Guild Wars 2

One thing I’ve noticed about combat is the lack of high ground advantage. In real world physics range weapons such as bows and rifles have a high ground advantage but with GW2 it seems to be based on a sphere around the player and the weapon. When elevated above and a bit away from the target there is a drop off where that sphere of influence curves under negating high ground advantage. There are ways around it with pets, turrets and such to extend that damage influence.

I’ve played quite a few first person shooters and they rarely have this problem. Was this a choice of the devs or a side effect of how they calculate damage? I’m curious on what others think about this topic.

In wvw, standing on a wall is very dangerous because of mass AoE hate. It’s much safer to stand on the bottom of the wall rather than on top.

Targeting whilst in a zerg is much easier when you’re fighting in the field and have the high ground. I’d say it was an advantage in of itself.

Bow damage in GW1 took altitude into the calculation; I dunno why that was removed, so I assume there was a design decision involved. Balance, maybe?

Probably to keep people from cheesing encounters. While I feel good about finding places where I can snipe enemies from safety, foes generally can’t climb or jump. That might not matter for ranged foes, but for melee foes, it’s pretty cheap, even if a creature wouldn’t have trouble with it realistically. (Anything that can fly, climbing creatures, etc.)

It’s frustrating when a mob loses focus and starts out-of-combat healing, but unless I’m standing right next to it, I can’t complain too much. Fair’s fair.

There’s also the issue of the ankle high lip on top of WvW walls causing “Obstructed”.

Redenaz.8631:

It’s frustrating when a mob loses focus and starts out-of-combat healing, but unless I’m standing right next to it, I can’t complain too much. Fair’s fair.

If only we could do the same thing. “Oh I’m tired of fighting this champion, let my health regenerate like normal and let me get my out of combat speed back plz & thnx”

OriOri.8724:

Redenaz.8631:

It’s frustrating when a mob loses focus and starts out-of-combat healing, but unless I’m standing right next to it, I can’t complain too much. Fair’s fair.

If only we could do the same thing. “Oh I’m tired of fighting this champion, let my health regenerate like normal and let me get my out of combat speed back plz & thnx”

Can you not? I do that all the time. Unless you’re trapped in a dungeon/fractal/storyline boss fight, it’s very rare that you can’t disengage and regroup.Take your pick of high mobility skills, stealth, teleports, etc.

Unless you’re fighting players, your foes lose interest pretty quickly.

I guess we can? But in the HoT maps, especially in TD, my character seems to be perpetually in combat for no reason.

Redenaz.8631:

OriOri.8724:

Redenaz.8631:

It’s frustrating when a mob loses focus and starts out-of-combat healing, but unless I’m standing right next to it, I can’t complain too much. Fair’s fair.

If only we could do the same thing. “Oh I’m tired of fighting this champion, let my health regenerate like normal and let me get my out of combat speed back plz & thnx”

Can you not? I do that all the time. Unless you’re trapped in a dungeon/fractal/storyline boss fight, it’s very rare that you can’t disengage and regroup.Take your pick of high mobility skills, stealth, teleports, etc.

Unless you’re fighting players, your foes lose interest pretty quickly.

Then you’re lucky that foes immediately stop targeting you when you walk away… I seem to drag them halfway across the map before they finally give up on me.

Rhaegar.1203:

Bow damage in GW1 took altitude into the calculation; I dunno why that was removed, so I assume there was a design decision involved. Balance, maybe?

In gw1 people needed to understand how game works , on gw2 is more follow the gimmick than anything else, it was not about balance, but to cut the gap between players effectivness, was removed to make game more easier for everyone.

Aeolus.3615:

Rhaegar.1203:

Bow damage in GW1 took altitude into the calculation; I dunno why that was removed, so I assume there was a design decision involved. Balance, maybe?

In gw1 people needed to understand how game works , on gw2 is more follow the gimmick than anything else, it was not about balance, but to cut the gap between players effectivness, was removed to make game more easier for everyone.

This most likely. They went overboard, then swam about three english channels worth of water in the name of accessibility in the move to GW2.

They wanted the game to be simple, where concepts of mastry are applied specifically to timing a keypress and all areas of interest or tactical utility in the environment are clearly marked with giant circles.

Energy management, height advantage, important interrupts, and other mechanics that are difficult to pick up for new players in the first hour of play were removed from the game.

Break bars and the new raid fights give me hope, though. Break bars are basically re-introducing GW1 style interrupts in a more “accessible” manner, so perhaps they slowly ramp us back up to mechanically interesting combat that revolves around more that running a rotation and dodging circles.

it does remove everything GW1 stands for, tactics.
sure, they said it is going to be a different game but to remove the essence of GW, that’s going to far.
they could at least keep it in PvE so balance isn’t effected as much, but nooo, let’s just abandon the fundamental reason why GW is such a success and make it a baby steps game.

Meh. Height-based damage seems silly to me. That said, I do wish altitude gave a range bonus.

High ground is hardly an advantage in pvp/wvw. It just makes it easier to focus aoes on a single point. As for pve? You do understand how broken it would be if I had an entire zerg standing 800-1200 range above a boss’kittenbox? Plus iirc, GW1 had a much higher range on bows anyways.

Hesacon.8735:

In wvw, standing on a wall is very dangerous because of mass AoE hate. It’s much safer to stand on the bottom of the wall rather than on top.

I hate being on those walls in WvW. Unless I actually stand on the battlements rather than behind them, I’m at a disadvantage. I can target neither ST attacks nor AoE’s, but the people on the ground outside are able to target AoE’s on the edge of the wall.

Good points. Hight should add or subtract range and power to projectiles. Attacks that are not projectiles could have other attributes adjusted.

Of course, doing something like that would necessitate a means of blocking or reducing damage for those on low ground and increasing vulnerability for those on high ground.

lets not mention how standing on a rock just gives the invulnerable message against PvE mobs.
In GW1 the mob attempts to escape range and flees until you can’t hit it if it is unable to reach your location…..

Why does it just go invulnerable in gw2?

Lazy programming that completely breaks immersion, imho…. and it was something they had right in gw1 and just completely forgot how to do for gw2.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Lazy programming that completely breaks immersion, imho…. and it was something they had right in gw1 and just completely forgot how to do for gw2.

GW2 is a fun game to play but a lot of stuff in GW2 breaks immersion unfortunately. One thing that bugged me about Quake engines over Unreal is the use of invisible walls to block players. GW2 uses them excessively. The collision layer and texture layer are the same in Unreal but I think the collision layer in the GW2 engine is separate from the texture layers. This is why you get so many surfaces that you can pass thru yet run into invisible walls.

When gliding was added to central Tyria it got really bad. Some maps aren’t so bad but others like Frostgorge Sound are really bad. Lots of invisible walls and solid objects you can pass thru. Some surfaces are totally missing. They erected invisible walls all around that central range in the middle just to keep people off of it. The top surface of it had no collision layer in many spots. It’s kind of a waste because they could do a lot with that area of the map.

Before y’all discuss the “real world” or “breaking immersion,” please consider whether you really want GW2 to be more realistic:

• Do you really want friendly fire? Why isn’t immersion broken when friends stand in a Barrage
• Do you really want burning things to burn you if you get too close?
• Do you really want to be locked into your direction while falling|gliding, without needing actual impulse to change your linear momentum 180 degrees?

Game physics tries to be realistic, but in the end it has to serve the game first and Real World Physics™ last. Issues of balance and fun have to take priority over imitating our world.

The way I avoid “immersion breaking” issues is by assuming whatever the game does is how it is supposed to be; for me, immersion is only broken when I forget that and assume RL is somehow ‘correct’ in Tyria.

Tekoneiric.6817:

One thing I’ve noticed about combat is the lack of high ground advantage. In real world physics range weapons such as bows and rifles have a high ground advantage but with GW2 it seems to be based on a sphere around the player and the weapon. When elevated above and a bit away from the target there is a drop off where that sphere of influence curves under negating high ground advantage. There are ways around it with pets, turrets and such to extend that damage influence.

I’ve played quite a few first person shooters and they rarely have this problem. Was this a choice of the devs or a side effect of how they calculate damage? I’m curious on what others think about this topic.

Program the entire combat mechanic fix in c++, present your work to Anet, and get turned down for having a brilliant idea! Welcome to the real world!

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Before y’all discuss the “real world” or “breaking immersion,” please consider whether you really want GW2 to be more realistic:

• Do you really want friendly fire? Why isn’t immersion broken when friends stand in a Barrage
• Do you really want burning things to burn you if you get too close?
• Do you really want to be locked into your direction while falling|gliding, without needing actual impulse to change your linear momentum 180 degrees?

Game physics tries to be realistic, but in the end it has to serve the game first and Real World Physics™ last. Issues of balance and fun have to take priority over imitating our world.

The way I avoid “immersion breaking” issues is by assuming whatever the game does is how it is supposed to be; for me, immersion is only broken when I forget that and assume RL is somehow ‘correct’ in Tyria.

Re: Friendly Fire

From the context of the game it seems to me that weapons being magical in nature have a sort of safety that only damages the enemy target.

Re: burning

Sure, stand in a fire and get burned. I’m ok with that. I’ve wondered why it wasn’t that way.

Re: Gliding

A glider in the real world has control over the direction of the glider. Even falling bodies have a measure of control on direction. A good example is a sky diver. They aren’t falling like an object in a vacuum. The can shift their direction and control their rotation even before deploying the parachute. I’m ok with game falling/gliding being more like the real world.

Tekoneiric.6817:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Before y’all discuss the “real world” or “breaking immersion,” please consider whether you really want GW2 to be more realistic:

• Do you really want friendly fire? Why isn’t immersion broken when friends stand in a Barrage
• Do you really want burning things to burn you if you get too close?
• Do you really want to be locked into your direction while falling|gliding, without needing actual impulse to change your linear momentum 180 degrees?

Game physics tries to be realistic, but in the end it has to serve the game first and Real World Physics™ last. Issues of balance and fun have to take priority over imitating our world.

The way I avoid “immersion breaking” issues is by assuming whatever the game does is how it is supposed to be; for me, immersion is only broken when I forget that and assume RL is somehow ‘correct’ in Tyria.

Re: Friendly Fire

From the context of the game it seems to me that weapons being magical in nature have a sort of safety that only damages the enemy target.

Re: burning

Sure, stand in a fire and get burned. I’m ok with that. I’ve wondered why it wasn’t that way.

Re: Gliding

A glider in the real world has control over the direction of the glider. Even falling bodies have a measure of control on direction. A good example is a sky diver. They aren’t falling like an object in a vacuum. The can shift their direction and control their rotation even before deploying the parachute. I’m ok with game falling/gliding being more like the real world.

1: Then why dont my aoes damage someone on my block list? They’re MY enemy, so why isnt it working? Why cant I kill them?
2: He’s talking about things afflicted with the burning condition. It’s illogical to think that you can stand close enough to shave an enemy while they’re a living torch and not be harmed by the fire.
3: Not what he’s talking about either. A sky diver cant instantaneously about face while falling at speed OR with a deployed parachute/glider.

Aidan Savage.2078:

1: Then why dont my aoes damage someone on my block list? They’re MY enemy, so why isnt it working? Why cant I kill them?
2: He’s talking about things afflicted with the burning condition. It’s illogical to think that you can stand close enough to shave an enemy while they’re a living torch and not be harmed by the fire.
3: Not what he’s talking about either. A sky diver cant instantaneously about face while falling at speed OR with a deployed parachute/glider.

I fully understand what he is saying and I’m saying I’m ok with more realistic physics. I also fully understand it’s a “fantasy” game. I’m just saying some things could be done better like make high ground be more of an advantage and get rid of the invisible walls. Invisible walls is just a quick and sloppy way of blocking players. Some maps don’t make them nearly as obvious as others.

Frostgorge Sound is probably the worse map. It looks like whoever made that map was rushed and didn’t get to finish it. There are slopes to block players yet they chose to put an invisible wall in front of them. There are rocks missing sides so they are more like tents and a lot of wasted space that could be used for events, nodes, etc. Plant and tree nodes on ice bergs/flows, one mineral node below the ground layer making in inaccessible to mine, etc.

Those inaccessible nodes are actually a crafty trick employed by anet. There are no legitimate means of accessing those nodes, so if someone mines it…..

Tekoneiric.6817:

Aidan Savage.2078:

1: Then why dont my aoes damage someone on my block list? They’re MY enemy, so why isnt it working? Why cant I kill them?
2: He’s talking about things afflicted with the burning condition. It’s illogical to think that you can stand close enough to shave an enemy while they’re a living torch and not be harmed by the fire.
3: Not what he’s talking about either. A sky diver cant instantaneously about face while falling at speed OR with a deployed parachute/glider.

I fully understand what he is saying and I’m saying I’m ok with more realistic physics. I also fully understand it’s a “fantasy” game. I’m just saying some things could be done better like make high ground be more of an advantage and get rid of the invisible walls. Invisible walls is just a quick and sloppy way of blocking players. Some maps don’t make them nearly as obvious as others.

Frostgorge Sound is probably the worse map. It looks like whoever made that map was rushed and didn’t get to finish it. There are slopes to block players yet they chose to put an invisible wall in front of them. There are rocks missing sides so they are more like tents and a lot of wasted space that could be used for events, nodes, etc. Plant and tree nodes on ice bergs/flows, one mineral node below the ground layer making in inaccessible to mine, etc.

I’m not sure you understand what I was trying to explain. The main point seems to have been lost: there is never going to be a ‘game’ in which everything matches reality. There are always adjustments and compromises to maintain balance and keep things fun. Each game has it’s own idea for how to do this.

Regarding the specific cases: if you accept that ‘barrage’ is ‘magic’ and therefore doesn’t cause friendly fire, why can’t you accept that there’s no “high ground” advantage due the magical nature of ranged skills? The lore reason is: “blah blah magic” and the gameplay reason is because it would be overpowered for this game (although not for many PvP style games).

I commend you for the being the first person to accept that burning in this game (and others) is counter to RL physics, since I’ve been posting in threads just like this one (10+ years). Again, it’s this way for playability reasons; the game is just more fun if you don’t have to worry about being burned by your neighbor’s torch.

Regarding violations of Newton’s law: while falling or gliding in GW2, I do not need to exert any force to completely do an about face. While jumping, I can decide to go backwards, like UFOs in bad science fiction movies — I cannot do that in RL, without anything to push back from.

There’s no question that the game has a lot of areas where concept and execution don’t match, weird invisible walls as you suggest, some times you can pass through a thick branch and sometimes you trip over a tiny root. Most likely, different designers, different supervisors, and different QA teams — not good reasons, but typical for games. I’d like those fixed, but that would be at the bottom of my priority list compared to tons of other relatively minor issues (not unusual to this game either).

However, the point raised in the initial post was about why the game doesn’t offer the same High Ground Advantage that the RL world does. And my response remains: because the designers think it’s more fun and better balanced if GW2 does not.

tl;dr RL and game physics will never match. I encourage everyone to immerse themselves in the physics of this game, rather than look for differences it has compared to RL. It’s, well, it’s just more fun to do so. (At least, in my opinion.)

edit: rephrasing more neutrally

Actually Na, could you imagine how OP Burn builds would be if burning acted like the fire DoT in Sorrow’s Embrace? God… that would be terrifying in WvW…. fail to cleanse everyone quick enough, the burning just spreads to everyone again….

Aidan Savage.2078:

Actually Na, could you imagine how OP Burn builds would be if burning acted like the fire DoT in Sorrow’s Embrace? God… that would be terrifying in WvW…. fail to cleanse everyone quick enough, the burning just spreads to everyone again….

If they changed burning, I would love to watch the first week of WvW videos, since most people don’t read patch notes.

I forgot the example of how RL doesn’t match game reality that never makes any “sense” unless you’re a game designer: a foe with 0.0001% health does the same damage as one with 100%. In RL, you might get in a Hail Mary with your dying gasp, but it won’t save you; in games, you can get a full hit (which in GW2 is) enough to rally you if you went down. It’s completely “unrealistic” — it’s just a lot more fun (well, except when you get wiped by a foe who should have gone down first but was “obstructed” by a 1 cm root at your foot).

Oh god….. I’d rather they do that as an april fool’s thing. Instead of inflicting a stack of burning, skills and traits would instead inflict a stack of that fire DoT. The delicious wubwub tears would be hilarious.

Oh, dodging is the other one too. In the game you can dodge twice, then wait for endurance to raise up, but in reality, it would depend on a lot of factors. For example, an ele would be able to dodge more than a guardian by sheer virtue of their differing armor weight.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Aidan Savage.2078:

Actually Na, could you imagine how OP Burn builds would be if burning acted like the fire DoT in Sorrow’s Embrace? God… that would be terrifying in WvW…. fail to cleanse everyone quick enough, the burning just spreads to everyone again….

If they changed burning, I would love to watch the first week of WvW videos, since most people don’t read patch notes.

I forgot the example of how RL doesn’t match game reality that never makes any “sense” unless you’re a game designer: a foe with 0.0001% health does the same damage as one with 100%. In RL, you might get in a Hail Mary with your dying gasp, but it won’t save you; in games, you can get a full hit (which in GW2 is) enough to rally you if you went down. It’s completely “unrealistic” — it’s just a lot more fun (well, except when you get wiped by a foe who should have gone down first but was “obstructed” by a 1 cm root at your foot).

In the future I’ll assume that you don’t like anything I post or comment on since you’re replies usually take odds with it so I’ll skip over your replies. Mental filter engaged.

Yes, ignore someone because their opinions differ from yours. That’s totally the way to foster discussions. Check Please!

Aidan Savage.2078:

Yes, ignore someone because their opinions differ from yours. That’s totally the way to foster discussions. Check Please!

I have no problem with disagreements. What I have a problem with is assumptions in what I know or don’t know. I really don’t care for someone acting like I’m an idiot and that I don’t understand the topic I’m discussing. I don’t discuss a subject without knowing something about it. If I don’t know something about a subject then I just watch, listen, learn and research. I was hoping for a constructive discussion not a browbeating.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Actually Na, could you imagine how OP Burn builds would be if burning acted like the fire DoT in Sorrow’s Embrace? God… that would be terrifying in WvW…. fail to cleanse everyone quick enough, the burning just spreads to everyone again….

Remember disease status from GW1?

Tekoneiric.6817:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Aidan Savage.2078:

Actually Na, could you imagine how OP Burn builds would be if burning acted like the fire DoT in Sorrow’s Embrace? God… that would be terrifying in WvW…. fail to cleanse everyone quick enough, the burning just spreads to everyone again….

If they changed burning, I would love to watch the first week of WvW videos, since most people don’t read patch notes.

I forgot the example of how RL doesn’t match game reality that never makes any “sense” unless you’re a game designer: a foe with 0.0001% health does the same damage as one with 100%. In RL, you might get in a Hail Mary with your dying gasp, but it won’t save you; in games, you can get a full hit (which in GW2 is) enough to rally you if you went down. It’s completely “unrealistic” — it’s just a lot more fun (well, except when you get wiped by a foe who should have gone down first but was “obstructed” by a 1 cm root at your foot).

In the future I’ll assume that you don’t like anything I post or comment on since you’re replies usually take odds with it so I’ll skip over your replies. Mental filter engaged.

That’s a weird response to my comment about the near-dead causing the same damage as the 100% healthy. Doesn’t that demonstrate exactly what you are accusing others of doing? Seeing a post, but failing to read it?

For what it’s worth, I think you have a lot of interesting ideas and well-considered analyses. I just wouldn’t like to play the kind of game that seems to be closer to your ideal.

In any case, it’s your choice to “skip over replies” just because the poster disagrees with your premise or analysis. Ignoring it doesn’t make them wrong (doesn’t make them correct either, of course, but there’s no way of knowing without a discussion).