Guild Wars 2

Actually it is the designers job to innovate, the dev makes the designers idea come to life.

But really the point was that there is nothing new or fresh to come yup with, there is only the designers spin. The game which shall not be named, has tons of skills/traits per “profession” but they are all just filler. As a “Ranger” I would just spam X shot until Y shot was of cooldown, and then if situation A came up I would use B ability. Sound familiar, it should because it is every game that is not a hack and slash or run and gun.

GW2 spin is the weapon combos. It is interesting as it makes you consider the weapons you have equipped before you go into battle and how it interacts with the traits and skills you have. Once they introduce trait set swapping (they have said they want to) then this system will become more robust. I agree some weapon combos for some professions are lacking, and the one class that is all about weapons is just as limited in swap options (should have been 4 for warriors taking the place of prof skills), but the combat it’s self is fine in my opinion. Your auto attack is your “rotation” while your other attacks and skills are there for situations use (CC, debuffs, burst, etc).

ecthelion.6794:

To this day, I just don’t understand why they didn’t just go with the same skill system they used in GW1.

I think the reason why was balance issues in PvP, especially where a skill or set of skills from the secondary profession ended up being OP, but then hurt players who played that profession as their primary. Things like IWAY (Warrior/Ranger), Touch Rangers (Ranger/Necro), Fast Cast Eles (Mesmer/Ele), Bunny Thumpers (Ranger/Warrior) all became very difficult, and eventually impossible, to balance without crippling the skills or certain builds for primary professions.

This problem got so bad ANet had to split what certain skills did between PvE and PvP which created its own barrier of entry when crossing over from PvE to PvP or vise versa because how a skill behaved in one aspect of the game could’ve behaved completely different in the other.

Also keep in mind that in the end, yes GW1 has over 1,000 skills, but many of those are direct copies of skills from previous expansions to give a base set of skills for people who didn’t buy all the expansions. On top of that you have some of those skills which intentionally nerfed into uselessness in the name of balance, like all the smite skills that made dual smites an awesome way for monks to completely faceroll.

The way I see the GW2 system it provides a large selection of customizability while still being able to keep the balancing issues manageable and not having to confuse players by splitting how a skill works between PvE and PvP. It also greatly reduces a player’s required knowledge base to be useful let alone competitive in PvE and PvP.

I liked GW1’s Collectable Card Game style system, but it ends up being completely unsustainable for both the players and the developers.

I agree, although I don’t think this is really going to change. GW1’s combat makes GW2’s look like it was thought up by a much lesser studio. GW2’s is just prettier, with the obvious improved movement.

In GW1 some skills were referred to as “Flares.” Flare being an Ele fire spell that you get in pre-Searing (tutorial). It’s a repeatable attack with low damage and no utility other than triggering fire damage. When a skill was boring, had low cooldown (or none), offered no utility but technically was balanced because its damage was acceptable, it was often called a “Flare skill.” GW2 has a LOT of these skills. In fact, a very sizeable portion of the “1” abilities are flare skills. Little to no utility, median damage, constant spam. People never used flare skills intentionally in GW1 because it destroyed build synergy. The fact that they are mandatory and prevalent in GW2 says something about the entire system.

Actually interesting skills, in the OP’s example for a Warrior’s rifle skillset might be:

1 – Autoattack skill. When held down, aims the rifle, resulting in more damage and one of three random conditions (bleeding, burning, vulnerability) applied. Has a short maximum time limit on this “charge up” attack.

2 – Does no base damage. Fires a targettable AoE shell that cripples around it and leaves a small burning AoE circle that deals its damage over three seconds.

3 – “Spray” attack that lands more hits the closer you are, but applies a bonus condition (or damage, would have to math this one) the further away you are from the target. (Best used at range on mobs of tightly bound enemies, with option to close distance or stay at range and try your luck against one opponent.)

4 – Fires a shot that leaves a poisonous trail behind it. Opponents crossing the trail are poisoned. Allies that fire through it cause a short duration poison. Can be ignited as a secondary skill effect that causes a half second stun, in a line.

5 – “Stamps” the ground with a short duration trap that explodes after five seconds, but can be triggered immediately, causing knockback.

Most of these examples are either the same thing or next to the same thing as what we have now, except they are more than “damage + condition” or “more damage.” They allow the user to use the skills in more ways than one, many creatively, and in response to various kinds of situations. That’s how you design a skill, when you’re working with a system in which you only want to give players 5 per weapon, and never any more than that.

I’ll do a bonus:

F1 attack – Reticule skill. Fire at the targeted area. Penetrates through multiple targets. Enemies in the small explosive AoE receive multiple short duration conditions.

You can balance numbers, but you can’t alter skill behavior, which is why it’s important to start with an idea that can be used with a lot of variety.

[edit]: BTW, GW1 never had much of a problem with skill balance, compared to most games. It actually won an award for most well balanced PvP. It was a very, very well balanced game compared to what you normally see on the market. ANet just didn’t want to put the money or effort into doing it anymore, resulting in the comparatively mediocre and uninspired combat we have in GW2.

Some people are so hard to please, I mean honestly, I don’t know what people expect….

andrewtheclark.7164:

Some people are so hard to please, I mean honestly, I don’t know what people expect….

This issue has been brought up since BWE1. This is not the “complaint of the day” or whatever you think it is.

dimgl.4786:

Corian.4068:

@OP, instead of just saying these abilities are boring, I’d like to see you replace each of those skills with abilities that are “interesting”, without increasing the overall power of the kit.

Yes because every person in this thread is a capable developer.

I don’t mean to sound egotistic or like a jerk or anything but I think I could create some more fun weapons. Right now I’m about to head out and pick up a friend but when I get back I’d be glad to rework any weapons you suggest. I mean I’d probably leave some abilities because some are fine but I’d change others…

Searingarrow.4637:

It’s bad enough you only have access to 15 abilities at a time but when those 15 abilities are uninteresting, recycled abilities you’ll see in any other MMO it gets really boring really quick. The abilities don’t even attempt to be interesting. We’ll take the warrior’s rifle for example:

• Aimed Shot – Small damage and cripples… yay?
• Volley – Pretty much a channeled auto attack that shoots faster… Also in just about every MMO
• Brutal shot – Slightly more damage than an auto attack and makes the target take 5% more damage. Boring standard MMO ability.
• Rifle butt – Knocks back.

You only get 5 abilities on a weapon. This kit is completely uninteresting. Things like cripples and vulnerability should be tied to other interesting abilities. They shouldn’t be abilities all on their own.

This problem isn’t just for the warriors rifle. Its practically for every weapon in the game. I feel like that’s why this games combat feels so stale. Theres not really any original ideas, just a bunch of sub par, one purpose recycled abilities from every other MMO.

I’m really surprised that you chose the Warrior’s Rifle for your example, as I have a ridiculous number of kills with it and have always found the ability selection to be pretty well done on this particular weapon. If you just try to fire off those buttons in some random order your killing speed will be horrible compared to someone who is being more tactical with their choices.

The first button is a stacking bleed, which should be applied quickly (and returned to often) so you can get the full impact from it. The second, a cripple, which is particularly handy when attacking melee opponents, although has its uses against some ranged opponents as well if they have a shorter attack than you. The third is the volley, which works exceptionally well if used after the fourth attack, a shot that applies several stacks of vulnerability. The fifth attack, a knockback, is handy as an interrupt and pushing away melee opponents that have gotten to close to you (which you can then follow up with another cripple and continue kiting).

Honestly, I love the Warrior’s rifle weapon. Every ability does something important. I would dislike it if they were all just five different ways of dealing damage on differing timers. And if you’re trying to use it that way, you’re doing it wrong.

^ I think his point is that your own expectations for the skills are way too low. The rifle skillbar is one of the worst in the game, as all of the skills (aside from #5) are just damage + a condition, or just damage. They have no active use utility, just passive utility in the form of some generic condition application. The issue here isn’t him not utilizing their utility, but you not realizing how little they really have.

[edit]: And no one is saying the rifle is a bad weapon. It compensates for its terrible utility by just having a lot of damage.

Zenith.6403:

Algreg.3629:

pray, what is an “interesting ability” in your eyes?

- Interesting abilities are those we had in the first Guild Wars:

• Ritualist’s Spirit Weapons, Spirits, Item spells
• Mesmer’s Diversion, Interrupts, Energy Burn, Migraine etc.
• Necromancers hexes, blood enchantments, Malaise etc.
• Ranger’s spirits and traps

Combat in the first Guild Wars had a lot of depth in it. You’d have to pay attention which enchantments you had and what order curses were applied. Skills could get interrupted with the intricate casting time system. When Ranger placed a spirit it became priority target, because it had strong impact on battlefield. Just compare how inconsequential GW2’s Ranger spirits are.

When you compare all this to Guild Wars 2’s system, this one’s a button masher. Your skills might apply poison or some damage or remove boon but it doesn’t create any meaningful decision point. Number of active skills is also a problem. It’s difficult to pay attention to 10 skills at one time. A popular game League of Legends has 4 skills per character and each of the skills has player skill dimension in them. Ten skills is too much and this is evidenced by Warriors and Thieves opting to run signet builds just for the passive bonuses they give.

that is a completely different discussion though. Yes, GW1 was a lot “deeper” in combat, though on the other hand you were watching your buff/debuff bar more than the actual action on screen. Now we have a more action oriented style which in my eyes is neither better nor worse. Still, I am pretty sure that is not where OP is aiming at, though I have no idea what he actually wants.

Plague.5329:

^ I think his point is that your own expectations for the skills are way too low. The rifle skillbar is one of the worst in the game, as all of the skills (aside from #5) are just damage + a condition, or just damage. They have no active use utility, just passive utility in the form of some generic condition application. The issue here isn’t him not utilizing their utility, but you not realizing how little they really have.

[edit]: And no one is saying the rifle is a bad weapon. It compensates for its terrible utility by just having a lot of damage.

I disagree. Your suggestions above try to add AoE abilities to the rifle in an attempt to make it (what you feel) is more interesting. I simply recognize the rifle (for Warriors) for what it is.. a great single target ranged weapon that favors control and support tactics. If I want AoE attacks I’ll pull out the Warrior’s bow.

For a weapon with abilities that you’re not giving a whole lot of credit to in terms of being useful, it’s very possible to tear something apart quickly when used properly compared to when it’s used improperly.

lacrimstein.5603:

Algreg.3629:

lacrimstein.5603:

Topics on this issue has been raised several times during the BWE’s, but were shot down by fanboys every time. Nice to see the general consensus changing. I hope ArenaNet does somehing to make the combat deeper. One of my personal favorite suggestions was having a skill tree for every weapon type, spending finite attribute points to unlock skills in a path that would fit the player’s playstyle.

please stop using this stupid word. The monicker “boy” is really flattering when you are closing in on your 4th decade, don´t get me wrong on that, but the “fan” part is just silly. Isn´t a fan just someone who enjoys something enough to stick with it? Aren´t you a fan of the game? Why are you playing it if you dislike it? Or are you just playing the forum game?

I’m sorry I got you all worked up. I agree that “fanboy” was probably not the best word choice in this situation. Maybe… “proponents of the current system”? I don’t know, I’m no good with words…

that is fine I am simply tired of people who defend something being termed “fanboy” (which really is a tautological fallacy, “oh, you like something because you like something”) – that is just as useless as people who voice their criticism being labeled “haters” or “go back to wow”-variants.

I could see you getting bored if you play a warrior. Utterly destroying all content with little chance of dying could induce sleep.

Try an elementalist. Opposite end of the spectrum. You can never stand still or you get planted and instead of killing 8 mobs at a time with one button you’ll be lucky to kill one mob at a time without major trauma.

It’s thrilling or something.

Yeah, it’s a criminal outrage that guns basically just shoot things and swords basically just slash and poke things. They should be more imaginative, like, if you fire a gun an elephant comes out of your kitten

The game is little over a month old.

There will be plenty of new skills in the future. Either sit tight, play and wait; or go play something else until the game is older and has what you want.

Trying out an engineer using 4 (yes FOUR) kits, including Med Kit and Tool Kit yes) just so I could keep a bit of the feeling I had with my endless keybinds as hunter in that other game…

But seriously: I played GW1 too, and I far preferred the choices all classes had to make there.

GW2 is great at what it does, but it does too few of those great things…

@Edge
I could easily come up with other ideas that are just single target only. That’s not the point. The point is that the skills we have in-game are just “point at something, do damage to it + condition,” whereas it could do the same thing in a more interesting way, which is what they advertised the game, in development, as being.

If you’re satisfied enough with this lack of imagination to describe the weapon as “favoring support tactics,” then more power to you. But certainly you can understand why some of us can easily ridicule such skills as being lazy and boring to use over time. Whether you agree for your own experience isn’t relevant; just that it can be understood why this is a problem for others.

I somehow have to agree…

Something is missing from the combat system.

I do like lots the fact that Abilities are tied to Weapons, but this is proving to be limiting maybe because the abilities on a weapon are not flexible enough to be able to deal with a a fast pace changing situation.

I been playing MMO’s since the Dawn of the genre (Ultima Online), and I am not saying this to say that I am good, only mentioning it to say that i have experienced many different combat systems in many of them. And honestly as much as I hate to say this, my favorite combat system remains that of WoW, (Especially vanilla edition).

Because at least any of the classes could react to changing situations and had at its fingertips the tools to deal with those situations. Example I used to play a Hunter, I knew that if I have to fight a Warrior I can use this and this skills in combination to this trap at the right moment, I knew I could counter some of his abilities and tried to avoid falling victims to some others, so lets say I dealt with the Warrior, then all of the sudden up comes a Mage, now I know that there is a different approach that applies to the Mage, he also has different tricks under his sleeve which I have to react to and anticipate, try to avoid, dealing with the Mage now all of the sudden a rogue unstealths on me..flare, scatter shot trap etc etc. different tools for different situations all available…..get the idea?

In GW2…this simply does not happen, I find myself out of tools out of options very often. There is a GAP somewhere…and it is nor the traits nor the extra abilities from the Skills that curb the Gap. As a Ranger, I have found Long Bow just useless in PvP…and many of the other weapon/skill configurations…But even if there was one that could lets say tackle another class or fill in a specific role, you are locked to that role for the remainder until you reconfigure. And I guess this lack of flexibility is what is making the combat feel stale…as the OP is expressing….

EnaiSiaion.8072:

Probably my biggest dissapointment considering the skill creativity in GW1 was outstanding and I think should be the standard for any MMO nowadays.

But… but… noobs won’t understand a complicated skill system! What will they do?! Face it, this game wasn’t made for you or me, it was made for 8 year olds.

great, until now this was a rather mature discussion somewhat concerning the facts, congratulations to you, man.

great, until now this was a rather mature discussion somewhat concerning the facts, congratulations to you, man.

No point in discussing something that is bleeding obvious. No point in suggesting something that won’t be implemented anyway.

but there is a point in laying out your concerns instead of insulting an imagined percentage of the player base per se. and if there is no point in those things you mentioned, why bother posting apart from feeling totally l337 ?

Plague.5329:

@Edge
I could easily come up with other ideas that are just single target only. That’s not the point. The point is that the skills we have in-game are just “point at something, do damage to it + condition,” whereas it could do the same thing in a more interesting way, which is what they advertised the game, in development, as being.

If you’re satisfied enough with this lack of imagination to describe the weapon as “favoring support tactics,” then more power to you. But certainly you can understand why some of us can easily ridicule such skills as being lazy and boring to use over time. Whether you agree for your own experience isn’t relevant; just that it can be understood why this is a problem for others.

Please feel free to come up with some. I’m not sure what more you would want with a rifle designed to be a single target support/control weapon. You have a DoT (bleed), a snare, a direct damage attack, a sunder, and a knockback. Every button does something different AND incredibly useful for the role the rifle is designed to play. What more do you want to cram in there?

Sure, you can ask for an attack that bleeds the opponent, in addition to applying a snare effect, while also knocking the target back and applying a sunder all at the same time – and there are attacks that do combinations like that – but the rifle isn’t meant to be one of them. And, frankly, I wouldn’t want it to be. Abilities that cram too many combinations together for player.. I just find them to be boring to use, and you tend to use them often rather than being situational. I would rather get creative with the combinations myself. It’s what helps me look competent compared to that fellow who is just spamming random buttons.

Algreg.3629:

but there is a point in laying out your concerns instead of insulting an imagined percentage of the player base per se. and if there is no point in those things you mentioned, why bother posting apart from feeling totally l337 ?

You got me there.

However, I think trying to come up with the best League of Legends kit to go with each weapon is pointless. The skill system is so far removed from the GW1 ideal that there is nothing that can be done to salvage it.

Edge.4180:

Plague.5329:

@Edge
I could easily come up with other ideas that are just single target only. That’s not the point. The point is that the skills we have in-game are just “point at something, do damage to it + condition,” whereas it could do the same thing in a more interesting way, which is what they advertised the game, in development, as being.

If you’re satisfied enough with this lack of imagination to describe the weapon as “favoring support tactics,” then more power to you. But certainly you can understand why some of us can easily ridicule such skills as being lazy and boring to use over time. Whether you agree for your own experience isn’t relevant; just that it can be understood why this is a problem for others.

Please feel free to come up with some. I’m not sure what more you would want with a rifle designed to be a single target support/control weapon. You have a DoT (bleed), a snare, a direct damage attack, a sunder, and a knockback. Every button does something different AND incredibly useful for the role the rifle is designed to play. What more do you want to cram in there?

Sure, you can ask for an attack that bleeds the opponent, in addition to applying a snare effect, while also knocking the target back and applying a sunder all at the same time – and there are attacks that do combinations like that – but the rifle isn’t meant to be one of them. And, frankly, I wouldn’t want it to be. Abilities that cram too many combinations together for player.. I just find them to be boring to use, and you tend to use them often rather than being situational. I would rather get creative with the combinations myself. It’s what helps me look competent compared to that fellow who is just spamming random buttons.

The problem is that this system is not Flexible, if you are using the rifle, you are shoo boxed in to a single role, and then get in to a situation where the rifle’s abilities are not useful at all or even play against you and your done.

Suraknar.1593:

The problem is that this system is not Flexible, if you are using the rifle, you are shoo boxed in to a single role, and then get in to a situation where the rifle’s abilities are not useful at all or even play against you and your done.

Isn’t that what your alternate weapon slot is for?

Really, this is how most weapon choices work, isn’t it? When I have a staff out on my guardian, there’s only so much I can do with it. Same with when I have my longbow out on my Ranger, or my shortbow. Or my daggers with my thief. Every one of my weapons are designed around a fairly specific role. And beyond the alternate weapon slot there’s always the option to switch weapon loadouts between fights.

Suraknar.1593:

Edge.4180:

Plague.5329:

@Edge
I could easily come up with other ideas that are just single target only. That’s not the point. The point is that the skills we have in-game are just “point at something, do damage to it + condition,” whereas it could do the same thing in a more interesting way, which is what they advertised the game, in development, as being.

If you’re satisfied enough with this lack of imagination to describe the weapon as “favoring support tactics,” then more power to you. But certainly you can understand why some of us can easily ridicule such skills as being lazy and boring to use over time. Whether you agree for your own experience isn’t relevant; just that it can be understood why this is a problem for others.

Please feel free to come up with some. I’m not sure what more you would want with a rifle designed to be a single target support/control weapon. You have a DoT (bleed), a snare, a direct damage attack, a sunder, and a knockback. Every button does something different AND incredibly useful for the role the rifle is designed to play. What more do you want to cram in there?

Sure, you can ask for an attack that bleeds the opponent, in addition to applying a snare effect, while also knocking the target back and applying a sunder all at the same time – and there are attacks that do combinations like that – but the rifle isn’t meant to be one of them. And, frankly, I wouldn’t want it to be. Abilities that cram too many combinations together for player.. I just find them to be boring to use, and you tend to use them often rather than being situational. I would rather get creative with the combinations myself. It’s what helps me look competent compared to that fellow who is just spamming random buttons.

The problem is that this system is not Flexible, if you are using the rifle, you are shoo boxed in to a single role, and then get in to a situation where the rifle’s abilities are not useful at all or even play against you and your done.

5 abilities regardless of what situation you’re in.

I’d rather have 30 abilities than are all situational, and useful against certain classes in certain situations.

Hey my teammate is getting attacked let me help him, yeah lets spam some random condition and random spam damage on him, that will help.

Instead of hey my teammates getting attacked, let me heal him, let me blind the enemy, stun them, fear, immobilize them, put an absorb on them, disarm the enemy, let me silence them, lock them out of casting, let me interrupt them.

But nope I’m on my Mesmer, let me cast a phantasm and run around in circles, there’s my team synergy. That is if tab wants to actually target an enemy player and not a pet or my teammates, especially useful considering you cant even cast anything on your team.

As it is now, you could PvP in this game on a snes controller.

My Priest in WoW has 34 abilities on bars and 18 macros, making 52 buttons.

This game has 15, only 5 of those are actual attacks, compared to 52. It’s a joke even trying to compare it. And the other 10 are on such long CD’s that you’re forced to spam the same 5 over and over, of which probably 3 out of those 5 are also too long of a CD, so you’re probably spamming 1 or 2 abilities.

Then add in the great idea of putting a 10 second delay on weapon swapping, as if you’re not limited enough apparently.

Also add in the fact you cant even rearrange the order of your “5 abilities” so when you weapon swap, you don’t get abilities on keybinds that you don’t want.

Regardless of what anyone says, having such limited abilities is BORING, and will not keep people playing.

When i first started playing this, i assumed there would be another 100 or so abilities to unlock, not endgame at level 1. In reality a level 5 character in WoW has about as many keybinds as an 80 here does.

Add in the fact there’s maybe 3 armor models for what, 80 levels, and you spam the same button for 80 levels, and you wonder why people get bored.

Jonnyguitar.1684:

My Priest in WoW has 34 abilities on bars and 18 macros, making 52 buttons.

Must have been a really big eyesore to see all those buttons. Exactly how did you macro all that?

Also if you play right a class such as the elementalist has quite a bit more than you think. Unless your the type of play that wants to be a “main” water elementalist.

Dead.7385:

Jonnyguitar.1684:

My Priest in WoW has 34 abilities on bars and 18 macros, making 52 buttons.

Must have been a really big eyesore to see all those buttons. Exactly how did you macro all that?

Addon bars and i make them really small on the bottom of the screen. Not clicking the majority of things so size doesn’t need to be huge.

I usually keep everything on the screen as small as i can to give the most screenroom.

I like how the GW1 crowd isn’t happy because there isn’t enough deckbuilding (read: one of about five meta builds), and the WoW crowd isn’t happy because they don’t have ten trillion skills to carefully manage (read: two macro buttons).

I mean if you guys are going to play up shortcomings…

Corian.4068:

I like how the GW1 crowd isn’t happy because there isn’t enough deckbuilding (read: one of about five meta builds), and the WoW crowd isn’t happy because they don’t have ten trillion skills to carefully manage (read: two macro buttons).

I mean if you guys are going to play up shortcomings…

Why do people say WoW is played with two macro buttons?

Its obvious you never even played it, go stream high arena rated players.

You cant even fit arena targeting and focus on 2 macros, let alone every single other ability.

You dont seem to realize most macros have alt shift and ctrl modifers, so each macro is x3 already.

More isn’t necessarily better when it comes to skills, which ANet understood. They didn’t really follow through, though. I wouldn’t want a fifty slot skillbar if all the slots were filled with “do X damage, apply X condition” skills. Those are very easy and lazy to make, and honestly are all the same skill with very minor differences. ANet liked to advertise a lot of their more unique skills in videos prior to release, although most of those ended up not working in the way they were depicted. The rest obviously weren’t going to be exciting enough to make a video about, because they simply are not unique or interesting. Imagine ANet talking about “better skills, not more skills,” and then releasing a video showcasing something like “For Great Justice!” It’d just leave people wondering what it is they just saw, if anything.

You didn’t read the last sentence in that post you quoted. XD

I get that some of the kits are a little bland, but let’s not act like that’s the very essence of all GW2 combat, in much the same way the statements I made in that post about GW1 and WoW aren’t very accurate for those games either.

Well, in the case of “For Great Justice” you and the people around you get a +20% crit chance for 8 seconds and three stacks of might, which boosts your power and condition damage for 25 seconds. I’m not quite sure how you would show that (and other shouts) off in a video other than having a Warrior yelling his battlecry and everyone around him suddenly kicking butt. Obviously it’s a handy skill in the right situation; just because it isn’t flashy enough for a video doesn’t make that not so.

As for the people who want more skills, I’ve had my fill of that from countless years of WoW, Rift, SWToR (overkill!), etc.. I didn’t come to GW2 looking for that setup all over again. In fact, I always liked that the original Guild Wars gave you access to a lot of abilities but forced you to create an effective loadout with just a few of them.

Searingarrow.4637:

Traits are another disappointment. Most of the traits are just stat increases like “6% extra damage against burning foes” or something generic like that. Every class has the “20% reduced cooldowns” trait for nearly every weapon. Nothing really too interesting.

I agree with you on what you say both about the skill system and the trait system. Also as I typed in another post a huge problem in the game and this is coming from a PvE perspective is that the classes is not that different from each other really.
I won’t get into that discussion again here but those are the three biggest issues I have with the game esp when I compare it to GW1 + expansions. Still I really enjoy GW2 but kitten did they fekk up with the combat :S

PotatoOverdose.6583:

If you feel a lack of variety in combat, I suggest you roll a kit heavy engineer or an elementalist.

Complaining of a lack of variety and then citing warrior skills….speaks volumes imo.

I have one and they really are not that varied or different as you want them to be. I do agree that they are fun but playing my engineer vs playing my Sword/board warrior isn’t really that huge in difference other then that my warrior is a little more head on while my engineer is a little more about pushing pots, run around the mobs while barbecuing them but in the end that really is one of the only real differences between those 2 toons (speaking of PvE here).

In GW1+expansions playing to different classes really were 2 completely different experiences. It wasn’t as straight forward cookie-cuttah as GW2 is atm.

Edge.4180:

Well, in the case of “For Great Justice” you and the people around you get a +20% crit chance for 8 seconds and three stacks of might, which boosts your power and condition damage for 25 seconds. I’m not quite sure how you would show that (and other shouts) off in a video other than having a Warrior yelling his battlecry and everyone around him suddenly kicking butt. Obviously it’s a handy skill in the right situation; just because it isn’t flashy enough for a video doesn’t make that not so.

As for the people who want more skills, I’ve had my fill of that from countless years of WoW, Rift, SWToR (overkill!), etc.. I didn’t come to GW2 looking for that setup all over again. In fact, I always liked that the original Guild Wars gave you access to a lot of abilities but forced you to create an effective loadout with just a few of them.

I agree with the force to make use of skills like GW1+expansion have. The problem in GW2 is that weapon skills are defined by the weapons u are weilding with no choice of changing and play around with them.

GreenZap.1352:

I agree with the force to make use of skills like GW1+expansion have. The problem in GW2 is that weapon skills are defined by the weapons u are weilding with no choice of changing and play around with them.

I believe the reasoning behind that was that it is easier to balance that way. That said, keep in mind that in GW2 you can at least switch weapons out whenever you get out of combat, where as in GW1 you were stuck with whatever loadout you chose for your entire visit to a map.

This game basically has the same problem LoL has, you have a bunch of heroes who basically have very similar skills like ‘do X physical damage on next hit’ and then they get something a little extra like a slow or something, it’s not very creative or interesting to use at all.

Edge.4180:

I believe the reasoning behind that was that it is easier to balance that way.

True but this is the problem with the current game for me: in a way I understand that it boils down to a matter of opinion and I applaud the idea of not having to “grind until end-game” to have fun. But the problem on the other hand is that in some ways it feels like that GW2 doesn’t scale well for different types of players.

The following is not meant to be a ”elitist rant” because I’ve never been that good personally at competitive games.

If I were to compare two other games: League of Legends and DoTA2 I always loved DoTA (all the way back from W3 DoTA) more then LoL because while LoL managed to remove a lot of the “newbie-traps” and do some things different and better than DoTA, LoL did at the same time fail at being a game that scaled well from beginner level to tournie level.
Watching a LoL Tournament at the same time as a DoTA2 tournament you will rarely see something similar to the crazy stuf they pull off in DoTA because LoL is a much simplier game with much more set rules of what you can do that instead of focusing on deeper strategic teamplay relies mainly on the “laning phase” where your goal is to outfarm your opponent.
You rarely want to leave your lane in LoL because you lose too much EXP and gold while doing it and this is due to how Riot choose to design how heroes scales with items.

The good with the LoL system: it’s easier to understand tournament matches for people that are not so experience in LoL where on the other hand Dota 2 tournaments requires more knowledge of the game when watching it because ; hero/item/ability knowledge doesn’t have the same huge leaps between a newbie or a pro player in LoL as it has in DoTA.

For those who are not familiar with both “MoBAS” we can talk about Starcraft 2 instead; watching SC 2 requires a knowledge of the game to understand what happens in the game and why players do the plays they do. The difference in skill between a pro player in SC2 and someone in the gold league is not even close in a million years.
You have to understand micromanagement for example why you do it and more there is just so many variables; in SC2 that just watching a stream requires you to have a good knowledge of the game to understand what’s happening.

Back to the MoBA scene; LoL is like football(soccer) in a way while Dota 2 is like Cricket (the sport). Everyone understand the basics of football(soccer), basic rules etc but not everyone understand Cricket.

This doesn’t mean that LoL is worse than Dota but the end effect is that Riot choose to work backwards in some areas of the Meta game which dumbed down the game and boxed it in with a set type of rules to it. Ofc a 2000+ elo player is much much better then a 1700+ player but the fact is that the difference is not as huge as it it would be in Dota.
As a beginner LoL player you will more or less always understand what happens in LoL tournaments because the heroes and the items and the meta game is much much simpler.

I always believed that when creating a good competitive game you have to design it for as many as possible. WoW does this really well (even though I’m not a huge fan of WoW) because it’s designed in the way that it appeals to everyone whether you are casual, competitive, extremely competitive or want to go pro. Whatever your agenda you can enjoy WoW because the game allows your skill and knowledge of the game, the abilities and the classes to scale for near infinity.
ATM for me it feels that GW2 does not deliver on the “scaling” part. There seem to be no “carrot” for those who want to really experiment to find the “best of the best” and therefor I don’t find the game interesting to watch streamed either.

I do enjoy that this game don’t focus solely on endgame but at the same time I want a middleground between giving the player the carrot at level 1 or at level 80 . If the carrot is given in the mid-teens what are we trying to achieve continue playing?

Maybe I’m just bitter because I am one of those who grew up with extremely punishing and unfairly crappy designed Nintendo 8-bits games but I want to look at GW2 and think; what is the challenge, what do I try to achieve here? And ATM I just don’t see anything really pushing me for the long haul.

This game is fun but atm GW2 feels a lot like D3 for me, it’s designed in the way that you play it and complete inferno once and then ur done with the game because it didn’t have the polish and endgame goals/challenges that D2 had or in this case GW1.
I want a deeper skill system (not WoW’s) but one that doesn’t allow you to unlock every weaponskill on lvl 5 and where you are not forced to use the same skills for 1 type of weapon every time. And I want Traits to have a much bigger impact on how I play my character.

Mekboss.5069:

This game basically has the same problem LoL has, you have a bunch of heroes who basically have very similar skills like ‘do X physical damage on next hit’ and then they get something a little extra like a slow or something, it’s not very creative or interesting to use at all.

You more or less summed up my negative feedback in a short set of sentences.

Raf.1078:

Knote.2904:

ecthelion.6794:

To this day, I just don’t understand why they didn’t just go with the same skill system they used in GW1.

It’s a proven system. Basically, it’s the system from Magic the Gathering. Huge bank of possible skills, but only 8 to choose. And then there was the Elite slot as a limiter that actually make it more intriguing.

And thus GW1 had the same replayability that Magic does because there’s always a “build” to experiment with. That was the core endgame for most people.

People say there’s no Endgame in GW2, this is one of the primary reasons why.

We need that system back, or at least the ability to swap out weapon skills. This game will not survive the year otherwise; people will just go back to playing pandas.

Yeah I’m not quite sure.

Removing dual-professions alone would’ve made balancing a billion times easier.

Raf.1078:

In your opinion, of course.

Trying to move, dodge and spam 25 more buttons would be an enormous pain in the patookas in my opinion.

Combat system works okay for me.

No one said anything about having more active skills. Are you even reading. Oo

Here Knote…let me try and explain this to you. The opening statement of any well written treatise generally sets the tone and subject of the material to follow.

OP wrote:

“…..It’s bad enough you only have access to 15 abilities at a time but when those 15 abilities are uninteresting, recycled abilities you’ll see in any other MMO it gets really boring….”

So we only have 15 abilities to choose from? Is that not a blatant comparison to most of the other MMO’s out there? What would be the obvious cure for such a statement? I would suggest more buttons to spam might make OP happier (though I doubt it)

Op again wrote:

“…..You only get 5 abilities on a weapon…..”

Note the use of the word “only”…..so then the obvious suggestion for this statement would be that OP want more abilities? Thats what I take from it in any case.

So my comment was well within the parameters of OP’s original statement. Too kitten bad if you don’t agree.

He’s still talking about the size of the pool of abilities to “choose” from. If they added more utilities to choose from, more alternate weapon skills to choose from, you’d still only have 15 skills at any given time.

And as for “ONLY having access to 15 skills at a time” perhaps you should consider the second part of his sentence, “but when those 15 skills are uninteresting/recycled abilities”, which he’s saying, having access to only a few skills at any given time is fine as long as those skills are interesting enough (cough GW1).

Good job making yourself sound like a condescending twat though, that’s not easy.

I agree, the skills in this game are too limited. They need to be spiced up a bit.

The skills in this game are boring me to death. Part of the charm that I liked in Guild Wars 1 was to experiment with skills and creating weird load outs from people’s templates to see what would happen for my personal combat. I can’t do that in GW2 when half the load out is locked to a weapon with a small number of skills. At times I feel like I’m playing Contra in this game, dealing death without choosing how I do it.

In a nutshell, I really want to be able to customize the weapon skills with more skills. In a genre in which skills play an important part in the gameplay, I find GW2 to be severely lacking.

I love this game, it’s far from perfect, I have my gripes on a couple of things but overall I’m enjoying it. But… I also think the combat lacks something to give it more freedom.

I’m not against using 11-14 buttons only on my bar, I’m from Everquest, we had even less available spell slots, but we could choose which one we wanted from a large pool and even swap some in combat if you managed to throw down a CC! In GW2 you are stuck with what your weapon offers and cannot swap the utilities in combat. Sure you can weapon swap but a lot of attacks will be similar to your default weapon set and there is a cooldown on weapon swapping. I like that the skills comes with the weapon though. Maybe if we could swap utilities in combat and have more weapon set available?

I don’t think swapping utilities in combat would help, generally people pick utilities to go with their traits or vice versa, using non-traited utilities doesn’t work well in a lot of cases. I think having more variety in utilities/elites would help, arenanet also needs to bring back the GW1-like elites that aren’t as potent or flashy as the current elites, but tend to glue builds together or even serve as a starting point for some builds.

Searingarrow.4637:

It’s bad enough you only have access to 15 abilities at a time but when those 15 abilities are uninteresting, recycled abilities you’ll see in any other MMO it gets really boring really quick. The abilities don’t even attempt to be interesting. We’ll take the warrior’s rifle for example:

• Aimed Shot – Small damage and cripples… yay?
• Volley – Pretty much a channeled auto attack that shoots faster… Also in just about every MMO
• Brutal shot – Slightly more damage than an auto attack and makes the target take 5% more damage. Boring standard MMO ability.
• Rifle butt – Knocks back.

You only get 5 abilities on a weapon. This kit is completely uninteresting. Things like cripples and vulnerability should be tied to other interesting abilities. They shouldn’t be abilities all on their own.

This problem isn’t just for the warriors rifle. Its practically for every weapon in the game. I feel like that’s why this games combat feels so stale. Theres not really any original ideas, just a bunch of sub par, one purpose recycled abilities from every other MMO.

I agree. GW2 fans made up some %hit about TSW combat being bad, this is the only game where during a “big boss” event stage I can literally auto attack and afk.

Tie that to the simplest skill system on the market, with weapons like scepter and axe that only have 3 abilities FOREVER, and horn, talisam that only have 2 abilities FOREVER , you get a extremely boring combat system.

I’d be happy with weapons that had a variance on the skills you would receive. Such as, shortbow A may be more focused on stuns and such, where shortbow B may be more focused on straight DPS. For a bit more customization and such.

Or even better (and this has been suggested before) that each weapon would have a few different skills for each slot, so you could further customize the skills you’re going to use. Or, you know, they could just add more weapons.

But I do disagree that the combat is stale. I rather enjoy it.

how odd, i actually like the lack of abilities, after years of wow i got sick of having 23 keybinds for umpteen spells you rarely used but had a reason to on the odd occasion during that random boss fight with a weird situation that demanded you use that spell you forget about all the time.

having a strict set of spells the way this game does it really is a breath of fresh air, there is such a thing as to much.

take pandaria, i pop on to the pre expansion patch…my pala has more sodden spells thanks to the talent tree, more i don’t know where to put more i could care less about, what with so many choices already for that odd situation you ended up running out of buttons in a set configuration that just bugs your happiness far to much.

gw2 imo got it just about right, sure i reckon adding another main auto attack type would be a good idea maybe something that has a slightly different purpose but no less potent would allow a broader game play choice but then thats just how i see it now how it has to be.

i play ele main, so staff (current choice) and 4 elements to choose from thats 20 spells which i often use, switching between fire/earth and out of combat air for speed/trap and water for healing i do fine and rather enjoy the variety of gameplay choices open to me.

but each to their own, some will be happy others won’t, can’t please everyone and there is no point in trying either.

Well, I played GW1 quite a bit (over 6k hours) and I must say that what I miss from that in GW2 is the real ability to create actual builds. This was because you could redo your skill bar and attributes, even save builds so you quickly change between them. Redoing traits isn’t so flexible…you do need to go to a trainer and pay a small amount, so there is less flexibility.
The weapon sets are prepared by Anet. I do not agree with their choices in many cases. My level 21 necromancer for example uses 2 daggers but in essence I use a grasp skill on 6 to pull an enemy in and spam auto attack (skill 1). That’s the quickest and best way to kill. I might occasionally cast a heal or a well but usually there’s no need.

Then there’s a lot of bosses or champions that are best done with auto attack. It’s just a matter of their toughness and hp. I would prefer bosses were a little less on that side and a bit more of a dynamic fight. In any case, it doesn’t help in making things interesting.

No, what it looks like to me is that the skills are mainly fine tuned around pvp and pve is set up in a way that it doesn’t really matter which skills you bring as long as you have your auto attack, a heal and condition removal. The rest is really inconsequential in my view. You can use them for flavor or make kiting easier but you could do without them.

And this makes combat a bit one-dimensional in pve. It seems that Anet wanted to get rid of all the tricky skill balancing from GW1 and as such focused around pvp and dumbed down pve encounters to simple dps vs health/toughness encounters.

The real skills you need in group content is ressing and dodging.

Now, I don’t want to sound too negative here but I really do feel limited by the weapon choices. A lot of times I don’t like the skill choices because I usually am stuck with at least 1 or 2 skills on the weapon side that don’t fit in my build and I do get a bit tired of mobs or bosses where the only challenge is not getting RSI before their hp are finally gone.

It does take a bit of the fun out of it from time to time.

orlen.7810:

how odd, i actually like the lack of abilities, after years of wow i got sick of having 23 keybinds for umpteen spells you rarely used but had a reason to on the odd occasion during that random boss fight with a weird situation that demanded you use that spell you forget about all the time.

having a strict set of spells the way this game does it really is a breath of fresh air, there is such a thing as to much.

take pandaria, i pop on to the pre expansion patch…my pala has more sodden spells thanks to the talent tree, more i don’t know where to put more i could care less about, what with so many choices already for that odd situation you ended up running out of buttons in a set configuration that just bugs your happiness far to much.

gw2 imo got it just about right, sure i reckon adding another main auto attack type would be a good idea maybe something that has a slightly different purpose but no less potent would allow a broader game play choice but then thats just how i see it now how it has to be.

i play ele main, so staff (current choice) and 4 elements to choose from thats 20 spells which i often use, switching between fire/earth and out of combat air for speed/trap and water for healing i do fine and rather enjoy the variety of gameplay choices open to me.

but each to their own, some will be happy others won’t, can’t please everyone and there is no point in trying either.

For the last time, no is asking for 100 skills on 50 hotbars. Read.

It would be fine if each weapon had 5 more abilities and they were interesting, unique abilities

That or they could go back to the guild wars 1 set up.