Guild Wars 2

I’ve been doing some map completions recently. This adventure underlines entirely how trivial it is to run around with no challenge or opposition. You can easily face tank veterans without moving, run into groups of mobs and watch them all drop like flies. While I know the matter of difficulty is a divisive topic that has been discussed before with people in both camps being very passionate, I want to suggest some changes that at the very least would make the journey more interesting.

Enemies
Whether easy or difficult, enemies don’t really seem to react. They just execute a cycle of abilities. They’re punching bags sitting in your punishment. Upping their health or increasing their damage alone will not be measures that make them more compelling.

• Enemies should make a better effort to flank you
• Enemies should deal significantly more damage from behind
• Enemies that stealth should try to take advantage of movement and positioning
• More enemies should consistently apply buffs to make builds that deal with those more compelling in PvE
• Enemies should deal more conditions, especially damaging ones
• Some enemies should have significant weapon swap between ranged and melee, e.g. if you get close to a ranged enemy, it may pull out a club to try and stun you
• More enemies should have quicker attacks, even if they do slightly less damage (right now there are some moments of inactivity that one could use to write an epic poem)

More in depth suggestions:

Desperate
Some enemies that reach low health should gain a buff called desperate. It should last several seconds. If the enemy is still alive when the timer expires, he will call for help from nearby enemies that will attack, perhaps with knockbacks to push you away from the target.

Panicked
Instead of fleeing for no reason and then returning with no health, enemies that begin fleeing should gain a buff called panicked. This will cause them to regain health while fleeing. If the cycle of fleeing completes, they will gain last resolve, increasing their health, damage, and possibly granting them quickness on their first hit.

Some enemies should both be able to gain Desperate and Panicked.

Avoidance
When the game was first released I could swear enemies avoided area of effect damage. It may have been written off as a bug that annoyed players (I may be remembering completely wrong), but I do none the less think that some enemies, perhaps even a random few in groups, should gain an ability called avoidance that causes them to dodge or step out of area of effect damage without leaving themselves useless for several seconds doing so. This could be a roll, firing an arrow similar to those the players have for retreat, etc.

Players
There are things that could encourage more dynamic play if enemies were made somewhat tougher. You could of course increase loot in general so that the effort still remains rewarded in a desirable manner if enemies take a little longer to kill. I know it’s not enough for some to simply have more fun skirmishes.

You could also begin to reward use of skills. Here are some suggestions that could alter how players see these fights (presumably enemies using the tougher skills above):

• Dodging an enemy’s attack gives you a small boost to magic find for that enemy
• Losing less than a certain threshold of health when fighting an enemy does the same; or maybe it gives a temporary damage (or defensive) buff against enemies of that type
• Defeating a tough enemy as quickly as possible gives more experience
• Landing blows to the back of certain enemies increases loot/experience chance for those particular enemies
• In fact, exploiting particular kinds of weaknesses in enemies should do the above
• Taking damage from certain enemies slowly increases the damage you take from that type of enemy, until you evade an attack

There could be achievements for doing a significant amount of these, perhaps even ongoing ones. If you manage to dodge x attacks, or if you defeat y of a particular enemy without dropping below a certain health threshold, you’re rewarded with stuff.

Feel free to add any ideas. I’d just like to see things become a bit more compelling, not just tougher for the sake of it, or worse, frustrating.

Just dropping this here, not all will be implemented , but still:

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021848/Building-a-Better-Centaur-AI

Kosmo.5187:

I’ve been doing some map completions recently. This adventure underlines entirely how trivial it is to run around with no challenge or opposition. You can easily face tank veterans without moving, run into groups of mobs and watch them all drop like flies. While I know the matter of difficulty is a divisive topic that has been discussed before with people in both camps being very passionate, I want to suggest some changes that at the very least would make the journey more interesting.

Enemies
Whether easy or difficult, enemies don’t really seem to react. They just execute a cycle of abilities. They’re punching bags sitting in your punishment. Upping their health or increasing their damage alone will not be measures that make them more compelling.

• Enemies should make a better effort to flank you
• Enemies should deal significantly more damage from behind
• Enemies that stealth should try to take advantage of movement and positioning
• More enemies should consistently apply buffs to make builds that deal with those more compelling in PvE
• Enemies should deal more conditions, especially damaging ones
• Some enemies should have significant weapon swap between ranged and melee, e.g. if you get close to a ranged enemy, it may pull out a club to try and stun you
• More enemies should have quicker attacks, even if they do slightly less damage (right now there are some moments of inactivity that one could use to write an epic poem)

2 and 4 could be easily done and them alone would have a big impact on PvE making it both require more attention and be more enjoyable.

As is now the only way PvE would ever really be a challenge is if your mentally challenged or FUBAR drunk

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Kosmo.5187:

• More enemies should consistently apply buffs to make builds that deal with those more compelling in PvE

2 and 4 could be easily done and them alone would have a big impact on PvE making it both require more attention and be more enjoyable.

As is now the only way PvE would ever really be a challenge is if your mentally challenged or FUBAR drunk

If four its implemented in the form of blessings, you could make necro more pve functional.

“smart” AI ends up just being frustrating but just as predictable as “dumb” AI.

What “smart” AI is, is really just giving the enemies patterns that are more difficult for the player to play against. It’s not actually smart because we don’t have the computing power for actual AI. It’s just patterns with fewer weaknesses.

For example, when enemies attempt to flank you, it makes it so that they constantly move out of your stationary AoE effects and out of your melee attack arc. So now you have to constantly reposition just because of a predictable pattern that the enemy has. It’s not more engaging than a stationary enemy because the pattern is so predictable.

Another example is AI that reacts to the player. What this means is when the player performs an action, the AI reacts with an appropriate counter. This is also frustrating design because all it really does is remove options from the player. Certain actions will simply be countered. Again, it’s not engaging because the pattern is still predictable.

Anyway, PvE is only challenging until you learn the optimal way to do it. That is true no matter how much time you spend trying to make the AI better. At some point players will learn how to beat it consistently and after that it’s not a challenge anymore. You can’t fix that without making some kind of crazy system that procedurally generates things so that everything is different every time.

Khristophoros.7194:

Another example is AI that reacts to the player. What this means is when the player performs an action, the AI reacts with an appropriate counter. This is also frustrating design because all it really does is remove options from the player. Certain actions will simply be countered. Again, it’s not engaging because the pattern is still predictable.

This is a good point. If you give mobs interrupts, they have lightning fast “reflexes” so your big skills will get interrupted. You won’t find this fun, especially since you know the AI is “cheating”. Also, looking at Anet’s love of AI spamming pushbacks, knockdowns, they’d probably give mobs no-recharge interrupts and you’d just be standing there with all your skills interrupted.

Careful what you wish for.

@Khristophoros
Have you ever seen a PvP player staying inside a painful AOE? No, the player is trying to avoid it. I agree with your point that as long as it is predictable it won’t be optimally enjoyable, and from the AI talk Anet gave, they don’t mention anything about randomness. But having enemies avoiding AOE, trying not to stack to prevent the whole group being cleaved and doing more than 1 attack every 2s can only be positive. I think the idea is that there should be trash mob with very limited abilities and boss which are challenging not only because they have 10M HP and deal 20k damage.

Silverkey.2078:

@Khristophoros
Have you ever seen a PvP player staying inside a painful AOE? No, the player is trying to avoid it. I agree with your point that as long as it is predictable it won’t be optimally enjoyable, and from the AI talk Anet gave, they don’t mention anything about randomness. But having enemies avoiding AOE, trying not to stack to prevent the whole group being cleaved and doing more than 1 attack every 2s can only be positive. I think the idea is that there should be trash mob with very limited abilities and boss which are challenging not only because they have 10M HP and deal 20k damage.

GW1 had AI that avoided AoE, and guess what happened? Pulsing AoE skills were useless in PvE and people would flame you for using them.

It’s impossible to make PvE that remains challenging after it has been figured out. It doesn’t matter if the AI is “smarter” because all that does is limit player options.

There is only one way to make PvE content remain challenging. You make it different every time so that the players need to figure it out every time they do it. You can do this with procedurally generated content. It’s just very difficult to make procedurally generated content actually feel meaningfully unique every time.

PS: The PvP player also runs away when he knows he’s gonna lose. Let’s have enemies run away when they’re losing and if the players aren’t able to stop them from escaping they’ll miss out on the loot. Because PvP. /sarcasm

Kosmo.5187:

I’ve been doing some map completions recently. This adventure underlines entirely how trivial it is to run around with no challenge or opposition. You can easily face tank veterans without moving, run into groups of mobs and watch them all drop like flies. While I know the matter of difficulty is a divisive topic that has been discussed before with people in both camps being very passionate, I want to suggest some changes that at the very least would make the journey more interesting.

That is why I never use warriors or thiefs or any class with insane damage that you just don’t need to move. That I how I felt when I was leveling my warrior. I was just standing there and whacking the enemy and they melted. Drop banners and press 2 on greatsword, switch hammer press 2 or 3, switch back, press 2 and everything dead. Or even better, press 2 only on greatsword, and everything melted. I have 2 warriors and both leveled like a boss up to level 80 without a sweat. In fact, it was boring even. And I was just using green equipments or lower level rares.

Khristophoros.7194:

GW1 had AI that avoided AoE, and guess what happened? Pulsing AoE skills were useless in PvE and people would flame you for using them.

Meanwhile, direct damage AOE (that the AI didn’t recognize because reasons) became king, and the thousand year rule of the necromancer began.

Seriously, though, that sort of AOE avoidance would really screw over a lot of weapons, skills, and traits.

Thanks for writing, everyone. I see several people have a beef with the suggestion regarding avoidance or partial avoidance. While I don’t see it as an issue that one of five enemies decides to leave the AoE to provide some flanking, it’s easy to notice in the responses that people have some bad experiences with certain implementations. I don’t really think it should detract from the other suggestions, though. They’re fairly independent and could work even if avoidance was not part of the equation.

The linked talk had some interesting bits. All things said, my stance remains that the current behavior of enemies definitely can’t be the pinnacle of MMO gameplay, at least not MMOs focused so heavily on combat as Guild Wars is. If we sink to conceding that AI will be forever annoying if it isn’t completely predictable, then I think we’re missing out on some great potential for improvement in the overall experience.

In some ways it’s passable, or good enough, versus breaking new ground.

It makes me wonder how much ArenaNet and other MMO companies actually experiment with well developed out-there or off-the-wall solutions that don’t make the cut in favor of the status quo.

HoT is going to implement smarter AI iirc.

Wasnt Mobs rather smart previously, but people got mad and they made them easiere?`(Mobs used to get out of red rings, avoid stacking and also beleive they used to dodge?)

Khristophoros.7194:

GW1 had AI that avoided AoE, and guess what happened?

GW2 also had it during the betas. Imagine if every tick of an AoE also applied a short duration fear. That’s basically what happened. Although it made AoEs rather useless as damaging abilities, the fear component was easily exploited since enemies could be kept in a constant state of fear.

Well, that is assuming that the mobs do not attack while moving out of aoe. An additional argument could be added to say, only move out of ground aoe if “dodge” available.

This way if players blow all the damage at once, and the mob has a dodge available, the players wasted dps. baiting a dodge or two out first OR immobilizing the target first would maximize damage done.

Additionally, mobs could block, heal, blind while in aoe. Or some mobs could be enraged while in ground aoe, so that while they take more damage, they will also DO more damage while in the aoe or maybe mobs can’t be blocked or avoided while in aoe…which may discourage mindless spamming of ground target aoe, yet encourage intelligent setup by players and coordination.

There are a lot of creative things that can happen beyond just “players put damage down…mob avoids damage”.

Khristophoros.7194:

“smart” AI ends up just being frustrating but just as predictable as “dumb” AI.

Mostly this.

I always laughed when people wanted better AI in trinity games, where the whole
concept lives from the fact that the mobs are NOT intelligent. Else they would
kill the healer first, and the whole concept of the trinity goes down the drain.

Now here .. who would play a scepter ele if you would never ever hit a mob with
dragons tooth because those mobs are intelligent end run out of the radius
before it comes down ? What mob would stay in wells of a necro, or in the
range of 100 blades .. and so on and so on ?

In the end we would have maybe only chars running around with longbows
and staff eles, because melee is just running after mobs but never hit them,
as long as the mob leads us into 10 other mobs where we then have to run.

Or we need to have masses of root skills that last long enough to kill a mob
before he runs away. However then mobs maybe also root us constantly ..
what would also be “great fun”.

I remember in Lineage2 there was an Ol’Mahum camp where mobs also always
ran away when at 25% health or so .. and yeah directly into a camp with masses
of mobs. As melee that was simply frustrating since you couldn’t kill them if
you don’t wanted to get killed and loose 5% of you level exp.

Khristophoros.7194:

GW1 had AI that avoided AoE, and guess what happened? Pulsing AoE skills were useless in PvE and people would flame you for using them.

It’s impossible to make PvE that remains challenging after it has been figured out. It doesn’t matter if the AI is “smarter” because all that does is limit player options.

I have my huge aoe atack in pvp, since i know they wil try to avoid the atack, i try to make their dodges wasted before, i chill, incapacitate, stun, etc them and my teammates chain them. On my mes i chain enemies to make my eles team destroy them.

If you have some degree of expertise and a litle skill level in pvp you will know that the game becomes of how to counter the enemy skills and make them fall in yours effectively.

Thats a very good form to make pve harder. Instead of just put the aoe, i need to put the aoe + the chills or any countermeasure, making the fail of one (coordination , etc) the cause of it not working.

Thats a litle of what AI can do, but its a huge improvemnet of the braindead game pve its in this game.

Khristophoros.7194:

The PvP player also runs away when he knows he’s gonna lose. Let’s have enemies run away when they’re losing and if the players aren’t able to stop them from escaping they’ll miss out on the loot. Because PvP. /sarcasm

Some humanoid ones do that, and if something can be game breaking like having a champ do it (champ runs, his hp its huge you cant kill him and he reset), the devs are intelligent enough to think of it and not implement it.

Pd: You sure limit players options when they need to think and use them effectivly. And that makes the difference betwen skilled gameplay and not skilled gameplay.

zengara.8301:

Wasnt Mobs rather smart previously, but people got mad and they made them easiere?`(Mobs used to get out of red rings, avoid stacking and also beleive they used to dodge?)

If im not wrong the game was nerfed before release.

Bandits and Centaurs, after level 15, still do it.

Lucius.2140:

Khristophoros.7194:

GW1 had AI that avoided AoE, and guess what happened? Pulsing AoE skills were useless in PvE and people would flame you for using them.

It’s impossible to make PvE that remains challenging after it has been figured out. It doesn’t matter if the AI is “smarter” because all that does is limit player options.

I have my huge aoe atack in pvp, since i know they wil try to avoid the atack, i try to make their dodges wasted before, i chill, incapacitate, stun, etc them and my teammates chain them. On my mes i chain enemies to make my eles team destroy them.

If you have some degree of expertise and a litle skill level in pvp you will know that the game becomes of how to counter the enemy skills and make them fall in yours effectively.

Thats a very good form to make pve harder. Instead of just put the aoe, i need to put the aoe + the chills or any countermeasure, making the fail of one (coordination , etc) the cause of it not working.

Thats a litle of what AI can do, but its a huge improvemnet of the braindead game pve its in this game.

Khristophoros.7194:

The PvP player also runs away when he knows he’s gonna lose. Let’s have enemies run away when they’re losing and if the players aren’t able to stop them from escaping they’ll miss out on the loot. Because PvP. /sarcasm

Some humanoid ones do that, and if something can be game breaking like having a champ do it (champ runs, his hp its huge you cant kill him and he reset), the devs are intelligent enough to think of it and not implement it.

Pd: You sure limit players options when they need to think and use them effectivly. And that makes the difference betwen skilled gameplay and not skilled gameplay.

Ok the difference between a human and an AI is you don’t know what the human will do. Unless the AI uses a huge amount of computing power, it will be predictable. And keep in mind, the game has thousands of individual enemies which may or may not be fighting players at any given time. Each one has to take minimal computing resources because there are so many of them.

You don’t know the human will run out of the AoE. It’s a choice. They may decide for some reason that it’s better not to give up the position. If they do leave the AoE, they may not move where you think they’ll move. They also are not guaranteed to run when they’re losing a fight.

The point is you don’t actually completely know what a human player will do and that’s what makes PvP interesting and challenging.

If you want PvP, play PvP. PvE is different.

Like I said before, and I don’t think you guys understand this, PvE is only challenging until it is figured out. The challenge is to solve the puzzle. Then you solve it and you know how to beat it every time. After that it can’t be challenging anymore even if the AI flees from AoEs, tries to flank, etc… A reliable way to beat each encounter will be figured out and it won’t be challenging anymore.

Khristophoros.7194:

Lucius.2140:

Khristophoros.7194:

GW1 had AI that avoided AoE, and guess what happened? Pulsing AoE skills were useless in PvE and people would flame you for using them.

It’s impossible to make PvE that remains challenging after it has been figured out. It doesn’t matter if the AI is “smarter” because all that does is limit player options.

I have my huge aoe atack in pvp, since i know they wil try to avoid the atack, i try to make their dodges wasted before, i chill, incapacitate, stun, etc them and my teammates chain them. On my mes i chain enemies to make my eles team destroy them.

If you have some degree of expertise and a litle skill level in pvp you will know that the game becomes of how to counter the enemy skills and make them fall in yours effectively.

Thats a very good form to make pve harder. Instead of just put the aoe, i need to put the aoe + the chills or any countermeasure, making the fail of one (coordination , etc) the cause of it not working.

Thats a litle of what AI can do, but its a huge improvemnet of the braindead game pve its in this game.

Khristophoros.7194:

The PvP player also runs away when he knows he’s gonna lose. Let’s have enemies run away when they’re losing and if the players aren’t able to stop them from escaping they’ll miss out on the loot. Because PvP. /sarcasm

Some humanoid ones do that, and if something can be game breaking like having a champ do it (champ runs, his hp its huge you cant kill him and he reset), the devs are intelligent enough to think of it and not implement it.

Pd: You sure limit players options when they need to think and use them effectivly. And that makes the difference betwen skilled gameplay and not skilled gameplay.

Ok the difference between a human and an AI is you don’t know what the human will do. Unless the AI takes a huge amount of computing power, it will be predictable.

You don’t know the human will run out of the AoE. It’s a choice. They may decide for some reason that it’s better not to give up the position. If they do leave the AoE, they may not move where you think they’ll move. They also are not guaranteed to run when they’re losing a fight.

The point is you don’t actually completely know what a human player will do and that’s what makes PvP interesting and challenging.

If you want PvP, play PvP. PvE is different.

Like I said before, and I don’t think you guys understand this, PvE is only challenging until it is figured out. The challenge is to solve the puzzle. Then you solve it and you know how to beat it every time. After that it can’t be challenging anymore even if the AI flees from AoEs, tries to flank, etc… A reliable way to beat each encounter will be figured out and it won’t be challenging anymore.

Thats why i put you later that you will need to do aoe+ lockdown, chill, etc. Thats more than one thing and more importanty if your class cant do it properly it requires of a teammate to do it.

The end result its you have to do more and coordinate: between your skills and your teammates.

Meaning theres more challenge than before.

Theres plenty of games with better AI than gw2 and are pve, its not only need to be pvp.

Lucius.2140:

Theres plenty of games with better AI than gw2 and are pve, its not only need to be pvp.

You mean any of those games where the mobs blindly attack the one person
with the most defense and hitpoints, only because he tells im some yo mama jokes ?

Beldin.5498:

Lucius.2140:

Theres plenty of games with better AI than gw2 and are pve, its not only need to be pvp.

You mean any of those games where the mobs blindly attack the one person
with the most defense and hitpoints, only because he tells im some yo mama jokes ?

No i mean, that kind of games that are for just one person and are hardcore oriented.
Been hardcore not the quantity of hours you spend in a game, but your level of coordination, reflex, fast and proper thinking, concentration and capability of notice many detailsa t the same time.

Plus, even if a game like what you said have better AI than GW2, except in what you mentioned. Why not correct it?, i mean your argument/reply, doesnt make sense -.- .

Mobs that move out of AoE or avoid attacks is an interesting concept. Consider how many attacks get wasted in WvW or PvP. Hitting characters that are constantly moving is a lot harder than hitting mobs. Consider also the profession-based practice NPC’s in the Mists lobby. These behave a lot more like players than the PvE mobs. They’re not as quick as players, but they’re closer.

While playing PvP or WvW, the game is designed for players to try to kill each other. PvE mobs are basically designed for players to succeed at killing them. This is especially true in the persistent world. While I doubt that the lion’s share of PvE players want mobs to be as hard to kill as players, there is a great deal of wiggle room between PvP play and PvE play as it is now.

I’d (personally) draw the line at mobs producing clones seemingly at will, or going into stealth and running away, though. Just sayin’.

Lucius.2140:

Beldin.5498:

Lucius.2140:

Theres plenty of games with better AI than gw2 and are pve, its not only need to be pvp.

You mean any of those games where the mobs blindly attack the one person
with the most defense and hitpoints, only because he tells im some yo mama jokes ?

No i mean, that kind of games that are for just one person and are hardcore oriented.
Been hardcore not the quantity of hours you spend in a game, but your level of coordination, reflex, fast and proper thinking, concentration and capability of notice many detailsa t the same time.

Plus, even if a game like what you said have better AI than GW2, except what you mentioned. Why not correct it?, i mean your argument/reply, doesnt make sense -.- .

MMOs are no single player games. If you want singleplayer games then play those
but don’t try to turn MMOs into it.

How do you image fights that last 5-10 minutes against a single mob in the open
world where you have 20 mobs in a camp and the all respawn after 1 minute ?

Please go play those games, but don’t try to turn this game in something that would
just frustrate most of the players because you won’t be able to move 20 feet because
mobs respawn 10 times faster than you could kill them.

Beldin.5498:

MMOs are no single player games. If you want singleplayer games then play those
but don’t try to turn MMOs into it.

How do you image fights that last 5-10 minutes against a single mob in the open
world where you have 20 mobs in a camp and the all respawn after 1 minute ?

Please go play those games, but don’t try to turn this game in something that would
just frustrate most of the players because you won’t be able to move 20 feet because
mobs respawn 10 times faster than you could kill them.

First: i prize that the quality of your answer went up.

Second: chill, inmovilizate, etc the enemy and aoe it in that condition, it will not take that longer, not will conflict much with you taking down a camp or the respawn rates of mobs.
Plus about the duration, supose i alredy didnt answer that, you would pull enemies instead of going rambo against an entire camp ^^, that way yu get the kills.

Third: If you do second you can upgrade the AI of the enemies without making the MMO “singular” characteristic generate issues with it.

Forth: Some AI changes could be just used in instanced content in case the respawn, quantity, etc of the mobs can become an issue – witch for the aoe thing, its not a case.

Obviously, we don’t want every single mob to be as smart as a player. Because in PvP, killing one player can easily take a minute. You can make mobs a bit more intelligent but not excessively. Basically, just make sure they don’t stack in the same point to let themselves cleaved/AOE-d to death. But then, have some challenging boss fights were indeed, AOEs won’t work every single time, but add an immobilize first and you may get 2 or 3 ticks out.
Currently in PvE, 80% of all skills are pointless because they are designed to keep a challenging enemy down. Everyone is using their cleave and AOEs, nothing else. There is no build variety (except somewhat for Ele), half of the professions are “not meta”…

Also, let NPC use all the game mechanics themselves. The necro currently is one of the worst PvE profession. Add boons to the enemy and necro suddenly has its own unique addition to a team.

Silverkey.2078:

Obviously, we don’t want every single mob to be as smart as a player. Because in PvP, killing one player can easily take a minute. You can make mobs a bit more intelligent but not excessively. Basically, just make sure they don’t stack in the same point to let themselves cleaved/AOE-d to death. But then, have some challenging boss fights were indeed, AOEs won’t work every single time, but add an immobilize first and you may get 2 or 3 ticks out.
Currently in PvE, 80% of all skills are pointless because they are designed to keep a challenging enemy down. Everyone is using their cleave and AOEs, nothing else. There is no build variety (except somewhat for Ele), half of the professions are “not meta”…

Also, let NPC use all the game mechanics themselves. The necro currently is one of the worst PvE profession. Add boons to the enemy and necro suddenly has its own unique addition to a team.

Similar opinion.

We cant make AIs as intelligent as humans and even if we could, it will not be smart to make something 10 times tougher than a player as intelligent as a human.

Plus if i can have duels of 10-30 mins against a player that have similar level than me, then i will not make a common mob the same, since i need to kill docens upon docens of them (alredy explained that a aoe against a chilled, stunned, etc enemy its effective, so dont try to use it against me -.- ).

Beldin.5498:

How do you image fights that last 5-10 minutes against a single mob in the open world where you have 20 mobs in a camp and the all respawn after 1 minute ?

Please go play those games, but don’t try to turn this game in something that would
just frustrate most of the players because you won’t be able to move 20 feet because
mobs respawn 10 times faster than you could kill them.

If this is a sophisticated joke that went over my head I apologize in advance, but can we reel it back more towards the original post? This is an absurd distortion of all the possibilities. Not even single player RPGs tend to have clumps of regular enemies that each take 5 – 10 minutes to defeat. That was not the suggestion. There is an immense amount of wiggle room between the current implementation where you can kill an enemy with two auto attack chains before they can react and this statement where fights take minutes and cause respawn problems.

Now I wonder how this thread would have been received if I’d simply left out the avoidance portion, but some of the subsequent posts are definitely taking it much further and as such I actually find they lose a bit of credibility as counter arguments. I’m definitely sensitive to the fact that pointing out problems (or even potential problems) is an asset, but creating problems for the sake of it, without considering any solutions, is counter productive. Such attitudes, in my humble opinion, gets in the way of innovation.

Not that it was my suggestion, but let me give you an example. Let’s say that regular enemies did take 5 minutes to defeat (using your lower end proposition). You claim it would ruin the game because enemies would respawn after 1 minute. Solution: adjust the rate of respawn to match the combat experience. Done.

I also think the original post contained a lot of examples that wouldn’t drastically increase combat time at all, but rather make the current combat time mean more. Right now many enemies don’t even get to use a single ability before they’re down.

You’d have to up the rewards of these advanced enemies notably.

I can’t be bothered to kill most of the current enemies as is, unless I have to, as its so unlikely that they will drop any to make the effort worth my time.

Pockets.3201:

You’d have to up the rewards of these advanced enemies notably.

I can’t be bothered to kill most of the current enemies as is, unless I have to, as its so unlikely that they will drop any to make the effort worth my time.

Yeah, however they could not be in gold or sellable gear, that will create inflation.

Perphaps crafting mats, like:

Ghosts: A lot of dust mats.

Bears: Like six claw mats?

Spiders: Several venom bags.

This will generate the mats to go down in price and the end reward not been so meaningfull, but they will still be better than now and will make the crafting in the game more fluid and less restrictive.

Plus more players will go to hunt enemies for the mats they need.

I’ve also posted topics regarding hostile NPCs being all too weak against full Berserker DPS builds, where enemies manage to hit player 1-3 times dealing some damage and then drop dead, without making players even use other skills or dodging some of the attacks.

Since enemies in PvE:

1. Have low armor (vs. Direct dmg)
2. Have high HP (vs. Conditions)
3. Rarely use boons (vs. Boon manipulation)
4. Rarely use conditions (vs. Condition manipulation)
5. Have harmless abilities and gain Champ and above ranks too easily (vs. Crowd Control) (vs. Dodging) (vs. Healing)

And even brought out how Conditions, Boons, Healing, CC, Armor and stat sets (other than Berserker, Celestial or Soldier) are under used.

Even used my Necromancer as an example: She has skills that manipulate conditions and boons (transfer and corruptions), enemies lacked defenses to make the condition and boon manipulations useful, limited to being expert class for DoT combat that can do some forms of direct dmg builds. Hostile NPCs were slaughtered in few seconds by berserker DPS, before my conditions dealt any damage.

Have also pointed out how variety will not make Berserker DPS obsolete, but makes them viable builds, instead of “The best for PvE, everything else is crap”…

However, I have never talked about AI, since I saw the AI ok enough if stats and abilitites are more varied.

I don’t mind having groups of intelligent NPC and groups of no-so-intelligent NPC.

For example:

- No veteran shouldn’t be that intelligent.
- Veterans should be quite intelligent and at least dodge when needed (with a cooldown).
- Elite veterans should be very intelligents and move from AoE, interrupt players, evade, etc.
- Champions should be like elite veterans but stronger or something.
- Bosses should be bosses (?).

Also, depending on the composition of a group of NPCs, for example a group of pirates with a captain should be more challenging/smarter than a group of pirates without a captain.

And i think that is possible with the new AI for HoT

Beldin.5498:

Lucius.2140:

Beldin.5498:

Lucius.2140:

Theres plenty of games with better AI than gw2 and are pve, its not only need to be pvp.

You mean any of those games where the mobs blindly attack the one person
with the most defense and hitpoints, only because he tells im some yo mama jokes ?

No i mean, that kind of games that are for just one person and are hardcore oriented.
Been hardcore not the quantity of hours you spend in a game, but your level of coordination, reflex, fast and proper thinking, concentration and capability of notice many detailsa t the same time.

Plus, even if a game like what you said have better AI than GW2, except what you mentioned. Why not correct it?, i mean your argument/reply, doesnt make sense -.- .

MMOs are no single player games. If you want singleplayer games then play those
but don’t try to turn MMOs into it.

How do you image fights that last 5-10 minutes against a single mob in the open
world where you have 20 mobs in a camp and the all respawn after 1 minute ?

Please go play those games, but don’t try to turn this game in something that would
just frustrate most of the players because you won’t be able to move 20 feet because
mobs respawn 10 times faster than you could kill them.

Way to straw man and try hard in the same response. Tera elegantly mixed BAMs into the mob population as a way to have challenging and/or group oriented content in an open world setting. You don’t make all of them that powerful, but as a designer you can intelligently mix unit comps to get a target difficulty level, and potentially focus them on different aspects.

In GW2 terms it would using Mobs, Vets, Elites and Champs, with special attention paid to their type skill sets, in order to set a difficulty level for events, but apply them to patrols and defense teams in an overworld setting. One of end of the spectrum you have examples like swarms of baby spiders, which you can cleave through with ease; And on the other end you have the Mordrem, who are Vet level mobs with force multiplying skill sets and attacks.

But the Potato AI and Mob designs undermine all these mixing efforts due to one universal weakness…. you can get them to group up, maximizing AOE damage output, simply by luring them in one direction long enough for the direct path behavior to converge in a small area. Ranged mobs are notably harder to deal with because they don’t normally chase on short distances. This is a major reason Orr is a point of frustration for many players. By all intent, the unit mixture of static undead is actually very effective, and is a good use of the that particular map design concept. But in practice it skews off toward frustrating because while individually (and in small groups) they are decently challenging, stray adds quickly force multiply out of control. But their density is a map design choice to prevent runners bypassing large swaths of hazards. In some respects this is highly successful…. but the pressure they can put up, combined with their frequent spawns and dense population, works on the assumption of an equally prevalent player population to roam the area.

This obviously was a gamble that didn’t pay off for the developers, since most of Orr’s activities are only reasonably successful with moderate to large sized groups… but that difficulty only served to funnel players into the K-trains, that now steam roll it with relative ease.

I’m hoping HoT’s unit capabilities allow them to target difficulty scale better through mob team comps, and that the AI changes pay off. Its also hinted that BAMs may actually be something they added to the level design resources.

Beldin.5498:

How do you image fights that last 5-10 minutes against a single mob in the open
world where you have 20 mobs in a camp and the all respawn after 1 minute ?

I’d imagine that was a camp that was designed as group content and the difficulty described indicates it was never meant to be solo’ed

Beldin.5498:

MMOs are no single player games. If you want singleplayer games then play those
but don’t try to turn MMOs into it.

I think it is quite clear that anyway, open-world will never be properly balanced to be challenging because it depends on how many people participate. As said, Orr is designed to be done in groups (I believe it is intentional), so a solo can roam around but not succeed many events.
On the other end, dungeons should not be meant as a grinding tool but as a challenging experience. And it actually is… in the beginning. The enemies AI really prevent meaningful replayability . Boss should not be tough because of 100000k HP and 1-shot kill you. They should have basically 100-500k HP, at most 5-10k per attacks (on cool down) but react to the enemy instead of just looping through their animation list.

Even if there would be some sort of compromise where you have an area, or maybe a few areas in several zones, where enemies display at least some degree of resistance and complex use of abilities that would be great. Here and there around the world they’ve scattered veterans which are not tough enough and champions which are mostly meant for group play, so neither really fills the niche. It could handily be part of the hero point system. Or even an achievement system where you have to hunt them down on each map. The other day I fought a few hero challenges and they just melt. One barely hit me.

If people are incredibly against this, it’s worth keeping in mind that even if it was a relatively decent selection of enemies that did this, the vast majority of the game would still be a complete walk-over. It’d basically be giving a part of the player base something interesting that the other portion could simply disregard if there was no interest. I want to stress again that I’m not really talking about avoidance. The fervor against it in the thread stands out, but most of the suggestions had nothing to do with it and were mere concepts and potential improvements.

I just don’t know that relegating it to HoT will be enough, as it’s the current regular world that suffers from this issue the most, more so after the traits made people more powerful.