Guild Wars 2

I know not everyone likes it, but i’m one of those people that absolutely love it, and I just hope that the water exploration gets the love and TLC that the land does for exploration

I’m okay with underwater exploration, so long as there are no enemies.

I’m ok with underwater epxploration if we can use non underwater combat. You know Asuran tech makes water like air :lol: brilliant.

One of the most unique part of the game left dead.
Sad.

DeanBB.4268:

I’m okay with underwater exploration, so long as there are no enemies.

Pretty much this….unless they completely overhaul underwater combat at least. We are going to a desert though, so i doubt well see too much.

DeanBB.4268:

I’m okay with underwater exploration, so long as there are no enemies.

Pretty much this….unless they completely overhaul underwater combat at least. We are going to a desert though, so i doubt well see too much.

People hate water in this game because its badly implemented.

And its badly implemented because the devs just never went back and fixed it. The most cited problem is the fact that most skills don’t work reliably underwater or simply don’t work at all, which is just a lack of dev attention.

They’ve been becoming more lax with it over time too; first we lost water weapon skins in new skin sets, then many skills which make no sense to not work underwater are simply disabled for no reason (see Revenant).

The worst part is, alot of this could be fixed by using predefined skill templates e.g standardizing how a PBAoE skill works underwater, but given how many patches they’ve had to dedicate just to fixing tooltips and broken skills its clear that alot of their code is copy and paste not polymorphism and inheritance.

I mean, it took them something like four years just to standardize behaviors such as boon conversion to conditions with predefined tables.

I’ve given up on them ever doing anything about it.

Underwater exploration? Love it!
Underwater combat? NEVER.

Cyrin.1035:

Fivona.5061:

One of the most unique part of the game left dead.
Sad.

For now, but I’m really hoping the game is building towards Cantha, Janthir Bay, and the Underwater Dragon for expansion 3, so we can finally get new UW mechanics.

I have dreamt about the fight with a massive UW dragon for years.

If they fully change up and/or upgrade the entire UW combat system, I’m totally down.

I don’t consider it outright broken, but I do agree that UW needs a fair amount of work. I"m one of those sorry saps that choose an underwater weapon for a legendary, and I don’t want that to have been for nothing. Arenanet, fix the combat, fix the skills, stop leaving out UW skins out of new sets.

I always found the problem being that for some reason, you do like 1/3 of the damage you do on land while under water, even with ascended breather and ascended underwater weapons (yes I made ascended underwater weapons and even Kraitkin, a legendary), and several skills don’t work. I get that the expansions have had very little underwater content (just some tunnels under Tangled Depths), but a lot of central tyria has substantial amounts of underwater combat. It shouldn’t be abandoned because people dislike it it should be improved until people do like it.

Why players hate underwater combat and why it has abandoned is not about being lazy or not being able to fix skills. It has several problems:

1. It is in 3D, unlike rest of the game which is still basically set out on the flat surface. people find free-3D environments confusing and annoying because in real life you also stand on flat surface. It is near impossible to keep an eye on your back under water since you can be attacked from so many directions. The games that do these 3D fights rely heavily on specially designed controls and UI elements to help the player, none of which GW2 has because it is designed for different purpose.

2. There is no ground targeting. It means any skills that would normally apply the effect at certain spot on the land is useless. Any AoE skill needs to pop around the player/target (the bubble) or appear at set distance, and it is very difficult to correctly measure distance under water. Is the enemy far away? Is it too close? These are easy on the land but near impossible in such 3D space.

3. The movement is slow, even slower then normal fights. And you can not dodge. Pretty much every fight on the land requires dodging. Since there are no ground, there are no damage circles, so you can not avoid being hit.

I like the underwater combat, never bat an eyelash when aquatic fractal comes up… I don’t see why people hate on it so much.

Xbon.9086:

I like the underwater combat, never bat an eyelash when aquatic fractal comes up… I don’t see why people hate on it so much.

every fight takes like 3x longer than it does on land, and a good number of the skills you’re used to using won’t work.

Xbon.9086:

I like the underwater combat, never bat an eyelash when aquatic fractal comes up… I don’t see why people hate on it so much.

Underwater combat is half done.
You have if you’re lucky 2 weapon choices (makes swapping pointless) that have no synergy with your terrestrial traits/build.
Your skills if you’re lucky are limited to about 40% and in some cases that 40% is utter garbage and has no reason to be locked out other than because they can.
All of this is before even mentioning the junk deal that is aqua breathers. The most significantly overpriced portion of the content if you want desired stats since you’ll always be at 5/6 runeslots without one.

Underwater combat is bad and needs a metric ton of fixes for the above alone.

TexZero.7910:

Xbon.9086:

I like the underwater combat, never bat an eyelash when aquatic fractal comes up… I don’t see why people hate on it so much.

Underwater combat is half done.
You have if you’re lucky 2 weapon choices (makes swapping pointless) that have no synergy with your terrestrial traits/build.
Your skills if you’re lucky are limited to about 40% and in some cases that 40% is utter garbage and has no reason to be locked out other than because they can.
All of this is before even mentioning the junk deal that is aqua breathers. The most significantly overpriced portion of the content if you want desired stats since you’ll always be at 5/6 runeslots without one.

Underwater combat is bad and needs a metric ton of fixes for the above alone.

Aquabreathers shouldn’t even be a separate armor item, it should just use your normal headgear’s stats and rune, it’s just a convenient deus ex machina for why we don’t have an oxygen meter, which was initially what was so exciting about how anet was going to do underwater combat, we’d be able to swim indefinitely under water and explore a lot of cool things, underwater ruins, underwater puzzles, fund sunken ships, treasure chests, etc. All that is cool stuff, but having to buy another helmet (and for a long time our choices on breathing devices was limited to karma vendors so we couldn’t even get a level 80 one), another rune, and then having skills locked out and doing less damage, with the underwater weapons not really supporting your build (IE I find that trident is often condi focused and spear is often power focused.. if you’re a condi build but a class that can’t use trident your damage will suffer. If you’re a power build but your class can ONLY use trident, your damage will suffer.)

Having Aquabreathers be cosmetic only would improve underwater combat.

Having all classes be able to use all underwater weapons would also improve underwater combat.

They haven’t forgotten it, but it’s such a low priority, they don’t even make underwater skins for the new weapon sets. (And don’t get anyone started on the state of rev skills, besides other aquatic skill/trait issues.)

Underwater combat willbe overhauled/refreshed/expanded upon when we fight Bubbles, until then, i don’t see any resources going into it. There’s just not enough content to justify the workload it would require.

Havok.6073:

Underwater combat willbe overhauled/refreshed/expanded upon when we fight Bubbles, until then, i don’t see any resources going into it. There’s just not enough content to justify the workload it would require.

Well, since they dropped idea of dragon killing – I guess they REALLY don’t want to touch underwater :P

as said before:
underwater exploration: like
underwater combat: ****

and my personal view on underwater combat isn’t even that the skills need to be reworked or something like that.
I just find it really hard to estimate the distance between me and the mob, in addition to the really weird vertical movement.

Please improve UW content. It is beautiful and unique. It deserves a rebirth.

I think the only thing that’s wrong with underwater exploration is:

a.) mob density tends to be too high for the 3d movement
b.) too many utility skills don’t work for no good reason.

If they addressed both of those things I’d kind of enjoy it from time to time. After all, it’s still a minority of content in the game, and I don’t expect that will ever change.

I like underwater combat enough to have all three underwater legendaries and 11 ascended breathers. I wish they’d add the water back to the WvW maps.

I would love to get more content for unterwater adventuring as well!

Einlanzer.1627:

I think the only thing that’s wrong with underwater exploration is:

a.) mob density tends to be too high for the 3d movement
b.) too many utility skills don’t work for no good reason.

If they addressed both of those things I’d kind of enjoy it from time to time. After all, it’s still a minority of content in the game, and I don’t expect that will ever change.

c) thief is a Joke underwater.

All I dream for is an underwater jumping puzzle. A proper cave diving experience.

wrathmagik.3518:

I know not everyone likes it, but i’m one of those people that absolutely love it, and I just hope that the water exploration gets the love and TLC that the land does for exploration

Well they look into improvement of water, somehow. We now have the tide-system since Ember Bay. It is surface water, but it makes swiming and walking alongside the coast so much more relaxing and enjoyable.

I hope/beleive they are currently working on a huge underwater update, which may take another few months. Why? SAB. According to the map, the next world is at least partially underwater ^^. Another hint for underwater development, the skills of the new elite-specs mostly work underwater or have at least an underwater-version.

And don’t forget about the giant underwater-cave in TD. Whenever I enter it, I find something new. The mechanics are challenging. During my first exploration tour through the tunnel system, I found the disco room by mistake, tried everything but /dance and left -.-

I also regulary check out the big cave below Behem Gauntlet, for years. Can we please get something in there? I even tried luring certain mobs (shark/armorfish) deep inside the cave to trigger something. Nothing worked ;_;.

So yeah, totally agree with OP. Hope they work on more underwater stuff. A puzzle would be awesome. Maybe a cave system with different currents, triggering switches to manipulate them in order to end up at the final chest? ^^

The underwater content was one of the main reason why I bought GW2 in first place, and yes I am a GW1 player aswell.
I would really hope to see underwater content and fights more soon! Hopefully in our next Expansion....
Since I like the underwater content, I cant wait to hear or see more about the Deep Sea Dragon, THAT has to be underwater..... otherwise.....

3rd Expansion, Cantha, Tengu playable race and Deep Sea Dragon, which means underwater battle!

under water, a fantastic part of GW2 left to rune… Devs cant be bothered to improve it, its just left negleted, must be too much hastle ensuring ALL classes skills work underwater not just concentrating on weaver!!! (Revenant) has only 2 elite classes functioning underwater … since release

Skills and bad camera angles, then its great!

finkle.9513:

under water, a fantastic part of GW2 left to rune… Devs cant be bothered to improve it, its just left negleted, must be too much hastle ensuring ALL classes skills work underwater not just concentrating on weaver!!! (Revenant) has only 2 elite classes functioning underwater … since release

Skills and bad camera angles, then its great!

To be fair its still the best underwater combat of any game.

I love underwater exploration. The problem is, traits skills and weapons don’t synergize at all while underwater because we build them up thinking about on land combats.
I personally think they should leave the underwater content on hold until they do a complete overhaul of the underwater combat system.

To begin with, they should totally dissociate on land and underwater builds (equipment, skills and traits). Then, they should design skills and traits specifically for underwater mechanisms.

I think that they should implement that kind of change whenever they introduce the underwater dragon. It would, in my opinion, be awesome if they manage to pull that off and provide in addition underwater specializations (which would only apply to the underwater section of the game, since underwater and above land builds would be dissociated entirely. You would revert back to your ‘normal’ elite spec when you get back on land)

Lahmia.2193:

All I dream for is an underwater jumping puzzle. A proper cave diving experience.

Professor Portmatt’s Lab

Akame.8736:

Lahmia.2193:

All I dream for is an underwater jumping puzzle. A proper cave diving experience.

Professor Portmatt’s Lab

That ain’t cave diving.

ANet has put underwater combat on ice for 5 years now basicalyl immedisately as they released the game, because they realized, that everythign they made to that point just sounded nice on paper, but ended up full with problems right when the game released and they saw what they did actualyl fully in action by players on the live servers and not just on their test servers with alot lesser people testing the systems and gameplay mechanics…

Thats practicalyl why anet reduced everythign that has to do with underwater combat to nearly 0, removed underwater combat practically out of WvW mostly except of some spots, which i can#t understand, why some pater passages in the borderlands haven#t been removed as well. would be a simple and quick redesign if Anet would mean it serious with putting underewater combat completely on ice, until the right time has come to reimplement it in an completely overworked and rebalanced way.

- In 5 years have sene all of the underwater skilsl not a single time a rebalance
- The underewater combat system completely lacks of its every own Underwater Combat Traits for each Class
- All Skills have to be reworked (and replaced if necessary), which currently can’t be used under water – there is no freakign excuse for it to exclude the usage of skills for only land combat – if a skill can’t be used eeverywhere, its just bad skill design and if necessary the skil lneeds to be changed into a different one, which can work everywhere – see it as a class balance option/chance to add some fresh new air into the game, or to merge eventually some skills together and use the made gaps to implement some fresh interestign new skills to improve build diversity!!
- With masteries now beign there, theres alot of potential also for all kinds of tyrian as like map specific Underwater Masteries – which most likely wil lget added with the expansion that is responsible for when we finally get against the deep sea dragon, because from all elder dragosn, he is basically the only part of the game, which lets GW2 require to have underwater gameplay.
Wouldnt that elder dragon exist, then there would be basically no need at all for underwater combat ect.

However, with the kind of workload and efforts that it needs to make an expansion , we will most likely get to see work on underwater ganmeplay eventually in like 3-4 years from now, when basicalyl the 3rd expansion is coming, as thats the next moment where its likely that we might see a change in that system perhaps.

I don#t see Anet working on this at all as part of a Feature Pack or anything else before a next expansion, therefore is the workload to rework the whole underwater gameplay way too big.

I think a lot of the player base ignore the underwater stuff a lot. Why? I couldn’t possibly guess others reasons but for me, I find combat “sluggish” – I don’t know how else to put it. Exploration though, that I do enjoy although, I think, so much more could be done. It feels like a missed opportunity. Just my two ha’pennies.

How fortunate we’re going to a desert in PoF. I guess even when, at some distant time in the future, we’ll encounter Steve/Bubbles, it won’t be underwater.

I can’t agree to Anet adding underwater content until they address underwater combat.

Underwater Exploration is Cool
Underwater Combat is also Cool.
Sexy Swimsuit Skins are Very Cool!
Better looking Rebreather skins also Very Cool!

I’m for it!

I can relate to most of the problems people have with underwater combat, but it’s still a feature i like. If it had been/was better implemented i think people would like it a lot more – one of the main reasons people dislike it is that it is different, and so they haven’t had the same chance to learn their skill underwater as on land (I’ve done multiple world completions and i still don’t remember what all the skills are for those characters)

Also Guard UW is so painful it makes me cry. Someone said thief sucks underwater, but i can at least kill stuff offshore in sirens landing. Guard does legit 1/4 or less of their land damage underwater, and extremely inefficiently even at that.

No, I don’t dislike it, because of something childish like “its different”
I dislike underwater combat mainly, because of Anets bad skill design, that underwater combat let my Thief feel like becoming a scaredy cat, that freaks out on the touch of water and instantly forgets like half of its skills and gameplay mechanics that are based on traits, which are 100% designed only around land combat, so that underwater cobmat cripples my class down to just less than 50% of its effectiveness it has on land, because like over the half of my skilsl don’t work underwater due to ANet beign too uncreative to design skilsl for the thief, which can work in both territories exactly to nearly the same.
Anet shows, that they can be creative in this way with the elementalists Tornado Skill, which turns into Maelstrom underwater.
This skill adaption should be done for all classes with all of their skills! End this idiotic – skill x can’t work in water.
If theres a skill ,which can’t be adapted into a way how it will work in water too, then remove the skill out of the game and completely replace it with a new one, which can work everywhere. Stop with the excuses!! Simple but effective solution, which can eventually bring in also soem fresh new air into the game and build diversity, if Anet would do this finally with one of their next bigger balance patches.

Underwater combat disturbs me also, because like mentioned, underwater combat has for the classes no own traits.. all traits for all classes are 100% based only on land combat, which leads to it, that when you go into water, certain traits can turn into becoming useless, because they don’t work in water due to the neccessary skills or gameplay mechanics not working in water for them, which is very shortsighted as game design.

All classes need to have individual traits, also too for underwater gameplay.
So the moment you go into water, your trait setting should switch from your Land Traits over to your Underwater Traits, where the traits are especially made for underwater gameplay and the underwater weapons and their skills in mind.

Yes, that means naturally alot of work, but its work, that ANet has made themself by just ignoring this part of the game for 5 years no. Would they have acted directly, then this problem wouldn’t have grown bigger and permanently ignoring the problem is no solution… Sooner or later they have to rework this stuff, if we want to go one day against the elder sea dragon and if Anet wants to make one day really usage of the great potential there is in underwater gameplay with their game through the help of the mastery system instead of keeping on ignirign it forever and focusing always only on other new land content, which would be quite boring, when there is so much ANet could do with more underwater gameplay and especially its combat system.

And yes, just to repeat it – Thief sucks UW, its absolutely no comparison of how you play it, when fighting on land where you have access to all of your skills and all of your gameplay elements and traits that work there, while in water not.

Please Don’t Forget Underwater Exploration.

Too late they already have 4 and a half years ago. How many examples do we need that this is the case? Sometimes we we see the original map before mapping it fully It had a lake for example and all of the sudden the map is done and the lake no longer appears on the final product. Other cases lake Doric, solution let’s find an excuse to empty it. HOT let’s make a lush jungle desert without water where frog mainly live in trees, result no water combat again.

Do you seriously still think we still are going to fight a water dragon? Players didn’t like underwater fights so they removed it. We’re getting tired of fighting dragons all the time, the solution they removed it we now fight gods. We’re going trough the desert we have the river Elon, in the first map we help a fisherman recover his goods from his sunken ship with no enemies attacking, result no water combat. Even if somehow someday we go back to killing the other dragons, the water dragon will come on land and we will kill him as he comes out of the water, lol. Remember Primordius a God killed him, result was? You guessed it, no need to make underground content therefore less effort.

Ever since the launch of GW 2 Anet has never faced us on this subject, they might and I say might read this thread but reply and have a conversation forget it. So as far as the words water and skimpy armors are concerned it is a dead subject and a forbidden topic. Even Shiro we killed him twice, we come back to Elona guess what Palawa Joko we get to kill him a second time, no need to come up with new scenarios, easy money.

Don’t get me wrong the oceans and water combat are still my favorite things and I still intend to finish creating my other two underwater legendary because they are cool.
We will always have water content but it will remain a diminished product as Tyria is slowly becoming a desert planet.

I have always loved water combat and always will, I simply don’t get players who don’t.
So my final analysis is this, has Anet killed water exploration and combat? No fussy and whining young players did, those who over analyze things and it’s a real shame because Anet had created the best and most beautiful water content of any game ever and we spat in their face claiming it was crap. Is it any wonder they have given up on it.
I simply wish they keep creating water content for those who do love it with or without combat. Hopefully I will enjoy the Elon river as it is on the map right now not a diluted and dried up version of it.

Hello everyone

I don’t think the main issue with underwater combat is the 3D angle issues you maybe have or that you don’t know how far your skill reaches. You will get used to it as you do on land.

The main problem I see here is, that you deal sooooooooo much less damage than on land. Just an example:

Back in the days I was playing a ranger and tried to do my 100% map achievement. I don’t know which specific map it was, but it was some lvl 60-70 are in core tyria. So the task was to disturb the inquisition in whatever they where doing. I was heading out with my shark and ready to go.
Usually it takes me up to 5 minutes to complete a heart quest (Unless I don’t know what even to do). This time, it took me nearly 20 Minutes. Why? Well, my gear was exotic lvl 80, even my underwater gear. It took me 1 minute to kill 1 non-veteran foe. Thats insane! Each kill gave me like 3% – 5% for my heart completion. I got soo frustrated.
You can’t combo in any way. Your skills do not match with each other and their base damage is way to low!
There are so many possibilities with underwater combat. You can forge so many cool skills that really have an impact on your playstyle. You have a real 3D space where you can do so many things.

Back in 2012 I was really hyped for underwater combat. That stated that it will be a core element of the game which it was on release. But somehow they lost the track for it which is really sad to see.

There are 3 things (which are not thaaaat hard to realize) that would even fix underwater combat in a way that it is as much fun as land fights are:

1. A seperate, simultaneous ruinning (which means you dont have to reskill every time you want to go to the water) masterie page, with masteries especially for underwatercombat. Something like we have for land weapons.

2. Rework all the (or lets say 80% of the) underwater weaponskills for every class and make them have some sort of synergy with each other. Also rework or fix the other skills so they can be used underwater.

3. (AND MOST IMPORTANTLY!!!) Fix the basedamage of underwater combat (player side). You deal sooooo kitten , extreme, mega, ridiculous, (what so ever) low damage underwater that it gets frustrating. Raise it! Make it as worthy as land skills are.

Also, 1 or 2 little thinks that could improvate the underwater combat too:

- Dont replace the helmet with the Respiratory Equipment (Is it called that way?), make it a skin only or maybe give it seperate, unique stats ON TOP of the helmet.

- Make underwater combat and exploring a core element of your game again. Create a synergy between UW and land combat. Add some tactical aspects to this. Even in PVP and especially in WvW which had a great potential for underwater combat.

Anyway, I really really (x100) hope that one day we get underwater combat back to a state where it is as cool as land combat. There is so much potential.

Just my 2 cents. Greetings