Guild Wars 2

Any plans to make the combat deeper and more engaging in a team environment? I know i’ll get flamed for this, but many people i know feel like the lack of real roles like dedicated healer hurts this game. Classes and skills feel homogenized and pigeonholed. Encounters are designed in an incredibly shallow manner. The combat just isn’t fun in my opinion compared to GW1. Can any developer give us some information on how they plan to evolve the most important aspect of the game?

lothefallen.7081:

What we have here in GW2 is extremely homogenized class design. The depth and specialization (very little; mostly ineffectual in the broad scheme) comes from gear, rune, weapon and sigil choices. Many people don’t see this, but what this does is actually take the complexity and integrity out of role specialization. You’re very pigeonholed into what you can do and how integral your role (if you can even call it that) is.

For you GW1 players out there, i mean the ones that are actually familiar with the game, the pvp, and weren’t just turned away because it was instanced and you couldn’t jump (can you believe these people? They don’t even have a leg to stand on with their ignorant opinions about GW1)..remember Alliance Battles…remember HA…remember GvG.

The trinity worked well in GW1 and it wasn’t simplistic, boring, tank and spank, or DPS race like many ignorant people seem to think of the trinity. Part of this was because of energy costs. A monk couldn’t sit there and save a warrior all day long if the warrior just facetanked. I’d even go so far as to say that after the Defy Pain nerf, there was no such thing as tanking in GW1. The point here is that the GW1 SKILL SYSTEM made the otherwise BORING trinity system shine like a greased furball that it is. Personally, i want that design philosophy back in this game.

What we have in GW2 just encourages a complete lack of real, meaningful synergy between classes. One exception would be the Mesmer’s Time Warp. But skills that effective would be on shorter cooldowns in GW1, which made the skill system seem more deep and rewarding to customize with. What we have here in GW2, the skill design, well it’s just obviously and lazily blanket balanced for all game modes with little regard for player choice or real balance.

Consider encounter design in GW2. Bosses are able to nullify knock downs and CC. Why? Because they’ve homogenized the skill system to the point that no single class can really have a meaningful, unique role in a consistent manner…in a team environment. Bosses also have ridiculously huge health bars to feign content difficulty and cover up poor design. The mechanics used, or rather, necessary to be successful in combat? Dodging red circles, pressing your insta heal button, and reviving players. Basically, it’s like an arcade game.

In closing, i could agree with this game not having a trinity system if:

-GW1 wasn’t so successful with a trinity-like system.

( It was)

-GW2 was actually designed better and more tightly to make up for it.

(it’s not)

GW2 didn’t foster a solo attitude.

(it does)

Removing the monk or healer (i mean direct, efficient, worthwhile to specialize into) role actually added depth to the game.

(It didn’t)

They came up with a better Band-Aid rather than Down State.

(They didn’t)

Bosses (encounters by association) weren’t horribly, shallowly designed and even acknowledged to be so by developers.

(They were)

The game wasn’t so homogenized and simplified from GW1 where it counts (gameplay, combat depth, customization, etc.)

(It definitely is.)

Just my 2 cents.

Agree.

i’am saying it since the begining that the GW2 skill system is VERY bad compare to GW1 possibilities and diversity.

NEVER in GW1 you saw some many ppl saying “what next after lvl 20” because you always had new challenge, new discovery because of the skill diversity and build creation.

The dev just made the worse lazy job every for this game for this point.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with the “Holy Trinity” what I thought GW2 was going to do was allow anybody to do anything w/o forcing them into that role permanently.

Every class should be able to viably Tank, Heal, or Deal Damage.

The battle system is very shallow indeed.

INB4 “This game isn’t for you”.

Removing the trinity was a bad idea. Opening up the trinity would have been a better solution. They say time and time again that they have a “new” trinity of damage, control and support, and that every class can fulfil each role, but they can’t. It simply isn’t feasible. Making anyone be able to fill a role in the trinity when required would have been perfect, but effectively removing it entirely prevented any kind of sound combat structure.

I’ll admit, I hated the trinity. I hated being pigeon-holed in to certain roles if I invested in to a character. However, I would have preferred to be able to build around any element of the trinity at will rather than have that structure ripped away completely and just telling me to dodge/hit defensive utilities.