Enemies in Guild Wars 2 feel like ghosts.

[Dib.4612]

When playing New World and Dark Souls 3 recently, something very clearly felt different compared to Guild Wars 2. When playing Guild Wars 2 I often feel like my enemies are but ghosts that I spin through in order to massacre them. I think the cause of this firstly lies in the fact that you can literally walk through your enemies in Guild Wars 2, as if they were not there.

Secondly, when attacked in Dark Souls, a fairly heavy attack can stagger you (look up 'poise'). With this type of combat you will always watch your opponent, because when you get hit with a heavy, it is likely you will die. In Guild Wars 2 we do have CC, but too many mobs simply do not have any CC skill, nor a follow-up that hits you hard. 

This results in a type of PvE where you simply stack up mobs and nuke them as if you're dumping a bucket of water to flush away some dirt. 

My suggestions to remedy this. 
1. Don't let us get inside the enemies hitbox. Gameplay that revolves around this, like Whirling Wrath, should be reworked. 
2. We have many many MANY skills that we can spam after eachother (and do in PvE). I would suggest making skills more impactful with bigger tells and bigger cooldowns, or make more use of the ammo system in which you can use a skill a few times in a row and then it goes on cooldown for a *long* time. On top, remove the option of auto-attacking, as it feels detaching from your character yet gives an advantage. On top it highlights the type of 'passive' gameplay in which you can continuously hit someone without consequence. 
3. Give every mob in this game a way to stagger, stun, knock, float and so forth. I would even go as far as saying, reintroduce the concept of GW1 where some NPCs have the same skills as PCs. 

Hope you all agree and thanks for reading.



 

[mungozen.2379]

9 minutes ago, Dib.4612 said:

My suggestions to remedy this. 
1. Don't let us get inside the enemies hitbox. Gameplay that revolves around this, like Whirling Wrath, should be reworked. 

Options->General Options->Combat/Movement->Melee Attack Assist checkbox

The tooltip reads 'prevents you from running through a target so that you stay in melee attack range'

This should alleviate that first issue, or at least mitigate for the target you are attacking.

I don't care for the other 2 suggestions, sure open world combat can be fairly 'basic' but perhaps you would enjoy WvW or PvP where the players are far more interesting than the enemy mobs in PvE.

[Ashen.2907]

31 minutes ago, Dib.4612 said:

When playing New World and Dark Souls 3 recently, something very clearly felt different compared to Guild Wars 2. When playing Guild Wars 2 I often feel like my enemies are but ghosts that I spin through in order to massacre them. I think the cause of this firstly lies in the fact that you can literally walk through your enemies in Guild Wars 2, as if they were not there.

Secondly, when attacked in Dark Souls, a fairly heavy attack can stagger you (look up 'poise'). With this type of combat you will always watch your opponent, because when you get hit with a heavy, it is likely you will die. In Guild Wars 2 we do have CC, but too many mobs simply do not have any CC skill, nor a follow-up that hits you hard. 

This results in a type of PvE where you simply stack up mobs and nuke them as if you're dumping a bucket of water to flush away some dirt. 

My suggestions to remedy this. 
1. Don't let us get inside the enemies hitbox. Gameplay that revolves around this, like Whirling Wrath, should be reworked. 
2. We have many many MANY skills that we can spam after eachother (and do in PvE). I would suggest making skills more impactful with bigger tells and bigger cooldowns, or make more use of the ammo system in which you can use a skill a few times in a row and then it goes on cooldown for a *long* time. On top, remove the option of auto-attacking, as it feels detaching from your character yet gives an advantage. On top it highlights the type of 'passive' gameplay in which you can continuously hit someone without consequence. 
3. Give every mob in this game a way to stagger, stun, knock, float and so forth. I would even go as far as saying, reintroduce the concept of GW1 where some NPCs have the same skills as PCs. 

Hope you all agree and thanks for reading.



 

I would prefer collision mechanics as well but the ability to body block foes in this game could break a lot of content so they would need to be very careful about any implementation of this sort of mechanic.

 

Auto-attacking does have a consequence, a reduction in performance. Of course this is not an absolute and changes quite a bit from build to build, but you need to do more than auto-attack to get the most out of your character.

 

Until this game does a better job of reducing visual noise, and provides CC immunity/resistance after being CC'd I cannot support the idea of adding CC to more mobs. I think that a better approach to making combat encounters more interesting would be to design them so that target prioritization is a more important aspect of success. Figuring out which foes need to be taken down, stunned, etc first...and then pulling the timing off while under attack from other mobs is more interesting, to me, than having every single mob working to chain CC you so that you do not get to play. Only so many dodges and stun breaks can be fit into your build.

[Strider Pj.2193]

I don’t have an opinion for me.  
 

But I can tell you that a large segment that plays this game would rebel by quitting  if what they learned to do from the start of the game was inherently changed.  
 

 

[Rogue.8235]

1 hour ago, Dib.4612 said:

3. Give every mob in this game a way to stagger, stun, knock, float and so forth. I would even go as far as saying, reintroduce the concept of GW1 where some NPCs have the same skills as PCs. 

PoF and HoT have this.  Not the same skills as players part, but CC to use on players.  The Core Maps are singularly low impact.  You're looking for what the expansion content already provides.

As for revamping core maps, I don't really care either way.  I'm good with status quo or revamped.

[AliamRationem.5172]

Your vision for the game sounds annoying.  Hard no on body blocking and giving every mob CC.  Also negative on slowing combat down so we're waiting for openings.  I think the combat in this game is one of its better features compared to most other MMOs and I prefer not to reinvent the wheel at this point.

 

[Poormany.4507]

That seems like a ton of time/resources that would be needed for a minimal issue. Considering there's actual bugs from Core that have still not been fixed due to spaghetti code/loss of old devs, redoing the basics of combat from scratch like this and almost certainly introducing tons of body-block bugs, is pretty much an impossibility at this point. Maybe in a GW3 (if that happens), it would be a nice idea, but I just can't see this kind of large, overhauling change happening in GW2.

[Dib.4612]

17 hours ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

Options->General Options->Combat/Movement->Melee Attack Assist checkbox

The tooltip reads 'prevents you from running through a target so that you stay in melee attack range'

This should alleviate that first issue, or at least mitigate for the target you are attacking.

I don't care for the other 2 suggestions, sure open world combat can be fairly 'basic' but perhaps you would enjoy WvW or PvP where the players are far more interesting than the enemy mobs in PvE.

Thanks for reminding me of that function, knew it existed but couldn't find it. The issue is that it doesn't actually work well, it seems to only stop you from walking through someone when you walk into them head on while having them selected. Walking into the enemy at any sort of angle even a slight one, will allow you to pass straight through. Furthermore, I don't know if there are more skills like Whirling Wrath, but for that one you have to get inside the hitbox to get the most damage out of hit, so that functionality would hinder you. It's a stupid mechanic if you ask me.

It's okay that you guys don't agree with me by the way. I'm just highlighting something I found to make the game less immersive. Or rather, in Dark Souls I felt like I was actually facing an obstacle when even running into small mobs, something I simply didn't find in Guild Wars 2. Instead, GW2 just lobs a huge bunch of meat to grind at you. No interaction whatsoever. 

About PvP and WvW, I find GW2 to have way too much visual noise to read opponents, the skill spam adds to this. Furthermore the skill gap between PvE and PvP is simply huge, it's like two different worlds. And WvW is a clusterkitten to put it mildly.

[Svarty.8019]

Collision detection allowed some excellent Shield Wall tactics in Warhammer Online.

[Yellow Rainbow.6142]

how many enemies do you fight in dark soul 3 at once?

5+ enemies  most of the time staggering you, yeah good luck with that one. You will not even make it beyond Queensdale.

on the other hand, I'd love to have GW1 vanquish type instance. That would keep guys like you happy.

Edited November 14, 2021 by Yellow Rainbow.6142

[Fueki.4753]

Imagine groups of enemies would chain CC abilities on you and mauling you to death without a chance to fight back.

The needlessly long Chilled uptime in Bitterfrost Frontier already isn't well-received. How would being chain CC'd in PvE be any more welcome?

And I don't think comparing GW2 to any Dark Souls game works, as they are fundamentally different.

Edited November 14, 2021 by Fueki.4753

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Imagine groups of enemies would chain CC abilities on you and mauling you to death without a chance to fight back.

Why are you describing WvW?

[aspirine.6852]

Got a feeling OP is just passing through the core game right now. 

[Fueki.4753]

32 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Why are you describing WvW?

Imagine a group of Pocket Raptors and add a CC ability to their tool kit. Now you have what the OP seems to want.

Edited November 14, 2021 by Fueki.4753

[kharmin.7683]

Hey, maybe play Dark Souls if it has all of this cool stuff that you enjoy. 

[Randulf.7614]

The flaws you describe are deliberate design decisions and one that mmos in general use for a reason. Such mechanics need reserving for champion or legendary or instanced mobs. Never for general open world common trash mobs which aren’t designed to bring complex action to the game. GW2 utilises a partial hack n slash style to increase accessibility to the broader range of skills than the much more niche, targeted audience of Dark Souls.

 

HoT and PoF will see some of the changes you might like, but not to the same extent and there’s a lot of players who pushback against too heavier combat. It’s hard enough getting players to understand and embrace break bars and cc as it is.

 

The current system could use some minor tweaks for sure, but not in the direction of what Dark Souls brings - admittedly successfully in its own right -to a very different table

[Wolfb.7025]

There is one single issue about OP topic.

 

 

GW2 is not Dark Souls

Edited November 14, 2021 by Wolfb.7025

[Khisanth.2948]

2 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

And I don't think comparing GW2 to any Dark Souls game works, as they are fundamentally different.

OP's biggest failure is ignoring context.

For example the CC stuff. Could that work for 1 enemy? Sure. 5 enemies? Bit of a stretch but still a maybe. How about 20 enemies?

Enemies in GW2 and most MMORPGs serve completely different purposes than those in DS(probably, I haven't played it but from what I have seen it is not a "kill a few thousand mobs for gold/exp/rare shiny sword" type game). The vast majority of enemies in a MMORPG exist to be exp/gold/materials fodder.

 

1 hour ago, aspirine.6852 said:

Got a feeling OP is just passing through the core game right now. 

and unfortunately they just missed the mad king labyrinth, push, pulls, dazes and more! As long as you stick to the west side of the map.

[Rogue.8235]

5 hours ago, Dib.4612 said:

About PvP and WvW, I find GW2 to have way too much visual noise to read opponents, the skill spam adds to this. Furthermore the skill gap between PvE and PvP is simply huge, it's like two different worlds. And WvW is a clusterkitten to put it mildly.

(emphasis added)

I've already commented on the other stuff, but this caught my attention.

One thing that I do remember about the original design of GW2 is that there were no cast bars or other HUD elements to watch for enemy actions.  The designers wanted you to read the enemy's animations to know how to react.

I agree that this element is missing.  

I also pick up that OP wants the combat system more like a fighting game than... dynasty warriors (best analogy I can think of).

I can understand this.  And I urge OP to solo open world champions and solo every hero point inthe game.  Take note of the fun fights.  There are many many fights in open world that are more tuned to what you are seeking.

 

I'm going to repeat what others are surmising in that OP doesn't seem like they've reached the expansions yet and are still roaming around the core maps.  Core maps are singularly easy, id est, they are the only areas of the game that are at that level of ease.  All other content is more difficult.  This includes all expansion maps.

Solo everything in all the expansion maps.  Again, take note of the enjoyable fights.  They are out there for you.

 

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

Quote

Give every mob in this game a way to stagger, stun, knock, float and so forth.

This request reminds me of the good ole days from launch where the trash mobs in Orr each had a CC. This resulted in your character being repeatedly ragdolled and stunned by mobs, which further resulted in a large amount of forum angst from the people who encountered this mechanic. Eventually ANet updated the mobs in that area.
 

fun days, fun days. 

[Sarm.5923]

This could just be inexperience (and/or I'm just a terrible player) but unless an enemy was noticeably larger than my charr, I found it difficult to read enemy attack animations for the purpose of dodging attacks while leveling in core content. Between my character taking up some visual space of the enemy, and my spell effects caking the rest of it, I ended up learning a bad habit of "you're going to get hit anyway, so don't bother dodging animation-based stuff and use Sandstorm blinds to tank instead."

HoT quickly whipped that out of me, but I still have an underdodging problem because I'm too worried about conserving stamina, so meh.

I think what makes this a little difficult to compare to Dark Souls is that those games don't involve DPS rotations. You have a light and heavy action for your left and right hands, a two-handed option, and if you're switching to other toolkits, it's because you have a specific purpose and not because you're trying to keep things on cooldown. This lets you keep more of your attention on how the enemy moves.

Moving out of red circles on the ground might not be as immersive, but I feel that it communicates information to the player in a quicker and more consistent fashion. Even if you don't know exactly -what- happened, you have a better idea of -when- it happened, so you have a clearer visual to work off of when watching for the same mechanic.

[Khisanth.2948]

33 minutes ago, Sarm.5923 said:

I think what makes this a little difficult to compare to Dark Souls is that those games don't involve DPS rotations. You have a light and heavy action for your left and right hands, a two-handed option, and if you're switching to other toolkits, it's because you have a specific purpose and not because you're trying to keep things on cooldown. This lets you keep more of your attention on how the enemy moves.

A DPS rotation isn't necessary most of the time. There aren't actually that many things which has a DPS check requiring specific DPS rotations. Especially not in open world since most stuff die before you can even finish a full rotation anyway.

 

 

[Sarm.5923]

10 minutes ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

A DPS rotation isn't necessary most of the time.

Yeah, I guess you're right. It's probably just a lot of wasted effort on my part. I was trying to do them anyway because I figured if I wasn't at least attempting to make use of all of my attacks while leveling (even if it gets overwhelming at times), then I'd just be that much worse off if I ever try group content. I'd rather fumble and mess up while solo than if people are expecting me to pull weight. :x

[Khisanth.2948]

2 minutes ago, Sarm.5923 said:

Yeah, I guess you're right. It's probably just a lot of wasted effort on my part. I was trying to do them anyway because I figured if I wasn't at least attempting to make use of all of my attacks while leveling (even if it gets overwhelming at times), then I'd just be that much worse off if I ever try group content. I'd rather fumble and mess up while solo than if people are expecting me to pull weight. :x

Unless you are playing something that can give yourself alacrity and quickness you are probably practicing the wrong rotation because those will change how skills cooldowns line up