Guild Wars 2

Combat isn’t a major issue with Guild Wars 2. In fact the combat is AMAZING.

Lots of people are mistaking combat problems for specialization problems. There’s a lack builds in Guild Wars 2, and I don’t exactly mean that there’s a lack of combinations for skills. The lacking factor is that there’s not as many build specializations as people are used to, especially people from GW1.

In Guild Wars 1 for example there were over a thousand skills, all with very different effects, and due to the secondary profession model used there were lots of combinations. Weapons had some impact on skill usage and skill combinations, but it was very little.

Guild Wars 2 is significantly different in that your combat specialization is weapon based primarily. While you can swap weapons (for most professions), you have a very limited number of roles you can specialize in with those weapons.

Personally I find GW1 to be a superior game from a combat perspective, because of the specialization it allows for. But the actual mechanics of Guild Wars 2 are obviously superior. That’s just one person’s opinion, though.

I think the mechanical foundations in GW2 are superior, but the game was designed to be solo’d. Outside of dungeons, what benefit do i get in regards to composing a team of players, traits, skills, etc? Absolutely nothing but a zerg heap of number buffs. The encounters are braindead. Encounters in GW1 had player-available skills, which is why the combat was inherently fun. The game is balanced around NOT needing any type of team composition, any certain class archetype, etc. In that regard, it has succeeded. However, this type of design does not suit MMO games. This is a way to design a casual game where people run through but dont spend any real time or money in the long run.

In GW1, i would sit there and pvp all day..because it was so gosh darn fun with all the permutations of builds (and i rarely ever built around my secondary profession). I would pve to have nice loot in pvp, but also because i enjoyed the story. Anet made a big mistake disallowing players to take pve gear into pvp. They’ve done nothing but segment the player base, not allowing us to play the way we want because of arbitrary design and laziness.

and the combat is braindead..it’s awful. If this game didn’t reward you for basically doing nothing (events), i can’t imagine there would be anyone left. When you strip away the gear grind and rewards, do you actually want to spend all day playing this game’s pvp / pve for its’ inherent enjoyment value?

See my topic on front page for more discussion on my thoughts about GW2 combat.

This is the reason why i’m so disappointed with the devs “watching” d/d ele.

This build should be the gold standard not only for other ele builds, but for all other builds in the game.

If it has aspects that are too powerful, counter-mechanics should be buffed or made more prolific, but the synergy of this build should not be broken. Doing so just makes it yet another non-viable build atop the dung heap of many across the entire game.

by giving the utility skills everyone has some teeth in this regard (as counters to the synergies that make specific types of builds powerful), you’d have less discussion about braindead combat and more arguments over whether it’s batter to be a bunker-buster, a single-target assassin, an area pressure, or a bunker. (and there would be MASSIVE arguments over which utility skills were the best – not only on their own rights but in combination).

I still think this is possible with time, but only if ANet grows a pair, stops caving to nerf-calls, and works diligently instead to bring forth as many viable builds as possible rather than breaking synergies because other players are essentially jealous.

Over on a different thread it struck me that there may be opposing metaphors in this game. On the one hand the combat mechanics are built to be reaction based, like a fighting game. Yet on the other hand ANet wants us to swap out skills and such to fit the situation.

Those two do not mesh, imo. You can’t get a good reaction time down if you are constantly fiddling with the build. In fighting games people rarely jump between characters. They stick to one and practice until they can do the various moves in their sleep.

Similarly, people won’t be readjusting their build the whole time. They will stick to one and drill it so they know my instinct what each button does.

Shockwave.1230:

Lots of people are mistaking combat problems for specialization problems…

…Personally I find GW1 to be a superior game from a combat perspective, because of the specialization it allows for. But the actual mechanics of Guild Wars 2 are obviously superior. That’s just one person’s opinion, though._

No offense OP… but it sounds like (to me) that you’ve just contridicted yourself by saying that the combat specialization problems don’t have anything to do with combat.

A game’s combat is how you fight (plain and simple). And essentially in GW2, combat requires everything from weapon skills, traits, to mechanics such as mouse-targeting and keyboard controls.

And I believe “class specializations” should fall under (if not already) there as a subpart of combat.

EDIT: Read what the poster above me wrote & you’ll absolutely understand why in the case of gw2, its class specialization is absolutely related to its combat design.

FluffyDoe.7539:

Shockwave.1230:

Lots of people are mistaking combat problems for specialization problems…

…Personally I find GW1 to be a superior game from a combat perspective, because of the specialization it allows for. But the actual mechanics of Guild Wars 2 are obviously superior. That’s just one person’s opinion, though._

No offense OP… but it sounds like (to me) that you’ve just contridicted yourself by saying that the combat specialization problems don’t have anything to do with combat.

A game’s combat is how you fight (plain and simple). And essentially in GW2, combat requires everything from weapon skills, traits, to mechanics such as mouse-targeting and keyboard controls.

And I believe “class specializations” should fall under (if not already) there as a subpart of combat.

EDIT: Read what the poster above me wrote & you’ll absolutely understand why in the case of gw2, its class specialization is absolutely related to its combat design.

We’re pretty much getting at the same thing. The problem isn’t in the combat mechanics, it’s in the lack of specialization offered in builds.

When we ask the question “What can players specialize in?” It’s not much, everything revolves around the weapon set and there’s only a handful of weapon sets. Many builds have access to a lot of the game’s mechanics, but a high quantity of mechanics doesn’t mean a high quality of mechanics. Options for players to choose a few of them that the player wants to specialize in is something lacking significantly.

the underwater combat is pretty bad. limited range of motion, unreliable dodging, “natural plane” based strafing and turning. try porting the engine to a space based game. youd be laughed out of the room.

Shockwave.1230:

In Guild Wars 1 for example there were over a thousand skills, all with very different effects, and due to the secondary profession model used there were lots of combinations. Weapons had some impact on skill usage and skill combinations, but it was very little.

This is very short-sightened. GW1 had over one thousand skill, most of which were underpowered so they could not make the game too imbalanced. The result was that normal PvE was dumbed down so someone could play while AFK (just send a team or heroes with henchmen and they could do anything in normal mode for you), while Hard Mode was dominated by a few favourite builds that were obviously better than everything else.

There is a very simple argument against adding more skills to GW2: do you think the current skills are really balanced? If ArenaNet can’t balance even the few skills we currently have, do you really believe adding even more skills would make anything better?

Players can fall for the illusion that “more is always better”. After GW1, I hope ArenaNet has learned their lesson and now knows better than that.

Shockwave.1230:

FluffyDoe.7539:

Shockwave.1230:

Lots of people are mistaking combat problems for specialization problems…

…Personally I find GW1 to be a superior game from a combat perspective, because of the specialization it allows for. But the actual mechanics of Guild Wars 2 are obviously superior. That’s just one person’s opinion, though._

No offense OP… but it sounds like (to me) that you’ve just contridicted yourself by saying that the combat specialization problems don’t have anything to do with combat.

A game’s combat is how you fight (plain and simple). And essentially in GW2, combat requires everything from weapon skills, traits, to mechanics such as mouse-targeting and keyboard controls.

And I believe “class specializations” should fall under (if not already) there as a subpart of combat.

EDIT: Read what the poster above me wrote & you’ll absolutely understand why in the case of gw2, its class specialization is absolutely related to its combat design.

We’re pretty much getting at the same thing. The problem isn’t in the combat mechanics, it’s in the lack of specialization offered in builds.

When we ask the question “What can players specialize in?” It’s not much, everything revolves around the weapon set and there’s only a handful of weapon sets. Many builds have access to a lot of the game’s mechanics, but a high quantity of mechanics doesn’t mean a high quality of mechanics. Options for players to choose a few of them that the player wants to specialize in is something lacking significantly.

They need to increase the synergy between weapon sets and traits.

Since launch they’ve done the opposite.

Gretsword was so prevalent among guardians because its toolkit made it useful for every build in different ways.

Then they nerfed the symbol cool down – breaking its synergy with a great many builds because so many traits are tied to symbols.

This was a terrible design decision.

Synergy should be increased, and synergy-breaker or synergy-jammer abilities put in for counters.

Erasculio.2914:

Shockwave.1230:

In Guild Wars 1 for example there were over a thousand skills, all with very different effects, and due to the secondary profession model used there were lots of combinations. Weapons had some impact on skill usage and skill combinations, but it was very little.

This is very short-sightened. GW1 had over one thousand skill, most of which were underpowered so they could not make the game too imbalanced. The result was that normal PvE was dumbed down so someone could play while AFK (just send a team or heroes with henchmen and they could do anything in normal mode for you), while Hard Mode was dominated by a few favourite builds that were obviously better than everything else.

There is a very simple argument against adding more skills to GW2: do you think the current skills are really balanced? If ArenaNet can’t balance even the few skills we currently have, do you really believe adding even more skills would make anything better?

Players can fall for the illusion that “more is always better”. After GW1, I hope ArenaNet has learned their lesson and now knows better than that.

There were meta builds of course but the fact still remains variety was a billion times better and that’s what the players want. Variety. In GW2 we have like 2 builds per character, yipee!

Also, builds that showed up to defeat the meta happened incredibly frequently. People theorycraft and set up builds 24/7 in GW1 to try and make that next meta. That’s what was fun, or even if you didn’t care about the meta you could still play any build you wanted even if it WAS crap because it wasn’t a particularly hard pve game except in dungeons. Pretty much the same as GW2.

It’s like how WoW players try to get their top DPS by using math charts and such, we tried to get the best builds and there were endless combinations, both in pve and pvp. Even today new meta’s appear even though the game is ‘dead’ and most people just /resign in GvG when facing a decent guild, and I can’t remember the last time I saw a full party of 8 with no henchies in the last 4 or 5 months.

I’m just saying, this game has zero longevity because the lack of variety is holding the whole game down. Tell me in a year if you still enjoy spamming your autoattack and hundred blades, seriously let me know.. I’ll be here, still waiting for ANet to give GW1 more of a dev team.

“play the way you want to play”

“no…stop playing that way, that’s not the way it’s meant to be played with!”

“ok we’re nerfing it so you can’t play with it again”

“so now you’re using THAT? ok nerfing that too, seriously stop playing with it that way”

-sigh-

They’ve been quick to nerf a lot, and it was supposed to open up more doors for builds, but due to broken traits etc and a lack of impact of a lot of stats, ultimately people will just stack the same things and just go for whatever is most simple and effective, they need to start increasing the usefulness of skills and not just flat nerfing

Rukia.4802:

There were meta builds of course but the fact still remains variety was a billion times better and that’s what the players want. Variety. In GW2 we have like 2 builds per character, yipee!

Nope.

In normal PvE, anything worked because normal PvE was so dumbed down it didn’t provide any kind of challenge.

In PvP, only the meta builds worked, so no big variety there. In PvE Hard Mode, each profession had at most two desired build, with everything else being considered trash.

There wasn’t more variety. There were a lot of underpowered skills and some players trying to play with subpar builds, which worked in normal, dumbed down PvE but nowhere else.

Meawhile, you have not replied to my question: do you think the currently available skills are balanced? Because if you think they are not, what good would it do to add even more imbalanced skills to the game?

GW2 has to flesh out specializations and make them more effective, but I think it’ll have to be part of a learning process. First it has to be seen what the community can come up with from the mechanics they are given.

For example there was no ‘bunker’ specialization until somewhere in beta testing players developed one.

Redfeather.6401:

GW2 has to flesh out specializations and make them more effective, but I think it’ll have to be part of a learning process. First it has to be seen what the community can come up with from the mechanics they are given.

For example there was no ‘bunker’ specialization until somewhere in beta testing players developed one.

Bunker is boring.

I firmly believe that the emergence of a bunker as the pre-eminent and absolutely dominant build for any profession is a sign that their innate survival skills (via weapons, healing, and utilities), offensive capacity, and the abilities which predominate their battlefields which drive them to bunkers need a serious look. (ahem.. backstab, kill shot)

Bunkers are only good at not dying. They seldom kill anything, and their number output is pathetic. Its NOT an engaging playstyle.

I don’t disagree with your judgement of bunker, plasmacutter.
Hopefully we are on the same page where it comes to the point of my post.