Guild Wars 2

I’m curious, what other players think about mobs in gw2. Even more than that. What other players think about game-play, why pve is so casual. Why so boring?

I can tell you my point of view. I think that class’s mechanic, warrior’s, elementalist’s and etc, are interesting. The problem in not with classes we have. I think the main problem we have is because of trash mobs.

Let see what we have in GW1. Mobs have some tactics, they are trying to eliminate the strongest member of your party, so your party becomes weaker, and easier to defeat. They support each other, they behave themselves as if they are the real players. In a way they are. They have same skills and have decent AI. Because of that, you have to think about strategy, not just mindlessly use your skills. You have to eliminate healer, because of healer you can’t harm other mobs. After that you can kill controller, or ranged mobs, and so on and etc. So you don’t just spam mindlessly your skills, you are doing some tactics, so do mobs. In gw1 we more or less have strategic.

And what we have in GW2? Trash mobs, who were born for killing as easy as possible.
I’M TALKING ABOUT OPEN PVE RIGHT NOW.

In my point of view, our classes don’t have a chance to show a full potential. Because mobs are simple, they are trash mobs, they don’t do any strategic. The whole battle with mobs looks like a simple slasher.

Moving in a battle and using bottom “V” and using skills is not a strategic. You can do it mindlessly.

What would be help? I don’t know if it useful or mindless point of view…

I would love to see mobs being more alive, not just stupidly heading towards you, but doing different strategics, working not on their own, but together. For example, rangers or other ranged mobs are avoiding you, while melee mobs or other controllers, are staying in your way, defending ranged mobs fellas. Using avoiding skills as well, heeling skills, just like us. Wouldn’t it be great?
You even don’t need skills like player have, all you need is to make mobs more alive, with decent AI. So they could make strategic in a battle.

For now I can fool ranged mob. How? It attacks my warrior, I’m using adrenalin skill on a bow and set ranged mob on fire, it dies. Is it entertaining?
I simply don’t see any chance to show a full potential of my warrior. All I can see, it’s a stupid slasher. I can’t see any decent opponent. Making mob tough to kill through giving it hp, or toughness, is not the answer.

If you make mobs more alive, using strategic in a battle, working together, this can improve team work as well.

This is my point of view. I wonder what other players think about it.

Very interesting point of view and i agree totally. Improving the mobs team work, also the players team work will be improved. And another thing is that in gw2 the majority of mobs in maps are alone, so its very easy to kill because they fight alone; in gw1 there were GROUPS of mob, and it was more difficult…every Group was a challenge because mobs help each other.

Kreslin.6832:

…and have decent AI. Because of that, you have to think about strategy, not just mindlessly use your skills.

Discord & SearingFlames would like to have a word with you….

I think the key difference is in the style of combat.

Whereas GW was about countering their skills (meaning that if you had a certain build for certain content, you could do it quite easily), GW2 is more movement oriented and reflex based, therefore AI would have to be based around this style of combat, and not simply through appropriate skill usage.

Now, if they improved mobs by:

• Giving them the tools players have (level appropriate meta trait setups that are random on spawn, utility skills, weapon swap with appropriate sigils and runes, condition removal / giving conditions to players, a downed state where they can revive each other)
• Recognize the players skill usage in order to counter (dodge, interrupt, block) as opposed to doing these as set HP points (bandits currently use dodge, so it can be done)
• Allowing them to recognize and use combo fields and finishers, as well as tactics such as flanking.
• Patrolling maps in packs and group compositions

I feel combat mechanics would be greatly improved.

Unfortunately, this would probably be too much of an undertaking. Heck, it might even be impossible with the current technology.

The problem is, they try to provide hard content with making bosses and mobs invulnerable for periods of the fight. I agree, this can make it hard. But extremely boring.

GW1 was very much about being aware what skills your enemies were using. You really learned to memorize the skills of each enemy, and since they had the same skills as you, you could counter them with their own weapons. Mobs in GW1 also had a traditional trinity. They had healers that you could target first. GW2 has not of that. Enemy skills are hidden from view, and are often unique to that enemy.

you’re talking about open PVE?
Currently unlike GW2 it was made to play solo. No henchmen, no other players helping you. If they introduced mobs that are too difficult to tackle how many people would even bother reaching level 80 do you think? Open PVE is supposed to be there for leveling.
Now for challenges – diving head first into a bunch of mobs might just end up with you being crowd controlled to death and then there’s always champions that you can decide to solo. Or group events.

GW2 mobs are far better then GW1 mobs mainly because in GW1 they used a lot less mob types then GW2. Most of the mob diversity in GW1 was just a simple color changes.

TheDaiBish.9735:

I think the key difference is in the style of combat.

Whereas GW was about countering their skills (meaning that if you had a certain build for certain content, you could do it quite easily), GW2 is more movement oriented and reflex based, therefore AI would have to be based around this style of combat, and not simply through appropriate skill usage.

Now, if they improved mobs by:

• Giving them the tools players have (level appropriate meta trait setups that are random on spawn, utility skills, weapon swap with appropriate sigils and runes, condition removal / giving conditions to players, a downed state where they can revive each other)
• Recognize the players skill usage in order to counter (dodge, interrupt, block) as opposed to doing these as set HP points (bandits currently use dodge, so it can be done)
• Allowing them to recognize and use combo fields and finishers, as well as tactics such as flanking.
• Patrolling maps in packs and group compositions

I feel combat mechanics would be greatly improved.

Unfortunately, this would probably be too much of an undertaking. Heck, it might even be impossible with the current technology.

I imagine the technology is there to get it all working to a degree…….the question is, is enough of it there to really make it worth it?

The Aetherblades offer somewhat of a challenge, the same can be said about the Molten Alliance veteran mobs and the Toys of Wintersday. We have seen more challenging mobs in the Open World, I don’t know if they should recreate the whole game and make all mobs like those…

But, what can be done is remove the boring veterans/champions out there and replace them with mobs that require some skill to kill, instead of having lots and lots of hit points.

Arah also has some nicely designed encounters, some dungeon mobs there combine well and offer a challenge, they could just be placed in the Open World (with substantially less hit points of course)

tl;dr: we already have more challenging mobs with unique skills, it’s just they are not used – at all – in the Open World, instead, they give Open World mobs more and more hit points and up their auto attack damage, which leads to dull and boring encounters.

The main reason, I think, that Guild Wars 2 mobs are so simple is that in Guild Wars 1 you played with a team each time, unless you were solo farming. You had access to all professions when you made a group up. This means the mobs had to be able to counter this. Now most players have only themselves in regular PvE. If they were encountering mobs that acted as a group and buffed each other, it would make getting thru a map really difficult for the average solo player.

Jski.6180:

GW2 mobs are far better then GW1 mobs mainly because in GW1 they used a lot less mob types then GW2. Most of the mob diversity in GW1 was just a simple color changes.

Wait, which GW1 have you been playing? Clearly we haven’t played the same one. GW1 has a HUGE diversity of mobs.

^— Yeah, GW1 had a far larger number of monster types, even just in prophecies, even counting everything that used the same model as 1 thing, there were still more monsters in GW1.