As for Gw2, Anet needs to focus more on players developing strategies and adapting to changing variables than roles, gear and such.
For example:
- Divide and Conquer: players should need to find ways to pull enemy groups apart and work their way through more manageable chunks. There needs to be more threat to carelessly attacking an enemy group, in a way that makes players need to go “hmmm… I should work through them this way.” Players should need to study a group for a second before charging in and develop at least some kind of strategy. (For this to work though, spawn rates would need to be worked on; some areas in game are ridiculous, by the time you kill an enemy the timer has reset. Maybe spawn by the group instead of single units? So, that the spawn timer doesn’t start ticking, or just has an extra long period, until after the entire group is killed). At the moment, if you try to “pull” like in Gw1 for instance, you end up with one big group 90% of the time (which makes sense in some scenarios, but there really needs to be a way to allow players to work smartly through enemy forces than have to just brute force it; maybe even spice it up by having some “traps” setup throughout areas players can run back to that insta kill, or do a large amount of damage to, enemies for ambushing and stuff; player ability traps are just condition AOEs, trapping in Gw1 was so much more fun…).
- Patrols and intersecting paths: Players should have to worry about enemies getting “reinforcements” and be able to visually see and time an attack. You see a group of enemies you want to attack, but know that there is a group on a path that comes through this area too; you either have to then attack the “patrol” or wait until you can attack without them joining in. (Very few pathed “patrols” would actually be needed in areas, most of the time a patrol could easily be used to intersect with many groups as they move along).
- Advanced Zerg Detection and Scaling: Mostly for larger events, but scaling based on the number of players in the greater area of the event and then upscaling the event, by adding in multiple sub events branching out almost simultaneously, to fracture a potential zerg, is definitely needed.
Thinking along these lines would do a lot more for Gw2 than doing anything major to the base combat system.
I agree with part about trinity roles, fits in with what was summed up earlier, but the rest, and that’s from technical point of view, is over complicated or really hard to implement. True, it’s easy to make dungeons with patrolling groups of enemies, but then every existing instance would have to be remade, not really easiest part.
What I agree with is group spawns (outside of instances obviously) and revamp on spawn timers, as this would allow for … hmm… synergies(?) between mobs? What I’d like to see is mobs working together, not only attacking same target. I mean combo system, detecting and using debuffs on certain occasions and such. This would make fights much more interesting and less predictable.
Back to dungeons (I know I’m jumping around the topic =/), what imo would help is (I think this has been mentioned way too many times) more diversity in boss fights. Once you get to know one, it’s always the same. Random extra conditions during fights, extra events on random times, more RANDOM skills on bosses, some that would be visible and easy to counter, but deadly if not avoided, and some that would just add confusion to battlefield – great example would be fight with Ice Elemental in FotM… just more of it. Is it a lot of work? Yes. Is it worth it ? Hell yes!
Summing it up again, would be a dream coming true if ANet even at least listened to some of those:
- Build/Traits having MORE impact on how your character plays, bringing us a bit more to trinity while still not forcing any role on anybody.
- Making dungeon encounters more varied, and random (word of the day) to make each and every one of them less predictable, thus more fun.
- Revamp spawn times and rules on open world and make enemies stronger BY making them work together, since we’re supposed to work together as well.
- Add enemies patrolling areas and make their paths intersect with different groups, stay a while in point places (entrances and such) and possibly react to nearby fights.
- Add more branching events/revamp existing to ongoing events, to keep different roles occupied on things they are good at (when we’re closer to having those roles) and make fights less of a spamfest and adapt better to player numbers.
.. Happy New Year !
; ) Hope we see some great additions to GW2 this year, and, six help us, game will only get better ^^
