One of the things that dissapoint me the most from a gameplay perspective is how almost every battle outside of raids can be solved by running into a corner or “blind spot” on the map and just spamming skills until the thing you’re fighting is dead. And if not, there’s a way to completely or mostly ignore the boss mechanics and just beat an HP sponge.
When I first saw videos of Guild Wars 2 about a year ago, I was excited of how it seemed to combine dodging with traditional Tab Targering gameplay; however trying the game and playing the content, I foudn out there was ALWAYS a way to exploit, glitch or bypass enemy strategies (Colossus Rumbulus for example), or just running into a corner and beating the thing to death…
Final Fantasy XIV and The Secret World have VERY similar mechanics in terms of gameplay, and on my time playing there I haven’t found problems when it comes to abusing in game mechanics to make stuff “easy”; I always feel teamwork plays an important part and we should be doing our job, learn boss patterns and care about the environment.
I think GW2 has great combat gameplay, however the stacking/zerg meta gets quite tirseome…
The problem is, is that they have basically endorsed it with their monster designs. They have made them such HP sponges you need to stack in order to beat it with a lower skill level and higher skill levels do it now because its auto pilot and if you REALLY want to win, do it. They would need to rebalance all buffs, HoT, DoT, red rings, white rings, boss damage, boss HP… It would be quite the undertaking.
Final Fantasy XIV and The Secret World have VERY similar mechanics in terms of gameplay, and on my time playing there I haven’t found problems when it comes to abusing in game mechanics to make stuff “easy”.
This is so wrong. FFXIV have plenty of “safe” spot during gameplay. The thing is, it’s just better designed since fights have often different phases.
The best example is T5, the trick spot wasn’t intented by the developpers, but they didn’t change anything about it because players are free to do their own strategies.
The major issue with Guild Wars 2 boss fight is the fact that it needs more diversity and phases. That’s why Raids have more interesting fights.
Second issue is the support system. Often, skills gives boons/buff only when you are close with your team members. It’s an issue since you have to pack with them for be effective. They should change this for PvE I think and increase the effective radius.
While there are exploits zerging isn’t one especially since content scales up. In fact due to scaling if a low skill player shows up everyone would be worse off and people would even call others out in mapchat for scaling. Also some bosses like the Silverwaste bosses can’t be exploited. The blue base boss for example does a spin attack that sucks everyone in so vaulting that seeing “evade”, chaining another vault, then dodging is quite satisfying especially when a whole bunch of players carelessly get sucked in. Maybe their FPS is bad so they couldn’t properly gauge when to dodge?
As for stacking that could be a gray area. If there’s an exploit that trivializes content then it should be fixed but usually an optimal strategy is simply something discovered by the community and word catches on. In fighting games for example someone spamming throws could be considered “cheesing” but there are counters to it, and counters to that, etc. Versus the computer sitting in a corner uppercutting even on hard is a serious oversight and should therefore be fixed.
I haven’t played FFXIV (and don’t play games with monthly fees), but I’ve played The Secret World (TSW) since they got rid of their monthly fees.
The big difference is that while boss attacks are dodgeable AoEs in each, GW2 has boons and combo fields that are usually based on close proximity to the source, while TSW has a lot more flexibility in how far apart you can be and still assist the rest of your party. As a result, positioning matters more in GW2, but this usually takes the form of encouraging stacking to share boons and combo fields, whereas there is little incentive to stack in TSW.
The Vale Guardian gives a disincentive to stack in that people have to run to the green circles. If not for that, it would be better to stack and push the seekers away, only dodging the teleports and coming back again after. So, Anet is trying to think of ways to disincentivize stacking. Personally, I think they should nerf might, as getting 25 stacks of might ends up being one of the most important things to do, and there should exist more strategies that could be just as effective as stacking might.
OP,
Anet have been doing this with all new/revamped world bosses (Silverwastes, Teq, Wurm and Shatterer) as well as the HoT meta bosses. Their mechanics require that the zerg split up. Based on that pattern, I would guess all future bosses would too.
I haven’t played FFXIV (and don’t play games with monthly fees), but I’ve played The Secret World (TSW) since they got rid of their monthly fees.
The big difference is that while boss attacks are dodgeable AoEs in each, GW2 has boons and combo fields that are usually based on close proximity to the source, while TSW has a lot more flexibility in how far apart you can be and still assist the rest of your party. As a result, positioning matters more in GW2, but this usually takes the form of encouraging stacking to share boons and combo fields, whereas there is little incentive to stack in TSW.
The Vale Guardian gives a disincentive to stack in that people have to run to the green circles. If not for that, it would be better to stack and push the seekers away, only dodging the teleports and coming back again after. So, Anet is trying to think of ways to disincentivize stacking. Personally, I think they should nerf might, as getting 25 stacks of might ends up being one of the most important things to do, and there should exist more strategies that could be just as effective as stacking might.
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