Guild Wars 2

like in gw1, where, targeting a mob, you could see which skills he was about to use and their activation time, even hover over them to read a description.

Many encounters in endgame pve are based on you timing your dodges/movement to avoid those attacks, which are usually foretold by some kind of animation.
Problems with that:

1) the first few times you run the content, there is NO WAY for you to know whats coming, what is killing and why you died. Many of thse encouters become trivial after you know the mechanics, but hiding those to the new players is NOT good design and can be very frustrating (death is only good when you know exactly why you died, and what you could have done to avoid it)

2)even if you’re a seasoned player, often the big firework display of 10 conditions, meteor showers, 10 feet tall norns make it virtually IMPOSSIBLE to see the animation

3)interrupts. Interrupts were a big part of gw1 pvp and pve, with faking casts, positioning and counter-faking (waiting for the last possible moment to interrupt, to negate eventual fakes). In gw2 , due to culling, the already mentioned fireworks displays, and mobs, feels like knowing who is casting what is 100 times harder, to the point where i see most people just spamming their KD and interrupts.

4) learning curve in pvp. If i encounter an ele, i’d like to know what is KDing me down, what is making him invulnerable to ranged, why he is suddenly taking less damage, and what is that fire nuke that just ate half of my hp . Seeing the skill icons pop up when he activates em, make learning ALOT easier, because even if you dont know the skill or didnt read the description, visual memory will aid you in connecting the icon and the effect you already experienced.

5)anet could introduce more enemies with very powerful attacks that MUST be interrupted, even in global pve (where often you cant even see your character, let alone the enemy animations), and more interrupts for every class, to make the combat more engaging and twitchy. With the current situation its just not doable.

yes yes a thousand times yes.

Actually, this would be really cool, different meter types to represent different abilities.

But on the other hand, I could also see this being taken to such an extreme that would would make it so you might as well black out all parts of the screen except where the meters appear, devolving the game to a combat Guitar Hero.

No No a thousand time NO. I rather like NOT having my hand held, thank you

its not about handhelding , its more about not having a variable (as it works when there is no one around and no effects) and artistic (because you can modify particle effects only so much) element of the game be the only source of precious combat info.

Its like saying “hey wouldnt it be awesome if instead of health bars your character model started bleeding, moaning and shivering?” yes it would, but NOT if thats the only source of information about your health.

Also, this is not a traditional mmo, you cant black out the rest of the screen ’cause dodges, positioning related skills, big circles of death, etc
Knowing an attacks is coming does not change that you still have to actively avoid it

I agree, I like playing Add-on wars 2.

Aegis.9724:

its not about handhelding , its more about not having a variable (as it works when there is no one around and no effects) and artistic (because you can modify particle effects only so much) element of the game be the only source of precious combat info.

Its like saying “hey wouldnt it be awesome if instead of health bars your character model started bleeding, moaning and shivering?” yes it would, but NOT if thats the only source of information about your health.

Also, this is not a traditional mmo, you cant black out the rest of the screen ’cause dodges, positioning related skills, big circles of death, etc
Knowing an attacks is coming does not change that you still have to actively avoid it

It’s very much about “hand-holding”. By putting those bars up, that tell you what attack their doing, it essentially holds your hand through the fight. It’s like getting into a fight in RL, and having the guy yell: “I’m gonna upper-cut you in 3 seconds, so, you better roll, or cast block”.

Pustulio.8207:

Aegis.9724:

its not about handhelding , its more about not having a variable (as it works when there is no one around and no effects) and artistic (because you can modify particle effects only so much) element of the game be the only source of precious combat info.

Its like saying “hey wouldnt it be awesome if instead of health bars your character model started bleeding, moaning and shivering?” yes it would, but NOT if thats the only source of information about your health.

Also, this is not a traditional mmo, you cant black out the rest of the screen ’cause dodges, positioning related skills, big circles of death, etc
Knowing an attacks is coming does not change that you still have to actively avoid it

It’s very much about “hand-holding”. By putting those bars up, that tell you what attack their doing, it essentially holds your hand through the fight. It’s like getting into a fight in RL, and having the guy yell: “I’m gonna upper-cut you in 3 seconds, so, you better roll, or cast block”.

the difference is that the game already tells you that ( if you know the encounter and can understand the tells, which is NOT skill, just basic knowledge of the fight you could learn in 30 seconds with someone in vent )

The difference is that the info would be accessible no matter how many people are spamming / how many fps your doing / how high your setting are / if the boss is on fire or behind another char etc.

Your comment would be relevant if, lets say, instead of telegraphed attacks the game worked with quick time events to dodge that “uppercut”. Then yes, knowing its coming 3 seconds before would defy the point of the attack. But its not like that, gw2 is less of a twitchy game then gw1.

Problem with ideas like this is it tends to shift the game-play to the bars and the UI and not the actual environment & scenery we’re actually playing in.

I’d rather more “obvious” and different tells for enemy castings and skills than another bar as it’s then a steady downhill road to all of us having 100 mods for DPS Meter, Target skills, Target of Targets, Target of Targets’ Target, Cooldown meters, Next-skill-suggestion etc etc and we do indeed end up playing Addon-Wars 2 and miss the actual fun environment and game itself.

No, please.. don’t go to far down this road of extra bars & UI boxes.

:)

Alf.9137:

Problem with ideas like this is it tends to shift the game-play to the bars and the UI and not the actual environment & scenery we’re actually playing in.

I’d rather more “obvious” and different tells for enemy castings and skills than another bar as it’s then a steady downhill road to all of us having 100 mods for DPS Meter, Target skills, Target of Targets, Target of Targets’ Target, Cooldown meters, Next-skill-suggestion etc etc and we do indeed end up playing Addon-Wars 2 and miss the actual fun environment and game itself.

No, please.. don’t go to far down this road of extra bars & UI boxes.

:)

i can understand that fear, but tbh Gw1 already did it right, without cluttering the screen. no mod support, but you could resize, move or delete any component on the ui.

Skill activation bar was one of those, also the game handled some of the problem in the OP in a different way: Everytime you took damage from something, you had the option to see either a small icon, text, or both floating over your head for a second, near the damage numbers.

Also, that feature worked while spectating gvg matches as well, and was very handy, for example, to learn the timings and skill orders on well executed spikes.

Aegis.9724:

Pustulio.8207:

Aegis.9724:

its not about handhelding , its more about not having a variable (as it works when there is no one around and no effects) and artistic (because you can modify particle effects only so much) element of the game be the only source of precious combat info.

Its like saying “hey wouldnt it be awesome if instead of health bars your character model started bleeding, moaning and shivering?” yes it would, but NOT if thats the only source of information about your health.

Also, this is not a traditional mmo, you cant black out the rest of the screen ’cause dodges, positioning related skills, big circles of death, etc
Knowing an attacks is coming does not change that you still have to actively avoid it

It’s very much about “hand-holding”. By putting those bars up, that tell you what attack their doing, it essentially holds your hand through the fight. It’s like getting into a fight in RL, and having the guy yell: “I’m gonna upper-cut you in 3 seconds, so, you better roll, or cast block”.

the difference is that the game already tells you that ( if you know the encounter and can understand the tells, which is NOT skill, just basic knowledge of the fight you could learn in 30 seconds with someone in vent )

The difference is that the info would be accessible no matter how many people are spamming / how many fps your doing / how high your setting are / if the boss is on fire or behind another char etc.

Your comment would be relevant if, lets say, instead of telegraphed attacks the game worked with quick time events to dodge that “uppercut”. Then yes, knowing its coming 3 seconds before would defy the point of the attack. But its not like that, gw2 is less of a twitchy game then gw1.

You can try to justify it with whatever feeble excuse you WANT. It doesn’t change anything.

Pustulio.8207:

Aegis.9724:

its not about handhelding , its more about not having a variable (as it works when there is no one around and no effects) and artistic (because you can modify particle effects only so much) element of the game be the only source of precious combat info.

Its like saying “hey wouldnt it be awesome if instead of health bars your character model started bleeding, moaning and shivering?” yes it would, but NOT if thats the only source of information about your health.

Also, this is not a traditional mmo, you cant black out the rest of the screen ’cause dodges, positioning related skills, big circles of death, etc
Knowing an attacks is coming does not change that you still have to actively avoid it

It’s very much about “hand-holding”. By putting those bars up, that tell you what attack their doing, it essentially holds your hand through the fight. It’s like getting into a fight in RL, and having the guy yell: “I’m gonna upper-cut you in 3 seconds, so, you better roll, or cast block”.

But this is an MMO, not an arcade game. I think this would aid with a lot of the issues of hidden depth this game has. For many reasons just like the lack of this feature, the game suffers for the pre-maturity.