give you another classic example. I play rift a cleric in the game. Rotation Bolt of Judgement,Vex, Sanction Heretic etc..The new max level came along BOJ was replaced with another bolt. Vex was replaced with another spells named scourge. What really happen there is the old skills got replace but you still have them. Which gives you a false thinking that you have a lot of choices. Almost every mmo is like that. Like I said GW2 is the first game not to smoke and mirrors it.

In WoW I used 31 keys on my Hunter and around 22 on my healer Druid. In Rift I mostly played my Chloromancer and used at least 20-25 keys on most fights.
I feel GW2 is insanely limiting with only allowing at max 13 (I play an Eng) skills and even most of those being not really used that much. Most of the time I feel like I am playing kind of below-average fighting game more than an RPG combat system.
The lack of sub fee is honestly the only reason I am playing this over Mists of Pandora or Rift’s new expansion.

ZaiTh.6378:

Name 1 thing in GW2 that has a great reward vs the Risk, Name me 1.

The mystic forge…. hahahha. FEAR THE WRATH OF ZORMOS.

Not that gear selection has to a be a big component, but I was just illustrating how complexity isn’t just some optional caveats to an encounter… it’s actually very critical to beating it.

Red Falcon.8257:

Those who think GW2 combat isn’t deep or special… then what about the other combats in all other MMOs that are miles below GW2?
Evolution is done step by step.
GW2 already went ten steps forward with combat compared to other MMOs, give it time and it’ll become even better.

Truth be told tho, GW2 lacks combat variety due to very shallow skill/character depth.
This is ok for a release, but we’re 4 months in now. Time to stop adding world depth and start adding character depth.

I half agree with you. Your Signature does not represent GW2 imho. Could you explain to me how you think the combat is deep and special? Special I do agree with you. Everyone fends for themselves for the most part but the rest I am at a loss but I don’t want to be.

Red Falcon.8257:

Those who think GW2 combat isn’t deep or special… then what about the other combats in all other MMOs that are miles below GW2?
Evolution is done step by step.
GW2 already went ten steps forward with combat compared to other MMOs, give it time and it’ll become even better.

Truth be told tho, GW2 lacks combat variety due to very shallow skill/character depth.
This is ok for a release, but we’re 4 months in now. Time to stop adding world depth and start adding character depth.

I feel in a bunch of ways GW2 has taken a step backwards in MMO RPG combat. It has moved away from the classic JRPG/WRPG combat systems and moved more into the First Person/Third Person shooter style that is ruining RPGs today. GW2 plays more like an action arcade game with light RPG elements than it does a real RPG and I think this fact is one of the main reasons people are getting frustrated with it.
Even the deepest part of the combat system (combos) are shallow and mostly pointless. Here is an example of a MMO with a real combo system: http://imgur.com/BDFT7 that is the FF11 combo system. It was based around using Weapon Skills (or some spells based on classes) that combo with an element and than chaining elements that match till you get a good combo bonus, then you end it with a elemental spell for burst damage plus extra effect. It is deep, easy to learn, fun, and rewarding to use.
GW2 was designed with “Modern Gamer” in mind, quick and action based with little under the hood to back it up.

I’m shocked we can’t even get a official response here. No one has flamed or been disrespectful even in the least. It’s rather obvious a lot of people would like to see progress or atleast feed back that we are being heard.

As others have said GW2 has some depth, but there just isn’t a need for it. GW2 is extremely easy. You don’t have to think or do anything, just hit auto attack and go to sleep.

What brought it all home to me were the little dolls that popped from the presents. Suddenly I had to stay away and actually think a bit to beat them. Use a little strategy and turn off my autoattack. I enjoyed the challenge of them and was opening presents just to fight them.

But apparently the complaining masses spooked the devs because I haven’t seen them the last couple of days. The other mobs that pop are the autoattack while you sleep type.

There is no challenge to GW2 and frankly the game sucks because of it.

ZaiTh.6378:

Lymain.6723:

ZaiTh.6378:

How is it you think that 5 abilities is depth? That is quite opposite unless you are playing a solo or console game. After reading so many posts on here, it leads me to believe that GW2 is a lot of folks first MMO.

Keep in mind, that is 5 abilities for 80 levels. You won’t do much more than that….forever.

It’s not so much the number of abilities you have but rather the number of options you have to consider. For example, my friend was yelling at me for not doing a blast finisher in his smoke field to set him up for a stealth stomp in a WvW skirmish.

I played EQ2 for years, by the way, which has dozens and dozens of abilities for each class., but more abilities does not necessarily mean more depth.

I also played EQ2 on Nagafen. I was in the Top 5 for Kills on my Warlock. Also a top raiding guild on the Server. When I raided, I either Dps’s or in the MT Group with my Dirge. I cannot believe you suggested that GW2 has more of a variety and depth of game play. More abilities does mean more depth, how can you say the opposite? If I created a game that had 3 abilities instead of 5, would that have more depth? The what if someone made a game that only had 1 ability? Omg Depth Incarnate!

Well first off, I liked EQ2’s combat – that was the only reason I played it for so long. However, there are a lot of abilities that do basically the same thing in that game. You use one damage ability only because your others are on cooldown, ect. You have a huge number of abilities but really a much smaller number of true choices in combat.

GW2 is the opposite. You have more true choices than you do abilities. For example, any class with a blast finisher can provide area stealth if there’s a smoke field around. Even if they don’t have an AE stealth ability (slotted), they have that option in combat.

If anyone has played secret world they have a great system. Pity the combat, effects(diversity) and animations and in that game are kitten poor

I find it interesting that they came up with these synergy combo’s as they advertised that between players you could create these effects.

Of course, who cares about combos when 90% of the content is solo content or zerg content and there’s little strategy going on on that level. Then in dungeons where you do have a team, most people are too busy killing blossoms or dodging to really come to a synergy approach.

Sure, it’s possible if you really go out of your way but most people don’t bother from my experience.

The skill bar is too rigid. We have more skill slots than GW1 but less customisation. Fixed weapon sets and fixed slots on the utility side really don’t make me feel like I can do a lot. And some of the cooldowns are just way too long for a 10 slot skill bar. It makes you revert to auto attack way too often.

Traits are too simplistic and complicated at the same time. I can’t really get a good grasp of why certain things are in the trait lines they are and I can’t half the time or more really notice much of a difference when I change something. Except you know “mace damage +5%” and because you often have traits relating to two weapons in one tree, you are almost forced to use a certain combination of weapons or have traits that don’t really work in the build you want to make.

So I thought I wanted to make a clone build with my mesmer, using staff and gs. Well I can’t do that because I must have phantasms whether I like it or not. A simple example but it shows how concept thinking is hampered and lack of versatility itself is already enough to make it uninteresting.

The actual combat itself is pretty good, but gets boring because of the above reasons.

Combat getting boring is the reason I made the video. I found away to amuse myself and actually do more damage. Wish we had a combo meter or atleast someone make one that be awesome. It would encourage more skill used than just button mashing.

The problem is these combos, finishers, and tactics really only matter on a small scale like sPvP.

Anything else and they are sort of pointless. In mass combat it’s the more damage in a larger area that matters and the pure output thereof. It’s because of this that it becomes boring, because it no longer really matters about every single thing that can be done, but rather what does the most damage with the littlest effort in the quickest amount of time.

Interesting but also slightly strange discussion going on in here.

- First of all, there’s only like 5 people in the thread.

- Second of all, you guys are discussing the depth of combat in PVE.

- Third of all, you’re proceeding on the assumption that combo’ing is something that’s always been there. It hasn’t. Even more action-y MMOs like Tera don’t have combo’ing.

- Fourth, and strangest of all, you’re talking about other MMOs and their ability bloat, without once mentioning macro’ing and razer nagas – guilty consciences perhaps?

The evolution of GW2 combat is two-fold:

- Combos: yes, they could use a bit more indicators of combo successes and make combos a bit stronger. But you do realise, combos are insanely strong. And I’m not talking about aoe weakness or burning. I’m talking about ethereal and dark fields for example. Check on how powerful the effects from those are, it’s pretty insane.

- Elimination of fluff abilities: Yes, you have 10 weapon abilities and 5 utilities. Maybe some class-specific stuff on top. That is actually a lot and here’s why:

Let’s take the example of WoW. More buttons right? But most of them are useless buttons. DPS rotations are just different moves that deal damage (or heal), based on procs and cooldowns.

So do you mortal strike, whirlwind, overpower, slam or heroic strike? You could watch for procs on overpower, slam between those and MS/WW (pre-cata) cooldowns, and HS on high rage. That’s complex right?

Wrong.

You could just do what everyone does and macro the whole thing. You can even macro the stance dance to gain the extra 5% dps.

More rotation buttons = more naga usage. That’s about it.

Hunters for years could reduce their entire heroic raid rotation to one macro button – or rather 2 macros in-game combined with one button macro on a macro mouse.

It made bad players feel like pros because they managed to google macros for their class and buy a macro mouse – and use that in PVE against scripted encounters based on the repetition of a pre-set dance

Bringing it down to 10 weapon abilities (let’s say 8 since 2 of those will be different autoattacks) but where each of those is important timing and effect wise is a move forward – and you can’t macro any of that.

I see it all the time, bad players assume that fewer abilities means less buttons to press. But they never mention that they weren’t pressing all those buttons, they were macro’ing half of them and reducing the number of actual total keybinds to around 15. This is true of most MMOs in the last 8 years, apart from TSW which had a total of 7 pressable button abilities, no utilities.

Personally I would like to see a DPS meter because I just like having solid numbers. And a combo meter of some sort to show combos activated, which could be part of a spectator mode for sPVP.

But the depth of combat is very high in GW2 when you realise it has no fluff at all, no one can use macros because there is no “rotation” – and when you apply that combat system to PVP.

That’s where the gameplay of GW2 really shines, when you realise there’s others out there who are doing the “oh-so-simple” combo’ing and timing of abilities better than you and your team – and that’s why they win.

You don’t need combo’ing to the max in PVE because PVE is easy. Because let’s face it, PVE in any game is easy, as long as people show up, know how to play and learn the dance. And that applies to any heroic raid from vanilla to DS.

PVP and skilled play in groups is what the system is designed for.

@xiv….

Do you not think that people can’t or don’t create macro’s in GW2?? You talk about naga razers (to which I do have) like somehow, GW2 magically made this device or even keyboards with built in maco makers, like it can’t be done in GW2. It not only can, but its how the ‘pro’ players get it done.

Using macros in other games (which were not only encouraged, but they made it readily available) helped to chain together abilities you would already use so that you didn’t have to hit 8 key binds together, and consolidated room on already crowded hotbars.

The ‘depth’ of combat is supposed to be about combo fields and the like, but the system is so simplistic that mainly, combos with other people happen ‘by accident’ and less due to careful planning, or strategic deployment.

I would love to see something like LotRO’s Fellowship manoevuer where you and your allies get abilities that do specific things indivdually, (granting certain bonuses to each indiviual based on what icon they choose) but create a powerful teamwide ability when the correct combo is plugged in.

There just needs to be something…deeper to the combat, one that involves everyone paying attention (and grouping) instead of hitting ‘1’ repeatedly.

Grim West.3194:

As others have said GW2 has some depth, but there just isn’t a need for it. GW2 is extremely easy. You don’t have to think or do anything, just hit auto attack and go to sleep.

What brought it all home to me were the little dolls that popped from the presents. Suddenly I had to stay away and actually think a bit to beat them. Use a little strategy and turn off my autoattack. I enjoyed the challenge of them and was opening presents just to fight them.

But apparently the complaining masses spooked the devs because I haven’t seen them the last couple of days. The other mobs that pop are the autoattack while you sleep type.

There is no challenge to GW2 and frankly the game sucks because of it.

I saw the creepy dolls in WvW yesterday. They’re still here o.0

“- Fourth, and strangest of all, you’re talking about other MMOs and their ability bloat, without once mentioning macro’ing and razer nagas – guilty consciences perhaps?”
– I think i used 10 macros my entire WoW career , pally tank FTW!
One to display guild vent info.
One to activate a shield-invulnerable ability / turn it off
One to describe a boss fight in Raid chat
One to spam “/cluck” for… well, you know
One to target a group member with a taunt or shielding ability
and I forgot the rest.

“Elimination of fluff abilities: Yes, you have 10 weapon abilities and 5 utilities. Maybe some class-specific stuff on top. That is actually a lot and here’s why:”
- your opinion. The ability bars in GW2 have been simplified. But, I still classify some abilities as “fluff” or at least less than optimal. That means I have less abilities that I’d normally use do to the reduced options we’re pulling from.

“Let’s take the example of WoW.”
– I’d actually like to take GW1 for example…

“Hunters for years could reduce their entire heroic raid rotation to one macro button – or rather 2 macros in-game combined with one button macro on a macro mouse.”
- I actually liked my (survival) hunter. When I played it in WotLK it was more than the generic 4-button rotation that plagued a lot of the classes. There were classes/specs in WoW that I stopped playing, because they could be reduced to a 4-button snooze-fest.

“I see it all the time, bad players assume that fewer abilities means less buttons to press.”
- I dare say some “good players” also assume this. Why are you stereotyping?

“But the depth of combat is very high in GW2 when you realise it has no fluff at all…”
- again, your opinion

I’m actually looking at this from the perspective of my main in GW2 (Hammer Guardian). I have 2 main abilities and 3 situational crowd control ones that do not last very long. I do have to move a lot during fights, but the actually fighting / swinging of the hammer is fairly simplistic. I honestly think GW1’s skill pool spoiled people like me.

JSmooth.7654:

Grim West.3194:

As others have said GW2 has some depth, but there just isn’t a need for it. GW2 is extremely easy. You don’t have to think or do anything, just hit auto attack and go to sleep.

What brought it all home to me were the little dolls that popped from the presents. Suddenly I had to stay away and actually think a bit to beat them. Use a little strategy and turn off my autoattack. I enjoyed the challenge of them and was opening presents just to fight them.

But apparently the complaining masses spooked the devs because I haven’t seen them the last couple of days. The other mobs that pop are the autoattack while you sleep type.

There is no challenge to GW2 and frankly the game sucks because of it.

I saw the creepy dolls in WvW yesterday. They’re still here o.0

Hmm they better be coming up with something to fix stuff. Instead of hiding from the legit forum post.

@Jsmooth but it’s not like you can’t come up with things to make it interesting. But i guess the argument would be we had to come up with it ourselves. Which usually ends up being a flame fest on forums.

Silentstorm.7531:

Don’t confuse depth with a over abundance a million buttons. I’ll give you another classic example. I play rift a cleric in the game. Rotation Bolt of Judgement,Vex, Sanction Heretic etc..The new max level came along BOJ was replaced with another bolt. Vex was replaced with another spells named scourge. What really happen there is the old skills got replace but you still have them. Which gives you a false thinking that you have a lot of choices. Almost every mmo is like that. Like I said GW2 is the first game not to smoke and mirrors it.

And don’t confuse depth with variety and choice – which Guild Wars 2 provides none.

Thats a opinion and in the eye of the beholder. I looked at every class the same way I looked at my own guardian. It’s on theperson to (learn) what to do and not look for easy cookie cutter ways. People say guardians don’t have any choices yet I made 5 successful builds. It’s not always the game its sometimes the person playing the game.

WvWvW easy mode deathkittenerg team only need,

-5 warrior running hammer/sword+horn using shout build, signet remove condition, elite warbanner and soldier runes
-5 Guardian greatsword/hammer using shout build, elite support tome + boon duration.
-5 Elementalist using Staff using healing type, elite Whirlwind and Earth Rune.
-5 Engineer using Sniper/duel wield, elite skill Elixer X and using Centaur Rune.
-5 Mesmer shatter exploit build, cookie cutter build. However you use this to deploy among the surviver within guardian and warrior for clone works.

Really rangers class is my less considering class. As they do next no damage with all active buff type.

Asking more depth doesn’t automatically mean asking more skills.
One example of how you could add depth without changing number of skills :

1) every skill could work like skill#1 : press once -> skill#3a, effect 1, press again -> skill#3b, effect 2, press once more -> skill#3c, effect 3. And if you don’t press in time, skill chain resets to skill#3a.
For people who would not want such complexity for all their skills, there could be a “skill lock” option on each one, slightly buffing it so there is no disadvantage.

2) builds and traits could add far more skill interdependancy. For example, imagine the 3rd step of skill#3 being “Stomping Hammer : if target suffers condition, creates a fire field under its feet”. Then a trait that says “you have 30% chance on criticals to unlock Stomping Hammer instantly.” I’ll let you imagine what these 2 combinations alone can add in term of choices and dynamism.

But that is the job of a gamedesigner.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/balancing-for-skill

Anyone who doesn’t think this game has depth should watch a stream of two high-level tPvP teams going at it, especially if you can hear their chat as well.

The problem isn’t the game’s depth, but the fact that it’s not really needed most of the game. Regular PvE content got nerfed between BWE2 and BWE3 — because people complained. Dungeons got nerfed within the first 2 weeks of release — again, because people complained. Most content can be completed with the First Order Optimal Strats (for those that didn’t watch the video – the “noob moves” like 100b and heartseeker) so people complain about lack of depth, when it’s really the devs having pitty on you poor souls.

Lack of progression has this unfortunate side effect of balancing content for the entire spectrum of the player base at all times. That makes it a bit harder to push out content where depth is not only present, but manditory — people complain about their inability to complete it (just look at the Holloween clocktower).

It would be nice to see combat complexity increase over time… the foundation is there. At only a few months since release though, people are still learning the system.

Silentsins.3726:

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/balancing-for-skill

Anyone who doesn’t think this game has depth should watch a stream of two high-level tPvP teams going at it, especially if you can hear their chat as well.

The problem isn’t the game’s depth, but the fact that it’s not really needed most of the game. Regular PvE content got nerfed between BWE2 and BWE3 — because people complained. Dungeons got nerfed within the first 2 weeks of release — again, because people complained. Most content can be completed with the First Order Optimal Strats (for those that didn’t watch the video – the “noob moves” like 100b and heartseeker) so people complain about lack of depth, when it’s really the devs having pitty on you poor souls.

Lack of progression has this unfortunate side effect of balancing content for the entire spectrum of the player base at all times. That makes it a bit harder to push out content where depth is not only present, but manditory — people complain about their inability to complete it (just look at the Holloween clocktower).

It would be nice to see combat complexity increase over time… the foundation is there. At only a few months since release though, people are still learning the system.

Everything He just said is absolutely true. Guys do a little experiment for me. Look at the people who complain post history. A actual doctor who plays mmo’s pointed this out to me last year. The same guys who complain one way also complain on the other side of things too. So I bet you will find the same people saying the game lacks depth also complained it was too hard a month ago.

Silentstorm.7531:

So I bet you will find the same people saying the game lacks depth also complained it was too hard a month ago.

Sad but true.
Sometimes I just wish gamers would think a bit more ahead of time about the potential problems they might encounter with a gamedesign, before being overly enthusiastic about the “new big thing”.

I’m bored to find myself, at each recent mmo release, raising a warning about combat risking to become shallow after the 1000th fight, having 90% of people not caring, and find that monthes later a lot of people are saying “the combat is shallow”.

I mean, it’s like everytime a new mmo comes out, most forum posters look like it’s their first one … they close their eyes on future replayability problems, and complain about gamedesign being “too complex” at release, only to find themselves bored 2 monthes after, once they mastered it.
Except that once a gamedesign dev cycle is over, you have to wait monthes, if not years, before there’s any big change …

MMOs are supposed to last monthes, years. MMO playerbase is supposed to already have 3 to 10 years of mmo experience.
So I was expecting mmo players to think a bit more ahead of time before complaining about “game being too complex / too hard” at release.

TL;DR : devs, stop giving so much importance to “it’s too complex / too hard” complainers during the beta / first Live month. And please stop considering your playerbase as people who never touched any MMO, if not any videogame. Most of us already know the basics, take away the training wheels once and for all.

dreztina.4820:

DAoC was the last MMO I played. My main was a cleric. I had 10 skills on my main bar and about 25-30 more abilities I used regularly in fights and more that I didn’t. For those not familiar with DAoC, it isn’t a cooldown based game, at least not for the basic class skills, so most of those abilities could be used at any time depending on what needed doing. I had to do a ton of different things, all with split second reaction times.

The level of mechanics, positioning, group interaction, and enemy interaction in DAoC was so incredibly far beyond GW2 that I’m having trouble playing this game for more than a handful of days here and there because I get bored. I’m maining an ele, the most intensive class this game has to offer, and it’s boring.

I also played GW1 from release until the first expansion. Again, there was a huge amount more depth. Tons and tons of viable skill builds, lots of interaction with your group, a heavy focus on reactive play, etc. The only reason I didn’t stick with the game is open world roaming pvp is my thing, and arena pvp isn’t.

There are very few actually interactive skills. You don’t really change much based on the situation. You don’t really do much with your group. You don’t really play off your enemy very much. You pretty much run through your rotations with minor adjustments. And there is a serious lack of viable builds. Changing a minor trait doesn’t make it a new build. I loved the ‘deck building’ aspect of GW1, and hoped to experience the same in GW2, but there’s just not much there.

So no, GW2 does not have much depth. Anet got greedy with the whole ‘easy to play difficult to master’ philosophy, counting on things like combo fields to add the high end depth, but the game just ended up ‘easy to play’ and that’s about it.

I don’t even hate the combat; it’s sort of fast paced as long as I stick to ele/engi and there’s some fun to be had with dodges, but it’s boring.

Spot on, Anet should of listened to more Daoc players then this game would have so much better and been the “game to beat” but sadly i think after TESO comes out this game will fade away like so many mmo games.

Depth there will never be enough of it, not until combat is as realistic as real life or as surrealistic as Hollywood, but then games just keep getting better and better.
I was adverse at trying out GW2 because of combat, I though skill bars were getting old and was more into trying out new types of mmos with, supposedly, fast paced combat.

Yet Im glad of being proven wrong, I hardly feel the skill bar, and am fiercely moving about trying to reinvent my combat strategy every time.

I have only made one combo so far, which I find disappointing, but it only means I have to plan my attacks better and pay more attention to my companions.

So far I love combat and its depth, as said, will never be enough, but it certainly is not lacking and I would put it above any mmo out there right now.

Well here’s a fact because people seems to compare this game to others. When guild wars came out the next expansion wow came with actually lowered the amount of skills you can have and use on the bars. Rift’s expansion actually did the same thing too. Showing that maybe Anet actually was on to something. If two of its biggest market share competitors copied it so blatantly.

@fefner slow down playa this game won’t fade into the night that easily……Every franchise has growing pains. Look at it this way it could be worse this could be WarZ lol.
………Too soon?

PvE:

GW2 @ Level 1:
Learn how to get by with skill 1 and self-heal

GW2@Level 5:
Learn how to get by with skill 1-5 and self-heal

GW2@Level 20:
Here is three more skills that you might sometimes press, when for the most part you are sticking to 1-6.

GW2@Level30:
Here is an Elite-Skill you might activate on cooldown, but maybe not and once you start to think about it, you do not need it anyway.

While the game still introduces new skills, it does not test the player and whether the player can use them properly. It is like introducing a double-jump to a Jump&Run and then never create a level in which you need it.

Overall, the relation between uptime and downtime of utility skills heavily pushes players to learn how not to require them in the first place. More often than not, the circumstances having triggered your use of a utility skill will happen again before your recharge is completed. Thus you need to learn how to avoid the negative consequence of said situation without relying on the utility skills and instead use an ability with higher availability → dodge.

Best example are the Elite skills. Since they recharge for minutes, you will not have them on every encounter. If you already fighting 70% of encounters without using the Elite-Skill, then you are forced to learn not to depend on it. You learn to ignore it. Most utility skills work the same way.

I agree with FourthVariety; I find most utility cooldowns to be too long, so apart from every so often using using an ‘oh ****’ button for getting out of tight spots I rarely, if ever, activate them. I don’t think I have ever used an elite skill, apart from for testing, in the 4 months I have been playing. I also run with 2 signets for their passive bonuses, but for the most part their active effects are too weak to be worth losing the passive for half a minute.

There is nothing new about the combat in this MMO. Nothing innovative, and certainly nothing futuristic or groundbreaking that would influence other manufacturers of MMO’s to copy. Been there done that, thousands of times.

Though this MMO has the single most amount of skill exploits and bugs i have ever seen or “participated” in. I guess they win an award for that.