Guild Wars 2

Wolfheart.1938:

Ok, now that seems way more reasonable and I actually agree. You certainly try to set up a burst way more often then you did in GW1, because both you and your enemies have lower cooldowns on bursts/countermeasures (dodge mainly).

Still I don’t realize why is that a problem. It may make combat seem spammy I guess?

dodge is basically an invulnerability with a short recharge and instant activation time available to all classes regardless of spec. i was just speaking generally about it, saying it was probably a poor mechanic in pvp. there’s no counterplay to a dodge, you just have to design the entire game around it. it is naturally very frustrating to set up a spike on a target only to have them bounce away, sometimes not even aware that they just foiled your plans. it is a contributing factor to making the game brainless in my opinion. to what degree exactly i’m not sure, but its effects can be felt in all of the combat system.

to be clear, i am not saying that dodge as a concept is a bad one, but its implementation in this game and its availability funnel the game design into a spammy direction.

Wolfheart.1938:

A well prepared burst contains CCs. You cannot dodge when CC’d and most builds take at best one (long cooldown) stunbreak. A well prepared burst takes place after the target is low on endurance. If you can simply dodge a burst of damage then it means it wasn’t well prepared at all.

If your point is that burst is weak because of the ability to dodge I am sorry to inform you that burst builds were/are pretty common, especially in the past.

And I still can’t find you on the leaderboards, not even top 700 EU/US. If GW2’s PvP is about spamming, how come you aren’t up there? Didn’t spam hard enough?

i don’t think i said burst was weak. i was trying to say that because dodge can be used so often that burst must generally be available often enough to recover from an important skill that was dodged. dodge makes burst, burst more often.

Leo G.4501:

milo.6942:

and no, i’ve never heard anyone complain that energy should be nerfed.

Didn’t say people complained about energy being nerfed, I said people probably complained about mechanics consuming energy to fast. In layman’s terms, it’s people asking the energy COSTS to be nerfed.

From how it was explained in a previous posts, lots of skills and profession abilities determined energy management and likely were added over time and possibly because of complaints about lack of a means to manage energy better. That’s an assumption on my part, but I’d be willing to bet it was a cumulative effort over a course of its updates that created the system you seem to favor.

It’s still archaic to me, and still doesn’t address the point that, in GW1, apparently non-magic professions didn’t need energy to perform well which puts their styles at odds with each other. It also only necessitated the presence of Energy Potions and such consumables.

That all said, a lot can become of learning your skills. If a player can time their dodges and manage their uses, one can trivialize the damage of most NPC enemies to nearly nothing and I’d agrue it takes more skills than your Guild Wars Monk. I’ve seen videos. GW looks easier than City of Heroes on a Defender

mate, you make assumptions way too comfortably about a game you never played. non magic professions didn’t need energy? all professions needed energy. some professions like the warrior also used an additional (not a replacement for energy) resource called adrenaline. warrior for instance had half the energy regen of magic classes and generally very reduced max energy. there were still many skills they had which were staples in gameplay that needed energy and they often would need to consider if they had too many energy-based skills in their build. energy potions?? are you nuts? not only did it not exist in the game, but no kind of consumable was ever usable in pvp. And your assertion that dodging in gw2 is more difficult than energy management on a monk is beyond absurd. please stop saying things that you have no idea about. i’ve not made a single comparison with coh because i’ve never played the game, and I don’t pretend to be an expert.

Leo G.4501:

milo.6942:

jumping is largely irrelevant to pvp.

Nope. Not when terrain plays a part in the combat, and it does.

dodge is an interesting addition to the game but i think that it is ultimately a bad one, or at least in its current form it is bad.

They could stand to have more mechanics to counter dodging, but currently it is a dynamic style of mitigation. Some things cannot be blocked, some things can only be evaded, dodges require endurance which is finite, and you cannot dodge while immobilized. They could add mechanics that punish dodging more or alternative expenses for endurance but dodge, in and of itself, is not bad.

speaking of spamming, that one word could sum up the entirety of all combat (pvp and pve) in this game. there is no resource management involved (such as energy) to make you consider when it is best to use skills. there is only the cooldown to think of. if the cooldown is very high then you are reluctant to use the skill until the “right” moment (which can be very difficult to know) and if the cooldown is very low there is no penalty for using it. None.

I’ll just cut you off here.

How experienced in the game are you? I’d consider myself a rabbit in PvP but even I know how shallow you make combat sound. Yeah, you can spam things and build around spamming things to get by, but that’s what separates the rabbits from the dragons. All you have to know is what profession someone is and watch them. If they spam their crap, they’ll spam themselves into a corner and have nothing left to defend themselves from a simple combo.

IMO, resource management in the form of energy or endurance is archaic. In CoH, guess how often it got complained about that you had to manage your endurance? Then they changed it so you have endurance management traits by default instead of choosing them out of a pool of separate powers. Then people kept complaining on top of all that so the game changed more and more to accomodate by making powers cheaper to use, making endurance recover faster, making gear augment costs more, introduce more mechanics to manage it, etc.

That isn’t good balance because the only time resource management like that is good is when it’s so easy to manage it’s not something you manage at all.

Never played GW1. How difficult is it to manage your energy? If it’s hard or requires much of your build to manage it, I bet you people whine about it and I bet you the game was forced to constantly change to the point it isn’t an issue now.

Also, please write in paragraphs….

dodge is the best, most frequent invulnerability in the game. it can completely cancel out a well-prepared burst that would have otherwise killed someone. it is on a very short recharge timer, with vigor and baked-in evades on some skills. as a baseline, dodge dictates that to get significant damage through to an enemy player, you need to overwhelm their dodge + heal capabilities. this leads inevitably to spam. but all of this is from a pvp perspective, in pve i don’t have enough experience to say whakittens impact is.

energy management was a learned skill. like, you as a player became better by learning when to use which of your skills during combat while pacing yourself so you didn’t run out. if you were creating a new build you’d agonize over which skills to take, comparing relative energy costs, recharges, effects, synergy between other skills, and how often you planned to use it. maybe you’d have to drop another skill you liked because the build required too much energy. then, once you were in the game began the real test of player skill and your forethought in build creation. not only this, but your energy was something your enemies could deplete so you might have to use specific weapons that drastically lowered your own energy on purpose so as to “hide” it from your enemies, swapping to your proper set when you needed to cast, and in extreme situations you would have an additional weapon set that basically doubled your base energy but halved your energy regen rate, giving you the ability to temporarily continue to cast. No class in guild wars needed as much skill to play than the monk, and they were the most challenging precisely because their ability to manage their energy was a major determining factor in the success or failure of a team. it was a mechanic that rewarded knowing when to use skills, and good build synergy. it was also another axis devs could balance skills on; not just recharge and damage output. energy was what allowed elite skills to have 2 second recharges and still be balanced, not 120 like we have now.

and no, i’ve never heard anyone complain that energy should be nerfed.

Vayne.8563:

milo.6942:

Spectre.6452:

Why not try to come up with solutions to make the combat in gw2 better rather than just telling everyone how shallow it is/comparing it to other games?

1. lots of people have already
2. they can refer to a little known game called “guild wars 1” maybe someone has played it?

Actually I don’t believe Guild Wars 1 had better combat that Guild Wars 2. It had better skill variety..but actual combat wasn’t as good in my opinion.

People confuse things like builds with combat…builds are builds and combat is combat. I wouldn’t want to give up either dodging or jumping. I wouldn’t want to have to stand still to cast. I’m not even very sad about giving up energy.

And of course, the number of skills in Guild Wars 1 made it completely impossible to balance over time. People say Guild Wars 2 is imbalanced, but it was nothing to what Guild Wars 1 became.

i’m not going to bite on the false separation of builds vs combat. they can be discussed separately but they are very related to the topic of pvp. jumping is largely irrelevant to pvp. dodge is an interesting addition to the game but i think that it is ultimately a bad one, or at least in its current form it is bad. Consider how often it is spammed and if you are OK with that then there is nothing more to say. speaking of spamming, that one word could sum up the entirety of all combat (pvp and pve) in this game. there is no resource management involved (such as energy) to make you consider when it is best to use skills. there is only the cooldown to think of. if the cooldown is very high then you are reluctant to use the skill until the “right” moment (which can be very difficult to know) and if the cooldown is very low there is no penalty for using it. None. the only resource you are consuming with low cool down skills is time, but in most situations there is no reason not to use every skill you have available in a pvp encounter. the fineness with which you applied or removed conditions and enchantments from guild wars 1 is gone: spam everything is usually the most effective option. it’s rare that you can use a condi clear on yourself to remove a specific condition which palpably contributed to your close victory. boons are spam and forget, no need to consider if it was already on you since they will stack and keep on stacking. no real negative aspect to having too many boons (not that you could prevent it anyway, with your allies nearby putting them on you, or half your skills applying boons constantly). aoe in the game is out of control. mindless aoe on capture nodes makes it a death sentence to get into melee so players just put their guardian on the node to 1v1 the enemy guardian while the rest of the team spams from far away. there no interdependence between classes where the weakness of one profession os offset by the strengths of another. there’s no reliance on allies doing specific things together in order to take down a target. very little “hey you use that skill that we planned on you using, and then that means that my other skill i’ve got will be more effective and together we make a good team”

this game is from the ground up designed to be a casual pve game. fundamental design choices in the early stages of game development have permanently crippled this game’s pvp. they made an amazing pvp game before, then they threw all of it out to make the big bucks with pve players. but thank god we can cast while moving, right?

Spectre.6452:

Why not try to come up with solutions to make the combat in gw2 better rather than just telling everyone how shallow it is/comparing it to other games?

1. lots of people have already
2. they can refer to a little known game called “guild wars 1” maybe someone has played it?

there is no lfg feature in gw2
devs have stated they are working on it
until it’s in you can use gw2lfg.com
it’s kittenty but best there is atm

…they had an excellent hype campaign

in other news gw2 is a great game and the mods are really nice folks

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/08/02/soe-live-2013-everquest-next-explained/

There are also no levels or in this game, although your character does still progress.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/08/02/everquest-next-is-real-and-its-amazing

This is all accomplished with voxels – the fundamental building block of EverQuest Next – which allow for more convincing destruction.

http://www.eqnexus.com/2013/08/eqnexus-everquest-next-debut-wrapup/

http://www.eqnexus.com/2013/08/soe-live-day-2-everquest-next-nightly-recap/

Player stats are called attributes. Equipment will not provide attributes. Additional attributes will be extremely rare and will require tremendous effort to modify.

Gehenna.3625:

milo.6942:

Justdeifyme.9387:

Insignya.8625:

No trinity doesn’t work in sPvP because there’s no synergy between classes. No synergy = no teamwork = no competitive play.

So you want sPvP to be some sort of Dungeon against other players where one tanks all the damage while others heal him and others do damage? That’d be boring to play and to watch, and Gw2 tries to get eSport attention. With the current system it would be possible, because it’s fun to watch and to play, it just needs more balance between the classes. PvP is about smashing others together, splitting and attacking from different angles, that is teamplay in a PvP Game.

oh man that was painful to read
gw1 combat was nothing at all like that
their trinity was like: spike-dps/pressure-dps, disable/interrupt, protect/heal
nowhere in there was there ever anything like a “tank”, and there was plenty of splitting in gvg
my god i miss that game q_q

Well, I don’t entirely agree. There was such a thing as a terratank for example. I remember going into DOA for example with a tank going in first with all kinds of protective enchantments etc….definitely a tank.

I do agree it wasn’t part of a normal trinity as in other MMOs but to say there was never anything like a tank anywhere in GW1 is also not true.

i was talking pvp
there were often tanks in pve

Justdeifyme.9387:

Insignya.8625:

No trinity doesn’t work in sPvP because there’s no synergy between classes. No synergy = no teamwork = no competitive play.

So you want sPvP to be some sort of Dungeon against other players where one tanks all the damage while others heal him and others do damage? That’d be boring to play and to watch, and Gw2 tries to get eSport attention. With the current system it would be possible, because it’s fun to watch and to play, it just needs more balance between the classes. PvP is about smashing others together, splitting and attacking from different angles, that is teamplay in a PvP Game.

oh man that was painful to read
gw1 combat was nothing at all like that
their trinity was like: spike-dps/pressure-dps, disable/interrupt, protect/heal
nowhere in there was there ever anything like a “tank”, and there was plenty of splitting in gvg
my god i miss that game q_q

DiogoSilva.7089:

Insignya.8625:

I’ve said it before- new MMOs will borrow GW2’s ideas and polish them and they will be far more successful.

Seems like that’s the plans for EverQuest Next.

Really, permanent dynamic events, combat system similar to GW2’s, GW1’s cross-classing and skill hunting, and a focus on fun, exploration and horizontal progression over vertical.

EverQuest Next seems to take Anet’s own manifesto one step or two further. Now, if the devs can succeed at doing so or not, it’s an entirely different question.

yes exactly. I just found some info about EQN and it really looks like the best aspects of guild wars crossed with minecraft*. in similar news, there is a dark age of camelot game coming out that is RvR with similar minecraft-esque environments and buildings. the most interesting thing to me about EQN is i heard there weren’t going to be any levels, and something you craft at level 1 will still be useful later. gear doesn’t give you any “stats” that improve the power of your character. or at least that’s what it seems like. very very horizontal progression with 40 “classes” (whatever they mean by that) and you can select any 4 skills from the classes you’ve learned along with 4 skills from your weapon. I’m keeping my eye on it.

*well I don’t think you can build things like minecraft, but you can destroy nearly anything and dig down into a randomly generated underground layer that goes all the way across the world

Desmond.5396:

If you’re not having fun just play something else until more content is added. I’m pretty sure dueling will be added in the future but there’s just alot more things they have to fix before they can add that.

I’ve never seen any dev confirm dueling, why are you so sure?

Furutre.2193:

The reason i asked was becouse i havent heard anything about it, its not a complain post ;P

If they have comfirmed it, its great news Thats what i wanted to hear.

it was a pvp dev that confirmed it was on the way, and also in gw1 the template system was more useful in pvp than pve. In pve to change your traits you need to spend money to respec, so I don’t know how it would work or what you should expect.

PwnsFroggles.7561:

SAB is what got a lot of my friends that quit to play. It’s an extremely fun game and even if you don’t get any rewards it’s worth your time.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could say that of the rest of the game?

panzer.6034:

SAB always seemed like the most widely loved update they’be put out to date.

which is pretty funny in a way because it had more compelling content on accident than everything anet has put out on purpose since.

ArchonWing.9480:

Why would anyone want gear progression in a competitive arena?

“I play Starcraft 8 hours a day. I should start with an extra worker”
“I play Street Fighter 8 hours a day. I should do twice as much damage.

Just, no. >.>

I don’t disagree, but those games are still fun after a few weeks. Gw2 pvp isn’t.

the keyword you are looking for is build templates. save em send em load em, they are coming “soon” devs said.

kRiza krimos.1637:

stof.9341:

Kurakura.7281:

TwoBit.5903:

I think it’s a problem with the design of the very core mechanics of the game and how they with one another. This game encourages dodging but only by pressing an invincibility toggle, which isn’t really dodging at all. You can move to dodge, but enemy attacks don’t synch to their animations so it’s not entirely sensible to move to dodge. Ranged attacks auto-track the player, making them rely on an invincibility toggle. The game wants to make movement matter but its simply can’t. To top it all off, the very telegraphing of attacks is done so poorly that you’re better off just not giving a kitten about dodging and are better off instead spamming dps, and cycling your reflect and heal skills off cooldown without really paying attention to enemy attacks and you do this for nearly every single encounter.

^This is exactly what I mean!

Most action RPG’s and MMO’s have very defined hitboxes from the AoE animations or the length of the weapon. If you aren’t within range, you don’t get hit. In vindictus, there are various kinds of projectiles, some are homing and others just travel is a straight line. If the projectile doesn’t hit you, you don’t get hit, even if that projectile was meant for you. You can get hit by projectiles meant for other people if you accidentally step in front of the person the projectile was heading towards.

I think the difference is that in vindictus, combat feels precise while GW2 it feels mushy, abstract, and weird. In vindi, attacks are telegraphed differently, some are easy to tell, others not so much, while some other attacks push the limit of human reaction time. It’s that preciseness that allows skilled twin sword warriors in vindi to stay toe to toe with the raid boss and dodge/attack at the same time…. accurately timing dodges and attacks to 0.3 or so seconds to maximize DPS while maximizing survivability.

Yeah… it seems like GW2 doesn’t have hit boxes, just ranges. If you are in melee range and don’t dodge you get hit. If an enemy fires a projectile and don’t dodge you also get hit even if you moved away… somehow that arrow that landed 6 feet away from you hits you.

This is completely true. I don’t know about Vindi but I know Tera and I have the same feeling. Tera is precise, sharp and accurate in it’s fight. GW2 is messy, mushy, hard to read.

In Tera, I remember a BAM that it was common knowledge you’d better tank him in front slightly to the left because you’d pass under his armpit when he does his main melee attack. This kind of precise positioning is completely missing in GW2.

Yea because in gw2 you have to keep moving or you are dead. But sure it must be better to stand below monsters armpit than to move and fight, you can smell excitment!

kite wars!! kill your foes through exhaustion!!

The content in gw2 is boring.
There I said it.

It is a little bit interesting, and a little challenging, and a little bit exciting, but overall everything is shallow and boring.

Snubber.4967:

It seems to me what the true issue is that the professions are the same in pvp and pve despite the fact that they are extremely different types of gameplay. Arena Net did the right thing when they separated your stats and gear from pvp and pve, but I think they should take it a step further and alter the player’s powers differently in pvp and pve. This may seem a bit drastic but it would get rid of a lot of these balancing issues we’re discussing.

Yes, and they did quite extensively in gw1. But Johansen has said he wants as little of this as is possible because it will make people not want to try pvp where all their skills do different things. The most optimal gameplay solution would be to create a totally separate game for pvp. However this is 100% not going to happen.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Mada.5319:

DiogoSilva.7089:

One step at a time. The next patch will bring a lot of neat features. Rewards and new game modes are being worked on. Yes, a year has passed, which is annoying, but things are at least coming.

Source please about the new game modes.

Just search for dev’s posts in this forum, they are working on something similar to a siege base-invasion/ conquest map, and are hoping to make it work.

new mode: capture points arranged in a line!!! aren’t we all excited?

Game was designed from ground up to be a casual pve game.
No healers, no “required” classes, lots of rng skills, dots and pets are viable.
However, they attempt to balance the game as if it was a pvp game, but it is futile because the foundational design structure can’t even support basic team deathmatches. So we have pvers unhappy about the pvp nerfs that spill over into pve, and the pvpers unhappy because we’re stuck with the only game mode in the universe that forces teams to split up & very little dependence between classes.

Arimahn.3568:

My first statement was intended to point out just how well they seem to be doing financially. As you say yourself, Anet doesn’t want “enough” money, they wan’t as much as possible. So why not put a team aside for 6 months and release a 30$ expansion with what is now Living Story content? Surely that would be great for business?

Yet instead they focus on mediocre Living Story content with more and more time-gated specialized currencies. It makes no sense, especially since the Story so far has not been all that well received.

I agree, the living story has not been well received by many players, but who are we to say it hasn’t been a business success for anet? They could do an expansion, and they would certainly profit, but it may just be that they estimate to make more continuing with mini updates. If you remember that they are making big money with gemstore, it makes sense that they would first try to optimize their profits there before “falling back” to plan b expansions.

Ultimately, as I’ve said, this game is infused with marketing decisions based on the gemstore. It’s impossible to delineate where gameplay ends and business begins. Temporary content and time-gated rewards are examples of this. Could we say that our gaming experience is better for these things… maybe. But the monetary gain from them is clear to me. These things put a vague pressure on the players to log in daily, even if for only a half hour. Is that in the interests of the players, or anet?

Arimahn.3568:

milo.6942:

Arimahn.3568:

Time gating makes sense in a game that has traditional subscription fees since you want people to play as often as possible. It doesn’t make sense in a game like GW2 where 80% of your income comes from 5% of the player base (“Whales” that buy everything on the TP asap).

Just wanted to pop in and remind everyone that gw2 is actually very similar to subscription games. They make most of their money now from the gemstore. It’s simple business marketing math, whatever your sales are you can increase them by getting more people to view your products more often. Ergo, gw2 has a very strong interest in getting people to come back as often as possible.

In my own related opinion: I believe many things in this game are strongly influenced by the gemstore. They are pumping out content as fast as they can in an effort to keep maximum engagement from players. Overall it is a positive trend, but anet needs to weigh their own profits vs what players want, and not get caught up in looking only at what produces the most $$$.

They apparently make enough money to not need a paid expansion like they did with GW1, so…

Again though: The most income is generated by the fewest players. It really doesn’t matter if the rest logs in regularly or not. In fact, I would suspect that fewer logins per day puts less strain on their servers which keeps cost down.

I’m not sure what you meant by your first sentence, but if you are implying that they make “enough” money so that they are no longer worried about making more, I dare say you are naive.

Your second point is irrelevant. Firstly you overestimate how much they pay for server bandwidth (hint: it is likely a footnote on their overall bill), and secondly it may be true that a small percentage of players generates the bulk of gemstore income, but by increasing the number of players in game -> more chance of eyeballs on gemstore -> more chance of someone buying something. This is basic business. By saying that they don’t need to make boxed expansions to profit essentially confirms that the ratio of paying / non-paying players is sufficiently lucrative that they are focusing on a strategy to maximize the number of logins they get.

I’m not attacking you. Just making sure my point gets across.

@OP: this game pvp will always be a casual joke. save your sanity and play something else

Arimahn.3568:

Time gating makes sense in a game that has traditional subscription fees since you want people to play as often as possible. It doesn’t make sense in a game like GW2 where 80% of your income comes from 5% of the player base (“Whales” that buy everything on the TP asap).

Just wanted to pop in and remind everyone that gw2 is actually very similar to subscription games. They make most of their money now from the gemstore. It’s simple business marketing math, whatever your sales are you can increase them by getting more people to view your products more often. Ergo, gw2 has a very strong interest in getting people to come back as often as possible.

In my own related opinion: I believe many things in this game are strongly influenced by the gemstore. They are pumping out content as fast as they can in an effort to keep maximum engagement from players. Overall it is a positive trend, but anet needs to weigh their own profits vs what players want, and not get caught up in looking only at what produces the most $$$.

Galtrix.7369:

I kind of gave up on Rangers since Guild Wars 1. I played a Ranger, complained multiple times that it needed a damage boost, and never received a single response back. Turns out that I shouldn’t have just left my Ranger. I should’ve just left the game.

damage boost for pve right?

mtpelion.4562:

milo.6942:

sounds like it greatly favors full dps teams

Not if you set the HP/sec threshold high enough to where at least ONE player has to have enough healing or ONE player has enough survivability to counter the HP loss over time.

It would obviously require balancing, but I think the concept is solid enough.

you think bosses that regen their health would encourage balanced team comps?

mtpelion.4562:

I think that the first thing they should try to do is balance the boss encounters around some form of healing rate. So if a boss fight was balanced around a healing rate of 500HP/sec then the party needs to be able to put out that rate on average. This means they could bring one guy who actually does 500HP/sec or they could each do 100HP/sec or any mix between the two. Obviously, increasing health/armor will reduce the amount of HP/sec needed to win (simply because you live longer) and increasing the amount of DPS will also reduce the amount of HP/sec needed to win because the boss will die faster (barring periods of invulnerability).

This system would force aspects of the trinity back into the meta without actually requiring people to spec as Tank and Healer.

sounds like it greatly favors full dps teams

if cc and support were viable it’d be a lot more fun

this sounds like a bad idea and a bad trend. potential to trivialize content for those who bust out the credit card.

title of thread is not “professions and combat are easy”

LilMcGinley.3890:

Can we get a Yearly too? Because someone who just bought the game should be able to get all the rewards we worked towards over the last 11 months in 8% of the time. ty

that’s a great idea, and while we are on the topic i’d like to see an hourly.

Vayne.8563:

milo.6942:

Vayne.8563:

The fact that protection was more important than healing in Guild Wars 1. That’s not true for most games, but it’s true here.

I have no idea what you’re talking about. Protection prayers was an attribute line with 38 skills from a super important profession that was deleted. Now we have a single “protection” boon which, while powerful, is not “more important” than healing in gw2.

Vayne.8563:

In Guild Wars 1 every single profession had a self-heal and that’s certainly an odd thing in many games. Even the idea that content isn’t gated by gear is something from Guild Wars 1. And Guild Wars 1 had dungeons that had story mode and explorable mode (such as Bloodstone Caves and Oola’s Lab). In other words, the first time you enter the dungeon is during the story and then you can return to see what happened after.

You’re running out of ideas mate.

If we made a comparison of all the defining features of gw1 vs gw2 how many do you suppose gw2 adopted? Almost none.

Protection meaning damage mitigation as opposed to healing. It’s far more important than this game than most games.

And I’m not “running out of ideas”. You don’t like the game that’s fine…but you can’t tell others what to feel any more than I can.

I play this game very much like I played Guild Wars 1…but do you know why this game is the TRUE spiritual successor to Guild Wars 1?

Because Guild Wars 1 didn’t do what everyone else was doing…it went it’s own way and Anet is doing the exact same thing with Guild Wars 2.

So many WoW people tried Guild Wars 1 and didn’t like it, because it wasn’t WoW. So many Guild Wars 1 players try Guild Wars 2 and don’t like it because it’s not Guild Wars 1.

Anet innovated…which is what they do. That’s what I’d expect from them. Clearly you expected Guild Wars 1.5.

We were discussing gw1 vs gw2. If you want to discuss gw2 vs other mmos, you should be clear about it. Don’t switch between these 2 frames of reference like they were the same thing to support your arguments.
Protection was an integral part of gw1 (especially pvp) combat. Here it has been reduced to a boon that some classes can have access to.
For the overwhelming majority of gw1 players I’ve talked to, gw2 is not a “guild wars” game. It doesn’t feel anything like what we expected. Everyone’s obviously entitled to their own opinions, but I think even objectively comparing gw1 vs gw2 vs rest of mmo genre, we can conclude that gw2 is closer to other mmos than it is to its predecessor. If this is a positive or negative thing is up to each player.

Vayne.8563:

The fact that protection was more important than healing in Guild Wars 1. That’s not true for most games, but it’s true here.

I have no idea what you’re talking about. Protection prayers was an attribute line with 38 skills from a super important profession that was deleted. Now we have a single “protection” boon which, while powerful, is not “more important” than healing in gw2.

Vayne.8563:

In Guild Wars 1 every single profession had a self-heal and that’s certainly an odd thing in many games. Even the idea that content isn’t gated by gear is something from Guild Wars 1. And Guild Wars 1 had dungeons that had story mode and explorable mode (such as Bloodstone Caves and Oola’s Lab). In other words, the first time you enter the dungeon is during the story and then you can return to see what happened after.

You’re running out of ideas mate.

If we made a comparison of all the defining features of gw1 vs gw2 how many do you suppose gw2 adopted? Almost none.

Anet’s idea of making gw more fun and accessible is to force us to play the game on their terms. Living story and all these “one per day per account” rewards are really buzzkills. Not to mention the “do x things for y achievement/reward” is exactly the boring grind they promised gw2 wouldn’t have.

Behellagh.1468:

milo.6942:

instead of 1 per day, should be 7 per week
it’s still pretty kittenty, but it’s better

Except those who log in with 4 hours left in the cycle and have 7 days worth of stuff to do. Oops, they get nothing.

in those 4 hours they could probably do at least a few of them. would your scenario be improved if they could only do 1?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

We’re saying GW1 had difficulty?

no
we’re talking about gameplay depth

instead of 1 per day, should be 7 per week
it’s still pretty kittenty, but it’s better

digiowl.9620:

The issue is that the game is built around (s)PVP

if only that were true

gw2 armor design is strongly influenced by the korean games where the rule is: exaggerate everything.
gw1 was more western and conservative. there is also an oversaturation of armors (and weapons) in gw2 imo, each vying to be “look at me” in a kind of insecure subconscious need for self validation, while forgetting that the best design is often simple.

Unknown.3672:

I think if they want to do things account based why not go all the way with it. Lets see dungeon story modes, fractal level, WvW Ranks, and skins all be account bound.

i’m not trying to get all “conspiracy theory” on you, but i wouldn’t be a single bit surprised if it had to do with the gemstore. it takes a lot of time to level and gear an alt, time that can be shortened if you use the gemstore. anything that prolongs the discomfort just a bit would ultimately benefit them.

quaggan*
please make a new thread with the correct spelling

TheDaiBish.9735:

Is it that the actual combat system lacks depth, or the content doesn’t require you to utsilise that depth?

I’d actually go with the problem mostly being associated with the latter.

that is also a big contributor

Meglobob.8620:

Balanced = bland, boring and uninspiring…

What do you expect?

this game is not balanced by any reasonable usage of the word. and anyway interesting combat does not equate to imbalanced combat

the combat is shallow and lacking depth: you manage cool downs for max dps and dodge occasionally. boss fights and champions should be more involved, but are in fact less so. you can certainly make the game exciting, so to speak, by purposely using less effective skills, but it is up to the player to create this dynamic combat. It is like playing wallball by yourself. traits are often passive & boring (recharge x% faster, deal x% more damage, x% chance to y on crit). skills are very straightforward and rarely have any conditional behaviour that you can set up for more damage with skillful play.

This game is boring because its combat is boring. there could be all kinds of cool lewts and flashy armors and anything else under the sun, but in order to get any of these rewards you have to fight. and it’s the fighting that’s boring.

edit: compare with gw1 (devs probably want to ban those 3 characters) where even the normal pve could be interesting and challenging when you were testing out a build with a few cool new skills for an interesting strategy. there is very little strategy in this game (in comparison).

ensoriki.5789:

Vena.8436:

Chrispytoast.3698:

Any game type besides Capture Point?

Southsun Survivor: Deathmatch in its purest form.
Aspect Arena: Capture the Flag.
Sanctum Sprint: Mario Kart.

All of these are PvP, they are alternate modes, and they exist in-game. Go play them.

Put em in the mists cus we lazy.

i love that
“please give us those minigames please we need diversity cause conquest is killing brain cells”

Xsorus.2507:

Condition gear in general has toughness because Conditions in general require the person to stay up longer then a heavy burst player.

We’re talking about a game that allows players to be hit for half their life in a single high damage hit even if they have high toughness. My BM Bunker Ranger can stay up far far longer then my Ranger wearing berserker gear and opening to pop people for 10k Mauls for Example….But It takes me a while to kill most players with BM Bunker, its slow….hence why its a Bunker Build.

its the same with Necro’s, If they couldn’t stay up with Toughness and Conditions, they’d just go their power builds and pop you in the face over and over with 5k nukes.

I think the main problem is, So many players don’t want to run anti condition builds, Just like many players didn’t want to kill the Ranger pet, We’re dealing with a generation that honestly is the Call of Duty generation, You didn’t see many former DAOC players whining that Pets were over the top, or that Ranger Pets were scary, because they dealt with things like theurgist in the past, and knew you had to actually clear pets when dealing with a pet user (i will flat out gut your pet if I think you’re a spirit ranger or someone who’s doesn’t have any survivability on them, Necro’s, i’ll kill Flesh Golems right off the bat if I see them up)

Now we have people who don’t wanna deal with Conditions, ….There is a Nasty kitten Necro in the back line throwing conditions, Don’t wanna deal with it…Rather just gut conditions completely…

We can all go back to Thieves spamming Backstab, Warriors spamming 100b, and Mesmer’s spamming Zerker

pets and dots are the epitome of lazy & noob play
they should never be effective in a game that takes pvp seriously