Guild Wars 2

Strange… I’m using a good 20 different abilities on my mesmer.

I wouldn’t call it shallow. Homogenized? Sure. But not shallow.

darkace.8925:

I wouldn’t call it shallow. Homogenized? Sure. But not shallow.

I was thinking more pasteurized. All the crap has been removed leaving only the good stuff.

ctrl + right click changes your attack to an auto attack so you don’t have to push 1 all the time.

Yeah you can use the same moves and be reletively effective in pve against regular mobs, but to actually been good at your class you have to use all your skills.

As an elementalist i’m constantly switching attunements, as a mesmer I need to watch my CD so I can summon another phantasm, and as a ranger i’m laying down traps. Being clever I can solo most champion mobs in the game, but I couldn’t do that if I was just auto attacking.

You’re being a bit greedy, action combat in an mmo is a relatively new system and it takes time to perfect it.

I just think OP is being lazy with his class and not properly traiting or utilizing the right utilities.

Take for example an ELE. An ele is incredibly diverse with the different attunements. Heck, you can even drop a hammer and a GS for extra skills.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

ctrl + right click changes your attack to an auto attack so you don’t have to push 1 all the time.

Yeah you can use the same moves and be reletively effective in pve against regular mobs, but to actually been good at your class you have to use all your skills.

As an elementalist i’m constantly switching attunements, as a mesmer I need to watch my CD so I can summon another phantasm, and as a ranger i’m laying down traps. Being clever I can solo most champion mobs in the game, but I couldn’t do that if I was just auto attacking.

You’re being a bit greedy, action combat in an mmo is a relatively new system and it takes time to perfect it.

I know and understand what you are saying.

no not greedy, just losing interest and hoping for stronger improvements to professions and combat.

Vol.5241:

I just think OP is being lazy with his class and not properly traiting or utilizing the right utilities.

Take for example an ELE. An ele is incredibly diverse with the different attunements. Heck, you can even drop a hammer and a GS for extra skills.

I can utilize the limited buttons, uninteresting skills and utilities, swapping and long cool downs just fine my friend. just saying that there is a lot of room for improvement in the professions and combat department.

Swagger.1459:

finally, for long run player retention, it would be a good idea to look up those old coh build planners and start developing accordingly.

gw2skills.net/editor is better than mid’s tool because its browser based, I don’t get how you can think coh’s combat was more complex than this game unless you never played some of the clearly OP builds that game had. I had a couple of perma-doms and my favorite was plant/psy with his 1 button cc that locked down entire spawns indefinitely, was cc proof, had capped regen and defense, and could clear huge spawns with just a couple attacks.

What class do you play in this game that has you seeing the combat kitten simplistic?

We often get players who do not want to play GW2 and wish they were playing some other MMO. Those often come here to complain about the GW2 combat system, and to point how ArenaNet needs to change it so it’s exactly like the system in their favourite MMORPG.

OP, what MMO would you rather be playing right now?

Solo.9027:

Swagger.1459:

finally, for long run player retention, it would be a good idea to look up those old coh build planners and start developing accordingly.

gw2skills.net/editor is better than mid’s tool because its browser based, I don’t get how you can think coh’s combat was more complex than this game unless you never played some of the clearly OP builds that game had. I had a couple of perma-doms and my favorite was plant/psy with his 1 button cc that locked down entire spawns indefinitely, was cc proof, had capped regen and defense, and could clear huge spawns with just a couple attacks.

What class do you play in this game that has you seeing the combat kitten simplistic?

not talking about better build planners, i’m talking about better “professions”, powers, weapons, customization options, lots of other stuff….

if you are telling me that this game can’t get better then I respectfully disagree.

Erasculio.2914:

We often get players who do not want to play GW2 and wish they were playing some other MMO. Those often come here to complain about the GW2 combat system, and to point how ArenaNet needs to change it so it’s exactly like the system in their favourite MMORPG.

OP, what MMO would you rather be playing right now?

I like this game. I sunk $700 usd to date but professions and combat are not impressive or living up to potential. things could be tremendously better in the above areas.

The OP is correct. The combat is very shallow. The rotations, while generally basically hardly more than auto-attack with an occasional 8 second cooldown filler, are much more trivial than those found in other games, e.g. WoW, EQ2, Rift

In PvP it’s still rather trivial compared to the aforementioned, but the complexity lies in building your character for the appropriate party/situation. Again, the long cooldowns on 1/3rd of your abilities (or more) and the general lack of resource management for most classes means that you really don’t have much to do in combat besides manage dodge.

Without dodge, this game would have some of the worst combat I’ve ever seen. However, with it, you have to pay attention to your opponents location, casting animation, etc.

Still, with dodge, it’s much more trivial than other games…. and I think that combat is the weakest aspect of the game as a whole.

Swagger.1459:

Erasculio.2914:

We often get players who do not want to play GW2 and wish they were playing some other MMO. Those often come here to complain about the GW2 combat system, and to point how ArenaNet needs to change it so it’s exactly like the system in their favourite MMORPG.

OP, what MMO would you rather be playing right now?

I like this game. I sunk $700 usd to date but professions and combat are not impressive or living up to potential. things could be tremendously better in the above areas.

What MMORPG are you coming from? Which one did you play the most, before playing GW2?

crestpiemangler.7631:

In PvP it’s still rather trivial compared to the aforementioned, but the complexity lies in building your character for the appropriate party/situation.

Define trivial.

Have you seen Team Paradigm vs Car Crash about 3 days ago?

Swagger.1459:

Vol.5241:

I just think OP is being lazy with his class and not properly traiting or utilizing the right utilities.

Take for example an ELE. An ele is incredibly diverse with the different attunements. Heck, you can even drop a hammer and a GS for extra skills.

I can utilize the limited buttons, uninteresting skills and utilities, swapping and long cool downs just fine my friend. just saying that there is a lot of room for improvement in the professions and combat department.

Just like CoH, it’s going to be ‘build’ related how involved your combat will be. There were plenty of builds in the city that amounted to set-and-forget toggles and then click your 1-4 attacks and just maneuver around until everything is bundled up for AoEs.

The only real improvement I believe here, is that there isn’t much ‘set and forget’ stuff. You have to actively dodge, block and move in time with the enemy’s attacks and you can negate them. And as for 11111111’ing things, it all depends on your set-up. An Axe Warrior can get away with 11111’ing but a staff or dagger elementalist cannot. 11111’ing on a mesmer won’t happen. 1111111’ing on a Ranger is lazy and your performance will be pathetic.

I will agree though, general performance is pretty stale once you get the rhythm. Greatsword/Hammer Warrior in PvE is super fun for a while, with all its AoE and stuns and burst damage, but there’s little to mix it up with (but it’s not 111111’ing at all…more like 1,1,1,F1,2,3,~,2,3,4,~,1,1,1).

But I heard this is going to change. Read in one of the official pages that more skill progression is going to be put in. I just hope it’s more exclusive/choice dependent so you can only carry so many alternate abilities in your pocket until you respec.

Leo G.4501:

Just like CoH, it’s going to be ‘build’ related how involved your combat will be. There were plenty of builds in the city that amounted to set-and-forget toggles and then click your 1-4 attacks and just maneuver around until everything is bundled up for AoEs.

Those set and forget builds in coh were just power builds that lazy people played so they could play one handed and still pull their weight. If played actively you could solo group content that could wipe 10+ people in average builds. Thats a sign of poor balance, imo.

There are a couple of classes with that kind of power here but there really isn’t anything at stake letting one class excel at anything outside of pvp because loot/rng is so bad and nothing is rewarding anyway. OP probably plays an auto-attack spamming bow ranger or something because he isnt saying what he plays.

I can somewhat agree, but only in PvE. The problem is that autoattack is too good in most cases. Many other skills on your bar sit unused because they do less damage than autoattack and either…

a) the effect isn’t needed because the enemy is too trivial

or

b) the effect is worth using but said champion is immune to the effect.

IMO the damage/effectiveness of autoattack needs to be reduced while bringing up the damage of all other skills. Also, champions should be more susceptible to crowd control, but should hit harder and potentially have moments when they are immune to crowd control.

In any case, PvE often consists of watching your character autoattack. This is not fun. Fix it.

My view is that they started out with some good ideas and then adjusted it and adjusted it and adjusted it till all the flavour was taken out.

It’s not all bad though. There is something to be said to soloing through the world and hitting auto attack once and sit back with your cup of coffee till the mob is dead.

There is some depth in the system but as it’s generally uncessary to worry about it, it does feel like it’s completely shallow because who cares if it doesn’t really matter.

I am sure it makes a difference in sPvP but in Pve an WvW, it doesn’t really matter what you bring and the fact that too many choices are made for you with skills being linked to weapons and/or only being allowed in specific slots, the skill bar and everything with it just feels totally prefab. It doesn’t invite to creativity really.

the combat is shallow and lacking depth: you manage cool downs for max dps and dodge occasionally. boss fights and champions should be more involved, but are in fact less so. you can certainly make the game exciting, so to speak, by purposely using less effective skills, but it is up to the player to create this dynamic combat. It is like playing wallball by yourself. traits are often passive & boring (recharge x% faster, deal x% more damage, x% chance to y on crit). skills are very straightforward and rarely have any conditional behaviour that you can set up for more damage with skillful play.

This game is boring because its combat is boring. there could be all kinds of cool lewts and flashy armors and anything else under the sun, but in order to get any of these rewards you have to fight. and it’s the fighting that’s boring.

edit: compare with gw1 (devs probably want to ban those 3 characters) where even the normal pve could be interesting and challenging when you were testing out a build with a few cool new skills for an interesting strategy. there is very little strategy in this game (in comparison).

Balanced = bland, boring and uninspiring…

What do you expect?

Is it that the actual combat system lacks depth, or the content doesn’t require you to utilise that depth?

I’d actually go with the problem mostly being associated with the latter.

However, the former could use improvements (swappable weapon skills [maybe just from a pool of 2 – 3 for each slot, with them skills tied to that slot to facilitate balancing], add more exciting traits [Tracking – pets aren’t fooled by stealth when their ability is on cooldown], removing the boring traits, reducing overall effectiveness of skills, and adding them to skill usage to make spamming unwise (this skill has reduced cool-down / more damage / more range / also does y if x requirement is met).

I play a thief so I must use 5, f1, 1 and proceed to use 2,2,2,2,2 until you’re dead, right?

Meglobob.8620:

Balanced = bland, boring and uninspiring…

What do you expect?

this game is not balanced by any reasonable usage of the word. and anyway interesting combat does not equate to imbalanced combat

TheDaiBish.9735:

Is it that the actual combat system lacks depth, or the content doesn’t require you to utsilise that depth?

I’d actually go with the problem mostly being associated with the latter.

that is also a big contributor

I’m surprised I haven’t seen any fanboy cry out the holy quote: “It’s optional, you don’t have to do it.”

Nightarch.2943:

I’m surprised I haven’t seen any fanboy cry out the holy quote: “It’s optional, you don’t have to do it.”

me too… especially with the hordes of white knights on this forum… GW1’s combat system was much more DEEP!

In reality you don’t need to have the game use over 30 keys to have a deep combat system. In other games like vindictus, you only use two keys for most of the attacks in the game, and one key for dodging. A mediocre player can struggle in a raid with great equipment while a highly skilled player can solo the raid boss. In that game, skill and intimate knowledge of boss attack patterns and being able to push the limits of their profession to the max, you can do a lot better than a pay to win scrub with gear that is way better. The difference in effectiveness of a similarly geared bad player vs a pro player in that game is like the difference between a pro NFL quarterback vs a bad highschool quarterback. It takes months to be good at that game, and some people, no matter how hard they practice, the best they will manage is become an average player, that can never solo anything and get carried by better players.

In GW2 this doesn’t occur. The effectiveness of a bad player just mashing all the skills in some semi-logical order vs a pro player using skills at max effectiveness isn’t THAT different. Even fearsome dynamic events vs a dragon is pretty much a snooze fest. You can just stand there 90% of the time, just using your most effective skill rotations…. so much so that you can just program macros to do it for you. Learning how to play a character only takes a few days at most… for pro players a few hours is enough to be able to play them most effectively.

On the flip side you can have 20 hot keys in a game like Dragon Nest… Most skills have a short CD in that game of about 8-15 seconds with others at 20-45 and ultimate skills at 120-240 seconds CD… you get 2 bars with 12 skills each and with so many skills with short CD, you’ll be hitting your keys like mad while dodging, moving, aiming, and paying attention to your surroundings. The pace of action on some of the raids is really fast and it’s a bit dizzying. In this game, you CAN hit all the keys randomly and still do decent damage but you will die because you didn’t dodge/move/ or pay attention to things… but the difference between a similarly geared bad player vs a good player is still much larger than in GW2.

And then similar aspects with tera online… etc etc etc…

Yep… for me GW2’s combat system is probably the easiest to learn, shallowest, and the smallest divide in efficiency between a good/bad player.

I hope by shallow you mean extremely complex and that no fight between class A and class B will ever turn out the same because it’s extremely reliant on build and skill as it was in Guild Wars 1.

People often confuse Player A beating Player B 100% of the time with Class A will beat Class B 100% of the time, which is obviously false.

On my thief, mesmer, warrior, necro, guardian, engineer, ranger and ele I never find myself spamming 1 in ZvZ fights. I’m constantly utilizing my AoEs at the right time to tag, apply conditions and immobilize targets. Anyone who thinks they can spam 1 and win against a coordinated group is a fool.

I alopogize for my erratic typing. It’s late.

Viking Jorun.5413:

On my guardian I never find myself spamming 1 in ZvZ fights.
Anyone who thinks they can spam 1 and win against a coordinated group is a fool.

I call Bullshait.

rogerwilko.6895:

Viking Jorun.5413:

On my guardian I never find myself spamming 1 in ZvZ fights.
Anyone who thinks they can spam 1 and win against a coordinated group is a fool.

I call Bullshait.

My guild on Kaineng and later FA, The Vengeful Blades [TVB] were a highly coordinated group of players. We weren’t afraid to rush in and put ourselves in harm’s way and that may be what made us stand out compared to most havoc teams. We’d take on groups far greater than our small 5-10 man havoc teams and slowly take down enemy zergs. It’s called focus targeting. Lock a single player down and stomp them as quickly as possible then either retreat or move onto the next target. I can tell you that most of the zergs we fought spammed 1. Most of them also lost.

I’ll direct you to http://www.twitch.tv/nightmarenet to see TVB in action. Have at it.

Thank you for the lesson in WvW. While I do know how a good guild should play, and I also heard about this thing called “focused targeting” about 10 years ago when I was doing mass pvp in a game called L2, I shall not watch your movie.

People like the OP (Swagger) are not members of a highly organized WvW guild. At least that`s what I understand from reading his post. My comment about guardians “using” staff #1 is not directed at the guardian minority who may play like you do (Viking Jorun).

rogerwilko.6895:

Thank you for the lesson in WvW. While I do know how a good guild should play, and I also heard about this thing called “focused targeting” about 10 years ago when I was doing mass pvp in a game called L2, I shall not watch your movie.

People like the OP (Swagger) are not members of a highly organized WvW guild. At least that`s what I understand from reading his post. My comment about guardians “using” staff #1 is not directed at the guardian minority who may play like you do (Viking Jorun).

Yeah IKR? Focused targeting…. THAT IS SO DEEP! :rolls eyes:

The combat in this game is so deep that you could almost solo the entire game by using nothing else than auto attack.
This is nothing like gw1 there you actually had to use you’re brain it seems like games have to be so casual and easy these days.

tom.7468:

The combat in this game is so deep that you could almost solo the entire game by using nothing else than auto attack.
This is nothing like gw1 there you actually had to use you’re brain it seems like games have to be so casual and easy these days.

It’s probably why games like vindictus is not popular in america… IT’S TOO HARD! Hnnnngggggg >_< 0.3 second timing on dodges? screw that! I just wanna press 1 all day long! Tho they did make the game easier since it’s release… I guess it was a bit too hard for even the average korean gamers… so timing got loosened to 0.4-0.8 seconds on some characters.

GW1 was challenging in many aspects. It didn’t test your reflexes like vindictus does but it made you think about skills and builds you needed for each mission…. until the OP PvE skills came out and then everything was just spirit spam/necro spam/OP skill spam to win. Only way to make it more challenging was to pull multiple groups at a time and see if we survive outnumbered 3:1…

tom.7468:

The combat in this game is so deep that you could almost solo the entire game by using nothing else than auto attack.
This is nothing like gw1 there you actually had to use you’re brain it seems like games have to be so casual and easy these days.

Right it’s nothing like Guild Wars 1…once you unlock the skills for your heroes (which you can buy unlock skill packs in the cash shop for), you can look up team builds on PVX Wiki (or wherever), and then pretty much sleep at your keyboard while your heroes do all the work.

You can solo farm the Underworld as a Rit? You can solo farm outside Bergen Hot Springs with your 55 Monk.

Guild Wars 1 did have depth, but it wasn’t any harder to success particularly in the open world. You had to play the hard mode elite content to have to even open your eyes.

I could solo any dungeon in the game in hard mode with my heroes and AFK through most of it….my heroes are good enough to play the game without me.

Vayne.8563:

tom.7468:

The combat in this game is so deep that you could almost solo the entire game by using nothing else than auto attack.
This is nothing like gw1 there you actually had to use you’re brain it seems like games have to be so casual and easy these days.

Right it’s nothing like Guild Wars 1…once you unlock the skills for your heroes (which you can buy unlock skill packs in the cash shop for), you can look up team builds on PVX Wiki (or wherever), and then pretty much sleep at your keyboard while your heroes do all the work.

I know someone who did that for the survivor title, minus the ‘pretty much’ and ‘at your keyboard’.

The issue is that the game is built around (s)PVP, where the enemy will react to your moves and employ counters. The PVE mob is dumb as bricks in comparison, and is given massive health pools and cheesy special abilities/exemptions to compensate.

This is why even before we take Defiant into consideration, CC is junk in PVE. Because it is built around SPVP arena fights, where the application of CC is either a opener for a burst or to stop a fleeing opponent.

but as a burst opener it fails in PVE, because even your average mob can eat 2-3 bursts to its face. And they do not flee. Some make a show of appearing to flee, but they will invariably turn around some seconds later and come right at you again (sometimes with full health, thanks to buggy leashing code).

And the traditional PVE usage of CC, thinning/managing the herd when fighting multiple mobs, do not work in GW2. This because again the effect durations and recharge times are tuned for PVP. Never mind that most of the CC in the game is single target.

digiowl.9620:

The issue is that the game is built around (s)PVP

if only that were true

During GW1 times, I once found myself defending a build called Ursan for being very friendly towards casually doing something without encountering much of a challenge. Not that anything was wrong with GW1 combat, it was complicated and there was fun to be had. To that end, having a very simple Ursan build was a nice counter-weight to enjoy the game in a less stressful way.

Today we have GW2 and by GW1 measures, every build now is an Ursan build. Mash your primary attack buttons upon cooldown and use the self-heal. It works for a broader demographic in the same way Ursan worked, however, GW1 players might want more.

In PvP you have the added pleasure of useful utility skills, since other players will put you into situations where they become useful. For normal PvE, most criteria of utility skills (and traits for that matter) are too outrageous, or too much of a fringe case. On top of that, the pacing in PvE is such that if you make do five minutes without using your elite, you might as well go without it altogether.

Utility skills in dungeons and fractals can be useful, but by that time you are either too bad a player to get it, or so good at auto-attacking and dodge rolling, that you never require them. Ironically, this makes CoF speedruns almost a masterful art of using all skills for the sake of speed. Something which is nowhere else to be found to that degree. Needless to say, the incentive will be patched away by next Tuesday and no matter how entertaining something might be, it can rarely overcome the lack of an incentive.

A player who is into “skillful” play regards a click on a button as an answer to a problem posed by the game. A moment where the player can feel smart because he provided an answer. GW2 does not ask that many questions to be honest.

You can now either blame GW2, or your schoolboy attitude.

Vayne.8563:

tom.7468:

The combat in this game is so deep that you could almost solo the entire game by using nothing else than auto attack.
This is nothing like gw1 there you actually had to use you’re brain it seems like games have to be so casual and easy these days.

Right it’s nothing like Guild Wars 1…once you unlock the skills for your heroes (which you can buy unlock skill packs in the cash shop for), you can look up team builds on PVX Wiki (or wherever), and then pretty much sleep at your keyboard while your heroes do all the work.

You can solo farm the Underworld as a Rit? You can solo farm outside Bergen Hot Springs with your 55 Monk.

Guild Wars 1 did have depth, but it wasn’t any harder to success particularly in the open world. You had to play the hard mode elite content to have to even open your eyes.

I could solo any dungeon in the game in hard mode with my heroes and AFK through most of it….my heroes are good enough to play the game without me.

A few comments on this:

1) GW1 didn’t start with the easy mode it became later due to more powerful skills entering the game with the expansions and the addition of heroes. GW2 was easy mode from day 1.

2) It actually took some work to equip your heroes and I thought it personally fun to make builds that weren’t from that pvx site. In fact I never went to the site.

3) In GW1 heroes could do a lot of the work for you, but it still was more than just hitting auto attack once.

4) GW1 was better because you had freedom in making builds. You could pick each individual skill and choose your own weapons. In GW2, a necro for example, most of your skills come from your weapon choice. Personally I don’t like axes on a necromancer. It’s a personal preference, a taste. GW2 then says well either use weapons you don’t like the look of, or you don’t get to use these skills. Then there is always at least one skill in those 5 skills that is a total pvp skill and is useless in pve to begin with. But you must choose it. The remaining 5 skills are a forced self heal, a forced (and often useless) elite skill and 3 skills that generally have such a long cooldown that you’d be lucky to use it more than once per fight. I could call it an amazing feat that Anet created a skill set with more slots (10 basic + 5 from the second weapon set + class specifics like boons and multiple skills that are sequential and locked to the same slot) and yet managed to give people a lot less freedom of choice in the matter.

So yeh, even though GW1 over time became easier, it was still more fun and had more freedom. GW2 just started with easy mode and is even more simplistic as a consequence.

darkace.8925:

I wouldn’t call it shallow. Homogenized? Sure. But not shallow.

Compared to its predecessor it is pretty shallow and honestly kind of boring. especially on professions like Ranger and Guardian, but to me most professions are.

there are more complex games out there and gw1 certainly was one when it came to skill synergy, but from your description it appears you are not even making use of the options GW2, which you call shallow, offers you.

If you really play like that, you are certainly underplaying any class. Sure, you get by fine in open world PvE, but even there you´d be way more effective if you put some more thought into it. Not to speak of dungeons and fractals.

Why would you call for a more complex system when you are not even exploring the complexity of a proclaimed shallow one?

We’re saying GW1 had difficulty? Where a competent, non-AI Monk with a refreshing Res skill could make it so you were probably not going to wipe and it was only a matter of time rather than “get more skilled”?

I mean, if we’re talking HM Eternal Grove, or missions where “Protect X” was a goal, sure. Though those were just usually stacked against you anyway.

For the record? 55 Monk was developed relatively early in the game life of GW1. So was the W/R IWAY . . .

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

We’re saying GW1 had difficulty?

no
we’re talking about gameplay depth

My main is d/d ele, I would get absolutly nowhere if I kept on spamming 1,,1,1,1,1
it’s more like 3,2,1 F2, 3, F4, 4, 5, F2 etc.

milo.6942:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

We’re saying GW1 had difficulty?

no
we’re talking about gameplay depth

Ahhh. Not difficulty.

I still didn’t find it deep. Or rather, diving into the depth wasn’t as rewarding as the known and charted territory. But that’s all right, because I found the majority I met didn’t do that pioneering themselves – they let someone else tell them what to use as a build and give advice for how to run it.

I’d say League of Legends is probably a better measure of depth, except I hate that game.

VOLKON.1290:

darkace.8925:

I wouldn’t call it shallow. Homogenized? Sure. But not shallow.

I was thinking more pasteurized. All the crap has been removed leaving only the good stuff.

Anymore pasteurizing and there would be nothing left, given how homogenous the existing skills and combat design are.

I think a good measure of depth could be derived from the of the tools players are given, how the game challenges them, and the overall variety created from the interplay of the previous two. There’s variety of in GW2, but it’s aesthetic. The same combo with a D/D Ele is as effective on a skritt as any other enemy. Furthermore, skill design isn’t very meaningful as the developers are opting to to design around damage numbers and conditions/boons rather than the actual frames of execution, hitboxes, and such, following a shallow concept of “action” gameplay. “Casters can move hurrderr so it’s better!”.

This results less nuanced gameplay. Efficacy of numbers always overwhelms skill. This is a huge problem in all game modes. In PvE as it creates a clear delineation of which class is better than which. In PvP, the inability of the combat system to scale to the player’s ability to execute skills creates a game with a laughably low skill cap which can only be balanced around hard counters.

The people claiming GW2 was “easy” from day 1 obviously didn’t play at launch. Does nobody remember the CONSTANT whining about how the game was “too hard”, especially exploitable dungeons? Had ArenaNet not nerfed the dungeons to allow more players to access them and decreased the difficulty of DEs, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

I love the GW2 combat. I understand what the OP is saying, but honestly, if the answer to not finding the skills all that rewarding is to give up finding interesting ways to use them and to end up spamming 1, then it’s never going to get more interesting.

So GW2 is my first MMO. “Ah,” you say, “So if you haven’t tried any others, you don’t know what you’re missing out on”. But I have. Because I liked GW2 so much, I went and tried WoW, Tera, Rift, GW1. I hated the combat in all of them (except Tera, though I don’t like it as much as GW1, I at least appreciate being able to move around more). Yes, I had way more skills to use. Were any of them more interesting? Not really. In the end, the skill bars get so full of ridiculous stuff, I end up just using 4 or 5 skills anyway, so it’s the same as GW2. YES, ok, I get to choose which I use, rather than having a set 5 weapon skills as in GW2, but once I chose my 5 I NEVER cycled through any others. It was a case of “well, this works” and I used it.

In GW2 the lack of options takes away the “paralysis of too much choice” (it sounds contradictory, but it really does exist), but doesn’t, for me, take away the fun. I know have a lot of fun using fewer skills more effectively, than I did using more skills less effectively.

I guess it’s the way my brain is configured or something. But it’ just my 2c. For me, the combat system is one of the best things about GW2, and it’s certainly kept me playing this MMO over any other that I’ve tried.

Viking Jorun.5413:

The people claiming GW2 was “easy” from day 1 obviously didn’t play at launch. Does nobody remember the CONSTANT whining about how the game was “too hard”, especially exploitable dungeons? Had ArenaNet not nerfed the dungeons to allow more players to access them and decreased the difficulty of DEs, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

Was this in Beta? because i was in GW2 from day one it opened and i didn’t see any difference in difficulty compared to today, for me the difficulty hasn’t changed at all since day one.

Still pretty shallow tho, compared to other MMO’s.