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I see people saying GW2 is an Action combat game like Vindictus / Tera..what?
Mkilbride
Member UncommonPosts: 643
Now, GW1 was one of my favorite games. GW2 had me all excited after a beta test, then release, but I gradually became bored with it. Mainly the lack of skills. GW1, on release, had 150 unique skills. Hundreds more with expansions. You had dozens upon dozens of builds that each did different things. GW2 had this weird skill system for classes that seems really restricted to me. But this is besides the point.
In a bunch of threads lately, I see people saying GW2 is an Action Combat game...now...It's been a few months since I even logged in but...what? It was very much a tab target game last I played. There was that Combat Mode mod that made it more like an action game, and I did indeed enjoy that, though I remember ArenaNet saying it is ban-worthy because it offers unfair advantage.
But I must ask, why are people saying the game is Action Combat when it is quite obviously Tab-target? My personal thoughts above are irrelevant. It is Tab Target. You click a target, move close to them, and press your hotbar numbers to attack. If you turn around, you usually get a red clicky noise, saying you are not facing your target, unless it's an AoE / Ranged skill.
Has the bar on Action Combat fell so low that simply by putting a dodge button, it is action combat? Despite it's limited usefulness(Shown that you can quite often just run faster out of any attacks).
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Comments
Action combat doesn't mean the same thing with non-target. Gw2 is a tab-target mmo with an action combat system.
Watch this video and you will see...
Action combat relates to turn-based combat or combat where you can hit pause and has no real definition for targetting. There are quite a lot of 3D action games where you can lock to your target, in a similar fashion to tab-target games.
Noone spoke about action combat in relation to targetting until BHS made their commercials for Tera where it was the first MMO to have "True Action Combat".
Despite I really did try by best and ignored all other issues I have with the game, combat is just big no no.
I cannot say exactly what is wrong but it somewhat feels bland. I could not feel the sense of hitting anything, long cooldowns and very specialized and limited skills makes you watch "autoattack" for majority duration of the engagement.
...and that circle strafing, doh.
Very disappointing.
The dodging feels and looks bad, and there's no feedback to speak of.
Playing it I never felt the feedback like when I play Bayonetta, God of War or Vindictus.
I wish I had the technical know-how to explain it.
Flailing around with impunity does not and never will equal action combat to me.
Feedback! That is the term I was looking for and feeling I had lacking when playing the game.
First in GW2 you don't need to target anything to hit.
Second GW2 targeting has different behavior options.
If you select auto targeting the game game will select targets for you once you shoot in a general direction. Otherwise you will shot towards where you are facing.
Third it depends if you have a target selected or not.
If you have a target selected and are not moving, the game will auto face you and then release the attack. If you are moving the attack will enter cooldown without actually attacking.
If you don't have a target selected (and no auto targeting option), you will shoot towards where you are facing, moving or otherwise.
So there is no red clicky noise in the game.
Fourth tab-targeting systems are called that because people press tab to got through the enemies until they select the one they want.
In GW2 while you might do that, there is no point - either you don't select a target or you click on it (or let the game auto target or promote skill to target).
GW2 is neither a tab-targeting system or an action combat - it is a bit of both and with a very trade mark characteristic of having a combat system where people keep moving.
The hybrid system has some weird situations.
One that annoys me most is the leap/charge type skills.
Without auto targeting, if I forget to somehow select the enemy first, it is quite normal to just over leap the enemy, so I want the auto targeting to prevent that.
But if I have the auto targeting and/or forgot to de-select the enemy on and I want to use the leap/charge type skills to create distance between myself and pursuers, often those skills will make me turn around and close the distance instead of increasing the gap.
There is also another funky situation with some weapon/skill combinations where it is possible to shoot/whack someone over the shoulder.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Good lord, do not let me start about leaps...
I cannot even count how many times I fell off the bridge or cliff because after the leap I was thrown sideways or just oddly misplaced.
Feedback for me is another word like immersion that are thrown around to try to make something that is personal preference into some kind of a fact.
It is all about the response times of the actions, after action cooldowns, the animations and the sounds.
Some people want to stop to hit, others like that after hitting their character briefly stop, others dislike stopping at all, some love that their hit instantly registers on the enemy as they press the button, etc.
For example, in GW2 costume brawl uses stop to hit and after hit delays that make that kind of combat to me so much more clunky than the normal combat.
None of the games mentioned (and none that I'm aware of) actually give a proper physics response to missing a full force wide swing or blocking a two handed warhammer swing with a shield.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
If you download the ActionCombat mod (which does little more than toggle a couple in-game settings, and add a retical to the center of your screen), you'll see that the game's combat plays nearly identical to TERAs. It doesn't have the same combat system in terms of combo attacks, but the controls are almost exactly the same.
The confusion lies in the fact that this game tries very hard to pander to the WoW crowd, in an attempt to ease those types of players into the game. You may notice this with multiple levels of gameplay.
It's the reason why the game has 80 levels, why it has so many heart quests at low lvls, but barely any at higher-levels. It's the reason they don't start you out with weapon swapping, attunements, & all that until you've leveled a bit with your toon. It's the reason why the default controls are so similar to standard fantasy MMOs.
- However, if you actually delve into the controls for this game, and see how it actually works, and how you can modify the controls to your personal preference; you will see that this game actually functions almost the same as TERA or Vindictus. The main difference is it adds the option for tab-'soft lock'ing a target (which is turned on by default) to make things easier for newer players.
However you can still miss with your abilities, they can still be dodged, and you can still change the settings so that you actually have to aim with your mouse to hit targets. Which is exactly what CombatMod does for you, if you choose to install it.
Please provide a quote where I "try" to pass anything related to GW combat as fact. Do you even understand what fact is?
I think you're missing Gaia's point, what she(?)s talking about is that feedback, as you're describing it, is how the combat 'feels'. It's aesthetic, aka you're 'personal prefence for how you feel while playing it'.
This has everything to do with combat 'flow', and nothing to do with combat 'mechanics', or the type of combat system a game integrates.
'Action-combat' refers to combat systems in which reactions, timing & skill are the dominant factor for a win condition over passive factors like stats / gear. This describes GW2 just as much as it does games like TERA & Vindictus.
The difference is that GW2 is much more fluid with it's combat (there are very few breaks to your movement in the game), Vindictus is very rigid (the game has lots of movement breaks and pauses between actions), and TERA is somewhere in the middle (it has a decent mix of animation locking, pauses, and free-movement abilities).
All of these systems are action combat, but they cater to different aesthetics (personal prefence). Most people tend to think about games in terms of aesthetics (how the game makes you feel while playing it / how pretty the game is), and pay little-no attention to the underlying mechanics. However, this discussion about action-combat is a discussion about mechanics.
Ironically enough, GW2 allows for this (even if he is mistaken about the definition). It's just not provided by default, and so people just assume it doesn't exist.
Nah, he just misinterpret mine, I guess. Understandable since my comment was rather off topic :-P
I wasn't talking about combat mechanics, just the visual, art side of combat - something that wasn't satisfying me.
And no, combat "flow" and combat mechanics are not separate. Combat mechanics sets technical parametrs for artist who then work on the "feel". It determines how the combat will "feel" by large margin.
I like GW2's combat mechanics. It feels extremely open with movement. It's tab targeted, yes, but you must take into account your surroundings: Terrain will block projectiles, your melee attacks won't hit if they're not in range, gotta be leery of other enemies around you, dodging properly, making sure you're not dodging off a ledge(or falling off a ledge to your advantage to escape combat), and so forth. Lots of skills able to be used on the move, making the gameplay very... movement oriented, with timing and positioning a key factor in wins or losses.
There's enough freedom that I feel like my actions and decisions control if the fight will be favorable or not, and enough targeting helping that I'm not missing or failing to do things to the enemy due to their ping, my ping, difference in hardware, server spikes, or whatnot.
Granted I have like more than 1000 hours on my Thief and not even 100 hours on any other class so I may view combat a bit differently than other classes.
I wouldn't say Action combat, but it is "actiony".
The entire game though plays more like an MMOAG than an MMORPG. The watered down and shallow skill system, the lack of trinity and zerg type activities fit more of an action type game than an RPG....
I do find it funny that there is such a discussion about 'true' action vs 'questionable' action combat; pretty nit-picky. I've even found comments that suggest that Tera is NOT 'true' action combat system, which is laughable.
It's a hybrid of both.
You can play entirely without a target if you wanted to, but you won't have a crosshair like in Tera, which makes it more difficult.
Projectiles will also miss their targets if the enemy moves, and if i remember correctly, you will still get hit in Tera if you fail to hit their "dodge" moves. I might be wrong about Tera, since it's been awhile.
In GW2, you also have more mobility, and directional dodging. Very few skills will lock you in place such as the warrior's whirlwind attack, or the ranger's autoattack, but the majority of skills can be cast while moving.
Anyway, action combat doesn't automatically mean it needs to have a crosshair, nor does it mean that a target shouldn't have a target-selection reticule on it.
I'm pretty sure I can destroy the OP with my thief without ever targetting him
Or the warrior 
oh well, what do i know
Nothing bothers me more about GW2 than the dodge mechanic. Dodging through an aoe is probably the worst mechanic I have seen. When the attack visually hits, then you should take some sort of damage. Nothing worse then seeing a gigantic meteor hit someone in the fucking head, but since they clicked dodge, somehow they are invulnerable to it.
I thought GW2 was widely accepted as a hybrid tab-targetting/ action system. Personally I think it is a poor version of both.
The problem with having a dodge button which you press when an enemy telegraphs a move is that it becomes just another button in your rotation. It is not like true action combat which is fluid and requires tactics and positioning, it is more the Pavlov's dog of gaming design- you are told to press a button so you press it.