This completely breaks whatever immersion you have in the game, and this is why people created the term Hotkey based.
From what Ive seen from the videos Ive been watching during the past year this does not seem to be how the game works, mostly its a straightforward case of 1 player vs about 2-3 mobs tops, and even solo players taking out single mobs can sometimes take all from 10-30 seconds. Does that system really lend itself towards what ArenaNet is doing with creating Active combat? Or would you, hypothetically speaking, prefer a system more similar to the one that I describe here? Or maybe you think Im bat crap crazy and a moron, do tell me what you think! Im very interested to hear it!
A few important things about this - Having weak enemies does not mean you cant have strong enemy types as well. In order for combat to be varied and fun I think it should provide the player with both. Now this is really a question about balance, instead of having a player being able to take out 3 centaurs on their own, would it not be more preferable to have some centaurs that are much weaker. For example the player might be able to kill 3 weaker centaur irly quickly and 1 stronger centaur with the same amount of effort spent as on killing the 3 centaurs in the first example. This to me would creGuild Wars Onlineate a bigger sense of power with your character,its okay to struggle vs certain mobs that provide a bigger challenge, but in order for that experience to be enjoyable there should be some contrast, contrast that is easily provided by cannon fodder.
Guild Wars 2 will have the second of these two things, very cool, dynamic, powerful and impactful combat. But what about the first thing, cutting your way trough a lot of enemies.
I do not have any professional experience. Meaning I have never developed a game and I am not a gaming journalist, I am simply a gamer and these are just my thoughts and as such they may contain errors.
This post is not a topic about combat in itself, but rather the philosophies behind designing combat in an MMO vs other genres.
All conclusions are based on assumptions from what I know and may be completely wrong, or not be true when the game is finished.
Some of you may have noticed I built on the same last sequence of numbers every time I added a new sequence. This is how a game like WoW or Rift creates its skill system, it integrates new abilities as you level up and thus gradually introduces you to the pool of skills you will have on your screen for the rest of your game. To me this is a band-aid solution to a design philosophy that doesnt completely understand basic psychology.
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The following is the main reason for this post. Now my comparison with the Hack N Slash genre didnt stop at this, and Guild Wars 2 share a lot of other traits with games of this type, a sense of progression, a sense of being a hero and a sense of power.
This allows the developers to throw in more depth in other departments of the combat to help further push it towards being active, examples of these are dodging, the ability to move while using some skills, line of fire, cross profession skill combos and so on, all of these work well because of the corner stone of the combat system which is a sound design philosophy.
You think its difficult remembering that last sequence of numbers? Well thats 20 digits, A Hotkey based MMO will often ask you not only to remember 50+ different skills, you need to remember exactly what they do, in what situation they are applicable and where they are at all times, and this is just keeping track of your skills.. No wonder combat in many MMOs is so static, just remembering the butt load of skills you have available to you is asking the player for most of its attention. If you had any doubts about my earlier statement regarding a Hotkey based MMOs ability to retain immersion during combat that should be completely gone now.
Alright so a few words to start off, Ill try to summarize my thoughts and the reason for this topic at the end of this post, I tend to think a lot and analyze to a great extent so if you dont wanna read the whole thing I will as I said try to summarize the coming text at the bottom of the post.
When ArenaNet first started talking about their skill system and how what weapon you have change what skills you have available I thought they were crazy. I thought most of the MMO world would not accept this way of dealing with the skill system and it was an aspect of the game that I for one was not that thrilled about, although I was still excited with the rest of the game so I was willing to overlook this one aspect because the general experience seemed so awesome.
It doesnt matter how impactful and dynamic your combat is, even the coolest animation will become boring the 800th time youre doing it on an enemy and their health bar moves by only a small percentage.
So, as we all know one of the very talked about features of Guild Wars 2 is how ArenaNet is attempting to create a much more active combat system, something Im a big n off. And Ive been thinking a lot lately about how they go about this, and how this relates to more st paced genres. The prime example to do a comparison with I feel is probably the genre of Hack N Slash and as such I started comparing what ArenaNet is doing with Guild Wars 2 with what you might find in a epic ntasy Hack N Slash game such as Diablo, Titan Quest, Torchlight and other similar games.
With Arenanet putting so much focus on creating a Active combat system, is it odd that theyve chosen to have mobs that are mostly equal in power to each other, and to about a half to a third of the players power? Meaning one player can maybe take on 2-3 different mobs. But not choosing to vary the combat by having enemy types that you can kill easier grouped with one to two harder enemy types per player thus creating a situation where you can kill some mobs st and some slower - overall creating the same challenge and time spent fighting each battle, but with more variation. Especially considering their design philosophy as described in the earlier part of the post that tends to lend itself towards a more varied type of combat when seen in Hack N Slash games. I dont think implementing this to the same extent as in a Hack N Slash game would be a good idea, but to some degree I think it would add a lot to an already well thought out and fun combat system in Guild Wars 2
This topic is not about speculating about what does or doesnt exist in GW2, its about what you would like to see and why.
I do apologies for the wall of text, as I said in the start I have a tendency to do that, I tried to format it properly so it would be easier to read. If you do read the whole thing, youre an awesome person and I look forward to hearing your insights on the topic!
A few things to keep in mind with this post if you choose to try to counter argue, which I encourage you to do.
This comparison is not an unusual one, for obvious reasons, but I dont think anyone has ever delved very deep into the subject before. So here I go. The key reason for why its so easy to compare what Guild Wars 2s combat is like to the genre of Hack N Slash is easily surmised in one key word, a word that has been thrown around to such an extent it stopped meaning much anymore, and that word is Active as supposed to many MMOs which are in ct Reactive.
It is only during the past few months while thinking about this subject that I ended up realizing how utterly brilliant ArenaNet are, and how this way of doing things is probably the best system in any MMO to date.
First off the human mind can only focus on so many things at one time, if you have any more then 8 different inputs coming at you at once youre gonna start losing focus very rapidly. Keeping track of how much damage youre taking, positioning, what the enemy is doing, what skills you have on cool down, what your energys at, how much health the enemy has left, and a bunch of things all the while having over 50 skill icons on the screen at one time completely breaks immersion because its impossible to focus on all this stuff at once. The game is asking you to be able to react to the situation at hand by not just throwing all these things at you, but also expecting you to remember what all these skills do and where they are located on your screen. What ends up happening is your brain prioritizes what you conceive to be the essential parts, which in this case is the intece. It will loop back temporarily to whats going on in the game and then while you are acting on the input you just got inevitably you will shift focus back to the intece for a few seconds, before you once again can completely focus on the game.
When I got to that last point , having a sense of power, something hit me. I stopped and actually thought about it and whilst it is true in Guild Wars 2 you will have a sense of power being a hero, how does this relate into the combat system in a MMO. In a Hack N Slash a sense of power is achieved by two aspects. The ability to Hack and Slash your way trough hordes of enemies, as well as having cool, powerful, impactful and dynamic animations that makes you feel like youre really wooping the floor with these guys.
The difference between these two on is so small, the key aspect is really the developers ability to create a immersive combat environment, which is very hard when you have 4-5 quick slot bars with over 50 skills on your screen at any given time because frankly the immersion is broken the moment you see that overwhelming UI. So with this in mind how do you create a really immersive combat system in a MMO where the players expect to have hundreds of skills and combinations.
This is of course only in relation to how the game lets the player control their character in combat, what I mean when I say that the combat is active and not reactive is simply that the combat has you actively engaged and immersed. Its a very subtle difference, active combat means you are your character, you are not thinking Im about to die I should press the hotkey for healing you should simply act directly without thinking, the action should be completely natural as if you were doing it yourself. This is often what you do in a Hack N Slash. You are completely immersed in the game and you play actively,legend of edda gold. youve learned your character to such an extent that you dont need to think anymore.
Second off, memory. Now with practice its not hard to remember what 50 skills do, but it doesnt create an ideal playing situation. What you need to understand abGuild Wars O Guild Wars 2 - Creating Varied Combat In An MMOout human memory is that it works best with small amounts of information delivered in chunks over a course of time. If I tell you to memorize the numbers 3870 you will be able to do that irly easy, and if they have significance to you it will be piece a cake. If I ask you to memorize the numbers 3870560709 Im starting to ask a lot of you, but with practice this isnt very hard either. Now if I asked you to remember the number 38705607096612245532... Damn its starting to get extremely hard. However if I introduced these numbers to you one number at a time every other hour or so remembering them would be a lot easier for you.
Let me back up a bit here, so with what I talked about in the last paragraph in mind I looked at Guild Wars 2 with new eyes and realized ArenaNet had created a way to give players access to a large pool of skills,iris gold. larger then in the first game because of the ability to swap between weapons/attunments/kits in the heat of combat, but deliver it in small chunks.
This is a hypothetical and intellectual discussion only, this is not about Anet change their design in anyway.
What does this mean? Well to understand this you have to understand some basic human psychology, more specifically how we process and deal with information.
To wrap up, this is one key part as to why Hack N Slash games are more Active. One part? Oh my lord hes gonna keep writing isnt he. Yes he is, but its almost done. If youve read this r I applaud you!
In the case of Hotkeybased MMOs such as WoW, Rift, LoTR and a bunch of other modern MMOs you are not actively playing your character, when you perform an action you are pressing your button and watching your character do something. You are only playing Reactively, meaning you see what happens, and then react by pressing a button(Youre not acting naturally by instinct.).
So why is Guild Wars 2s system better. Well, with what I just talked about regarding focus and memory it should be quite apparent as to why Guild Wars 2s system is better. From the bottom up this system is designed with these two principles in mind. At any given time you have access to 10 skills and thats it. Now you might argue that thats not true, you might argue that the Elementalist for example at any given time access to 20-30 different skills because of its attunement mechanic, and technically youd be correct. BUT, the main difference is how Guild Wars 2 gives you access to these skills, namely by categorizing them. Remember what I said about humans having an easier time remembering small amounts of information at a time. This is basically what the entire combat system of Guild Wars 2 is founded upon grand fantasia gold, yes you still have access to a large amount of skills, but its categorized into smaller portions and you can never have access to all at the same time. This creates a situation where you can easily remember what skills you have at any given moment and focus on the game play without your focus being spread thin, and this is what creates complete immersion and thus the Active combat where playing is about naturally acting because you dont need to focus on anything but whats going on in the game, and because of the smaller pool of skills available to you right at that moment you dont need to look at the UI and your focus can be left with the action where it should be.