Guild Wars advances player combat skills and tries to level the field, but is it moving in the right direction?

By Michael Lafferty

First thoughts on the state of combat models in the realm of massively multiplayer games

Is it Quake with swords and sorcery? Bows and the banes of one’s short-lived existence? Has the realm of massively multiplayer online gaming finally started to offer massive free-for-alls of a PvP nature within an arena setting?

It is an arena setting, with places to run, places to attack from, places to try to hide (if not for that map), different games including an all-out assault, king of the hill, capture the flag with multiple teams … is this gladiatorial combat catering to the PvP community, but with a new twist?

Well, the answer could be a qualified yes. While other games, such as Anarchy Online, have offered arena combat, and Lineage II players were starting some tournaments, the world of gladiatorial combat has not really been addressed until Guild Wars launched its world preview beta last weekend.

And when you look at the combat model being used, Guild Wars certainly has some nice features, which other games would do well to emulate. Back in the older days of MMOs, Asheron’s Call 2 set the new standard to thoughtful combat with its model. For one of the first times, there were no magic missiles. You could, if you timed it right, sidestep an incoming ranged attack. If you got into a duel with another archer, with planning and timing, you could move to the side, not get hit and launch a counterattack.

Fighting as a team presents its own challenges in Guild Wars

Too many games, though, go for the simple combat model. You shoot a bow or launch a magical ranged attack and it will go through hills, through trees, through walls and hit your target.

And then along comes Guild Wars. The combat model does have a ways to go, some fine-tuning, as it were, but then ArenaNet has until February to get it right. And so far so good.

EverQuest II also has a decent combat model. Barring the auto tracking of the NPCs, unless you can see your opponent, you can’t attack it. Bows have range, both maximum and minimum. If the mob is in your face, you can’t use the bow in EQ II. But the scout class is fortunate in that it can switch to melee weapons. It is the best of both worlds. But in EQ II you don’t get to actually choose the skills you would have, you are given them as you level. And yes, it is true that the developers have recently introduced a system whereby you can customize the traits of your character. But essentially, you level, you get a new skill for your class. You buy scrolls to level up that skill and make it deadlier.

In Guild Wars you can also buy your skills and you carry two classes or professions. You have a primary and secondary class. If you create a ranger and don’t have warrior as a secondary class, no melee for you. You will end up firing your bow at point blank range into the face of the opponent. Unrealistic, certainly, but necessary for the combat model.

GameZone’s Tim Surette also participated in the world preview event, and his story (at http://www.gamezone.com/gzreviews/p21979_03.htm) discusses how one carries skills into combat, and that is not the point of this article. The focus is on combat models, and with what Guild Wars has shown, so far, and with more to come in the months between now and release, what one gamer (the author of this column) would like to see.

Guild Wars allows players to sidestep incoming ranged attacks. That is good, but you then have to re-initialize your attack. This is likely to prevent the running attack that became prevalent in AC2. After all, it should be hard to move, watching incoming shots and then target at the same time. Because games allow players to lock on a target, you are stepping outside the challenge when that happens. Having an archer use that bow at point blank range is likely necessary too, unless the archer has a minimum range and at that range, the bow becomes a stave. Of course, the damage output would go way down. After all, the archer does the biggest damage at range.

For mages, it seems that unless knocked down, they can take blows and continue to cast. Some games, like World of Warcraft, will have allow spells to be interrupted. Other titles allow you to plunk skill points into concentration, which makes it harder for casting to be interrupted.

Mages have long been the most consistently dominate class in terms of damage output. Most games counter that by making them squishy, meaning they can’t take a lot of damage. Some titles have even tweaked the AI to draw it to the biggest damage dealers, unless someone has captured the aggro (aggression). Wish (the Mutable Realms title) required that for mages to cast spells, they had to carry spell components (regents). Dark Age of Camelot’s Catacombs expansion will allow a class of magic user to prepare several spells in advance, but once they are used, you are back to the preparation phase.

EverQuest II made a very nice move recently when it came to dealing with aggro and their healer class. Prior to a recent patch, a priest (the healing class) could get a mob’s aggro by simply healing the members of his or her party. Made sense – if a mob has any kind of intelligence and is fighting a warrior and not doing damage because said warrior is being constantly healed, take out the healer so you can take out the warrior. But priests were drawing a ton of aggro, the EQ II developers scaled that way back.

Everyone of particular classes can carry the same skills into battle in Guild Wars

In Guild Wars, monks are the healing class and it is back to getting aggro. But because GW pairs primary and secondary skills, and all but one class has damage output attacks, those monks are also capable of doing some damage.

The aspects of Guild Wars that are both intriguing and somewhat frustrating, when it comes to combat, lie in the skill system. First, if you have the gold, and get up to level a little, you can carry exactly the same skills into PvP combat at level 10 as a level 40 (when that skill level is available). What will make the difference is the weapon you use and where you have allocated your attribute points. The higher level, the more hit points you have and the more mana for casting special attacks. This levels the playing field a great deal.

The question is do players really want it leveled? Do they want a rewards system that pays off in skills they can unlock at certain levels, or just have the opportunity for better weapons, armor and higher hit points. If at level 40, I encountered a level 10 player in a gladiatorial arena, I would hope that I would feel if I fought smart, I would simply be able to win because of the equipment and hit points I have. And chances are I would receive no experience for the encounter, whereas if that level 10 player managed to kill me, he or she would get decent experience for it.

Jumping over to DAoC, the folks at Mythic had a great idea with their battlegrounds, in making them level specific. For instance, levels 10-14 only can fight in a certain area, while 15-19 in another and so on. You are more evenly matched in terms of armor availability and skills.

As it stands now, if I have a level 15 and I saw a level 40 in the arena, you bet I would be hunting him or her. So little to lose and so much to gain. It could be argued that getting killed quickly hurts your team’s chances of winning and the bonus experience points associated with it. This is a valid point. However, those that know how to PvP fight in arena settings and those who do not quickly distinguish themselves. Sure, we all started somewhere learning how to fight other players, but learning to fight in a PvP arena setting for the first time should be done in increments, for players who don’t have the experience to learn. It can be a joyful, challenging and entertaining experience. Hey, make it a true gladiatorial arena with ranking and different arenas you can move up to against stronger competition.

And when it comes down to it, more stories of combat are told about PvP sessions than about NPC encounters.

For instance, during one of the random 8-versus-8 team combat battles in Guild Wars, the team I was on had taken the brunt of the opposing forces initial attack, shredded it and were in the process of chasing down the runners from that other team’s failed attempt to overwhelm us. Another warrior and I had targeted a ranger, who had been behind his team’s main force and was on the other side of a bridge, moving in our direction. We could not see him, nor could he see us because of the terrain. We crested the bridge and he came into view. We also came into his view, two warriors, shoulder-to-shoulder, with blood in their eyes. I have never seen anyone make a U-turn as quickly. It was hilarious and smart, though he didn’t have anywhere he could really run to. Mobs don’t have that kind of intelligence, no matter how well they are programmed, and they don’t respond as well to variables. (And for the record, I have been in that ranger’s shoes many, many times.)

More games are moving away from the “sandwich” combat system – where you engage an opponent (or opponents), and then go to the kitchen to make a sandwich while the encounter is resolved. This bodes very well for the genre. However, developers are also leery of making it too much of a “twitch”-based combat system, where the one with the faster fingers (and connections) win all the time. There has to be a happy medium between the two. AC2 touched on it, EQ II has some elements moving in that direction, and Guild Wars definitely is moving toward that middle-ground. However, Guild Wars is still is its infancy as far as allowing players to test it out. There are several months left before its release. The game has already evolved remarkably in the past three months; it will be interesting to see what the next three months brings.

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