FA+
Shop
Guild Wars 2 - Pt. 2
13 years ago
PvP combat in Guild Wars 2 seems very promising; I spent the entire second day of the beta weekend testing out my skills as a Mesmer in the battlegrounds. There are some rather rough realizations – Guardians tend to be nigh indestructible, Rangers and Thieves are ridiculously powerful in solo combat – but I’m certain that a good amount of the balancing issues will be resolved before release. There will always be balancing issues with any MMO, of course.
There are three different scenarios in PvP.
Battlegrounds are in which you and four other allies face off against another team of five in point-capture scenarios; these are relatively quick battles, lasting approximately 20-30 minutes. The team assignments appear to be completely random, as there is an auto-balancing feature that seems to take into account individual scores to pair strong and weak players together in order to keep battles from becoming too one-sided. I assume that there will eventually be a ladder system that does not include the auto-balance feature, but for players that enjoy casual PvP, this allows them an enjoyable experience (assuming they aren’t constantly ganked by fucking thieves or rangers).
WvWvW (world vs. world vs. world) has two scenarios – the Eternal Battleground and the Battlefronts. The Eternal Battleground is an enormous map centered on a gigantic castle (i.e. the main objective of the area). What I enjoyed about this was that there is no “victory” condition – it is a gigantic, free flowing warzone between three servers combating over real objectives (keeps, towers, supply depots and, of course, the gigantic castle). You needn’t always be a part of the main force, either – with three worlds present, multiple battlefronts can occur quite frequently over the span of the entire map.
The battlefronts are separated into the three worlds, with each world having the option of either defending their world’s battlefront from the invading forces of the other two worlds, or assaulting the lands of those same forces on their own battlefront. The vastness of tactics, opportunities and strategies across the various opportunities of PvP gameplay often found me looking at the clock and going “holy crap, did five hours really just go by that fast?”. All in all, I had a blast sampling the variety of PvP available.
Now, let’s touch on the flaws.
First off, there are a few aesthetic details that could be addressed. Developers need to ask themselves when designing aesthetics this question: “Will this ever get annoying after ten or twenty times of experiencing it?” Case in point: Announcers. Battleground announcements should be succinct and informative – flavor text such as “You’ve taken the keep! Now keep it!” gets to be annoying as hell when it’s the umpteenth million time I’ve heard that pun.
Siege weaponry definitely needs to be addressed. There are some balancing issues involved with the various weapons, such as the arrow carts definitely needing to be scaled back in their damage output, or the cannons needing a stronger defensive capability against player attacks, or the fact that you should be able to move a battering ram (really, who builds a battering ram right on the spot in the midst of a siege, right in front of the enemy gate?). These are issues that can be dealt with easily before release and, hopefully, they well be.
Pathing issues need to be addressed, of course; see my complaint about Mesmer clones.
Underwater combat is rather fun, to an extent; I understand that the physics coding behind underwater movement has got to be rather aggravating to even think of writing, as why many games opt for the "free motion as if flying" concept, but it would be rather neat if someone actually could do it correctly. Some games touch on it (mostly single player games), but it's rare to see liquid physics done right. Guild Wars 2 opts for the free motion aspect, which is fine. Underwater combat in Guild Wars 2, however, is actually surprisingly fun. The fact that there are unique abilities only available while underwater and that there are objectives that can be reached via underwater routes is a great idea, though attempting to defend against enemies that are underwater and breaching an underwater gate is next to impossible. Hopefully that will be addressed.
There are three different scenarios in PvP.
Battlegrounds are in which you and four other allies face off against another team of five in point-capture scenarios; these are relatively quick battles, lasting approximately 20-30 minutes. The team assignments appear to be completely random, as there is an auto-balancing feature that seems to take into account individual scores to pair strong and weak players together in order to keep battles from becoming too one-sided. I assume that there will eventually be a ladder system that does not include the auto-balance feature, but for players that enjoy casual PvP, this allows them an enjoyable experience (assuming they aren’t constantly ganked by fucking thieves or rangers).
WvWvW (world vs. world vs. world) has two scenarios – the Eternal Battleground and the Battlefronts. The Eternal Battleground is an enormous map centered on a gigantic castle (i.e. the main objective of the area). What I enjoyed about this was that there is no “victory” condition – it is a gigantic, free flowing warzone between three servers combating over real objectives (keeps, towers, supply depots and, of course, the gigantic castle). You needn’t always be a part of the main force, either – with three worlds present, multiple battlefronts can occur quite frequently over the span of the entire map.
The battlefronts are separated into the three worlds, with each world having the option of either defending their world’s battlefront from the invading forces of the other two worlds, or assaulting the lands of those same forces on their own battlefront. The vastness of tactics, opportunities and strategies across the various opportunities of PvP gameplay often found me looking at the clock and going “holy crap, did five hours really just go by that fast?”. All in all, I had a blast sampling the variety of PvP available.
Now, let’s touch on the flaws.
First off, there are a few aesthetic details that could be addressed. Developers need to ask themselves when designing aesthetics this question: “Will this ever get annoying after ten or twenty times of experiencing it?” Case in point: Announcers. Battleground announcements should be succinct and informative – flavor text such as “You’ve taken the keep! Now keep it!” gets to be annoying as hell when it’s the umpteenth million time I’ve heard that pun.
Siege weaponry definitely needs to be addressed. There are some balancing issues involved with the various weapons, such as the arrow carts definitely needing to be scaled back in their damage output, or the cannons needing a stronger defensive capability against player attacks, or the fact that you should be able to move a battering ram (really, who builds a battering ram right on the spot in the midst of a siege, right in front of the enemy gate?). These are issues that can be dealt with easily before release and, hopefully, they well be.
Pathing issues need to be addressed, of course; see my complaint about Mesmer clones.
Underwater combat is rather fun, to an extent; I understand that the physics coding behind underwater movement has got to be rather aggravating to even think of writing, as why many games opt for the "free motion as if flying" concept, but it would be rather neat if someone actually could do it correctly. Some games touch on it (mostly single player games), but it's rare to see liquid physics done right. Guild Wars 2 opts for the free motion aspect, which is fine. Underwater combat in Guild Wars 2, however, is actually surprisingly fun. The fact that there are unique abilities only available while underwater and that there are objectives that can be reached via underwater routes is a great idea, though attempting to defend against enemies that are underwater and breaching an underwater gate is next to impossible. Hopefully that will be addressed.
