Realities to unlearn

[Leo.3428]

When I was leveling up my first character and trying jumping puzzles, I had to unlearn everything I knew about jumping and falling and get used to the platform game mechanics. In WvW I'm going through the same process. Here are a few observations to discuss. Some of my assumptions may be incorrect.

High ground

In the read world, holding the high ground puts you most often at an advantage; you're on the right side of gravity. In the game though, you will run up a slope at the same speed you run down the same slope (warclaw leaping is an exception). Projectiles won't reach further down than up, arrows and bullets behave like magical casts, a geometric shape. Hitting the the enemy's heads from above is the same as hitting their shields from below.

Encircling

In the real world, an encircled group is vulnerable to heavy artillery or bombs and the encircling forces are harder to hit. In the game, a compact group shares tank boons, and bomb-like skills have a reduced number of targets. Maybe two flanking attacks work as a limited form of encirclement.

I have a few more things on my mind but I don't want to make this a thesis, rather a discussion.

[floppypuppy.5789]

Good and reasonable observations, but keep in mind one thing:

 

Real world combat is generally not fun, but a game must be fun.  Some degree of simplification and unreality has to happen, not even mentioning technological limitations.

 

How would improving the physics accuracy in your way produce a more fun game?  

[Leo.3428]

Hi @floppypuppy.5789, I agree with you and I'm not suggesting changes to the game mechanics. Maybe at some point I will want to change things and rant about them 😉 but for now I'm just trying to list what runs counter to my intuition, and adapt to these.

[Dawdler.8521]

4 hours ago, Leo.3428 said:

Projectiles won't reach further down than up, arrows and bullets behave like magical casts, a geometric shape.

False. Arching projectiles (arrows, fireball) go considerably further.

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

also, high ground is alone a sight value in battles. aoe targetting and other skill arcs are way better to aim if u have the high ground...

 

artillery is too braindead in wvw anyways yet. there'd need to be a lot less artillery or far lower fire rate to beeing able to buff their dmg. like, if mortar can only fire all 2 minutes, high dmg would be okay. arrowcarts overall are some even more problematic factor.

 

encirceling... well if u can surround your enemy group, you should just melt them anyways (as u apparently are way bigger than them or more coordinated... ideally), unless u are doing something fundamentally wrong.  there needs to be no more boni than that.

 

if it is a "oh we have zero clue what we are doing and just run cloud formation" and u called that "wE sUrRoUnDeD tHeM".... yeah then better reconsider that a battle irl never was done without tactics. pugfights are highly untactical. it's like a ton of norse berserkers just slam into each other on a random raid engage

[subversiontwo.7501]

12 hours ago, Leo.3428 said:

When I was leveling up my first character and trying jumping puzzles, I had to unlearn everything I knew about jumping and falling and get used to the platform game mechanics. In WvW I'm going through the same process. Here are a few observations to discuss. Some of my assumptions may be incorrect.

High ground

In the read world, holding the high ground puts you most often at an advantage; you're on the right side of gravity. In the game though, you will run up a slope at the same speed you run down the same slope (warclaw leaping is an exception). Projectiles won't reach further down than up, arrows and bullets behave like magical casts, a geometric shape. Hitting the the enemy's heads from above is the same as hitting their shields from below.

Encircling

In the real world, an encircled group is vulnerable to heavy artillery or bombs and the encircling forces are harder to hit. In the game, a compact group shares tank boons, and bomb-like skills have a reduced number of targets. Maybe two flanking attacks work as a limited form of encirclement.

I have a few more things on my mind but I don't want to make this a thesis, rather a discussion.

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say, for the sake of discussion, but for the same sake: a few comments

1. Running faster down than up, you will "run" faster down if you can glide 😉 . Other than that, these things are quite situational and depends on the gravity of whatever slope. If it's steep enough you will likely tread careful down and if it's flat enough the difference can be quite negligable up. Even more interesting is that for general position advantages I think the game handles it pretty interesting too since the gravity of angle will affect whether it is better to be above or below as well. Being above is generally a big advantage until the angle cuts off your arcing. The same goes for the differences between certain AoE skills, it could be argued that gameplay mechanics necessitates things like Meteor shower and Barrage functioning similarily, but their differences can be explained by that they simulate a true ground attack being called down on specific ground versus firing in an arc/the air. So perhaps the simulation and difference is more accurate to game canon than people give it credit.

2. I guess others have already pointed this out but for arcing/momentum projectile physics they do travel longer in the game so overall I think the game handles this bit well. Things like gunpowder weapons need forward momentum for penetration so that is likely what is simulated by not having them travel further or use gravitation weight/drop.

3. Most builds in the mode do not use shields and for those builds with shields the shield effect doesn't really come from having the weapon but from using it. There are plenty of abilities in the game where shielding is forward facing only and you can get above it or get behind it. In other cases blocks are a boon or a bubble or whatever but that is where supportive simulation or good old magic comes in. Overall, the game handles this too pretty well, I'd say.

4. Siege, true siege, in the game actually is advantageous to fire on tightly packed groups. Things includes both primary attacks with knockback and secondary attacks with other debilitating effectcs. The player attacks, while some may be somewhat impressive, are not artillery or bombs or whatever. They are all just relatively light AoE attacks. The attacks that are simulated as being high impact also comes with a CC component to simulate that. That some of the big damage attacks do not have CC components are generally just skill-skill or class-class balance decisions. They've even purposely split CC and damage now, but in the past you could easily have argued that some big damage- and impact skills should have a CC component but then those would have had to been balanced by other measures like giving them prohibitively long cooldowns that just isn't fun. Eg., Meteor shower could have a CC component but then it would likely have been given a 2min cd instead.

As an aside: While all of this is just lighthearted commentary, I also think to whatever small degree, it factors into discussions about balance and understanding the game (-mode) too. Many times when people complain about something not working (as they want), they are also often not fully understanding how to approach it. So in related ingame discussions about fighting around objectives or attacking pre-organized groups the people who complain are usually very bad at what they are trying to do and then pass that off as being impossible or disadvantaged when not.

Edited October 28, 2021 by subversiontwo.7501

[Dawdler.8521]

30 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

2. I guess others have already pointed this out but for arcing/momentum projectile physics they do travel longer in the game so overall I think the game handles this bit well. Things like gunpowder weapons need forward momentum for penetration so that is likely what is simulated by not having them travel further or use gravitation weight/drop.

It has nothing to do with that.

Its the "time-to-live" variable that determine it. Straight line projectiles end at about their max range no matter how you aim.

Arching projectiles however live longer because they are assumed to hit ground thus lowering the range naturally. When they dont, they continue beyond max range for a while.

Most obvious example of this is sieging DBL bay south from the cliffs. Much further range than firing on flat ground... but go too far and the projectile will despawn before it hit the walls.

[Sylvyn.4750]

7 hours ago, kamikharzeeh.8016 said:

also, high ground is alone a sight value in battles. aoe targetting and other skill arcs are way better to aim if u have the high ground...

Unless you're on top of a parapet for a keep or tower, in which case defenders have limited line of sight for combat skills compared to attackers...makes no sense...

[Stand The Wall.6987]

high ground in this game is a disadvantage cuz you don't need line of sight for aoe. so someone can camp at the outside bottom of walls and spam aoe to make it impossible for people defending on the walls to respond. this happens every time an objective is attacked lol, no real revelation here. 

[Leo.3428]

Thank you Everyone! I will not quote each reply because it would go wall of text.

@Dawdler.8521

I stand corrected on projectile mechanics and will look into the differences between the different types. Also, I wasn't thinking of siege engines, which might be a third type; I don't have much experience with these yet.

@kamikharzeeh.8016

What I had in mind was the encircling forces are of equal or lesser size but better organized, maybe setting up an ambush - although I know it's not easy to hide in the bushes in WvW.

@subversiontwo.7501

By "for the sake of discussion" I meant I wanted to see the (possibly divergent) views on what provides advantages in the game. At this stage of my journey, mainly how positioning and deployment operate within the game mechanics and how that compares to a newbie's assumptions.

Right, the glider (and the warclaw that I mentioned, but I don't have it yet) make going downhill faster. Yes, a very steep slope is a disadvantage to both sides in real life (well, you can still throw stones from above); I was picturing "reasonable" slopes, that are more exhausting to rush up, especially in a heavy armor.

I'm going to ponder all you said about AoE/CC in the context of height and sieging, there's a lot of mechanics that are not intuitive to me yet. Shields I agree are quite different than the real thing, all the weapons in the game are, but that's understandable, no arguing here.

As for your aside, I'm not complaining about the game or fabricating excuses, I'm just trying to understand everything better. Full disclosure: I don't play enough to progress quickly and I'm well aware of this. You may say "Go play instead of discussing on the forum" and you may be right 😉

@Sylvyn.4750 and @Stand The Wall.6987

I once ended up alone defending a tower against a group of gate rammers and I spent half the time dodging on the rampart just to avoid being pulled down or fried or whatever the red circles stood for. I know, I shouldn't have stayed there, but it was one of my first incursions into the game mode and I was just trying things.

[subversiontwo.7501]

1 hour ago, Leo.3428 said:

As for your aside, I'm not complaining about the game or fabricating excuses, I'm just trying to understand everything better. Full disclosure: I don't play enough to progress quickly and I'm well aware of this. You may say "Go play instead of discussing on the forum" and you may be right 😉

All is well, it sincerely wasn't a dig at you - like I said - whatever logic or misconceptions we can talk about regarding how the game simulates the world also tends to color what people assume possible in the game, when they discuss in other threads/topics 😉 .

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

ye well, ambushes as such are barely possible, as u see the nameplates of enemy players. even pincher movements are barely happening, outside of the situations where ever color has 2-3 guilds within one area and they play it "free for all" ... which is mostly still too chaotic for a proper execution of that.

 

like, two group would have to stealth for that be working. and dual-tag cooperation has in the past shown to not be working very well; still, it afaik at least has been tried more than one time.