The War of the Dragon III

I hate dying. I take dying as an affront to my skill as a gamer. Death is not to be used as a lesson, it means I was sloppy or foolish or just plain stupid. I die in Guild Wars 2, a lot. It’s quite irritating how many times I’ve bite the big one. Guild Wars 2 has mechanisms in place to make dying less aggravating, at least that’s the idea behind it. I don’t know if it was intended or not but in reality death in Guild Wars 2 is an art form, let me explain.

When a player loses all their health in Guild Wars 2 they go into what is called a downed state. Their character falls to the ground and tries valiantly to kill whatever put it in that state because doing so grants a temporary reprieve; the person is given say ten percent of their total health back and is up in the fight. I should say that in a downed state the character can’t do most of the things it can normally do, so while it is still alive it’s vastly crippled.

The strategy for dying then especially when faced with multiple enemies is to leave as many as possible with a sliver of health left so that when you’re in the downed state you can quickly revive to normal status, albeit with very little health. Maybe it was intended, maybe it wasn’t but essentially the game often comes down to how well you play your cards in the downed state. No matter how good you are in normal play you’re going to get killed, a lot, and when death is hovering over, you all that separates the best and the rest is the downed state. I have to say I rather hate it.

Dying for me is a failure, it’s the proof that you made a mistake, not dying again is proof you made a correction. Now maybe next week I have a eureka moment and I never die again, but frankly I find that unlikely and it’s a crying shame. Sigh, I hate dying.