Guild Wars 2

I’ve been wondering how many people play GW2 and yet feel bored with the combat. Recently I’ve just been soul crushingly bored with my necro and warrior, mostly because of how dry the combat feels in pve to me.

I’ve even resorted to disabling auto attack, effectively shooting myself in the foot on the damage side of things, to eek out a tiny bit of fun from pve. I just can’t seem to keep myself running dungeons anymore.

Basic combat is almost always pretty mind numbing in MMORPG PVE. It’s the encounters that make it fun, sadly this game’s challenging and enjoyable encounters are few and far between.

Good point, panda, I guess I’ve been expecting too much from PvE recently, I just hope things will go well in the future for Gw2. I think the problem with most dungeons is that they are made without the combat model in mind, it really mirrors WoW 5mans from what I’ve experienced.

Basically enemies don’t react like real players do and so it feels like you’re bashing zombies all the time. This is a problem with most MMORPGs where AI is almost non-existent. Imagine if those ranged enemies decided to get behind cover just as you’re about to shoot at them. Imagine if melee enemies actually dodged your AOE attacks instead of just running straight at you like a mindless drone.

At this point what could be done?

I don’t know the amount of work it would take to improve enemy AI but it seems like a worthy task if it’s within reality. Other things add up to bring down personal fun but this seems like the elephant in the room. Enemy AI was/is not developed with the combat system in mind, it feels bleh. I agree zero.

Go play RuneScape and then tell me if Guild Wars 2 combat is boring.

I NEVER get bored of combat in GW2 I think it’s the best as far as MMOs go. It was the only game i LIKED to farm kitten because I never get tired of leaping and spinning at stuff with my warrior.

Group mechanics, on the other hand, get boring, when you’re running dungeon mostly. Your hammer is useless, your mace nearly the same. I hope champions and bosses in general get addressed. The defiant buff is ridiculous, they have no skills etc…
Also all builds and weapons should be made equally useful and efficient for a dungeon run. I guess they should just split everything already between pve and pvp. Heck even WvW. See if i care.

But intrinsically, the skills are a ton of fun, c’mon guys.

Pandabro.8743:

Basic combat is almost always pretty mind numbing in MMORPG PVE. It’s the encounters that make it fun, sadly this game’s challenging and enjoyable encounters are few and far between.

This sums up what I was going to say.

Nope, I’m not bored. I quite enjoy the combat in this game (compared to the combat in other MMOs anyway).

Not that I’ve played many other MMOs, but the combat in this game varies from brain-afk to pretty involved. Dungeons like Arah have some some encounters where you have to pay attention, and the combat is pretty… (insert word im looking for here). I would agree though, throughout the majority of the game there aren’t too many encounters where the combat is overly exciting.

Foeralk.9587:

At this point what could be done?

I don’t know the amount of work it would take to improve enemy AI but it seems like a worthy task if it’s within reality. Other things add up to bring down personal fun but this seems like the elephant in the room. Enemy AI was/is not developed with the combat system in mind, it feels bleh. I agree zero.

I think we’re at a point where it wouldn’t be too terribly difficult to add actual AI to the game. It’s more a question of “is it going to be worth the investment?” As someone had mentioned a lot of the problems stem from designs borrowed from other MMORPGs like WoW. You have this action-based combat system in place which is great in PvP but falls short in PvE because the AI is too dumb to react to what you’re doing. To make things more challenging they increase the health and damage of enemies or just add more enemies.

A lot of people clamor for more interesting “mechanics” like in WoW. I think that this is part of the problem rather than a proper solution. A game with highly scripted mechanics will eventually feel monotonous and yes, mechanical.

Adding in more complex behaviors in enemies and actual awareness will go a long way to improving combat. It will make the game feel fresh, unique, and truly stand above the crowd. We know it’s possible because of the botters out there. People have written bots that can play through the entire Diablo 3 campaign. Last time I checked they could farm Act I inferno and were better than the average player. I don’t know how advanced the Guild Wars 2 bots are since the vast majority of them have been banned. While I don’t condone botting at all, I think developers can learn a thing or two from them.

Thanks for the replies zero, this has helped me pinpoint aspects of PvE that I enjoy, also I think it’s time for me to involve myself into the pvp aspect of the game. I’ll be sure to come back and see the changes to PvE when they roll around in the favor for enjoyment.

Problem lies in challenges, not combat itself, I find combat very fluid and engaging but dungeons and most champions are faceroll.

I wouldn’t say that the combat is an issue. More like the mob mechanics and AI.

Nope not really. Sure not all encounters are challenging, but I can live with that. Logged into SWTOR and almost got despressed instantly with the tradtional type of MMO combat, can’t go back anymore!

Autoattacking being too good is what makes combat boring. Funny to see this thread as I just posted a long write up on this exact topic.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Combat-Not-Content-Is-The-Concern/first#post2408001