Originally posted by Sfaliara

@Sasami

There is no auto target for melee, you just swing your sword and if the enemy is within range then you hit him. Also both melee and ranged can do all their spells at will even with no target (like a ranger shoot an arrow in the air).

Having ability to hit air isn't really positive thing, there is lot of annoyance related to this like lag, lack of player collision and strafe combat syndrome(2 players trying to out circle each other). Besides in demo there was situation where Thief used ability and it said something like "Out of range"(unless I'm mixing again, PAX demo), he did have target on that time so atleast you won't be wasting good attacks. But if thats true why treat melee differently?

Didn't EQ or some other game had ranger class with FPS mode. I would imagine if you can shoot freely it would have different viewmode, which I haven't seen demoed. Anyways the combat isn't FPS style even if it's possible to shoot untarget, which ofc begs question why on earth would you want to do that? It's useless.

If you are one of those few poor things that haven't played WoW, well here is short explanation to my topic.

In WoW Paladin and Druid are true hybrid classes, they can tank, they can heal and they can DPS even in raid. Other classes can do 2 things. And this brings me back to TOR.

Bioware has announced that Bounty Hunter will be able to tank, DPS and heal in flashpoints. For me this should automaticly mean that all classes can fill all roles, but it seems that it won't be like that. Now for me this is huge injustice and makes certain classes more valuable than others. I would hope that all classes can fill all roles, simply for flexibility of grouping. Anyone else see this as possible problem/annoyance?

{mod edit - edited title of thread}

Originally posted by BlahTeeb

Originally posted by Mad-E-Fact

Wait, are you saying GW2 combat is completely reflex based? I haven't looked into the mechanics much, but that would kinda suck. Not looking forward to playing an action game.

Depends on what you mean by reflex. It's not going to require reflexes like an FPS. It's just more interactive.

It's not really. It's just bit different since there is no taunts, aggro isn't typical bar system and there is more "oh shit" skill. Anet never has claimed its interactive.

There is still auto attack. But projectiles must hit a target. So if the target steps out of the way while the projectile is incoming, it will miss. Same with melee.

This is pretty much same as all current games. No you can't dodge arrows, you need to use "dodge" skill. It's not same as FPS has which is true dodging. All ranged is calculated same way as games are doing now. Again people seem to miss dodging with real dodging.

AoEs and such are ground targeted. To block, you must raise your shield in the form of a skill or something similar. Flames impacting a shield will deflect and fluster around the shield. This is due to the Havok engine. You cannot target your ally when using support skills. You have to find them, and cast accordingly.

Haven't seen any videos that would go against this or confirm this.

I wouldn't call it an action game. You won't be clicking to attack. You'll just have to aim the majority of the skills. You will however, have to keep a keen eye ON the battlefield and OFF your skill bar.

No you don't. Don't make it sound like FPS because it's not. You still have auto target for ranged and melee just like any other game. You still need to look skill bars and "mana" bars so you can use best possible skills for situation.

Also, it won't be a dodge-fest. In the current state, dodging drains up a lot of your energy, maybe more than any other skill right now. Dodging leads to exhuastion pretty quickly. I think we have it charted at 10-15 dodges will comsume your energy bar. That along with actually usage of skills... maybe just a handful of dodges before you run dry. Of course there are still skills to help maintain energy.

Again look videos. Only rogue can do 10 dodges per fight, others are limited to as little as 4. Dodging is more like "oh shit it's attacking me" style skill, most games are full of those nowdays. The point is quickly move away and hope some other player gets aggro.

So GW2 won't be like God of War. But it won't be like WoW. More like... God of WoW.

Closest thing that GW2 combat reminds is AoC. They ditched "aiming" thing to make combat more moving and finger friendly, but other than that it's not FPS MMO like Mortal Online or some others.

 GW2 has lot of good decisions that might have huge impact on next generation games, combat dying, all can res, working together rather than against, more evolved PQ system, etc. Biggest grief I have is fanbois making up stuff or waving some Powerpoint to show how great it's gonna be. Mortal Online had great powerpoint presentation, yet it turned up as pile of vomit.

And on OP. Yes there is some weirdness in foliage drawing, but otherwise it looks pretty damn good. Art work quality reminded FFXIV in many actual gameplay videos I seen. VO system looks pretty horrible but I guess it's part of personal quests only. And teleports do suck and mounts are cool thing but again it makes gameplay easier and less boring, double edged sword situation.

Originally posted by romanator0

Originally posted by Wizardry

What makes gaming fun for me is i like to see the developers ideas for themselves,not what i want.If it was always what i want,then there would be no change from game to game.

What i do want from developers is to see that they take every idea and put a lot of depth and thought into it.So i just want to see what GW2 has to offer,then i'll decide if they made something intuitive or just cheap design to make a quick sale.I want to see a design aspect of the game that tells me ,it was a design the author truly is pleased of and not something that cuts corners to save production costs.

Yes i can spot cheap from effort a mile away,i have seen thousands of design ideas from thousands of games and for the most part,i know how they do it.All i want is EFFORT !.

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1013691/Designing-Guild-Wars-2-Dynamic

Looks like they put quite a bit of effort into their Dynamic Event system.

 Actually this is one thing I would like to see in action. Seeing punch a slideshows don't impress much, in fact if that was case Mortal Online would be pretty great game but it's not, it's pile of shit. So show us Dynamic Event from start to end and how it behaves when you lose or win. We saw part of it in PAX but it looked just standard PQ.

Originally posted by Slapshot1188

ROFL.  Listen, I am going to be one of those that buy SW:TOR.  No doubt about it... but using beta applicants to project subs is kind of silly.  It's like the company StarVault that used to brag they had 178,000 forum members and that was a good indicator of future growth for the game.   They have concurrent users in the mid to low 3 digit range.. so yeah, using the Forum members didn't exactly work in that case.  SW:TOR is going to be huge.. there is no doubt.  It comes with an enormous pre-built fanbase, but I wouldn't give any more credance to Beta Applicants than I would to Forum Accts...

 I'm sorry how is it silly? This is practicly industry standard nowdays. I mean I work in software company and we do what we call customer intrest studies where we feed them examples of products we might do. Based on that intrest we calculate would we do it. Besides your logic is totally wrong. Your comparing forum users to beta testers.

Also you guys seriously don't think that they didn't know how many players they are expecting to play BEFORE THEY EVEN STARTED? You think world works so that you get 150million dollar budget with just few papers? This isn't few amateurs from sweden, this is one of the biggest development studios in the world working with one of the biggest distributers in the world.

Originally posted by Robsolf

In terms of the different ways crafting can be done, I'm good with SWToR's direction.

But I hope that crafting makes for a great deal of item customization, as it did with SWG.  You could make weapon barrels, batteries, etc, and they could have many different properties and buff your weapon in many different ways.  Different color clothes, armor, etc.

If they went with an SWG-ish system, I'd be happy with that, too.  But I'm just glad that it sounds like there's not going to be a big material grind where I'm crafting X number of useless, underpowered widgets to get crafting XP.  That just seems like a waste.

 There was wonderfull posting in GW2 forum about crafting.

The learning of crafting should be minigames, a puzzle or something like that. And reward from that puzzle would be some refined materials and skill points. Now learning should be easy and you should get maxed pretty fast, because otherwise it gets boring. After that all mass crafting, the dreary part, is done by NPCes. That way you would be like chef of kitchen, you don't do most stuff anymore you are just quality control. To make sure those puzzles won't be wasted you would lose some skill points after while and had to redo some puzzles. It makes just sense. People didn't like spending hours watching there character crafting but they did like fact that it would take sometime to make stuff.

Time solves one major problem why economy doesn't work in MMOs today. If crafting takes few minutes the market will be spammed. Other and maybe even bigger problem is lack of corrosion. Not just corrosion of weapons and armors but everything else also even crafting materials.

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I don't get where you got this Hellen thing since he said it just shows how intrested people are. I mean if I published short video of my incomplete movie on youtube and got 15million hits on I think many studios would be intresting to make it. So don't twist words.

Originally posted by someforumguy

My take on GW2 combat is that its even more about tactical positioning then in GW1. Which I find a refreshing change. I always found the taunting abilities in other games kind of meh.

 That what I was thinking however in this video it seems that mobs can walkthrough players so you can't really block them. Maybe it's just demo effect or players didn't play that well. Otherwise it looked lot like aggro pinball, again probaply due player inexperience. That Gears of War ressing is still best thing in GW2, definetly step in right direction instead of stupid spells.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx0QnKgQ1CI&feature=related

I like DA2 very much, it's fast and fun to play. Where DA1 was following legacy of NWN, the DA2 is much more KOTOR style. After playing games over 25 years the habits have changed alot. I don't have kids, yet I have very little time to actually play games. Yes the DA2 had less choices, movement is limited, it's not that long and there isn't much tactic. But it doesn't matter because I have no time to lvl crafting, explore huge map or spend hours finding story. DA2 makes me happy and laugh sometimes, and it's enough. It has good combat, good voice acting with humor, great characters and solid gameplay. I have pile of games waiting and new come every month, gone are days when I could put couple hundred hours to one game per month.

BTW many seems to complain that you can't change your companions armors and sometimes weapons, but it just makes them feel more individuals than dolls. Lot of people seems to draw conclusion what happens DA2 affects SWTOR, ofc it doesn't. They aren't stupid, example having few armor pieces in single player game makes sense since the goal is to complete story which is the game, in MMO having many armor slots makes sense since getting better gear is often goal. Even if you make story based MMO story isn't the game, just part of it

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Loke666

I can't say I read anyone here who wish that GW2s crafting was a minigame. I guess people here are more experienced than many people Lewis talked to and know that minigames gets freaking boring after a while.

That's why the Puzzle Pirates approach to minigames was invented.  You play a minigame a bunch of times to get good at it, and it keeps track of how good you are.  Then after that, it will let you continue to craft goods based on your rating of how good you are at the minigame, if you've played it in the last 10 days.  If you play it once per week, you can keep crafting goods at that skill level forever.

If you quit for six months, then as soon as you play it once again, it lets you continue crafting goods for the next 10 days at that skill level.  Of course, if you quit for six months, you might not be so good anymore when you come back.

 That actually sounds pretty damn good system. Damn I really wish this becomes cornerstone of future crafting. It's not too easy, yet not too hard. I really like how it mimicks realistic skill system where you actually need to do stuff to be good. I'm sure there is features that could be adjusted like losing skill lvl or losing materials in process but damn that sounds good. Post of day, week, maybe even month.

Originally posted by Phry

Originally posted by Solestran

Looks like it will be a nice change of pace from the RPG main game.  I'm not interested in having a completely seperate space simulator main game like SWG had.  Even in SWG, my primary focus was on the land content and character development, over ship modification and twitch combat.  So this works out well for me.  Maybe in the future, if they can manage to integrate space that includes the story and quest branching that is less about twitch and more about RPG, then I'll be interested.

 

Of course, the ones complaining are the people who really prefer consoles, but can't seem to let go of the PC.

quite the reverse, the space factor of the game would be more appealing to a console kiddy than to the PC crowd, considering that all the comparisons are to PC games and not console ones after all,  its the PC gamers who enjoy the tie fighter vs xwing thing that are the most disappointed by the pseudo space minigame within SW:Tor..  a factor tbh, that i half expect will come back to bite Bioware in the arse at some point.. 

{mod edit}

Seriously it's minigame, you know the thing you have on phones nowday. Whole point is to having something else to do while waiting, but I guess people like boredom nowdays. I guess it's hard for sandbox people to understand that there is games where you don't HAVE TO repeat everything thousand times, instead do stuff for FUN.

{mod edit}

I can already see the conversation:

AL: Wait guys I just land my ship so we can begin this Flashpoint

Jeff: Don't, pls

AL: Don't worry I'm imba

Jeff: AL... you coming

AL: umm guys...

Jeff: Yes...?

AL: I crashed it, can you wait bit I get back

*Jeff has kicked AL from party

Originally posted by Mitchard

I like this, I like my women muscular.. I mean I love the change, it gives then a difference from human models... 

 They aren't really muscular in my opinnion rather thin, if you seen bodybuilder women they have much larger shoulders or weightlifting ones they have much sturdier legs. GW nord look like typical elf type where model is stretched making it look even more thinner. Still difference between male and female model is annoyingly huge but fortunatly not as much as some eastern MMO. But thats the problem of industry oversexing female models and making men beefcakes. Still huge improvement over GW1.

Originally posted by Meowhead

I'm confused by the people who are confused by what the Arenanet team says when they say they don't have normal quests, they have dynamic events.

Have you guys never played any MMORPGs in the past 10 years?  You really honestly don't know what somebody means when they're talking about an MMORPG quest?  What are you even doing on this site if you don't know something so completely basic? :(

Dynamic events are obviously different from quests.  Dynamic events will happen whether or not you're actually there.  Things actually DO happen.  When a quest says 'Help protect us from the monsters who are attacking our town!' it's a bunch of monsters standing around outside the town, maybe looking a little embarassed, waiting for somebody to come and kill them.  They're not actually going to attack the town, no matter how long you take.  Whether you kill them or not makes no difference.  Nothing different is going to happen.

That's where the word dynamic comes from.  Something is happening.  :T

I'm still laughing on the inside a bit at the person who said 'binary chain events'.  People will do anything to be as obtuse as possible, I suppose.

 I'm sorry but thats what they are, scripted events that follow chain and direction of that chain is simple binary flag(fail or success). Event chain could be something like this:

1) Mobs spawn outside village and start moving center of village. Timer based situation where players have certain time to engage mobs. Did players manage to kill mobs True/False? True reset event and start it on certain time.

2) False. Start next scripted path, mobs start to burn village. Script activates water buckets that players use to dose flames in certain time. Did players manage to dose flames True/False? True go back 1(or reset event).

This is what IT people call workflow and it's great that finally gaming industry is bring it to games.

Highly dull game actually after playing few times. There is other games available that do much better job using location base.

Originally posted by Robert_S4

As someone else said earlier, the way the current MMO games are, things are just flawed.

 

Loot griefing is mostly my point. Running instances and have people need roll everything there is, or generally win against you on an item both needed.

This doesn't promote community, it merely promotes anger and hatred.

 But it does promote competition. Keep mind that lot of players are competitivie nature, majority of games are that style. I think players that play games like Call of Duty casually online are more intrested on challenge of other players than co-operative nature gameplay.

I'm also glad that loot won't be as meaningful, the content will be what puts the meaning into the game.

If Blizzard took a look at Arenanet, they could learn a thing or two.

Bit overstatement really, Blizzard has sold what almost 100million WoW boxes(WoW+TBC+WotLK+Cata counted together). Let's just see when Areanet gets GW2 out first what we actually get.

Not talking WoW killers or crap like that, that's just stupid stuff. Merely saying that WoW has run a good course for many years now and the content has simply gotten dull. At least for the people that has played since the beginning.

Indeed it has, I played Cata for 3 months and got tired. It's far too early to see what big masses like and what not. Lets face it lot of games that tried to bring new stuff have failed.

 One big grief I have of GW2 is gathering or rather lack of offline gathering. Since there is no competitive nature in gathering and tedious nature of so called herb runs(I hated doing that on WoW) why not have offline gathering. For example I could find mine operated by NPC and get work there, now instead of doing it while online playing I would do it offline. This way when I get back the ore would be waiting for me. Ofc more rare stuff would be found near binary chain events(or dynamic events as they call them).

Originally posted by Kyleran

Large worlds could be good, depends really though what's in them, and how players interact with them.  If there's really not much to see and players use fast travel options to speed from one quest location to another (largely bypassing the world) then it really isn't that impressive.

 This is thing that worries me most. I really don't care if world is big if it serves no purpose. Too often you see designers copying either layout (WAR) or copying elements (FFXIV). One of the most hated part of sandbox MMOs are devs who brag about having huge world, then you play and find out all tools are missing to use that land.

Btw they said only fast movement are taxis and speedsters(speed bikes, what ever they are called). So doesn't that mean mounts will be speedsters? Or did I miss read it?

Originally posted by HerculesSAS

Honestly I don't know how this adds a hell of a lot to the gameplay. It seems like they are grasping at straws to make the game alluring, but I don't know a lot of people who are going to sign up if the combat is stale and broken, but hey, you can eat people.

 It adds something to do while waiting combat to be fixed. Tbh this looks like major thing so I doubt it will work for long time or it will be very basic. Did MO even have talents like cooking, if so they have to implement that, the crafting UI, crafting placeses, eating animations, buff system, drops on mobs, possible gathering nodes and so on. I'm guessing they make it very basic, meat from animals and humans plus few plants that can be harvested.

Originally posted by grimm6th

there are multiple hit boxes on big bosses (shown with a big red target symbol) because it makes some sense that they would be able to be dealt damage in more than one place.

again, dodging works by double tapping a WASD key and you will use up a fair amount of your enemy to jump out of your current area and roll a short distance away.  While doing this, attacks and projectiles will miss you.  There is no spell failure chance based on level like in other games, and there is no parry chance or dodge chance.  There is NO dodge rating.  OIf you are standing still you are going to get mobbed by multiple enemies, if you are moving WHILE CASTING SPELLS AND ATTACKING LIKE YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING, you are less likely to be the first to eat dirt.

If that would be case then in situation where player A is standing still and turning around so that he is facing player B who is running around player A in perfect ring measuring 4 meter diameter and facing player A all time they both would:

1) in situation where there is no dodge rating: Die same time

2) in situation where there is dodge rating that has movement bonus: Player A dies before player B

You have to assume Player A and B are clones sharing same stats and change of luck.

Now if I read just first part of your post it means situation 1 would happen but in the end you seem to suggest that situation 2 would happen. So far what I seen on different videos there is target lock and shooting isn't FPS style but rather standard RPG math.

Active dodging seems nice way to get rid stupid blink spells and back steps, but in those cases I would assume hit is calculated by simple if-statement (if target == active dodging; result = miss;). If it was calculated on position based then moving should cause most of them miss(if target_location_shoot == bullet_hit_place; result = hit;). I don't know maybe they use padding on calculation, that would explain why active dodge is so long movement.

Originally posted by therez0

Theres also critical and glancing hits to consider. Aiming and dodging is a huge part of this game; if you aim well (headshots for instance) you are likely to land a crit-hit. Even if your target dodges your well aimed attack, you may still end up glancing him. Similarly If you aim/position poorly, your hits may only glance, or just miss completely.

 Can you link to news where they say that there will be multiple hit boxes. Also in Thief video it looked like there was target lock which makes even less sense using multile hit boxes. Apart from "active dodging" in Thief video there hasn't been really solid info how dodge works. Does moving all time increase dodge rating? Position seems to related certain talents that require others to stand next, behind, front or certain spot from caster. It feels lot like AoC combat which isn't bad thing.