Guild Wars, Wolcen, And How GGG Can Learn From It

Back in either the recent ExileCon or the speech Chris made somewhere else, he explained that one of the games which he drew inspiration from was Guild Wars. At the time, I wracked my head over what Path of Exile had taken from the game and I was drawing a blank.

Skip ahead to the present, where Wolcen officially releases. It's got a great endgame concept, but mechanically speaking, the game is pretty shallow and seems like it's meant to attract Diablo 3 players. However, while I was playing through act content, I've noticed a number of encounters use something from Guild Wars. I'm talking about the "warning markers" that paint the floor just before an attack is made. This feature was shown to its fullest during the final boss fight in act 2 where sections of the arena glowed bright red to indicate a powerful attack or a green spot for where you need to stand while everywhere else becomes lethal. These markers were easy to spot, and the game gave you plenty of time to react.

This brings me back to PoE. I think a feature like this is direly needed, now more than ever due to how clusterfucked the game has become with particle effects. We already have this in a couple fights, such as when you fight Tukohama and he reels up his powerful slam which leaves a colorful marker on the ground, or when you fight Kitava in act 10 where he covers the arena in glowing runes before detonating them. This should be expanded everywhere else in the game, with markers varying in intensity based on how dangerous they are.

And more importantly, because of the game's visually messy state: The markers should glow and highlight through everything so they're impossible to obstruct.

Wocel Out...

Kitava gives you enough time to react on the "X" attack... And if you take any amount of time to learn a mechanic, you don't need these hand-hold features. If POE isn't for you, just say that. The game is fine, except for maybe some of the performance issues due to some particle effects from certain items (GORE... I'm looking at you), but other than some performance issues I find astounding, the gameplay is fine. Getting 1 shot? Learn the mechanic. Feel like you can't avoid a mechanic? Exaplin how level 100s happen in HC... Doubt they grind Blood Aqueducts to 100... PepegaPhone

But there is such things in PoE. Strong attacks are always telegraphed or accompanied by voice lines. I hope you don't mistake Chris mentioning Guild Wars with him talking about Guild Wars 2.

As someone who's played Guild Wars 1 for many thousand hours I can say there's a lot of stuff from old Guild Wars in this game actually, like instances created for parties instead of areas being open for everyone to roam like in World of Warcraft.

Guild Wars was unique in its approach of having unique feats to every class but allowing the classes to be freely combined - this is similiar to PoE's ascendancy system.

There's a lot more than just that, but I'll leave it at that since you're not criticizing Chris for that comparison. I just wanna say that I think the visual queues we get are fine.

You didn't come up with one example of a place where you'd think more clarity would be necessary actually. I'm curious what you come up with

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ArtCrusade wrote:

But there is such things in PoE. Strong attacks are always telegraphed or accompanied by voice lines. I hope you don't mistake Chris mentioning Guild Wars with him talking about Guild Wars 2.

As someone who's played Guild Wars 1 for many thousand hours I can say there's a lot of stuff from old Guild Wars in this game actually, like instances created for parties instead of areas being open for everyone to roam like in World of Warcraft.

Guild Wars was unique in its approach of having unique feats to every class but allowing the classes to be freely combined - this is similiar to PoE's ascendancy system.

There's a lot more than just that, but I'll leave it at that since you're not criticizing Chris for that comparison. I just wanna say that I think the visual queues we get are fine.

You didn't come up with one example of a place where you'd think more clarity would be necessary actually. I'm curious what you come up with

More clarity? Dominus' slam, starting direction on Piety's diarrhea beam, Core boss' slam, rare Maraketh Legion enemies, off-screen leap slams from various sources...etc. The point is that there are tons of great visual cues, and why not add visual cues for all the other attacks?

I get that every single attack in the game can't have a giant red mark on the ground or it wouldn't make sense, but there are some, after 2500 hours of playing, that I still have no idea where they come from.

Also, any game I've played with visual cues, they always sync up better to the actual damage than audio cues do. I don't know if it has to do with the triggering of the audio files vs visual effects, but I've been slapped more than once by the game for taking a hit RIGHT as an audio cue was starting.

There are good telegraphs in PoE and there are bad ones.

Good one - Brutus - expected width of the "big ground slam", line charge

Bad one - Sirus last phase "Die" as he teleports off screen

There are many more "good ones" than the bad ones, yet there are graphically big effects that do low dmg and like single projectile bs attacks which could oneshot you (legion mobs / Delve mobs). Betrayal/Syndicate encounters are still unclear to me, spikes on the ground while ground is cluttered as fck, or charging attacks while turning to face you while hiding in a pack of ads while bunch of spell effects are running wild around.

I find Wolcen combat to be dull. Telegraphs are nice, but it takes a lot from the game if there is unified danger markers.

In general PoE has more entertaining combat, but some of the telegraphs could receive some balancing to give us not just quarter second to react but half a second. PoE 2 seems to have bigger reaction window as the game footage available is generally slower. Maybe it is going the right direction, but year long journey.

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Marxone wrote:

PoE 2 seems to have bigger reaction window as the game footage available is generally slower. Maybe it is going the right direction, but year long journey.

One can hope, but at the same time, what they showed was demo gameplay of earlygame. Even earlygame enemies in PoE1 have big telegraphs. Take the skeletons on the Ledge for example, they no longer swing immediately and instead reel their weapon back and hold it for a second before hitting. Necromancers in the dungeon do the same thing, offering you a whole second to get out of where they're going to cast a curse. This all goes away as you reach act 2.

I get the impression the same will happen in PoE2.

There's nothing to learn from Wolcen, tbh that game is buggy as hell it is uterly broken

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Altnaharra wrote:

But if a monster gets faster, they can usually still be slowed down. Even in act 2, after gaining entrance by defeating that enchanting sea-witch.

If every monsters throughout the game didn't increase in some way as the exile does, it would become an auto looter.

Spoiler

I couldn't find the one I was looking for but this will have to do.
https://youtu.be/aOS4xil-sto?t=15

I was looking for human reaction time to light vs sound and how street fighter balances its attacks with animations and sound.

Perhaps there's a misunderstanding. I'm not suggesting we give every enemy attack a marker, only to ones that will 1shot you, especially if they're from off-screen. My argument to Marxone was that they believe PoE2 will make bosses have highly telegraphed attacks, but it's usually the case for just about every enemy in act 1 right now which gets phased out in act 2 onwards.

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Altnaharra wrote:

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diablofdb wrote:

There's nothing to learn from Wolcen, tbh that game is buggy as hell it is uterly broken

There is something to be learned from Street Fighter.

I don't think Street fighter is a good example.
1. environment clutter in poe is huge
2. usually multiple objects to watch for (boss, adds, environment - we know how GGG loves their ground effects)
3. moving picture - you are moving, boss is moving, adds are moving
4. fps lock on SF vs laggy unpredictable fps spikes in PoE

If we take Shaper as perfectly telegraphed combat situation - balls have own animation, beam has sound queue, teleport slam has own animation. All animations have set timer, there is no "speed up" or skip, no adds, arena is fixed and clean


Now compared to Cameria from Syndicate in something like Undeground Sea map where shadows go rampant, add some ground effect like shocking ground, zombies which spew tar on death, bunch of necros spawning around and 3 other syndicate members.... now there is a blue spike on the ground .. somewhere .... ok great. Good luck keeping 100% track on the effect. Basically then you brain goes into overdrive and now it is solely on the defense layers.


Basically GGG should avoid instagibs in situations which are unpredictable while maintaining the death by thousand cuts avaialble in every situation of the game. When there is oneshot / Savage shot incoming, it should be clear what, where and anticipated that it is coming.


edit: I do not recall much from my GW1 days altho I played on decent EU level with a good team. When playing vs spike builds, it was usually pretty clear who was targeted, positioning mattered a lot and reaction speed was usually the key. But I played almost entirely focused on team based PvP which has unpredictable human element in it as a core element so it is hard to say if the PvE aspect had some valued function (i usually did cheese content with invincible monk / R/Mo solo farming /running - maybe that is the inspiration - to completely cheese what ever content they throw at you :D

I don't like what Wolcen did there, if you find a way to add an immersive element that makes you think that something is coming, then fine.

If you need to add an artifical obvious marker that is immersion breaking ( as it is yelling to you "this is not part of the game's 'universe', this is an extra layer obviously added for gameplay reason", then there is a problem already.


Check the primordial block boss' attack .. there is a wind up, and a clear floor marker, but it isn't a stupid red square purely added there for gameplay purposes, it's part of the skill, it's immersive, it makes sense.



That said, PoE's screen clutter is of course terribly aweful, no doubt about it, but that's another problem together and I don't think that having it solved by adding more artifical elements that will hide other things in the mess will do any good.

The only think that GGG needs is to take a step back, realize the mess that the game has become and do something about it, and everything leads to think that this is just not going to happen unfortunately.

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Marxone wrote:

There are good telegraphs in PoE and there are bad ones.

Good one - Brutus - expected width of the "big ground slam", line charge

Bad one - Sirus last phase "Die" as he teleports off screen

This

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Pizzarugi wrote:

I get the impression the same will happen in PoE2.

yep