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[EventHorizon]

I was a huge fan of Guild Wars 2 from launch, but quit playing for a few reasons. First, to be blunt, I was wrongfully banned without recourse. I had a second account at the time but was so pissed that I just gave up on the whole game and never looked back.

Second, I was coincidentally weeks away from quiting anyway. Leveling up was fun, but once I hit max level things got stale pretty quick. The game never delivered on its promise of letting you continue to play as you had once you hit the cap. Your character was supposed to be leveled to the area so you could still meaningfully explore the whole map, but I quickly found that I was overpowered which made combat boring. The reality was that I was still stuck experiencing the same few high level zones over and over again.

Third, while GW2's dynamic quest system was much better than the traditional static quests, it never lived up to its hype. Most quests never scaled well to the number of players. They also reset too quickly to feel like you made a change to the world, and were too linear to want to replay often.

Finally, Guild Wars 2 seemed to be turning into the type of MMORPG that I wanted to avoid. I like dynamic improvised play, and at the time I left, the game was moving towards more typically structured boss battles where players had to perform a specific set of actions to win. I simply don't like gameplay that makes me feel like I'm following a script.

So to sum up, GW2 started off saying all the things I wanted to hear about MMORPGs, but only half implemented the changes they proposed. Then at some point they started to shift back to more traditional MMOPRG tropes that I wanted to avoid.

====== Memory lane of other MMORPGs I loved but with fatal self inflicted wounds ======

City of Heroes:

First MMORPG that I really cared to role play due to its great character creator. I loved making and playing multiple heros. The game was ruined by following the typical increasingly slowed level progression system. Leveling simply became too slow to continue to play multiple characters. That turned the game from being one that I played to role play many different characters into the same old typical single character experience point grind fest.
​

Anarchy Online:

Getting a plane and being able to fly over all danger to any point in the world made that world seem incredibly small. The game also made the horrible design decision that their random instanced quest dungeons had to be fully explored and grew in size as you leveled. That meant that at some point, if I didn't have hours to play it was useless to try. Also requiring the dungeons to be fully explored removed the benefits of a random dungeon. There was no sense of exploration. You simply had to do a grid search pattern as much as possible to make sure you covered all areas.​

 

[Azubah]

I never felt I was getting more powerful and the dungeons were boring. The stories we're not very engaging either.

 

[ahoyhoy]

Story was garbage compared to 1.

The swerve at the beginning of 1 is amazing and sets a great tone for how the game was going to differentiate itself from other MMOs.

But then 2 goes and introduced a bunch of cute cuddly races while neutering the Charr.

 

[spleenpoker]

I've always been curious about getting further into GW2.

I have a quick question, which I posed about FFXIV earlier.

Do each zones have their own overarching quest that tells ths story of that particular zone like WoW does? I like getting to know more about the zones, their history, people and culture.

All I remember is going around the zones doing hearts, learning nothing about it.

Is that covered in the personal story perhaps?

Thanks.

 

[vertopci]

Because GW2 is complete garbage compared to GW1. It's like arenanet wanted to purposely kill the GW franchise.

 

[LKSmash]

I bought GW2 having never played GW but seeing a lot of hype for a sequel to a well liked predecessor. Didn't survive the initial month. Thought the combat was awful and generally wasn't enjoying myself. Honestly not surprised it's not popular. Too many better alternatives.

 

[EventHorizon]

I've always been curious about getting further into GW2.

I have a quick question, which I posed about FFXIV earlier.

Do each zones have their own overarching quest that tells ths story of that particular zone like WoW does? I like getting to know more about the zones, their history, people and culture.

All I remember is going around the zones doing hearts, learning nothing about it.

Is that covered in the personal story perhaps?

Thanks.

I haven't played the game in years so I have no idea what it is like now. However, I believe most of the story is in your personal story. The hearts were kind of a hidden curse to the game. Players were meant to follow their personal story and just explore the world which would cause them to stumble across dynamic events.

The problem was that players had been so conditioned from other MMORPGs to be told where to go that they felt something was missing in GW2. To solve that problem the devs had to add hearts as a way to get the players to move around the map. Unfortunately players took the hearts to be the main quests of the game instead of the gentle nudges to move on and complained about their lack of quality. The hearts were only ever meant to supplement the dynamic events and personal quests, not surplant them.

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

I've always been curious about getting further into GW2.

I have a quick question, which I posed about FFXIV earlier.

Do each zones have their own overarching quest that tells ths story of that particular zone like WoW does? I like getting to know more about the zones, their history, people and culture.

All I remember is going around the zones doing hearts, learning nothing about it.

Is that covered in the personal story perhaps?

Thanks.

This was a point of criticism about the game in that dynamic events are the meat and potatoes of the main game. You explore (don't do the hearts. They are pointless) and as you run around certain events will go on- These have a story, a conflict and drama, but since players discover them midway through, they often lack the context to understand.

Centaurs are attacking the village and you can help defend, but you don't really get a deeper understanding of it.


I think GW2 does open world events better than any other game. They are very well done. Particularly the zone wide ones like Dragons Stand:

200 players organize themselves in three lanes, and each lane consists of people doing various objectives to take the fight to the big boss. It's a large open world raid.

And so, you do have some natural world building going on. But it's more nuanced and stitched together.

The problem is that when people run around the game and think they should do hearts, they're just following the old paradigme of running from zone. The game is really meant to be explored. When you fail a dynamic event, often that will change the parameters, and spawn new events.

If you fail to defend the town from centaurs, new events will pop up that is about saving some villagers or freeing some captured soldiers or destroying some catapults.
So there is replay value in different states of the game, and you learn new things about the races and lore.

 

[NynyXIV]

Because it destroyed a bit of the following it had with the move to the Open World MMO and decided to be a WoW clone.

It's not a bad game, I had lot's of fun with it, but for me, Guild Wars 1 is where the real charm was.

^ This.

GW1 kept me hooked from start to finish. GW2 held my interest for a bit, but ultimately got boring for me despite the many good things it had going for it.

 

[Kane1345]

I had a lot of fun when I first got it but that quickly faded after I crafted Sunrise. The combat has always been horrid and group play/dungeons felt like a cluster fuck. GW2 was the game that taught me that the trinity was actually a good thing.

 

[Maledict]

I haven't played the game in years so I have no idea what it is like now. However, I believe most of the story is in your personal story. The hearts were kind of a hidden curse to the game. Players were meant to follow their personal story and just explore the world which would cause them to stumble across dynamic events.

The problem was that players had been so conditioned from other MMORPGs to be told where to go that they felt something was missing in GW2. To solve that problem the devs had to add hearts as a way to get the players to move around the map. Unfortunately players took the hearts to be the main quests of the game instead of the gentle nudges to move on and complained about their lack of quality. The hearts were only ever meant to supplement the dynamic events and personal quests, not surplant them.

That's all well and good, but there simply isn't enough content in the game to provide that levelling experience. Your personal story is very thin all the way through, and dynamic events are way too rare to provide a solid levelling system. RIFT did that much better - it was entirely possible to level through an entire zone just doing the public events.

Plus, you can't claim hearts were intended as the back up when they are the main thing players are presented with. Scouts exist to point people towards the pointers, and thats the first thing new player see when they enter the game.

 

[EventHorizon]

Plus, you can't claim hearts were intended as the back up when they are the main thing players are presented with. Scouts exist to point people towards the pointers, and thats the first thing new player see when they enter the game.

Not only can I claim it, but that's exactly how it happened. Scouts and hearts weren't in the initial game design. ArenaNet did play testing before release and found that players were expecting the typical MMORPG experience and were confused not to be told explicitly where to go. Scouts and hearts were the answer to that, but were never intended to be the main content. The scout is the first thing you see because that's where it is first needed. To say that that somehow proves that scouts and hearts were intended to be the main content would be like saying a tutorial was meant to be the main content because you see that first too.

Whether you are satisfied by the dynamic content in GW2 is irrelevant. Hearts were only ever meant to be bread crumb type hints. The reality is that if you try to play the game as if hearts were the main content, then you are not playing the game how the devs designed it to be played.

Btw, I agree that ArenaNet did not implement its dynamic quest system as well as it could have. It was lacking in quality and quantity. However they made significant strides in MMORPG gameplay that were extremely well received in the beginning. A lot of people here are forgetting that. GW2 was a success, not a failure.

The problem was they didn't fully deliver on their initial manifesto. Those omissions made the game feel shallow over the long run because the new dynamic content didn't make up for the traditional content that was lost. Then ArenaNet gave up on trying to innovate, and tried to steer the game back to a more traditional direction. I can't speak to how well that worked out since I no longer play the game.

 

[Laiza]

Totally disagree. You should try Jedi Knight, Mount and Blade, Black Desert.
As I explained before, these games are based around a interplay between ranged and melee. Kiting is a core part of the game. What the fuck does Souls has to do with that?

Souls is just an example of a game where committing to attacks is a core part of the combat.

It's hilarious that you would mention Black Desert because that game does the exact thing you're complaining about! The only difference is that attacks are generally pretty fast so, outside of a few slower outliers (and the two caster classes), you can generally avoid being locked in and getting punished for it. But it does NOT allow you to mindlessly strafe around targets without end. You specifically have to use evasive attacks do to that, and that's not the kind of idiotic strafing we're talking about here, those are actual moves designed to actually look like the character is fighting properly.

I've played Jedi Knight and, honestly, the game has not aged well. It's fun in its own right, but the combat looks straight-up dated at this point. Mount & Blade I have no interest in, sorry. That being said, what I have seen of it gives it the exact same problem as Jedi Knight - it just looks dated and video game-y.

Also not sure how having commitment to attacks removes the interplay between ranged and melee. Especially if both ranged and melee combatants have similar restrictions (i.e. charging up a bow string slows the ranged character down as much as charging up a big sword swing does).

At any rate, stop defending this shit to me. Please. I don't have any interest in reading this. You are the minority here; learn to accept that fact and stop trying to make this type of combat seem better than it actually is. It's not. I've played enough games with decent and good and even great combat to know what good combat looks like and this is not it. You can enjoy this type of combat but you are 100% opting for a more unrealistic, unbelievable, videogame-exclusive form of combat. That's for you to enjoy and me to lambast. At this point there is nothing you can do to convince me otherwise.

 

[Maledict]

Not only can I claim it, but that's exactly how it happened. Scouts and hearts weren't in the initial game design. ArenaNet did play testing before release and found that players were expecting the typical MMORPG experience and were confused not to be told explicitly where to go. Scouts and hearts were the answer to that, but were never intended to be the main content. The scout is the first thing you see because that's where it is first needed. To say that that somehow proves that scouts and hearts were intended to be the main content would be like saying a tutorial was meant to be the main content because you see that first too.

Whether you are satisfied by the dynamic content in GW2 is irrelevant. Hearts were only ever meant to be bread crumb type hints. The reality is that if you try to play the game as if hearts were the main content, then you are not playing the game how the devs designed it to be played.

Btw, I agree that ArenaNet did not implement its dynamic quest system as well as it could have. It was lacking in quality and quantity. However they made significant strides in MMORPG gameplay that were extremely well received in the beginning. A lot of people here are forgetting that. GW2 was a success, not a failure.

The problem was they didn't fully deliver on their initial manifesto. Those omissions made the game feel shallow over the long run because the new dynamic content didn't make up for the traditional content that was lost. Then ArenaNet gave up on trying to innovate, and tried to steer the game back to a more traditional direction. I can't speak to how well that worked out since I no longer play the game.

Sorry, im being slightly unclear in my point.

Arenanet may have intended for them to be backup content only. I remember the heartless version of the game. And as a level of content, they clearly are very low quality stuff that's suppossed to be done in the background compared to other stuff.

BUT the end product is one that very clearly makes them the first thing players will see, and the *only* type of content they can reliably log on and do. So let's not blame players for Arenanets failing. They are the ones who didn't build enough dynamic content to let players ignore the hearts, and they relied on hearts to fill the gaps and that's why they are pointed out so much to players.

The fact is there simply isn't enough dynamic content in the game to not do Hearts, and in many zones even at launch you could not do the dynamic content reliably. You cannot expect people to log on and hope that the centaur event is running. If you want people to really rely on that content only, then they need a lot more of it - again, it's not perfect but RIFT does a *much* better job at providing dynamic content in each zone that can be reliably used to level rather than quests.

I'd also say that dynamic quests failed because guild wars 2 mass player combat is fucking awful in every respect. I'd rather pull teeth than run round in circles zeroing down centaur for half an hour to level. That was a big problem with the game - their dynamic content was actually considerably less interesting than the static content that world of Warcraft was pushing at the time as standard.

(Funny how the expansion made the opposite mistake - the dynamic quests are much better and fun, but they are all that exists in the zone, and Christ do they get boring fast).

EDIT 1 - sorry, I think we are agreeing mostly on their failure to deliver what was promised, so the latter half of my post isn't at you, just in general my own failings.

EDIT 2 - did Gw2 really drive the industry forward though? I'm struggling to think of something they did that other MMOs didn't. As I've said, I think Rift did dynamic content much better than Gw2 at launch (zone invasions with the big end boss were a lot of fun and changed the zone in operation). Personal story I guess was a new thing at the time with the instances? Although when did Lord of the Rings launch as that did the same thing as well. I'm struggling to see what they did that others have adopted. Certainly in terms of class design, I think Arenanet failed at what they aimed to do, and modern MMOs haven't gone near that design since.

 

[Geminosity]

You keep moving the goalposts. Previously you said that animation rooting was due "being able to attack faster by not having locking.

I don't buy your argument at all. The idea that you're more committed because a supposed movement skill allows you to navigate past the character seems reductionist to me.
You're arguing in relative terms here. I might as well argue that it takes more skill to run after an opponent as I input my attacks, using my skills on multiple levels, instead of just having to worry about my own and my attackers fixed positioning as a baseline.

As I said before- Most MMORPG works within a interplay of melee and ranged attackers, and in that space ranged attackers have usually lower defense compared to melee who has more defense. The interjection between them is that melee has to catch up to ranged attackers.

Secondly, with the latency in the netcode for every MMO I can think of, applications used in fighting games with much lower latency is not applicable in MMOs.
When you're fighting someone in a MMO, it's not normal to have a 1-2 second of latency, which is a huge deal. That is one of the core reason why most games- Even more traditional ones like FFXIV and SWTOR, as traditional as their combat are, has pretty seamless upper body animation in corrospondence with the movement of their legs.
You can chase someone, even with latency delay, and you're allowed a longer range to give up points for this latency.

TERAs combat in PvP partciular was not fun for me at all due to this rooting.

I'm not calling you a shitposter. I said that you made a unsubstantiated claim that you rang home in a way that made that post feel like a shitpost.
Secondly, you backtrack and move the goal posts because you don't want to engage or own up to what you say. You keep deviating and refusing to engage.

You say you don't make shallow assessments of games, but you rang up experiment, you're being incredible vague on, refusing to give details on, and summing it up with a braindead claim.

I asked you to clarify and specify. What level, area and build did you use that made you think the game was so broken it was brain dead as you said?
Lastly, going into a game in a mid level and owning some mobs, and then declaring the game to be broken seems like someone who just has an out for that game. I don't understand why you won't explain what it was you did that made you reach that conclusion. I've played the game for 3000 hours, and it knee jerks me to see lies like this being posted.

You might have played the game, but it doesn't sound like you gave it a chance, or you went into it hating it. I can conjour up a build that owns mobs above my own level in other games, but I don't think I'd sum up my experience in those games as that the game is broken and braindead.
My problem is not that you had your experience. My problem is that it feels like a shitty thing to do to ring up your opinion in that matter that you did.

And I don't think I am being unreasonable here. Yes, you do have a tendency to be hyperbolic and it's good you realize that.

I'm not moving the goalposts at all, the issue here is there seems to be some level of miscommunication, which is definitely not helped by me perhaps not being detailed enough.

The commitment is not about how often you can attack, it's that you do the attack to the exclusion of all else, often leaving yourself vulnerable in some way while doing it for a palatable amount of time, which is why I brought up fighting games. I'm also not arguing that it's more skilled,: I think most fighting game combos are braindead, but that doesn't change the fact they require good dexterity to execute and perhaps some research/'labbing' to find and refine in the first place. Same goes for MMO rotations. At the point in combat you're doing them the thinking parts are long gone and it's mostly just cycling through muscle-memory, hence my choice of the word brain-dead
A slightly less inflammatory way of phrasing it would be that I feel they often lack tactical depth, eschewing it for strategic depth instead, things like animation locking being a trade of vulnerability for attack being a more tactical than strategic element when not just part of a damage-conversion combo and it also makes it harder to just kite everything :3

Note that I'm bringing up animation locking because you stated the lack of it as a good thing in GW2's combat. I'm not trying to tell you that you MUST love animation locking but rather explaining why I like it, why it's commonly used in the games it's in and by proxy why I think it would've helped my enjoyment of GW2's combat and maybe even explain some of the vaguer complaints of the combat system you'll see from other peeps such as it feeling weightless.

Latency is indeed an issue in more action-based combat but I'd argue that for me Tera, PSO, Rakion and a bunch of other online action combat games have dealt with it more than adequately. Then again, I don't expect everyone to agree with me on that one, I'm just stating it's not a huge issue for me within those games, though like anyone I'd definitely be glad if it could be magically eliminated

Oh, you actually were asking for me to give more details? Sorry, I missed that somewhere. To be honest, we're talking about something I did five years ago... I'm not going to be able to be all that specific I'm afraid just by virtue of not really remembering a most of it :/
My experience of Guild Wars 2, however, was going into the closed beta with my usual mix of hope and doubt but trying to go in mostly with no preconceptions where possible: I like to just discover what something wants to be first rather than holding it to any kind of standard.
GW2 did a bunch of things I thought were interesting and I'd love to see other games either build on, steal or try with different execution but admittedly not many of these lie in the combat system. The only big thing in combat I was a fan of was mainly the weapons determining your attacks, a hold-over of sorts from my enjoyment of PSO where your attacks are predominantly defined by what you're wielding. I've always enjoyed the idea that you battle differently with a mace than you would a two-handed sword, though admittedly GW2's approach felt kind of abstract in that at times, perhaps due to that aspect's actual execution being more MMO than action game inspired.

After closed beta, then open beta, when retail hit I continued jumping onto classes, powering through them to get past the starter zones that like in most MMOs I'd already seen frequently enough to know like the back of my hand and get up to the levels where I could get a bunch of hero points to try out builds. Admittedly I wasn't willing to buy any slots so I had to churn my characters a lot to hop from class to class. Not a complaint against GW2 at all, just the usual affair in most MMOs for me, outside of the few that give you enough slots to have one for every class :3

I'll be honest, I just tried to log in to my GW2 account to see if I could find any details that might actually help but I don't seem to remember the password and the 'forgot password' thing, as someone else mentioned, annoyingly requires you to enter the name of a character you had on your account and I'll be damned if I remember what I was slapping in as a second name for most of them. It's quite possibly one of the daftest requirements I've seen on an account retrieval. The serial code doesn't bother me as I bought digital so I've still got it in an email somewhere, but characters names? In a game that forces you to give a family name to them? Ick :/

Anyhoo, I would think the fact that I'd played through closed, open and retail would be hint enough that I wasn't just "going into a game in a mid level and owning some mobs, and then declaring the game to be broken". The bomberman build was the last thing I tried before I finally wandered off. I'd played many things and done many other stuff before then, it was just the final straw. At this point you're just going to have to accept that I put a considerable amount of hours into the game and came out of it not loving the combat as much as you and there's not really much more I can detail if that doesn't sit with you. That's not changing the goalposts, that's just simple facts.

and yes, I exaggerate sometimes. I would never claim otherwise, at least not on purpose :3

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

I'm not moving the goalposts at all, the issue here is there seems to be some level of miscommunication, which is definitely not helped by me perhaps not being detailed enough.

The commitment is not about how often you can attack, it's that you do the attack to the exclusion of all else, often leaving yourself vulnerable in some way while doing it for a palatable amount of time, which is why I brought up fighting games. I'm also not arguing that it's more skilled,: I think most fighting game combos are braindead, but that doesn't change the fact they require good dexterity to execute and perhaps some research/'labbing' to find and refine in the first place. Same goes for MMO rotations. At the point in combat you're doing them the thinking parts are long gone and it's mostly just cycling through muscle-memory, hence my choice of the word brain-dead
A slightly less inflammatory way of phrasing it would be that I feel they often lack tactical depth, eschewing it for strategic depth instead, things like animation locking being a trade of vulnerability for attack being a more tactical than strategic element when not just part of a damage-conversion combo and it also makes it harder to just kite everything :3

Note that I'm bringing up animation locking because you stated the lack of it as a good thing in GW2's combat. I'm not trying to tell you that you MUST love animation locking but rather explaining why I like it, why it's commonly used in the games it's in and by proxy why I think it would've helped my enjoyment of GW2's combat and maybe even explain some of the vaguer complaints of the combat system you'll see from other peeps such as it feeling weightless.

Latency is indeed an issue in more action-based combat but I'd argue that for me Tera, PSO, Rakion and a bunch of other online action combat games have dealt with it more than adequately. Then again, I don't expect everyone to agree with me on that one, I'm just stating it's not a huge issue for me within those games, though like anyone I'd definitely be glad if it could be magically eliminated

Oh, you actually were asking for me to give more details? Sorry, I missed that somewhere. To be honest, we're talking about something I did five years ago... I'm not going to be able to be all that specific I'm afraid just by virtue of not really remembering a most of it :/
My experience of Guild Wars 2, however, was going into the closed beta with my usual mix of hope and doubt but trying to go in mostly with no preconceptions where possible: I like to just discover what something wants to be first rather than holding it to any kind of standard.
GW2 did a bunch of things I thought were interesting and I'd love to see other games either build on, steal or try with different execution but admittedly not many of these lie in the combat system. The only big thing in combat I was a fan of was mainly the weapons determining your attacks, a hold-over of sorts from my enjoyment of PSO where your attacks are predominantly defined by what you're wielding. I've always enjoyed the idea that you battle differently with a mace than you would a two-handed sword, though admittedly GW2's approach felt kind of abstract in that at times, perhaps due to that aspect's actual execution being more MMO than action game inspired.

After closed beta, then open beta, when retail hit I continued jumping onto classes, powering through them to get past the starter zones that like in most MMOs I'd already seen frequently enough to know like the back of my hand and get up to the levels where I could get a bunch of hero points to try out builds. Admittedly I wasn't willing to buy any slots so I had to churn my characters a lot to hop from class to class. Not a complaint against GW2 at all, just the usual affair in most MMOs for me, outside of the few that give you enough slots to have one for every class :3

I'll be honest, I just tried to log in to my GW2 account to see if I could find any details that might actually help but I don't seem to remember the password and the 'forgot password' thing, as someone else mentioned, annoyingly requires you to enter the name of a character you had on your account and I'll be damned if I remember what I was slapping in as a second name for most of them. It's quite possibly one of the daftest requirements I've seen on an account retrieval. The serial code doesn't bother me as I bought digital so I've still got it in an email somewhere, but characters names? In a game that forces you to give a family name to them? Ick :/

Anyhoo, I would think the fact that I'd played through closed, open and retail would be hint enough that I wasn't just "going into a game in a mid level and owning some mobs, and then declaring the game to be broken". The bomberman build was the last thing I tried before I finally wandered off. I'd played many things and done many other stuff before then, it was just the final straw. At this point you're just going to have to accept that I put a considerable amount of hours into the game and came out of it not loving the combat as much as you and there's not really much more I can detail if that doesn't sit with you. That's not changing the goalposts, that's just simple facts.

and yes, I exaggerate sometimes. I would never claim otherwise, at least not on purpose :3

Okay, I think your viewpoint understand better now. Thanks for clarifying.

To me, in games I've played where I cannot move my character, it takes me out of the game and remind me that I am not controlling the character, but merely inputting the commands for me to observe a character act something out.
I feel the faster I have control of every micro movement, the more immersed I am in the game.

Which is why I don't so many of the complaints about the combat in GW2 here. The animations are rock solid. When you make a swing with a sword in a basic attack animation, it cares about the direction you're coming at. from the left, front, right, back. There is a grounded heft to it, and the basic attack for nearly all the weapons being free flow from animation lock as the bread'n butter of combat makes it a much better experience for me.

For example in FFXIV and WoW you cannot swing to your weapon without having a target and being in range. You cannot fire arrows through windows and shit like that, and that takes me out of it.

Souls is just an example of a game where committing to attacks is a core part of the combat.

It's hilarious that you would mention Black Desert because that game does the exact thing you're complaining about! The only difference is that attacks are generally pretty fast so, outside of a few slower outliers (and the two caster classes), you can generally avoid being locked in and getting punished for it. But it does NOT allow you to mindlessly strafe around targets without end. You specifically have to use evasive attacks do to that, and that's not the kind of idiotic strafing we're talking about here, those are actual moves designed to actually look like the character is fighting properly.

I've played Jedi Knight and, honestly, the game has not aged well. It's fun in its own right, but the combat looks straight-up dated at this point. Mount & Blade I have no interest in, sorry. That being said, what I have seen of it gives it the exact same problem as Jedi Knight - it just looks dated and video game-y.

Also not sure how having commitment to attacks removes the interplay between ranged and melee. Especially if both ranged and melee combatants have similar restrictions (i.e. charging up a bow string slows the ranged character down as much as charging up a big sword swing does).

At any rate, stop defending this shit to me. Please. I don't have any interest in reading this. You are the minority here; learn to accept that fact and stop trying to make this type of combat seem better than it actually is. It's not. I've played enough games with decent and good and even great combat to know what good combat looks like and this is not it. You can enjoy this type of combat but you are 100% opting for a more unrealistic, unbelievable, videogame-exclusive form of combat. That's for you to enjoy and me to lambast. At this point there is nothing you can do to convince me otherwise.

We're talking rooting in the context of TERA thou. The animation system does not work the same way in BDO (due to the speed as which you said). The entire point of the problem with TERA is that the animations play out abysmally slow. In BDO the attacks are so much faster, and a mere double tap in any direction acts as what would essentially be free movement.

As a result, I don't think you're committed in BDO, but I guess you're correct that your attacks do not allow for lower free directional lower body movements.
It goes so much faster, which is also why I like Bloodbourne and Platinum games more than some of the Souls games where the animations can be really slow.
I don't think you can say that this a fact that one is better than the other. It's a preference thing.

Thirdly, you propose a hypothetical where this is not a problem if the ranged attacker is also rooted, which I'd argue is just really unsatisfying to me personally. I hate shooters also where you cannot move when you attack. I don't think this is good at all. But you end up with a situation where it becomes very very annoying to catch a ranged attacker if you're a melee. the melee attacker basically have to chase the ranged attacker until ranged attacker is rooted in animation.

The only other option is to give the melee attacker a bunch of CC that makes the ranged attacker lose control of his character, and that is obviously a terrible game design choice, and a frustrating experience from the ranged attacker.


I totally disagree about Jedi Knight. It's an old game(from 2002) but for a Quake 3 engine based game, it holds up with a lot of grace and animation based fluidity. I've still not seen sword fighting like that in any game. The way swords lock, the way you can mount and attack, from 360 degrees to get more velocity and "swung" and "swooosh" behind the attack is something you cannot replicate by just executing an attack with a hotbar ability.

As for Mount and Blade, it is fucking awesome. Positional and directional attacks created by the direction of how you attack gives you a physics based form of combat that mirrors something more organic to how it would be in real life.
When you throw a kick or a punch, most of the force comes from your hip, and what you get with a combat system where your lower bodys position and velocity dictates the weight of the swing/punch/kick/whatever feels much much closer to home.
As I explained earlier my problem with the rooted with the combat combat is that you don't have control over your character. You have to watch a long combat animation play out.

And I don't know why you'd argue that this form of physics based proponent of both using lower and upper body movement to dictate the attacks as being less realistic?
I've not fought or trained with weapons, but I feel strongly that applying real world martial arts concepts to games with this form of combat is more closely related to "the real thing".

But I'd have to ask; Is more realistic combat the same as more fun? One might very well argue that something that hits closer to home is not necessarily more fun.

And lastly- Stop using this "accept the opinion of the majority". GAF is not the consensus on what is correct or better. And even if it was, neither is the popular majority based opinion proof of anything either. This argument is NEVER okay and you should stop using it.

 

[Geminosity]

Okay, I think your viewpoint understand better now. Thanks for clarifying.

To me, in games I've played where I cannot move my character, it takes me out of the game and remind me that I am not controlling the character, but merely inputting the commands for me to observe a character act something out.
I feel the faster I have control of every micro movement, the more immersed I am in the game.

Which is why I don't so many of the complaints about the combat in GW2 here. The animations are rock solid. When you make a swing with a sword in a basic attack animation, it cares about the direction you're coming at. from the left, front, right, back. There is a grounded heft to it, and the basic attack for nearly all the weapons being free flow from animation lock as the bread'n butter of combat makes it a much better experience for me.

For example in FFXIV and WoW you cannot swing to your weapon without having a target and being in range. You cannot fire arrows through windows and shit like that, and that takes me out of it.

Fair enough, sorry if I let my hyperbole get in the way of my message :3
You'd probably get on well with a friend of mine; When we're discussing design animation lock comes up a fair bit because he hates any moment where a game takes control from you :3 I obviously feel that you can't portray appropriate heft without planting your feet and I enjoy the give and take of giving up control by degrees in exchange for something but that's always going to be a trade-off and no one solution is ever going to please everyone

I agree with you that melee vs ranged shouldn't fall into melee having to wait for ranged to attack before they can close the distance, but I think melee vs ranged is mishandled in most games. I actually think Melee should always have better movement options than ranged, I think Rakion was the first game I saw that broke the mould and it was a major ephiphany for me
In that the Archer class is slow and decently armoured. Mages are tiny lil munchkin things who's stubby legs can't outrun the melee either. Most combat between them and normal classes is melee trying to close the distance without getting taking too much damage and if they can get there it quickly changes to the ranged class trying to either use the damage difference created while the melee closed the range to win out with their less capable melee attacks or trying to use something to punt melee away again or hold them in place so they can create distance again. Surprisingly satisfying I found

 

[Lesath]

Well, I remember immensely enjoying GW2 until I got to the end-game, which was remarkably unpleasant (and so to this day I am wary of any MMO thinking of doing without the trinity).

WoW and FFXIV if I recall, have more robust group-finding functionality, and both have well-established world-building and branding to carry people through the rough patches. Nothing about GW2 calls out to me to play again.

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

Fair enough, sorry if I let my hyperbole get in the way of my message :3
You'd probably get on well with a friend of mine; When we're discussing design animation lock comes up a fair bit because he hates any moment where a game takes control from you :3 I obviously feel that you can't portray appropriate heft without planting your feet and I enjoy the give and take of giving up control by degrees in exchange for something but that's always going to be a trade-off and no one solution is ever going to please everyone

I agree with you that melee vs ranged shouldn't fall into melee having to wait for ranged to attack before they can close the distance, but I think melee vs ranged is mishandled in most games. I actually think Melee should always have better movement options than ranged, I think Rakion was the first game I saw that broke the mould and it was a major ephiphany for me
In that the Archer class is slow and decently armoured. Mages are tiny lil munchkin things who's stubby legs can't outrun the melee either. Most combat between them and normal classes is melee trying to close the distance without getting taking too much damage and if they can get there it quickly changes to the ranged class trying to either use the damage difference created while the melee closed the range to win out with their less capable melee attacks or trying to use something to punt melee away again or hold them in place so they can create distance again. Surprisingly satisfying I found

So you feel that the long there is more "umpf" to an attack if it takes a while?


What if it's something like For Honor:

The attacks are fast, and you can sidestep. Would you say this has the commitment you were talking about?

 

[Geminosity]

So you feel that the long there is more "umpf" to an attack if it takes a while?


What if it's something like For Honor:




The attacks are fast, and you can sidestep. Would you say this has the commitment you were talking about?

Well, impact is about portraying effort in most cases and when you're animating you ideally want your character to look like they could realistically maintain balance, which is hard with strafing and stuff unless it's part of the attack itself in some way :3

In the Gif, I'm assuming the attack is after he counters and then steps forward to wallop the opponent with the ball and chain. The forward step helps sell that they're following through and delivering power into the blow. The opponent they're hitting looks a bit weird but I can't really see them all that well behind the shield smacking them in the face anyhoo

As far as commitment... well, I don't see him doing any weird stuff during the swing so yeah, sure. It doesn't have to be super slow or anything to be a commitment, it just has to be exclusionary and create some kind of vulnerability that could be potentially exploited to make me happy. As long as I feel like there's a trade in there so that there will be times you don't want to use an attack without requiring a cooldown or some kind of meter to dissuade you then I feel like there's actual tactical stuff going on under the hood :3

 

[Anastasis]

Cross-posting from the main OT:

I haven't played in years, but thinking about jumping back in with some nice prices on the expansion. But then I remembered how the price of the expansion worked last time (same price for base+expansion and expansion), plus rumors of a new expansion, would it be better to wait and get both expansions for one price (if they keep the pricing model for the new expansion)?

 

[Lesath]

Well, impact is about portraying effort in most cases and when you're animating you ideally want your character to look like they could realistically maintain balance, which is hard with strafing and stuff unless it's part of the attack itself in some way :3

In the Gif, I'm assuming the attack is after he counters and then steps forward to wallop the opponent with the ball and chain. The forward step helps sell that they're following through and delivering power into the blow. The opponent they're hitting looks a bit weird but I can't really see them all that well behind the shield smacking them in the face anyhoo

As far as commitment... well, I don't see him doing any weird stuff during the swing so yeah, sure. It doesn't have to be super slow or anything to be a commitment, it just has to be exclusionary and create some kind of vulnerability that could be potentially exploited to make me happy. As long as I feel like there's a trade in there so that there will be times you don't want to use an attack without requiring a cooldown or some kind of meter to dissuade you then I feel like there's actual tactical stuff going on under the hood :3

Sorry that I'm barging in on the conversation here a bit, but I don't think any MMO I've played ever matched up to Vindictus's combat. I played Fiona, and it just felt so satisfying to perfect shield counter a boss's weak attacks, the backwards staggering animation after your dig yourself in to shield block a strong attack, and then charging back in to respond in kind. You had a choice between a warhammer and a sword, each with their own combo animations, which made you vulnerable, and the key was to essentially time your attacks so the last and most powerful one hits the boss during his vulnerability frames where he's not hitting you for massive damage. I also loved that the hammer hits had so much weight that enemies essentially ragdolled away once you kill them with it. It's really too bad the combat was the only thing the game had going for it.

 

[adversarial]

Lack of trinity. Weird end-game.

 

[Kalentan]

Cross-posting from the main OT:

I haven't played in years, but thinking about jumping back in with some nice prices on the expansion. But then I remembered how the price of the expansion worked last time (same price for base+expansion and expansion), plus rumors of a new expansion, would it be better to wait and get both expansions for one price (if they keep the pricing model for the new expansion)?

Not really sure.

Since this is our first second expansion this will set the precedent whether or not the newest expansion always contains the previous. It's possible it might not.

https://www.dlgamer.com/us/games/buy-guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns-29808

You can get the expansion right now for 20.99 from this source.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/retailers/#UnitedStates-physical

It's listed as a trusted source from their website if you click on digital download.

Otherwise we will get an announcement of the next expansion soonish after Episode 6 of the Living Story Season 3 releases. Then the expansion should come out 2 - 3 months after that. (Since that's the general wait between Living Story updates and they said the expansion would follow at the same rate.)

 

[Anastasis]

Not really sure.

Since this is our first second expansion this will set the precedent whether or not the newest expansion always contains the previous. It's possible it might not.

https://www.dlgamer.com/us/games/buy-guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns-29808

You can get the expansion right now for 20.99 from this source.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/retailers/#UnitedStates-physical

It's listed as a trusted source from their website if you click on digital download.

Otherwise we will get an announcement of the next expansion soonish after Episode 6 of the Living Story Season 3 releases. Then the expansion should come out 2 - 3 months after that. (Since that's the general wait between Living Story updates and they said the expansion would follow at the same rate.)

Thanks!

 

[Perona]

^ They have said that all future expansions would make previous ones free.

 

[Anastasis]

^ They have said that all future expansions would make previous ones free.

There we go! I think I will wait a bit and see then.

Thank you!

 

[Kalentan]

^ They have said that all future expansions would make previous ones free.

They did?

Nice.

 

[Fishious]

^ They have said that all future expansions would make previous ones free.

I did some digging and this news piece from 2015 was the closest I could find.

Expansions are the one place where the buy-to-play model gets a little tricky. When you're coming in as a new player to a game that has a bunch of expansions, what exactly should you buy in order to play with your friends? The base game and also every single expansion? We've seen examples in the industry where that kind of thing has gotten out of control. It doesn't seem right, and we want to do better. As we get ready to ship our first expansion for Guild Wars 2, we want to ensure that we keep the business model friendly and simple. So let's be clear that when we say Guild Wars 2 is buy-to-play, we're only asking you to buy one thing: the current release, Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

I feel like they clarified it more in a follow up that this would be the plan going forward, but I can't find anything in my quick search. However unless people are just itching to play HoT I'd suggest waiting for the actual expansion announcement since we'll probably hear about it in a month. Plans can change, so unless you've got a more recent source I'd probably advise people interested to wait and see. Try the F2P base game if they want to get started now.

 

[Geminosity]

Sorry that I'm barging in on the conversation here a bit, but I don't think any MMO I've played ever matched up to Vindictus's combat. I played Fiona, and it just felt so satisfying to perfect shield counter a boss's weak attacks, the backwards staggering animation after your dig yourself in to shield block a strong attack, and then charging back in to respond in kind. You had a choice between a warhammer and a sword, each with their own combo animations, which made you vulnerable, and the key was to essentially time your attacks so the last and most powerful one hits the boss during his vulnerability frames where he's not hitting you for massive damage. I also loved that the hammer hits had so much weight that enemies essentially ragdolled away once you kill them with it. It's really too bad the combat was the only thing the game had going for it.

Haha, no worries, it's a public forum and public conversation, joining in is encouraged ;D
I was rather excited for Mabinogi Heroes before it came out (and before it got renamed Vindictus ) but when it finally hit I didn't quite gel with it for some reason. Admittedly, I didn't play much of it so I don't have a solid opinion on it. I should maybe swing by it again some time and see what's what, especially now they've got classes like scythe-wielding Evie in it (I have a serious weakness for scythes) :3

The combo system it uses is somewhat reminiscent to me of Musuo games or Rakion, which I thought was interesting, but I'm a huge fan of having attacks on the mouse and free aim over the usual MMO way

All this combat talk makes me think I should look into the action camera that GW2 apparently added later on that vigilant mentioned, as I remember both myself and a bunch of other peeps thinking the fan-made mod that Areanet kept deciding was ok and not ok that gave it an action camera back in early release made it seem more appealing to us.

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

Well, impact is about portraying effort in most cases and when you're animating you ideally want your character to look like they could realistically maintain balance, which is hard with strafing and stuff unless it's part of the attack itself in some way :3

In the Gif, I'm assuming the attack is after he counters and then steps forward to wallop the opponent with the ball and chain. The forward step helps sell that they're following through and delivering power into the blow. The opponent they're hitting looks a bit weird but I can't really see them all that well behind the shield smacking them in the face anyhoo

As far as commitment... well, I don't see him doing any weird stuff during the swing so yeah, sure. It doesn't have to be super slow or anything to be a commitment, it just has to be exclusionary and create some kind of vulnerability that could be potentially exploited to make me happy. As long as I feel like there's a trade in there so that there will be times you don't want to use an attack without requiring a cooldown or some kind of meter to dissuade you then I feel like there's actual tactical stuff going on under the hood :3

Hmmm ok! I think I get it. But do you think that invincibility frames take skill out of it?

In Black Desert, you can spam attacks pretty frequently. It's a potion spam sort of thing, and a fair bit of classes have little cooldowns compared to other games, but it's also a very chaotic game. Do you think this is commitment?



It's interesting you talk about Rakion because my game back in the day was Gunz the Duel! I remember that Gunz and Rakion was the two only worthwhile F2P games- but that was 15 years ago now? Gaming has completely changed since then.

Which was a game which rewarded pretty crazy strafe playing known as K-Style. There was then other "styles" of play added. It was a very rough game and it hasn't held at all, but to me, that showed great skill because you had to navigate the vertical plane, and chase others and manage blocking peoples shots as you dashed across the field.
Of course it wasn't a MMO, but it was one of the first games that had that persistence character generation. I really think that Warframes gameplay is sort of based of it in a way.


I later veined towards games like; Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy, Mount and Blade, Chivalry;

And these sort of became my favorite. I love being able to capitalize on someone making a heavy a attack, and then having them reach beyond their means, leaving their back, side, or arms exposed by putting too much force behind the punch or the swing!
So I think my preference being this is probably why, I really enjoy GW2s combat. It has that umf and swoosh and swing where I feel grounded. It's funny that you say you feel that, but with the commitment you're talking about!

The game gives me this sense of seamless transitions, where you don't notice when the animation is finished. It just blends it really nicely with the attack and idle animations.
Where as you have some games, where you engage an attack animation and then the animation has to finish, and then it jumps back awkwardly to the idle standing / attack pose animation! That annoys the hell out of me. Particularly in older MMOs. I recall it in games like Archeage!

And the cycles are seamless too. You can swap as you jump, double tap, fall, run backwards in circles. It is so important to me that the characters animations don't look weird. so when you spit fire out of your mouth, it's not like the lower body disobeys it. Sometimes in SWTOR you can move when attacking but it looks like the upper body swinging and lightsaber and lower body are playing two different animations.

I guess thats where I am coming from. I love the expressions in the animations they made for this game. I can feel a lot more personality in most player characters than I can in many other games. It has one of the largest amounts of idle animations I've seen for each race, for each weapon.

But it's very difficult to talk about animation in general. There are often times when people will say a combat system is floaty or clunky, but what does that mean? I hear it about SWTOR, about Dragon Age Inquisition, about Witcher 3. People will say "it's bad" but rarely specify.

And it is difficult to specify, between not liking how victory is achieved or the game rules, or how the animations play out. What we're accustomed to probably has a lot to say with it.
Some people like Context driven action games like Assassins Creed, other combo based like action games like Capcom and Platinum, and others like the soules approach.


GW2 (and GW1) got so many points for me because there is nothing else like it. There was nothing like GW1s card inspired system, and there is nothing like GW2s hybrid action/tab targeting hybrid, and I think thats a huge deal. It's not about being best of neither world, but being a niche between both.

Because I really like Black Desert and Blade and Soul, and their combat is spectacular, but there is something lost in the frantic fighting-game combo approach.
And then I go back to WoW and FFXIV, and there is something draconian and outdated by the dice-roll wack a mole approach to their combat.


I've spend a lot of time with games, I thought would drive bridge between the turn hotkey based combat and action combat of the past. Like the Boware games, or Lord of the Rings Conquest, or Hellgate London.
Maybe it's because I've spend so much time playing games with so many flaws in them, that I just genuinely am a stickler for these sorts of details in the animation, where as even some modern game with high quality mocap, still drives me off the wall if there is jank between a animation and its end cycle, making a stutter before the character sits down, puts down the cup, throws the kick, does the high five and so on.

 

[Gurnlei]

I always thought it was/is popular. Amazing game.

 

[Kalentan]

I always thought it was/is popular. Amazing game.

It is. Just not on GAF.

Most MMOs have little to no communities on GAF.

 

[Geminosity]

Hmmm ok! I think I get it. But do you think that invincibility frames take skill out of it?

In Black Desert, you can spam attacks pretty frequently. It's a potion spam sort of thing, and a fair bit of classes have little cooldowns compared to other games, but it's also a very chaotic game. Do you think this is commitment?

It's interesting you talk about Rakion because my game back in the day was Gunz the Duel! I remember that Gunz and Rakion was the two only worthwhile F2P games- but that was 15 years ago now? Gaming has completely changed since then.

Which was a game which rewarded pretty crazy strafe playing known as K-Style. There was then other "styles" of play added. It was a very rough game and it hasn't held at all, but to me, that showed great skill because you had to navigate the vertical plane, and chase others and manage blocking peoples shots as you dashed across the field.
Of course it wasn't a MMO, but it was one of the first games that had that persistence character generation. I really think that Warframes gameplay is sort of based of it in a way.

I later veined towards games like; Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy, Mount and Blade, Chivalry;

And these sort of became my favorite. I love being able to capitalize on someone making a heavy a attack, and then having them reach beyond their means, leaving their back, side, or arms exposed by putting too much force behind the punch or the swing!
So I think my preference being this is probably why, I really enjoy GW2s combat. It has that umf and swoosh and swing where I feel grounded. It's funny that you say you feel that, but with the commitment you're talking about!

The game gives me this sense of seamless transitions, where you don't notice when the animation is finished. It just blends it really nicely with the attack and idle animations.
Where as you have some games, where you engage an attack animation and then the animation has to finish, and then it jumps back awkwardly to the idle standing / attack pose animation! That annoys the hell out of me. Particularly in older MMOs. I recall it in games like Archeage!

And the cycles are seamless too. You can swap as you jump, double tap, fall, run backwards in circles. It is so important to me that the characters animations don't look weird. so when you spit fire out of your mouth, it's not like the lower body disobeys it. Sometimes in SWTOR you can move when attacking but it looks like the upper body swinging and lightsaber and lower body are playing two different animations.

I guess thats where I am coming from. I love the expressions in the animations they made for this game. I can feel a lot more personality in most player characters than I can in many other games. It has one of the largest amounts of idle animations I've seen for each race, for each weapon.

But it's very difficult to talk about animation in general. There are often times when people will say a combat system is floaty or clunky, but what does that mean? I hear it about SWTOR, about Dragon Age Inquisition, about Witcher 3. People will say "it's bad" but rarely specify.

And it is difficult to specify, between not liking how victory is achieved or the game rules, or how the animations play out. What we're accustomed to probably has a lot to say with it.
Some people like Context driven action games like Assassins Creed, other combo based like action games like Capcom and Platinum, and others like the soules approach.

GW2 (and GW1) got so many points for me because there is nothing else like it. There was nothing like GW1s card inspired system, and there is nothing like GW2s hybrid action/tab targeting hybrid, and I think thats a huge deal. It's not about being best of neither world, but being a niche between both.

Because I really like Black Desert and Blade and Soul, and their combat is spectacular, but there is something lost in the frantic fighting-game combo approach.
And then I go back to WoW and FFXIV, and there is something draconian and outdated by the dice-roll wack a mole approach to their combat.

I've spend a lot of time with games, I thought would drive bridge between the turn hotkey based combat and action combat of the past. Like the Boware games, or Lord of the Rings Conquest, or Hellgate London.
Maybe it's because I've spend so much time playing games with so many flaws in them, that I just genuinely am a stickler for these sorts of details in the animation, where as even some modern game with high quality mocap, still drives me off the wall if there is jank between a animation and its end cycle, making a stutter before the character sits down, puts down the cup, throws the kick, does the high five and so on.

Invincibility frames still require timing so there's definitely skill in their use, I've always just worried that they're a bit too 'catch all' due to being complete invulnerability and tend to prefer actually moving my hurtbox to evade attack hitboxes as i feel there's a larger tactical space to explore with that.

I can't comment on black desert too much as I've not played it, but the videos I've watched of Steparu playing it brings up my concern of it risking having too many special effects going off in combat. It can make group combat somewhat difficult to parse, something that I encountered a few times in GW2 as well (The more solid memory coming to me was when I was trying to 'tank' a world boss with my guardian, but it became incredibly difficult to see the enemy among all the effects going off on and around it to time my reactionary defensive abilities )
That said, going off what you said: I'm not a fan of being able to 'spam'. I prefer it when each strike is a carefully chosen action, because throwing strikes out needlessly could get you punished/leave you vulnerable... now if you can spam something because your opponent could punish it and isn't... well, that's a-ok because that's your opponent's fault not the game's ;D

I love Rakion because it was like someone had smushed soul calibur and counter strike together
Gunz was pretty fun too, albeit it got rather silly with the k-style and whatnot going on. I think I spent a greater amount of time doing d-style just for the sake of it That said, the wall running, air-dashing and whatnot was very satisfying. It's worth noting that k-style was based around animation cancelling though as sword swipes actually had a great deal of animation locking attached to them :3
Thinking on d-style reminds me of the interesting half-way house that Unreal Tournament Championship apparently struck between free movement and animation locking (albeit this is all second hand as I didn't play it myself, just merely looked into it): light attacks didn't do much damage but don't stop you moving so you could circle strafe around someone doing them and if you could score 4 or more light hits on a target in quick succession you could stun them. Heavy attacks, on the other hand, would animation lock you and did tremendous damage. Good for catching someone walking round a corner or for finishing someone off you just stunned with light attacks :3

while not my favourite way of doing it, I do appreciate jedi knight, mount and blade and whatnot for making you move in the direction you want to swing as it at least gives some sense of weight and also interestingly adds a small element of telegraphing your move which I like

I don't think you'll find many detractors of GW2's animations when stationary as they're pretty well done, they just lose a bit of their finesse when you start circle strafing people with them and the top/bottom blending kicks in, in my opinion :3

I agree that animations not blending or just general animation jank is pretty off-putting in any games it turns up in though

 

[Nemesis121]

Walrus what res you down scaling from? 4k? those gifs look great, makes my 1060 look like a PoS old card...

 

[brennok]

I recently reinstalled to try again mainly out of boredom. I bought BDO, but something about that game never clicked with me so I returned it. I think the problem with that game is there is so much to do and so little of it I care about so it feels like I am wasting my time. The animation gifs above always make me wish I was playing it until I do.

I think GW2 is similar. I bought at launch excited and never clicked. Mostly everything has been said at this point so not much to add. To this day I have never made it higher than mid 30s. I have started over multiple times usually whenever I would try it again because I had no clue what was going on anymore with the game or characters.

One immediate annoyance was limited character slots. Not being able to try all classes without deleting a character rubbed me the wrong way. I know about the PVP option, but I never get a good feel that way and prefer to level a bit. As others have mentioned the starter areas get old pretty quick. Even now coming back again I found it a chore to get through the starter zones. I would probably rank them human, norn, charr, sylvari, and asura.

I think the big problem for me is none of the classes feel great. As I would level I would struggle to find skills I wanted to unlock since I knew many were ones I would never prefer to use. This is probably why I bounce off around the 30s. I just look at what I am unlocking and see no point. The loot isn't good enough to keep me going and the event system isn't that great.

I do wonder what they would do if they made a GW3, but I doubt that is in the cards. I never bought HoT since it is all 80s stuff and doubt I will hit the cap if I am even still playing if the new expansion launches this year.

 

[ChackanKun]

Guild Wars 1 was amazing. The lore and storytelling, albeit not perfect, was amazing.

The combat was incredible fun, even with a low max level cap (lvl 20). The whole reach level 20 but continue to gain skill points for new skills was a great idea.

I had about 20 different builds, all played in distinct forms from another, and all this on a Warrior. The dual profession system was great also.

From the Story Missions, Fort battles, skill gathering, etc, man, it was great.

It was like they picked up Diablo, Magic the Gathering, added a really interesting lore, built it in a MMO foundation and voi lá, a MMORPG like notihing else in the market.

Guild Wars 2 took that lore and storytelling and lowered it a notch, removed the dual profession and eliminated the need to create different skill builds.

GW2 is a great MMORPG, it just isn't nearly as good as GW1.

 

[spleenpoker]

Snip Snip

That is most interesting, thanks! I played at launch and I definitely played it as a conventional MMO at the time. Back in Vanilla WoW and TBC I just use to skip quest text because I enjoyed just leveling with friends but over the years, WoW definitely refined their quest system. I love learning about the world, the zones, everything.

Guild Wars lore really interests me. I'll definitely take what you say about the hearts into consideration. I just remember at launch when I played, I could just wonder from personal story to personal story, was always underleveled even though I did one or two dynamic events on the way, so I just fell back to spamming hearts over and over.

Snip

Woah, are those last 4 of GW2? Looks incredible, I always thought the game was a looker though, especially those weapons where you can see a galaxy or what not in them. Crazy stuff.

 

[GLAMr]

I loved GW and was excited for GW2.

The two people I know who bought GW2 were falsely accused of hacking and had their accounts banned within the first week or two. They couldn't be bothered dealing with the daunting appeals process.

This is the limit of my experience with GW2.

 

[Boss Doggie]

I'm still looking at the reasoning as to why GW2's combat is crap. The closest someone has said it was "floaty" and even then it's so vague because I can't fathom how a combat is "floaty".

Well most of them that I experienced were filled by either killing rats, or some variation of right clicking on glowing objects. It was basically "Help Farmer Dipshit" and you could "help" him by killing rats or watering his plants. Neither of which was exactly exciting or fun, and often you had no idea how many of either you would have to do so it was just mindlessly doing menial tasks or killing mobs--exactly what the system is designed to avoid.

but there aren't much glowing objects in GW2, only few quests have that and they're not just the things to do

also most of the time not killing mobs actually fill up the meter fast, so some even go there and see killing mobs as bonus

GW2's quests work because they are easily done quickly without any red tape going on with the NPC, and later maps are more event focused.

 

[texhnolyze]

It is. Just not on GAF.

Most MMOs have little to no communities on GAF.

Unless it's on consoles. Lots of mmos got a second life after hitting consoles.

That's pretty much Gaf.

 

[Mr_Antimatter]

Own it myself, have max level characters for every class.

It's got some stuff to love, and some stuff I hate. I hate how much of the cool stuff is locked behind the cash shop, including most of the really awesome weapon designs.

I do like the characters and story, and some quests were quite memorable. I personally love the "hangover' personal story with the Norn. Claudia Ann Christian played that part really well.

Though I like Jennifer Hale as the sylvari female PC better.

The updates have been hit or miss, but rocking along quite nicely, and well, there has been some amazing ones over the last few years. Twisted marionette and the destruction/reclaiming lions arch were my favorites.

Zone design and music were quite nice. Some of the expansions zones have more verticality then any mmo zone i'd played.

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

Invincibility frames still require timing so there's definitely skill in their use, I've always just worried that they're a bit too 'catch all' due to being complete invulnerability and tend to prefer actually moving my hurtbox to evade attack hitboxes as i feel there's a larger tactical space to explore with that.

I can't comment on black desert too much as I've not played it, but the videos I've watched of Steparu playing it brings up my concern of it risking having too many special effects going off in combat. It can make group combat somewhat difficult to parse, something that I encountered a few times in GW2 as well (The more solid memory coming to me was when I was trying to 'tank' a world boss with my guardian, but it became incredibly difficult to see the enemy among all the effects going off on and around it to time my reactionary defensive abilities )
That said, going off what you said: I'm not a fan of being able to 'spam'. I prefer it when each strike is a carefully chosen action, because throwing strikes out needlessly could get you punished/leave you vulnerable... now if you can spam something because your opponent could punish it and isn't... well, that's a-ok because that's your opponent's fault not the game's ;D

I love Rakion because it was like someone had smushed soul calibur and counter strike together
Gunz was pretty fun too, albeit it got rather silly with the k-style and whatnot going on. I think I spent a greater amount of time doing d-style just for the sake of it That said, the wall running, air-dashing and whatnot was very satisfying. It's worth noting that k-style was based around animation cancelling though as sword swipes actually had a great deal of animation locking attached to them :3
Thinking on d-style reminds me of the interesting half-way house that Unreal Tournament Championship apparently struck between free movement and animation locking (albeit this is all second hand as I didn't play it myself, just merely looked into it): light attacks didn't do much damage but don't stop you moving so you could circle strafe around someone doing them and if you could score 4 or more light hits on a target in quick succession you could stun them. Heavy attacks, on the other hand, would animation lock you and did tremendous damage. Good for catching someone walking round a corner or for finishing someone off you just stunned with light attacks :3

while not my favourite way of doing it, I do appreciate jedi knight, mount and blade and whatnot for making you move in the direction you want to swing as it at least gives some sense of weight and also interestingly adds a small element of telegraphing your move which I like

I don't think you'll find many detractors of GW2's animations when stationary as they're pretty well done, they just lose a bit of their finesse when you start circle strafing people with them and the top/bottom blending kicks in, in my opinion :3

I agree that animations not blending or just general animation jank is pretty off-putting in any games it turns up in though

Ahh thanks for clarifying.

Walrus what res you down scaling from? 4k? those gifs look great, makes my 1060 look like a PoS old card...

I think most of these gifs used reshade. Seems like they are cranking that saturation to make the colors pop a bit more. WP talked a bit about it in the past.

That is most interesting, thanks! I played at launch and I definitely played it as a conventional MMO at the time. Back in Vanilla WoW and TBC I just use to skip quest text because I enjoyed just leveling with friends but over the years, WoW definitely refined their quest system. I love learning about the world, the zones, everything.

Guild Wars lore really interests me. I'll definitely take what you say about the hearts into consideration. I just remember at launch when I played, I could just wonder from personal story to personal story, was always underleveled even though I did one or two dynamic events on the way, so I just fell back to spamming hearts over and over.

It's not your fault mate.
What happened was that when they first had testers for the game in 2010, people didn't know what to do. We (as players) have become so conditioned to not go explore, that we're just looking for guidance and breadcrumb quests to take us to the nearest town.

So the developers added these hearts, but they end up confusing people. It makes people not seek out and explore. GW2 is pretty wild in that everything gives good xp. Cutting down trees give as much xp as killing things. You get combat xp for crafting, jumping puzzles, just running around.
I have 12 max level characters, which isn't even that abnormal. Most people who've played it over the years have multiple max level characters because it's quite relaxing and streamlined to level.

What always fascinated me is that, the personal story (as others have said) isn't good. It's this serviceable run of the mill thing, but strangely enough the world building outside of the personal story is really good. Really good voice acting, and it's surreal to run into a cavern, and then have a rare dynamic event pop up. There are many many hundreds of these, and it's interesting to see how their stories unfold even when you fail them.

What's nice though is that, like FFXIV, the story get a lot better after the main game is finished. GW2 has had a big amount of updates over the last 4 years that greatly expanded the game, and their stories have become really compelling. It's actually cool to see a studio that struggled with narrative, get the hang of it.

In the GW2 community, the story guy is a youtuber called Wooden Potatoes. He is a cool resource to consult. He is really excited about the lore, and drives a lot of speculation about the story.

Woah, are those last 4 of GW2? Looks incredible, I always thought the game was a looker though, especially those weapons where you can see a galaxy or what not in them. Crazy stuff.

Yeah, the game can look really nice at time. I really adore the art direction. The ones used for Faction and Nightfall was also wonderful.

The games aesthetics also have their own flavors. Some of the new areas they added in Season 3:

 

[Astery]

for me, I just lost interest in most MMO type games. Too much time investment required, plus the need to make and maintain online friends for each game since I don't have a full group of real life friends playing the same game at the same time.

 

[kiuo]

I was never into the artstyle they were going for, seen in the dialogues, cutscenes, and loading screens. It had that kind of mushy, blurry artstyle that while it looks good, for some reason just looks really off to me.

Story wise, I was fine with it till it started going all doom and gloom with the rise of the undead. I hate zombies and undeads in my games, and I hate it even more when the main plot deals a whole lot with friends and allies turning against you as zombies. I just find it cheap story telling that the only big bad final boss (when I was still playing) they can make is someone who can basically revive all the people into their underlings. Not to mention all the frikin zones are just filled with these fkers crawling everywhere...

I also, hated the combat and how it limits you to like 10 skills only, which are dependent on what weapons you equip. Coming from a game like Rift where I can customize my action bars and how I want to hotkey/macro them with all the skills I've unlocked, I just felt really limited in GW2. Not to say the combat was easy in GW2, it was frikin hard and I was terrible in pvp, but I just wanted more options and less limitations. It also doesn't help that the combat system was terrible for group plays in dungeons and raids.

 

[spleenpoker]

In the GW2 community, the story guy is a youtuber called Wooden Potatoes.

Does Wooden Potatoes have a video summarizes the events of Season 1? I hear that's not playable for new players because the story seemed pretty fun. Can't look right now, at work unfortunately.

The games aesthetics also have their own flavors. Some of the new areas they added in Season 3

Those look absolutely stunning. Wish I could see them in a higher resolution. So small I've always loved the aesthetic of the game. As proven, the zones ooze style, hoping they have substance though as others have said they are dull but, visually are amazing.

You've convinced me. I'm going to pick the expansion up and start playing again soon, hopefully will coincide with the new expansion launch too. This time mostly avoiding the hearts if possible and try to experience more of the dynamic events which I personally enjoy. I will also take time out to explore and discover things naturally.

 

[Damaniel]

Easy - Guild Wars 1 players don't like it because it's drastically different than GW1 was, and non-GW1 players aren't as likely to jump on a sequel to a game they never played. They should have given it a different name.

That said, it's my favorite MMO out there right now and I still actually play from time to time. FFIV might be better, but I refuse to play MMOs where group play is the only viable path to advancement - I've had enough nightmares about losing, in the span of only 15 minutes, two weeks worth of work gaining experience while playing FFXI to ever deal with that crap again.

 

[Boss Doggie]

Does Wooden Potatoes have a video summarizes the events of Season 1? I hear that's not playable for new players because the story seemed pretty fun. Can't look right now, at work unfortunately.

Certain content in Season 1 is fun but man the story is absolute garbage.

 

[spleenpoker]

Certain content in Season 1 is fun but man the story is absolute garbage.

Really? Why do you say that? I haven't played since launch but I followed post launch content a bit.

Spoiler

Scarlet is the antagonist for the first season correct? Why do you think the story is garbage?

Very sad to hear though.

 

[Anoregon]

There's nothing specific I can point to that I dislike about GW2, but it's just not a game that is ever able to hold my attention for very long. My highest level character is like mid 40's even though I've had the game for a few years. It doesn't have that "hook" that makes me want to play for a few hours every day for multiple weeks in a row like WoW, SWTOR, and FFXIV have at various points.