Guild Wars 2

When I first heard the term “Action Oriented Combat” I envisioned something more akin to what we have going on in the Super Adventure Box. Sure, I would want it a lot more complex than this 8-bit remake has us playing, but very true to that old school game with less stats and more moves.

I think this has captured the idea of Action Oriented Combat really well, and should be used as a foundation to build upon. Not everything has to be “auto attack” oriented or DPS.

Examples include the frog boss, where you have to maneuver around attacks while setting up to create an opening to do damage.

As it is now, we really still have auto attack on and just spam cool downs. A “little” bit better than older MMOs but the root of it is still there.

Its an interesting point actually. I have very few snags with the game, but boss mechanics are one of them, esp in open world. The frog is a classic example of a reasonably challenging boss mechanic and under that definition is a better boss than tequatl or shatterer.

There you go josh, another project for you – re dsigning dragon fights. You dont really need sleep right?

Current open world dragon fights or the LTs for the dragons have targeting reticles on the head and legs. Thing is, it doesn’t matter what you target just swing and the dragon’s HP drops.

I would hope the original intent was that you had to damage the legs of the dragon to bring the head down low enough to damage the head.

Or damage the leg of the dragon before it did some sort of stomp or super attack on you.

Some sort of target switching and maneuvering, but as it is now just dps and dps hard.

Even in smaller scale fights or normal mobs. It would be nice to run something closer to what we have in the SAB. Sitting there hitting a boar or a giant fire fly for 10-20 attack swings is less action oriented combat than dodging monkeys coconut throwing monkeys and break dancing spiders.

I remember a quote somewhere talking about how GW2 was going to take away the “you swing and hit the monster and you swing again”. Unfortunately look at a lot of our combat now.

Too many stats and HP pools and not enough action. I of course don’t expect a complete revamp of the current combat engine and world NPCs but it would be nice to see more action in our combat if possible.

Have you guys ever done a run of Crucible of Eternity?

I decided to do a random one with a guildie and some other random folks. Path 2 (i think – the one with the teleporter) has you fighting Subject Alpha – who cannot be tanked. Sitting there just doing dmg won’t work at all. Even staying at range doing damage won’t work.

He casts giant AoE attacks, from what it seems like 3-4 per person. Basically in most cases, you cannot escape out of the red circles. In order to defeat him you have to learn the timing of the attacks, and dodge just when the massive AoE damage occurs. I thought this was the secret to the frog boss – since you can actually dodge through the tongue of the frog boss, if you get the timing right.

That path also has a plant boss who cannot be killed directly, you must grab an environmental weapon and target the incoming bomb-golems (who will usually go after you), thereby reprogramming them to strike him. Thing is, you can’t reprogram them if they get aggroed by any player, so amidst all the chaos of being shot at, you have to coordinate your team to not aggro at least some of them so you can re-program them to kill the plant.

Anyway, what I’m saying is, these types of bosses do exist.

The thing is, these bosses are quite challenging and until you figure out the pattern you’re likely to get a lot of people ragequitting on you. It works fine in SAB because of the great scaling, but not so well in dungeons.

I have run that, and yes the alpha fight is a great example of more action oriented combat. What I am saying is there needs to be more.

There was the idea at the start, but I feel they lost sight of that in development. What I am acknowledging is them trying to make a rudimentary old school game that performs better on the action oriented combat than the majority of the “real” game.

Why does it do that? Because it based down combat to the simplest form.
Don’t get hit.

In MMOs and other games, you are expected to be hit and soak up a couple of points of damage. Even in our modern day FPS games you have a tolerance for being hit.

In the older games I grew up with they were really hard. If you made one mistake you died. Sometimes you had extra lives or continue points…sometimes you don’t.

When you have mechanics where 1-3 hits is a death the enemies have to have interesting way to threaten you with being hit other than standing there and swinging at you.

Now the player has to think about attack timing and pattern before they get in close. Or if there is a ranged attack or a flurry of attacks that leads to a “dizzy” phase that opens up the target for attacks.

The old games were harder because the rules were simple: Don’t get hit.

You’re right in some way – having more of this wouldn’t be a bad idea.

I think it also depends on profession – warriors are very direct, and less about dodging. I played a thief to about lvl 30, and dodging is almost completely necessary to survive – in case you didn’t know, Thief along with Elementalist, have the lowest natural HP in game, I think (guess) around 12,000 at 80.

The game becomes far more challenging, and I’m still struggling with my thief. Even with my engineer I have to dodge a fair amount, given that engineers are semi-squishy.

Going with your line of thinking – the ’don’t get hit’ mentality in SAB is also enforced by the lack of health regeneration. Otherwise it would seem somewhat cheap, and you could just run through mobs until you lose aggro, and re-heal to full (health potions are finite, therefore not equivalent to regen). Of course, if you’re good, you can run through anyway, and avoid hits, but if you do get hit you risk your future inevitable encounters with the boss for example.

See, I realize that you like this mechanic, and actually so do I – but I don’t think it works too well with most gamers. My feeling is that most gamers are looking for a quick way to jump in, do some fight and not worry about consequences or whether you were fully healed before hand, or prepared.

It’s the sort of mentality that dates back to games like CS, which has isolated fights that have no lasting consequences from one fight to the next. In older games you almost always had to invest more long stretches of time to beat certain areas or bosses.

That’s why I think this sort of thing is best kept in an isolated dungeon form. More strict rules on damage and healing in the open world would probably just frustrate most players who are looking to jump from fight to fight with little downtime. (it’s also why the waypoints exist I think)

Anyway, long rant, point being, I don’t think SAB combat can be pulled off outside of dungeon like areas without becoming frustrating for most people (though some will love it). Unless of course that’s the point of the entire game, which is not what GW2 is.

Good point on the wider population aspect. Challenging but achievable by the majority, otherwise no one would play.

Still I do want more of this “idea” integrated into the game somehow, but as you and I both pointed out, I don’t think they are going to totally revamp what they already have any time soon. I just want it on the radar as a “positive” action that they accomplished with the SAB.

Why do you thinkittenep posting that I want SAB to be kept around, and expanded more (its actually the only reason I even started posting on the forums at all – I had previously only read but not posted anywhere on these forums)

edit: apparently typing “think” followed by “I” and “keep” after each other gets filtered… hmm.. thinkittenep

all these points are interesting but whenever i fight a boss that require coordination and not direct attack i get bored to death. have you ever killed the ice elemntal or the mining suit in the dredge fractals? now tell me about how fun it is not being able to kill him normally

I have actually killed the Ice Elemental once, and failed the Dredge suit once.
I can say only this – it’s frustrating, but not at the game, but at my team, as well as myself, for not being able to organize properly.

The Ice elemental fight was anything but boring to me – we were on the edge of being wiped most of the time due to his really painful attacks. But at the end, it was great to see him die! mwahahaha…

Anyway, doesn’t mean you’re wrong, but you obviously enjoy a different style of gaming, that’s all.

The thing is, if the SAB is kept around as it is now (separate instance), you won’t be affected. You’re not going to be forced to change the way you play the rest of the game, and those who like that gameplay/exploration can do so freely as well. Win/win if I ever saw one.

Yes I have, and no I do not think a “tank and spank” fight would be more fun. That is my own opinion though, and I guess not shared by you.

Now the mechanics they do have in I still have a problem with because they do not require player skill so much as playing knowledge of buffs/debuffs with the molten metal/lava being poured on the suit to do reasonable damage to it.

The other aspects of the fight as far as dodging the bombs is more along the line of what i see as player skill, based off of timing and situational awareness. Just as I mentioned the alpha fight is interesting with the mass amounts of red rings of death on the ground and relying on player timing to dodge roll (or walk out if you are close enough to the edge).

A lot of complaints from combat when GW2 first came out was when players started doing dungeons and being faced against trash mobs with huge HP pools and no real reasonable way to “skillfully” react to the attacks.

That is somewhat alleviated now because of familiarity and better gear/dungeon tactics by the player base as a whole, but you can’t deny they replaced “challenge” with “large hp pool” with some of these fights.