Guild Wars 2

A number of times I’ve read that ‘GW2 has shallow combat’, and that ‘the Trinity adds depth’, and I’ve personally never understood how having the same 3 roles added ‘depth’ to the game.

The question is: What is Depth?

According to the Penny Arcade (whom I recently found and am enjoying the series), Depth is: the total number of different possibilities or meaningful choices that can come out of one ruleset.

Lining up some examples, if we take this definition:

-the Trinity is actually light on depth. You can’t choose to do the content that’s balanced around the Trinity any other way than bringing a Healer, bringing a Tank and bringing DPS. Now, you generally got a choice what class to bring in that roll, but even then, sometimes a particular class will be suited to a particular role. If you got a mechanic that needs you to swap Tanks, you need to bring two tanks. You can’t make a meaningful choice not to bring two tanks. This then turns combat into more like a script.

-GW had an incredibly deep skill system, not because of the sheer number of skills, but because of how skills interacted with each other. As a Water Elementalist, for example, I could take Shatterstone (a Water Hex), and I could follow up with Teinai’s Crystals to give that foe Cracked Armour, in which I could follow up with Teinai’s Prison (another Water Hex) to give health degen. Because of that Water Hex, I could follow up with Glowing Ice to return some of my energy. I could also follow Shatterstone up with Icy Prism for heavy AoE damage. Backtracking to Cracked Armour, I can (as of Sept 2012) use Shock Arrow to also return Energy.

-GW missions, on the other hand, weren’t as ‘deep’ as the skill system, although still pretty deep in that most professions could do most things (such as Interrupting and Pressure), and were certainly more ‘deep’ than Trinity fights (at least until everyone worked out the perfect group compositions and such). You needed specific skills, builds and damage types to tackle content, lest you kitten yourself to the point that the content was stupidly difficult. For example, the last mission in Prophecies. Cold damage was more effective than any other type, while most mobs had a resistance to Fire damage. A lot of the mobs weren’t ‘fleshy’ or didn’t leave a ‘corpse’, meaning Bleeding, Poison, Disease and Minion Masters were useless. This removed some of the ‘depth’ that the skill system had, since you had less viable choices. You weren’t going to take a Fire Ele, a Minion Master or a build that relies on Bleeding, Poison or Diseases.

So How Does This Factor Into GW2?

GW2 has the potential to be a deep game. The framework in terms choosing weapons, skills and traits, combo fields, the more free-form group composition, weapon and armour stats, runes and sigils ect.

The current problem is that some current encounters and some mechanics, and some don’t make use of this depth. This, I feel, is where the the complaint ‘combat is shallow’ comes from:

Encounter Mechanics

Defiant

Skills

I’ll leave it at that for now.

Any thoughts?

Depth is:
The distance from the top or surface of something to its bottom. Distance from the nearest to the farthest point of something or from the front to the back.

That’s not Penny Arcade. That’s Extra Credits, who are separate from Penny Arcade. Also your recommended videos are very useful.

Anyway.

RE: Defiant —

Defiant is probably one of the better depth-inducing mechanics but it’s also one of the more hated because people in large fights simply don’t play with it properly. However, I have been in groups which manage that Defiant counter for some really wonderful stun chains. It’s been glorious the one time it clicked and we pretty much could unload on the boss at the same time, leaving them open for more stuns/knockdowns.

It does not need to be changed, people need to understand it better. Or just not spam CC skills in the open-world champion fights.

RE: The Lovers —

I hated this fight. We could not keep them apart properly when I did the story, until we managed to stun-lock Vassar and manage to make it work. It also had the potential to be very interesting and it definitely changed up the flow.

Notably, there are other encounters where you have to think and actually figure out how to do it. I hate most of them because the gimmicks make it really hard to handle. The Infused Grawl Shaman was one most recently which I loathed due to the swarms of Lava Elementals making it impossible to dodge sometimes.

If you want a good amont of strategic and execution depth, fighting games are a good place to look. The Persona 4 Arena is one such example.

MMOs rely less on execution depth and more on strategic depth, i.e. predicting your opponent’s strategy and using your skills in an order that would counter it. The problem with GW2, IMO, is that many skills reduce the number of choices for the players they’re being used on. For instance, thief back-stab combo needs to be countered with a stun-breaker, and due to stealth countering them is more of an execution challenge than a strategy.

In general, the game is very dps based and there’s often little difference between the order of skills used. Axe rangers are a good example of this. You can press 1-3 in any order and the damage would be the same. The difference in choices is meaningless, and therefore gameplay often devolves into unloading dps in based on cooldowns rather than strategy.

There’s also the fact that the game does a lot of steering for the player due to tab targeting, and that reduces potential depth of execution.

Personally, for PvE at least, GW2 is about on the level of depth as most other MMOs. Sure, you get a lot of choices for skills and weapons and such, but you don’t get many MEANINGFUL choices. GW2 is built in a way where it’s pretty much impossible NOT to succeed. The only effect your choices have is how quickly you clear something, not IF you’ll clear something.

Given this is a casual game, though, it’s fine for what it is. It’s not very deep, but it’s also not very complex. You don’t HAVE to buy into stat min/maxing in order to succeed. For people who don’t want to do mental calculus every time they get a new weapon, it’s good.

GW2 stats, skills, and traits don’t add depth. What they DO add, is flavor.

Just because you can live entirely off of potatoes and water for every meal doesn’t mean it’s not enjoyable to add a steak to that, or some butter or chives, or a glass of wine to the meal.

GW2 let’s you succeed with the bare minimum so that you’re free to add whatever flavors you want to the mix and still succeed, with the only difference being time it takes to succeed.

It’s not particular deep or complex, but it’s still enjoyable, which I think is the core thing you should be looking for anyway, right?

Anyway, this is all just for PvE. PvP and WvW are completely different beasts.