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GW2's combat system is boring, zerg everything, why do people want that?
BearKnight
Member CommonPosts: 461
Compared to EQ1, EQ2, WoW, DAOC, GW1, etc....GW2's combat system is of the most boring.
Tanks/Healers/Control don't actually exist, so everyone ends up being DPS with healing/control/armor side-speccing abilities. This just ends up with everyone being an amalgamation of everything rolled into a DPS class that just spams their 8 hotkeys until whatever it is, is dead.
"World Bosses" in GW2 are a joke, they stand still while flashy "Aimpoints" show you where to attack while the boss throws out scripted event attacks every X amount of HP or after X amount of time has passed, rinse, repease. Every World Boss encounter I fought in was the most boring thing ever. Shiny effects everywhere with 50+ people just spamming all their abilities without a care in the world about adds. Someone goes down, a random stranger comes up and "Rezes" you during combat, continue with hotkey spam. Far too easy, no soul, no thought behind it, just spam spam spam click click click, next target.
Is this REALLY where the industry is going? Wildstar, and now EQ:N?
It seems like we're going backwards, devolving into nothing more than a browser-based action RPG with pretty lights.
Must be just me 
Comments
No, you're not the only one who recognizes this. The hailed messiah of MMOs has turned out to be the antichrist in some sense.
The smaller fights are a lot more focused.
Really big fights in ALL games, most people are just facerolling through the suitable attacks, unless it's a raid with elaborate choreography.
Just like how in WvW, when two small squads bump into each other, it can be really tactical and teamwork can make a huge difference, and the bigger the two groups get, the less it's about any one individual's contribution. (Though one well placed person can still make or break a zerg, it's just harder to BE that person)
GW2's combat is the most boring of all you mentioned huh?
So why are you posting this? It's completely obvious what you said is false even if it is as "opinion".
Oh...I get it. It's another "Holy Trinity" thread....gotcha.
GW2's combat is the best in any MMO and the main reason, why I cannot play any other MMO anymore. You are right, big boss-fights tend to be a zerg-fest. But hey, everything else is fantastic: group pvp, wvw, dungeons, solo. And the best thing: no trinity! Everybody has to think about what he is doing.
Talking about raiding. In every MMO out there boss fights tend to be a zerg-fest. That is the reason why games like WoW create so many special boss fights, where the raid has to do a lot of movement, watching your addons, etc. But the combat-mechanics do play a diminished role.
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.
Why precisely do you enjoy GW2s combat over WoWs combat?
This is not a game.
Many people don't want strategy, they down't want downtime to discuss tactics, they don't want community, they want action.
And now every other MMO coming out is a zergfest.
EQ and EQNext couldn't be further apart. They're at the complete opposites of the MMO spectrum.
One is a slow trinity game with community. The other is a casual zergfest with gimmicks.
Agreed, personally I prefer sneaking around and picking loners and dolyaks in WvW to zergs.
World boss fights do get zergy since they scale, in a raid they know exactly how many players there are so they can coordinate the fight better.
But when you go down to explorable dungeons and fractals things get interesting, there is a group dynamic in it even if many people don't see it in the beginning (those people usually wipe a lot since they stopped allowing you to rez while one group member is alive).
GW2s problem is that they nerfed the difficulty of the open world and single player campaign after beta weekend 2 so most of the stuff is so easy that open world players can zerg stuff. That together with the act that you don't lock mobs to the group in the open world.
Sure, GW2s mechanics can be improved a lot, the trinity combat was rather simple compared to how it is today in Meridian 59 as well but I think they are moving in the right direction here.
If they just could move the difficulty back to the first 2 open beta weekends I would be a happy camper...
It has weak grouping for sure, but it's a bit excessive to say it has bad combat.
Basically the removal of player specializations (the trinity) where players rely on one another makes teamplay considerably worse in GW2 than other games. Even games whose overall combat was kinda weak, like WAR, had better teamplay at least.
But the ability design and monster designs are solid. You occasionally run into monsters where if you don't interrupt things or dodge correctly they'll kill you. Which is a little more involved and engaging than several other recent MMORPGs (WAR, SWTOR, etc)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
That is not exactly true. First of all, while EQ had many people moving around in the open world it only had massive combat against raid bosses. Massive combat easily gets zergy.
Add modern MMOs low difficulty and you can zerg stuff, and since you can zerg world bosses instead of being forced to think people will.
It is the difficulty that is the main problem here, most people only think and use strategy when they have to, and it was honestly the same thing before but then you die if you didn't think.
Most raids are still hard enough to force people to think and therefor they plan them, but if an raid gets easy enough people will zerg them too, even the same people who plan so carefully for hard raids.
I want to see you zerg on an EQ raid, you'd lose your guild tag in a second.
Good games don't have zerg raids.
There is no reason why massive combat becomes zerg unless it's designed to be like that.
The reason all those action MMO become zerg has been pointed out by people in the past.
If you remove tanking and healing from a game, you need to increase the armor of the players to compensate for this, because everyone is now a tank without heals.
The increased armor results in zerg tactics that aren't possible in trinity systems. You can give everyone but your tanks 0 armor in a trinity system with forced grouping, you can't do this once you remove trinity.
Thank you for extrapolating World Boss tactics on to everything in the game.
Now, please play CoE, Arah, AC, CM, TA, Fractals, Queen's Gauntlet, Grenth meta, Dwayna meta, etc., etc., etc.
The combat system isn't zergy for the entire game. You could argue for tougher World Bosses with anti group mechanics (Try Karka events). But stop this silliness...GW2 has plenty of difficult encounters for those who want them.
"As you read these words, a release is seven days or less away or has just happened within the last seven days those are now the only two states youll find the world of Tyria."...Guild Wars 2
If that's how you play it, you must be pretty bad at GW2. First of all, it doesn't have 8 hotkeys. Every class has at least 15 abilities. You can spam them. That's stupid and ineffective, but will probably suffice in a large group. However, someone who spams their abilities will be a hinderance in a smaller group, where individual skill actually matters.
Now, since everyone is an amalgamation of everything, you can post a Thief build that can provide defensive support as well as a Guardian can, right? Or maybe at least teleport people around and reflect projectiles like a Mesmer? Or buff as well as an Elementalist? Oh, right, you can't, because Thief is a spike DPS profession.
Please, don't try to criticise games you know this little about. This is like me going to a DotA forum and bashing it for having only 4 abilities per char and dumb mob AI.
Now this is a good point. ANet's encounter design is disappontingly (and surprisingly, considering GW1) simplistic in GW2. It's the reason why 100b-full-zerk-yay-DPS group builds are viable. They've improved greatly post-launch, but they should really go back and fix many of the dungeons like they promised to. Some of them are pretty bad.
@Piechunks
In WoW you just stand around using your rotation you got from your guide. Although there is trinity in dungeons nobody cares, nobody cares even about boss-mechanics, because with the right gear everything is easy-mode. Oh, then there is raiding. While raiding you use even less abilities, but you have addons the tell you what you have to do in certain situations.
In GW2 I am constantly dodging using all my abilities, changing weapons and having tons of fun, even if it is just killing some stupid mobs. But even in the open you encounter regularily very dangerous mobs, that you can kill, if you play your char(r) correctly. In WoW I often was fighting more against not falling asleep than against the enemies.
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.
Umm because that is the whole point of these forums? this is not a fan site though and if people dislike a certain topic they are free not to read.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
The combat itself is great.
The PVE encounters themselves are not.
I'll take GW2's combat wrapped up in an expanded trinity with complex boss mechanics any day. I believe this is what Wildstar is doing, so we'll see.
Well someone needs to tell these younglings that MMOs aren't about action, if they want that, there is always super mario and all them kids games.
And before the "oh but that's progress, its modernization!" crowd kicks off... NO, it isn't. Us older people call it "going backwards, to appease impatient brats!" Look at where it all started... D&D (the pen version, not those other jokes), D&D set the whole idea of roleplaying games alight, then jumped to computers as tech became more commonplace.
Now while I do find myself more in favour of a trinity style system, that's only because it's slightly more real, with heavy armoured knights trading blows (no jumping about in full plate here!), and wizards casting fireballs etc.
I have fond memories of many a Sunday in our loft (converted attic) with 5 friends, a ton of beer and as many cigs as you could smoke (hey it was the 80s, we all smoked!), and it was heaven. Yes, not much got done at times for fecking around and laughing at stupid things, but it was FUN! Now? Now, it's like..
"omg we can't wait 5 mins, we're wasting time! Sit? Sit for more than a min waiting? Are you mad?"
MMO's have gone to hell, and I blame the generation, all them 12yo's I met in WoW a few years back are now screaming for action and killing MMO's. In the last few years MMO's have gone from bad to worse, and the future isn't so bright looking either...
TL/DR: If you want "action" your Xbox is in the other room!
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I agree it would be better if it was harder.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky