Okay, I know this is going to sound absolutely wild, so hear me out ...

[itspomf.9523]

... but what if the game forbade players and NPCs from moving through one another?

 

It was a thing in GW1 and honestly meant putting more thought into combat.

 

Just imagine an end to stacking as the be-all, end-all reasoning for narrow areas of effect, awful balance decisions, and benchmark exploits reliant on maximizing the number of hits delivered from inside a target's hit-box.  Would also be nice to see encounter and arena design with more workable space than constantly worrying if my forced movement skill is going to fling me into the soup or off a cliff (again).

 

And yeah, to get it to work -- I mean, really work -- ANet would need to go back and redesign a ton of content and instanced maps where narrow corridors and the like would make this really awful to deal with, but then again, that just goes to show you that no one was considerate of space and movement in the first place.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

There's a reason noone has asked for this.

[Farohna.6247]

That sounds about as un-fun as it gets.  Imagine the cluster everytime anyone tries to enter any thing.  NPCs on escorts blocking stuff.  Yeh there's definitely a reason no one asks for this.

[Linken.6345]

Imagine 5 people blocking enterance to you towers in wvw.

[Freya.9075]

I can see the chaos when doing world bosses or big metas with this. Ppl yelling and fighting to be able to melee the poor fella. And the poor banker in lions arch. More violence less violets 

 

[Donari.5237]

ESO has it as an optional toggle.  I toggled it off so expletive fast once I realized that npcs were stopping me from getting out of fire.  It's useful if you're purely melee, guarantees you will stop in range facing the right direction, but is hell on mobility.

In GW2, mechanics often assume you will be able to go through the boss, for instance "half the world is death" means you have to dodge forward through the boss to get out of the ick.  And as others above have noted, the world is designed on the assumption you won't have a chokepoint in a doorway unless a mechanic specifically creates one such as a force field or gate that must be opened to proceed.  There would be a whole lot of corollary issues involved in upending things as you propose.

edit:  To avoid confusion - as posted later in this thread I think I am wrong about this option in ESO, it might only work regarding fellow players, or be in another game entirely.  The years muddle details for me, apologies.

Edited July 18, 2022 by Donari.5237

[Danikat.8537]

They do this is Fractals sometimes, one of the Mistlock Instabilities is 'Social Awkwardness' where players will push each other away, so you can't stack too close together and also have to be careful with things like the platforms in the Uncategorised Fractal because one person jumping onto a platform can push someone else off.

If they wanted to do it in other areas I think it would have to be restricted to people you're in a group with and/or to instanced content, otherwise you would get things like players deliberately standing around bankers, in doorways and other important places to stop other players from getting to them.
 

12 minutes ago, Donari.5237 said:

ESO has it as an optional toggle.  I toggled it off so expletive fast once I realized that npcs were stopping me from getting out of fire.  It's useful if you're purely melee, guarantees you will stop in range facing the right direction, but is hell on mobility.

I didn't know it was possible to turn that off, but I'm logging in right now to do it.

Edit...except I can't find it. 😕

Edited July 17, 2022 by Danikat.8537

[Zephire.8049]

You want collision detection and that's a big nope. It's easily exploitable and can be abused by players to harass others, would render popular boss fights pointless because you couldn't get close enough to the boss to smack it if you were melee and you couldn't doge mechanics, and fractals have pseudo collision detection in the form of Social Awkwardness that's pretty universally hated, especially if there's cliffs involved.

It would also eat up a lot of server resources having to track and calculate collision of every NPC and player on a map. Not bad when you're solo but the servers already can't handle WvW blobs without collision detection being a factor.

[Cuks.8241]

1 player blocking the whole JP.

[Trejgon.9367]

This was brought a couple times, specifically as a potential counter to zerg stacking as a strat, and the most popular counterpoint I recall seeing was - too much of a server strain, to track player collisions.

GW1 had much less players per instance (or other entities likely to collide) so it was much less straining there.

[Jin.8501]

I use the combat toggle on here. 

[Omega.6801]

No.

[Donari.5237]

1 hour ago, Danikat.8537 said:

They do this is Fractals sometimes, one of the Mistlock Instabilities is 'Social Awkwardness' where players will push each other away, so you can't stack too close together and also have to be careful with things like the platforms in the Uncategorised Fractal because one person jumping onto a platform can push someone else off.

If they wanted to do it in other areas I think it would have to be restricted to people you're in a group with and/or to instanced content, otherwise you would get things like players deliberately standing around bankers, in doorways and other important places to stop other players from getting to them.
 

I didn't know it was possible to turn that off, but I'm logging in right now to do it.

Edit...except I can't find it. 😕

Gah, I may have misremembered and it's player collision that I disabled.  Sorry, once I get a game set how I like I leave it that way for years on end and details get murky 😞

[Gibson.4036]

2 hours ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

There's a reason noone has asked for this.

 

2 hours ago, Farohna.6247 said:

That sounds about as un-fun as it gets.  Imagine the cluster everytime anyone tries to enter any thing.  NPCs on escorts blocking stuff.  Yeh there's definitely a reason no one asks for this.

As @Lord Trejgon.2809said above, that’s not true. Collision detection was repeatedly requested by some WvWers and GW1 fans in the early years. In GW1 it was used strategically, and it if the tech could handle it, would bring strategic options to WvW as well.

Fortifications in the real world have been designed for centuries to funnel invaders into small spaces so a small defending force can hold off a superior force. Imagine how that could change the way objectives are defended and flipped in WvW.

 

[DexterousGecko.6328]

 

anyone remember Warhammer Online? The pvp had collision, and it was SO GOOD. Shield Walls? Yep, that was a thing. Smaller groups blocking off chokepoints from enemies? Yep. That was incredible.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

38 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

 

As @Lord Trejgon.2809said above, that’s not true. Collision detection was repeatedly requested by some WvWers and GW1 fans in the early years. In GW1 it was used strategically, and it if the tech could handle it, would bring strategic options to WvW as well.

Fortifications in the real world have been designed for centuries to funnel invaders into small spaces so a small defending force can hold off a superior force. Imagine how that could change the way objectives are defended and flipped in WvW.

 

In GW1 it worked because NPCs were mostly standing on the side of outposts/towns, rarely walking. 
But in GW1 you didn't have a ball of 50 people colliding with another ball of 50 people. Using examples of real life structures on why it should be added is also pointless since bringing down a wall solves all the problems.

I personally don't want to be bodyblocked by a ton of mobs like you could in Elusive Golemancer(it was so much "fun" having your henchies and heroes - or worse, yourself - surrounded by golems). You know how much fun it is doing a quest where you have a bunch of NPCs, each of them doing their best blocking you from properly walking?
My favorite is talking to a Merchant or Skill Trainer, running off to the exit of the Outpost then getting teleported back, because the game decided that you ARE stuck on an NPC.

Mount Races would devolve into Bumper Cars. Festival Mount Races would be literally whoever reaching a certain point first gets to win because the rest gets stuck on eachother(The first part of the Lunar New Year race for example)

[Lottie.5370]

Sounds awful tbh. It works in GW1 because you have way less people in the maps (and I'm pretty sure there is no collision in towns?).

[Kaliwenda.3428]

And we have mechanics here where you specifically all have to run to those shrinking circles to keep from being blown up.  That would end up being like musical chairs.

 

[AliamRationem.5172]

6 hours ago, itspomf.9523 said:

... but what if the game forbade players and NPCs from moving through one another?

 

It was a thing in GW1 and honestly meant putting more thought into combat.

 

Just imagine an end to stacking as the be-all, end-all reasoning for narrow areas of effect, awful balance decisions, and benchmark exploits reliant on maximizing the number of hits delivered from inside a target's hit-box.  Would also be nice to see encounter and arena design with more workable space than constantly worrying if my forced movement skill is going to fling me into the soup or off a cliff (again).

 

And yeah, to get it to work -- I mean, really work -- ANet would need to go back and redesign a ton of content and instanced maps where narrow corridors and the like would make this really awful to deal with, but then again, that just goes to show you that no one was considerate of space and movement in the first place.

Sounds absolutely awful.  Sign me up for none of that, thanks!

[Gibson.4036]

3 hours ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

In GW1 it worked because NPCs were mostly standing on the side of outposts/towns, rarely walking. 
But in GW1 you didn't have a ball of 50 people colliding with another ball of 50 people. Using examples of real life structures on why it should be added is also pointless since bringing down a wall solves all the problems.

I personally don't want to be bodyblocked by a ton of mobs like you could in Elusive Golemancer(it was so much "fun" having your henchies and heroes - or worse, yourself - surrounded by golems). You know how much fun it is doing a quest where you have a bunch of NPCs, each of them doing their best blocking you from properly walking?
My favorite is talking to a Merchant or Skill Trainer, running off to the exit of the Outpost then getting teleported back, because the game decided that you ARE stuck on an NPC.

Mount Races would devolve into Bumper Cars. Festival Mount Races would be literally whoever reaching a certain point first gets to win because the rest gets stuck on eachother(The first part of the Lunar New Year race for example)

Cool. There’s definitely a lot of reasons not to do collision detection, especially in things like races on routes that were never designed for such.

My post was not to support adding it, but to question the dismissing of it with the idea that no one ever asks for it.

The negatives might outweigh the positives, but there are potential positives. Boonblob zergfest WvW would definitely look different.

[Ryuk.6840]

4 hours ago, DexterousGecko.6328 said:

 

anyone remember Warhammer Online? The pvp had collision, and it was SO GOOD. Shield Walls? Yep, that was a thing. Smaller groups blocking off chokepoints from enemies? Yep. That was incredible.

Yeah !!

Every 15 min an open world stracture was enabled to be sieged

Essentially the to fight , were fought in the Lion Arc - Action house with 5/6 tanks trying to prevent  horde of players from coming in , while the ranged did their aoes , in both sides .

 

I believe  there is a current button for collision , but most people have turned it off .

I hope someday in WvW , when the "Swords" have been enabled i a keep , a red area will enable this fuction for 3 min only (to prevent stalemate) and another area will be enabled somewhere indoor for the same duration .

 

Edit2: Or an open world event , to prevents the horde of enemies in a chokepoint , like the  Battle of Helmsdeep/ Tower Defence games (were mobs ignore tanks , but will attack them if they feel the presence of an invisible Fractal-Taunt aura emiting from the players)

 

edit3: Or when the last bastion of chokepoints is going to be  used ,  the players chooses to use that last one and fight or get "charge" (aura that fears nearby enemies , if those player are moving towards the 2nd chokepoint (when Aragorn persuade king Theoden to charge with their mounts )

(mini invisble checkpoints , between the 2 bases , offering aura-fear for 0.5 sec)

Edited July 18, 2022 by Ryuk.6840

[mindcircus.1506]

8 hours ago, itspomf.9523 said:

... but what if the game forbade players and NPCs from moving through one another?

 

It was a thing in GW1 and honestly meant putting more thought into combat.

 

Just imagine an end to stacking as the be-all, end-all reasoning for narrow areas of effect, awful balance decisions, and benchmark exploits reliant on maximizing the number of hits delivered from inside a target's hit-box.  Would also be nice to see encounter and arena design with more workable space than constantly worrying if my forced movement skill is going to fling me into the soup or off a cliff (again).

 

And yeah, to get it to work -- I mean, really work -- ANet would need to go back and redesign a ton of content and instanced maps where narrow corridors and the like would make this really awful to deal with, but then again, that just goes to show you that no one was considerate of space and movement in the first place.

The real reason is that body blocking requires far more server resources and data transmission to calculate.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

9 hours ago, itspomf.9523 said:

... but what if the game forbade players and NPCs from moving through one another?

 

It was a thing in GW1 and honestly meant putting more thought into combat.

It worked in GW1 because you were restricted to 8 players in combat situations. GW2 is open world with 50+ players. Any zerg scenario, like world bosses or guild missions, would be straight up impossible with full body blocking.

So instead, GW2 has a higher usage of crowd control than GW1, giving players the necessities to put thought into combat in a different way that is friendly to open world MMO experiences.

[Batel.9206]

It sounds amazingly fun in theory. In practice, sadly, it would be a nightmare, as others have already pointed out.

[ugrakarma.9416]

would be some 3rd world war in JP's;.