Guild Wars 2

I recently started to play this game again and couldn’t help but notice how the state “being in combat” seems broken, both for players and NPCs.

Sometimes, you won’t be attacked for minutes, but still, you will be in combat. This is very annoying in puzzle jumps for example. If nobody attacks you (and you aren’t attacking anybody), how can you still be in combat?

Also, I tried killing a boss (uzolan’s golem) alone, so all is going well, but since I’m dodging every attack it does, it will randomly go back at its spawn, becoming invulnerable and regenerating its life. If a monster attacks you (and you are killing it), it should probably stay in combat.

I’m only lvl 45 and already encountered 2 bad experiences with the combat mode, so I guess I’m not the only one having trouble with it. Maybe this should be looked at?

That’s not so much a “bug” as a difference in mechanics from what you might be used to in other games.

The second example you offer is a foe “leashing” to its zone of control. If you think of a circle around the foe’s spawning location, there’s a maximum distance it will chase you. If you try to get too far, it will assume that you are withdrawing from combat and return to its original location. This prevents people from deliberately “pulling” a foe into a position it can’t defend and also gives you the opportunity to run and fight another day.

The flipside explains your first experience: if you have hit (or been hit by) a foe and withdraw so it can’t find you, but remain within its zone of control, you’ll remain in combat. This prevents foes from prematurely leashing and gives you the potential to control their movement with pets etc, so it will e.g. chase you around a corner (away from friends).

In other words, both mechanics are in place to offer an improved gameplay experience in several ways, although, like most mechanics, there are also “cons” to match the “pros”.

To prevent a foe from leashing, don’t run “too far”. To get out of combat, run farther or, if you have to, go to the character select screen and return (when you do, you’ll be out of combat).

The other common cause of being stuck in combat is applying a non-damaging condition to an ambient creature. They can’t attack you and they are easy to miss.

Thanks for the answer. The first case was definitely due to leashing, however, there should probably be a time limit. I was on a pillar, and the monster was patrolling under, so I was always in its patrolling zone. However, I couldn’t kill it because since it couldn’t reach me its regeneration was really fast.

The boss didn’t go back because I was too far from its spawn. I was cirling around an obstacle near him and after not being able to hit me for some time it just stopped trying. That’s pretty annoying.

I don’t think that the game design targets this AI comportment, so it looks a lot like a bug to me.

It’s intended function that if a foe can’t hit you reliably, you can’t hurt it much, again to prevent abuse of the AI. There are still some annoying edge cases, like you’ve described where it feels as if monsters should leash more quickly; it’s just not possible to program it perfectly. On the whole, ANet tries to balance on the side of preventing abuse.

In the end, we just need to get used to whatever the mechanics are, not what we’d like them to be. I’m sorry that it’s been a frustrating process for you.

“ANet tries to balance on the side of preventing abuse”
And they do this to prevent abusing players ruining the experience of regular players.
Makes sense, unless they are themselves making their game worse in order to prevent abuse.

“In the end, we just need to get used to whatever the mechanics are, not what we’d like them to be.”
I guess if this is really how they develop this game, nothing can be done. Improving game mechanics is how you make a better game though.

Actually the annoying part is that leashing doesn’t actually break combat. Either choose to fight me or don’t, not both. Additionally this can cause the mob to rubberband.

You posted this originally as a bug. Now that you know it’s intended behavior (with some unintended edge-case consequences), I hope you are able to enjoy the game as it exists. ANet might agree that this is worth tweaking, even though it’s impossible to get a perfect balance to avoid abuse and annoying side-effects. But that won’t happen soon. In the meantime, we have this version of the game to play.

Yeah I get that’s not easy to fix. And as you say, it’s edge-case consequences, thus not common and not a priority.

Still hope this can be improved eventough the game seems great (loving the exploration part).

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

This prevents people from deliberately “pulling” a foe into a position it can’t defend and also gives you the opportunity to run and fight another day.

And it also prevents people from pulling Mr. BigBoss over to a local town or city.