Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Guild Wars 2: Pacing and Combat
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In his latest Guild Wars 2 column, MMORPG.com Industry Relations Manager Garrett Fuller takes a look at the pacing and combat coming in the game. As Garrett opines, pacing and combat can make or break an MMO. Many have fallen victim to poor deployment of these two features. See what he's got to say about pacing and combat in Guild Wars 2, then weigh in with your own thoughts below.
Game play is changing in MMOs. Over the last few years action games have stolen a lot of techniques used by MMOs to enhance character advancement, online play, and PvP. Oddly enough, MMOs have not adapted and looked into other areas of gaming where they can make these types of improvements. Guild Wars 2 had a playble demo this summer at several shows. They gave the players a chance to try the game out and test the playability. Like any MMO player I jumped in to check out two important things: the pacing, and the combat. Both of these areas happen to be where MMOs suffer. The Guild Wars 2 playable demo from 2010 will be remembered as one that addressed these two areas very well.
Read more Guild Wars 2: Pacing and Combat.
)
Comments
Interesting point. I agree, MMO combat feels often sluggish and needs a pace up.
Depends on what you are looking for. The "actiony" FPS combat style games can be fun...but I also actualy like games that slow things down and give you alot of complex factors to juggle... so combat ends up being more like a game of "speed chess" then a game of Nintendo...then again I like Turn Based Strategy games... so maybe I'm a bit biased there.
Right now the main thing I dislike about MMO combat is that in most games it ends up being just too simple and cartoonish.
errr... the author is talking of "desperation moves". Does anyone know what he is talking about? I have never read about this although I read most information one can get about GW2
For now we can only wait until the show season starts and get ready for the next playable demos to come for 2011. "
:[ ... 2012 release, boo! lol
PS - All mammals have nipples.
Get over it already.
Desperation moves are the "downed abilities".
They occur when your HP reaches zero. Also, I definitely know what the author means - the combat felt a lot like Gears of War to me.
People think it's fun to pretend your a monster. Me I spend my life pretending I'm not. - Dexter Morgan
When you're near death. You gain different and "stronger" skills so that you can struggle to stay alive.
"At low levels even though you are a new warrior or mage, you still should not have to take three to fiver exchanges to kill a simple back yard pest."
Have you ever hunted boar with a sword? I'm betting it will take you more than a few swings. Of course, a rifle (well-aimed) could do it in one shot. But I'd believe (if I was to put on my willfull-suspension-of-disbelief-hat) that a beginner mage might take a couple of blasts before he/she was able to down a boar who was busy biting at them.
Ok, that said -- I'd love a well-paced MMO!
Now I know what the he meant. I only knew the desperation moves as downed abilities. Sure have I heared of them.
Thanks and bye!
actually, they are not stronger, they are weaker. The only case where this is not true is with necromancers but they can enter there downed state as the classes special ability (its good in a wide veriety of ways, more than just powering up. the drawback to this though is that afterwards, they must refill the lifeforce bar, a special resource, or else if they do go into there downed state for real, they won't have any lifeforce to use, and they will just die right after entering the downed state.) each classes downed skills are the same no matter what weapon you are using or what traits you have active (as far as I know). Each class also has interesting things they can do when they go into their downed state. Rangers can have their pets, if they are still alive, come and res them from their downed state. Warriors can stand up and be invulnerable to all damage for 30 seconds to do whatever they want, like res other fallen allies or party members. necromancers are really dangerous when they go into their downed state, and they don't have movement restrictions (other classes do). elementalists have various skills and can call the earth to snare enemies among other things.
If you kill an enemy, or deal damage to an enemy while somebody else is hitting it, you rally and leave the downed state.
all this happens without dedicated healers keeping you alive, and this is part of what help make the pacing MUCH faster than previous games. Part of the reason this was done is because in GW1, PvP was very defence heavy and the only practical way to kill anything was absurdly coordinated 1/2 second spikes (and if the healer was reallly good, they could stop those spikes). It lead to things like players not being able to kill anyone for 10 minutes (REALLY boring for some people) while everyone is constantly manuvering and doing things like fake spikes and KD locks and spamming AoE and general running around like you have your head cut off.
making it easier to attack than it is to defend (look at Ravious's article on energy on KTR) also helps.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
Nice point, I think historicaly Boar hunting was something like a 15-20 man affair. The things are absolutely viscious... more dangerous then black bears.... takes alot to put them down. Thiers a reason specialized boar spears were developed with a cross-bar on the spearhead to prevent the boar from forcing it's way up the spear to get at the wielder.
24 men epic boar raids ftw! All new mmos should have them. xD
I also like to take my time with monsters, I just don't want to take my time with every single one. That's literally taking my time...as in, it's absorbing my every moment of spare game time and offering no comparable reward for that time. I felt this way while playing FF14, and I didn't like it.
Taking my time, strategizing, planning, etc...that should come from taking down the big bad thing. That should be the challenge. If you struggle like that with every single monster, even the random weak things roaming the country side, when will you ever feel powerful? I can understand that logic if the MMO you're playing is supposed to have you in the shoes of an average joe human trying to survive, sort of like a survival horror MMO (which by the way, sounds sort of cool), but generally you're playing the role of a hero. If Superman, Aragorn, Wolverine, [insert hero name here], etc. struggled when fighting even peons, they wouldn't seem like very interesting, powerful heroes, nor could they possibly be prepared for the things controlling those peons.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, there are other ways to challenge players beyond just giving monsters a huge HP bar. Thinking back to the early-genre platformers, some monsters were fast, or didn't move in a specific pattern, were unpredictable, etc...they all died in one hit, but still made themselves a threat to the player. It's not just about a huge hp bar, and having to spam every single skill you have 3 times before the thing gets weak. How that ever got to be acceptable for an MMO, I don't know, but I do not agree with it. I'm glad to see GW2 and other MMOs taking the more action-intensive route.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
the only thing i hate more then the pull one mob and fire skills (then repeat 1000s of times till you hit max level...then you do the same thing just with bigger mobs) is the fact that AI has not advanced (or possibley devolved) in years. why do mobs still stand around while all these people are killing their friends?
that is what i am hoping will change in GW2. do I expect the AI to charge the flanks of the ranged characters... no. However i do expect mobs to be on patrol...or walking in large groups...and when they attempt to take a town i expect to see them burning down a building and destroying a water pipeline or poisoning a well or something. not just a mob fighting towns people that can't kill it but they keep respawning to try anyhow....how does a little town have SO MANY PEOPLE
*nod nod* Yeah, the combat pacing really is a chore now. I just have enough of the old fashioned combat. I mean, I played Eq2 for many years, but I just cannot go back to this extremely slow paced boring sort of combat anymore.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Dropping mobs with a single swing isn't any better system than the hack/swing/hack/swing system. In fact, I'd say its worse. One hit kills require: no skill... no thinking... no learning...
Blowing away thousands of zombies with a machinegun might be mindless fun for a while, but I can only take a few minutes of it. I like combat in games to require more than a fast trigger finger (or button pushing finger, whichever). "Pacing" is a very vague term. In EQ1, I could solo as a druid gnolls outside of Split Paw... it took several minutes to kite them, and even then I usually had to "med up" (regain mana) to do the next that took a couple of minutes as well. An empty mana bar could take 10-15 minutes to refill. WoW and similar games help fix that "pacing" by implementing much faster out of combat regen. The length of the actually monster fights let you learn which skills worked best and in what order/combo/etc. If no fight in WoW required more than say "Fireball", what the heck fun would that be? Sure the "Pacing" would be incredibly fast, fast enough even for console players with ADHD, but the game would be *boring* to everyone except those with ADHD (well, for the few seconds they could concentrate on the game, it'd be fun, but then they'd lose interest and go do something else).
I play MMOS because the pacing is slow. In fact, it is already faster than I am comfortable with. Before MMOs I played CRPGs like Baldur's Gate, where combat was turn-based and pausable. From there I went to Everquest, where combat took minutes per fight and so did recovery. I was very comfortable with the pacing of both types of combat.
From there we moved on to the accelerated combat of EQ2 and WoW, which became faster than I would have chosen but not so fast as to become unpleasant. I am used to that now, even though it still seems too flash-bang-wallop and not tactical enough for my taste.
If we move to something akin to "Action RPG" pacing then that's it for me. I have tried a couple of those and I absolutely loathe them. They are the epitome of tedium. We'll see how GW2 pans out, but commentary about the faster pace is one of the aspects that is currently dampening my enthusiasm for the title.
Not sure if you've played GW1 but it did have somewhat more advanced AI than just to close in on the player and whack away, ocassionally try to run when its health got low.
Yeah, I see no reason why MMO's feel like they have to present you with 1000 bad guys to kill every minute. I mean it's fine if the MMO is going for a cartoonish style feel...but honestly those sort of genres feel more "Monty Python" then "heroic" to me.
I'd like to see an MMO that does quality over quantity.... where the average "badie" is actualy somewhat dangerous...and a pretty tough fight. That way you may only be fighting 4-5 badies an hour...rathern then 30...but each of those fights is a pretty serious deal.
I hate the games where it's "Oh..ho hum....just another Orc/Troll/Giant... chop chop...done. <yawn>."
I know they are trying to make you feel "Epic" or whatever MMO marketing buzz-word of the week is....but usualy all they end up making me feel is cheesy.
So basically, Guild Wars 2 is kind of like Guild Wars 1? What a surprise! The only things in the article that were said of Guild Wars 2 that wouldn't also be true of Guild Wars 1 is the downed system.
It is true that lots of games now want to call themselves "action" MMORPGs or whatever. But Guild Wars 1 was ahead of the curve here, with a markedly faster combat tempo than its contemporaries. It's not as fast paced as, say, Champions Online, but then, I don't expect GW2 to be, either.
"At low levels even though you are a new warrior or mage, you still should not have to take three to fiver exchanges to kill a simple back yard pest."
Of course it should. Because as a new warrior/mage, you don't know where to hit them with your sword or which spell can actually hurt them most. :rollseye:
To be perfectly precise, that boar should be able to eat you in one bite. lol
Ready for GW2!!!
rofl
Ok, lets assume that you are lvl 1 & that I gave you a club. Now, go kill that boar & see what happens... my money is on the boar.
I think, there's a little disconnect here, but to each there own I supposse.
I don't have to feel that i'm some kind of super human, orc, dwarf, whatever, to have fun in a game.
WoW HAD a raid like that, Alliance swine be fearful, thyne boars name be Hogger.
And yeah... that statement about boars was definitely off. Whose up for giving the author a crappy, rusty axe, then throwing him up against a massive, ticked off, starving boar and see what happens? Deers can take a car crash and possibly survive, while F***ING up your ride.
Animals aren't just glass pinatas in the real world, and thats true of them in any game as well. Besides critters... critters are there for the stomping on... that's your one-hit kills.
And thought I'd add this in, but a mage versus boar? That mage will be tempted to fireball the Boar, boar catches on fire, gets even more ticked, and now there's a flaming boar mauling your stomach open. Blame wizards, their fault, all the time.
Speed is critical for an MMO. Slow and people will yell, "Grind". Go to fast and people will yell, "When's the next expansion coming out". We have seen this with STO when people hit end game within a week or two.
I like the faster action pace but I want my content to last a bit before I reach lvl cap. This is the most dificult balance besides PVP/PVE. If people go slow they may get bored. If it's to fast people will most likely get bored waiting for new content.
If it is a faster action oriented MMO maybe like GW2 or DCUO will be then I am for it, just as long as they have some content to last a bit.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Cloudsol/
Aside from the bouts of carpal tunnel syndrome that action combat visits on my wrists and fingers, I dislike the fact that most games that do action style combat do so in a way that is extremely unforgiving and a single mistake means defeat. I like slower combat for several reason, bodily comfort being one, but also the ability to make mistakes and still be able to recover and win the day and I will admit it, I'm not a fast thinker and quick reaction combat gives me headaches.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.