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"Unresponsive" combat
There have been several complaints on this board about "unresponsive" combat in GW2, and like many of you who aren't experiencing that problem, I was baffled by this criticism. I assumed there was some strange lag or performance issue those people must be having that I don't. In response to those posts, many people asked for the critics to post their system specs because it seemed to be something wrong on their end.
So I didn't think much about it beyond some client side issue until I was reading a post on another forum comparing combat in GW2 to WoW and they mentioned that in WoW the damage is subtracted instantly when you executed your skill whereas in GW2 it is subtracted at the end of the animation. Then it occurred to me, this isn't an issue of responsiveness but instead one of instant gratification (not using the term derogatorily, but that's just the best way to describe it).
In WoW, many of the skills are instant cast, and when you press the key to execute those skills you get instant feedback that the skill did damage (regardless of what the animation is doing), whereas in GW2 when you press the key to execute your skills there's an animation associated with it and the skill doesn't actually land until it visually connects with the target. So there's a delay between when you start the skill and when you get that feedback of it doing damage.
However, there's a major drawback to the WoW system. In order to balance that instant gratification responsiveness, they had to interject a false delay between successive skills... the global cooldown (GCD). GW2 does not use a GCD system but instead each skill has a cast time, even if it's very brief. So what's happening in the two systems is this: for WoW you get key press, damage, delay... key press, damage, delay; but for GW2 you get key press, delay, damage... key press, delay, damage.
That's why people feel GW2 is unresponsive.
Comments
It's worth noting that different skills behave in a different way. Many are almost instant, with little animation ahead of them. Others have somewhat longer animations before the effect takes place. Others spread their effect throughout their animation cycle. Finally, some lock you in place to achieve their effect, and some can be canceled by moving, also canceling the skill cast.
It's part of the player skill to know these activation times/methods, and to use them the best they can,
Think I prefer GW2 combat because it has me watching the combat and not the numbers or the cooldowns as much or at all. Just like Arena Net said they wanted, more focus on the gameworld and what's happening and less on stats.
is there any instant cast in GW2?
instant cast means you dont have any chance to dodge it , from my experience you have a chance to dodge any kind of attack(melee, ranged, magic spell)
maybe there are some instanst cast or skills but i dont know wich class (didnt play all the classes)
I've played both WoW and Guild Wars 2 - I don't know if that's what players are talking about - if it is, it's a very meta-gaming approach where players want instant damage without care for how it looks. It's not that these people don't care about graphics, I'm sure many are excited by how cool some of these games look, but it seems to me people approach gameplay and graphics as though they should be totally separate things... which I disagree with.
That being said, I have never had any unresponsivness in GW2. It plays as smoothly as the best games I've played in terms of responsivness.
Since my opinion is probably easily ignored by some people, let's take a look at someone else.
Mike B, aka Fony has a web-show where he reviews (mostly) MMOs. He's an avid WoW player, having posted many guides on how to tackle new content in WoW.
He has specifically pointed out in several of his reviews that the gameplay of the games has fallen short of WoW - mentioning things like bad timings, animations taking precidense over gameplay etc. He hasn't been afraid to call out games on this.
He did a review of GW2 too here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SMYW3tvYeE - watch at around 10:30 - he specifically goes out of the way to mention responsivness, talking about how in GW2 you can do pretty much anything (run, throw magic missiles etc) and not worry about animations or something getting in your way. Knowing him, he would have most definitely pointed something out had he felt the controls felt unresponsive - he didn't.
That's as close as you'll get to someone citing sources in their argument on a mmorpg forum. The people who say they feel unresponsive controls - perhaps their opinion is biased (even subconciously) to trying to notice issues that may or (more likely) may not exist.
OP that is actually a very good theory/body of evidence to support it.
I don't know, I've played WoW off and on since 2004 and I think GW2 is incredibly smooth and responsive.
It's like, of course I'm not going to see the damage numbers and be able to perform a second action until my first action completes!
But it's so fast paced, I don't even notice any kind of delay.
Due to the nature of GW2's dodge, no. You can dodge anything, even if by chance, at times. But some skills would fall into the instant cast category, especially melee ones.
lol wrong definition of instant cast. Don't know how you can conclude that instant cast = guaranteed hit.
Instant cast is exactly what the name says...... no cast time
Not sure if there are instant casts, besides things like switching elemental schools of an elementalist.
But what you're saying is incorrect. Instant cast means that you don't spend any time 'casting', i.e. your character can do an instant cast (theoretically) without slowing down any of his other abilities.
'dont have any chance to dodge it' would be Instant Hit - meaning, no projectile flies over, but instead the effect is directly applied to the enemy. This can happen even with non-instant cast abilities, and such 'no chance to dodge' spells exist - for example the very first skill you get as an elementalist lights foes on fire, without a projectile, and never misses. It still has something like 0.5 cast time, so it is not instant cast, but it is instant-hit (upon finishing casting).
Well, there are 2 skills that I can think of that are basically instant dps.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Arcane_Blast
This one is Elementalist insta boom. It's actualy very nice finisher.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mantra_of_Pain
This one is a similar set-up, I think. From what I understand, you charge this up before you go out to battle, and when you want to use it, boom. Blast him.
I don't think either of these can be dodged. Maybe blocked with a Aegis or something? But as far as I know, they aren't dodge-able.
The "Youtube Pro": Someone who watches video's on said subject, and obviously has a full understanding of what is being said about such subject.
Very nice and to to the point observation OP.
Instant cast/damage would kill balance when you consider evade/dodge and interrupts.
Now, to actually explain that to fans of more "traditional" MMO combat... Theres a challenge that my limited english language skills are just not up to.
We dont need casuals in our games!!! Errm... Well we DO need casuals to fund and populate our games - But the games should be all about "hardcore" because: We dont need casuals in our games!!!
(repeat ad infinitum)
for me instant cast = 0 s the chance to hit someone is 100% , tell me how is it possible to dogde something with a casting time of 0s
for example in GW1 stance has instant cast(so 0s) if you apply this kind of skill/spell to your opponement its instant hit for me
If I'm not mistaken, when you start dodging in GW2 there's is a time period where (most) attacks can't hit you, whether they are "instant cast" or not. Also, the concept of an instant cast skill is primarily associated with a combat system based on a GCD. Talking about instant cast skills in GW2 is a bit of a misnomer. With GW2 is it more about variations in cast times (even if they fractions of a second).
Additionally skills won't override skill #1 so if you have it in auto cast it might delay the next skill.
In GW1 you cancelled actions by pressing ESC. In GW2 ESC is default for menu. Haven't checked if there is a binding available to cancel action in GW2.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
There are things like Aegis and other deflections/blocks that will stop "next attack" so they'd be able to counter instant attacks too, even if non-dodgable so I don't think instant attacks would be too unbalanced in GW2 (hence why there are some)
Hell, in terms of "block/deflect next attack" warrior has... jeeze, one for mace main hand, one for sword offhand... guardian has one focus offhand, i think also mace main hand?
point is, skill /strategy in knowing when/if an opponent is going try and sneak in an instant attack and you can counter it.
dodge is not an end-all solution to defending yourself - ability usage and timing is like 75% of it.
One other thing I should mention is that in GW2, the character animations always sync with combat (lag aside). There are no "hidden" (auto) attacks going on in the background while other skills are going off. What you see on your screen is what is actually occurring in combat. There are also no bizarre overlaps where you're spamming skills so fast that the animations are stepping on top of one another and what you see on your screen isn't indicative of your attacks.
Here's how a lot of games work:
Actually, in some case you can perform multiple action without waiting for the other action to finish. For example with the elementalist I could use lighting strike at the same time that the character was channelling arc lightning witch is the auto attack without interrupting that attack. As for the area of effect spell usually they have a delay before the effect happen but they do not lock you in animation or prevent you from casting something else right away and you can start casting other spell while the animation of the previous spell is playing itself.
In other case you can perfom an other attack while the first is playing itself but it will cancel the first one. So you basicly never wait for thing to happen before being able to do something else.
I don't think it's unresponsive. I think that compared to WoW, it is less responsive. And I think that is what the players that are complaining are comparing it to. Really, two things cause this in my opinion.
The camera has a smoothing effect on it. That annoys me to all hell. The camera in general needs work. I was hoping they would have had it done by BWE3, but they didn't.
The animations slide around a bit at times. The animations are great in my opinion for what they are trying to accomplish - a game where you can move and still cast almost every skill in the game. But sometimes it does feel a bit floaty and GW2 could use some work in this department.
When it comes to key presses, I found it to be very responsive. I can see how the short cast times give the impression of not being responsive though.
Are you positive about that? That wasn't my experience at all. Even though skill #1 was set on auto attack that just means it fires without you having to hit the button, not that it fires in the background. I know for sure while playing guardian that the #1 skill, which is a cycle of three different skills, the cycle would reset back to the first skill in the series if I started using some other skill because it would interrupt the cycle.
For me, as a new player of GW2, the problem came with skills not firing when I pressed them which caused the game to feel unresponsive. I picked up a two-handed hammer on the guardian I was trying and I had this problem a lot. The #1 skill seemed to basically be an auto-attack while the #2 skill was a big overhead smash. If I hit 2 it wouldn't actually fire until after I finished the current swing from my "auto-attack" (skill #1). In an effort to figure out why I wasn't smashing I would look at my bar to discover that the #2 ability wasn't on cd so it hadn't fired. I would then hit it again, and again, and again until it fired. Maybe the system is working as intended but I just didn't find it very enjoyable.
i completly understand what you mean
in my head instant cast means "no casting time+ no spell travel time to target"
i had the example of the stance in GW1 but from what you explain i understand very well the 3 other possibilities
In the previous betas I did have an issue with combat. It didn't have a great feel or impact and dodging seemed pretty useless really. This last weekend felt completely different however. Things did feel more responsive and several attacks that needed it felt like they had more impact and dodging really gave the bit of breathing room you'd think it would give you.
Yeah I've heard that complaint as well but that's really a separate issue from what people are referring to when they say combat in GW2 is unresponsive. At least that's the impression I get. Perhaps the animation sliding is related, but I think primarily they are used to that instant gratification feeling in WoW when they press a key and get the damage feedback right away rather than having to wait for the blow to actually connect.
I think what you're experiencing is skill queuing. In GW2 when you press a skill while another one is executing, it goes into a queue and you see a flashing box around it. Once the first skill finishes, the next one in queue starts. However, I did notice there were times when I'd hit a skill while one was in progress and it didn't queue (no flashing box) so I'd have to press it a 2nd time. That sort of thing I'm assuming is a bug because it was inconsistent.
Part of it is movement too.
Most people were complaining about camera, which is very valid.
There's accelleration when moving the camera, meaning it's "responsive" but it's not fluid at all.