Guild Wars 2: Pre-Release Discussion

[Dragir]

Couple questions I haven't heard asked are answered in this video.
Pretty sure this hasn't been posted. Found on the NVIDIA YouTube channel.

HD Link



Hope people are still looking at the OP occasionally. I'm still editing that mfkr like crazy. Suggestions welcome.

[Zerocool]

New interview:
http://www.nowgamer.com/features/108...interview.html

[Dantrag]

New interview:
http://www.nowgamer.com/features/108...interview.html

FUUUUUUUUUUU hurry up Dx

[Tonka]

Title is mean.

[Zerocool]

I admire their ambition. You don't hear many people say they're trying to make the best PC game ever made.

[Amastacia]

I don't mean to be a troll, as, like Casual, GW2 hasn't really been on my radar either. In fact, since quitting FFXI a while back, no MMO has really heavily been on my radar besides XIV (which, well, lawl).

The one thing that I am really, really confused about is the bragging about the death of the Holy Trinity. I understand the motivation for it, but XIV had sort of a similar thing going on, where any class could end up using a broad variety of skills and the result was a huge outpouring of butthurt about a lack of class uniqueness. Cosmetic differences only last so long, before everything starts to "feel" the same, and people wonder what's the point of having multiple classes.

I have not read every Q&A with the devs, nor watched hours of GW2 videos, and I don't pretend to be an expert on the game, so if someone can just do a quick "here's why this isn't going to go utterly tits up like it did in XIV" I'd appreciate it.

I've got nothing against checking out GW2, but I am genuinely worried at how pie-in-the-sky a lot of what has hyped sounds. If it's executed on well, it could be an amazing game. Or it could wind up like the conveyor belt of recent MMO releases that couldn't rise above their flaws.

[Lucavi]

XIV never got rid of the holy trinity. XIV allowed everyone to slap a heal on if they wanted to, but that isn't to say that those people that could heal could heal -well-. The difference with GW2 is that you can do it -well-, so you don't need some one person specialized in healing to heal the group. You cannot say that for any other cooperative MMO on the market right now, and based on what we've seen with it, it looks amazing, especially when you can say the same thing about tanking.

Go do a dungeon in XIV without a dedicated tank or a dedicated healer. Have fun trying.

[Elrina]

It might really take Taki or someone to do this question justice, or even a link to an interview or video interview (I haven't actually watched any GW2 videos, most of what I know is written interview/transcript/written overview).

But the first difference I can think of is that in XIV, part of the problem with the lack of "class uniqueness" was quite literally because of the lack of it. Every class was able to use the majority of every other class's abilities.

This is achieving what it is not by limiting each class's unique aspects, but rather, by focusing more emphasis on each class. They are each capable of performing each classic role in the trinity by different means unique to their class (think, NIN and PLD were both tanks in FFXI, but they did so in different ways). Instead of spreading the same abilities across all the classes, every class has it's own unique abilities to cover each necessary function, that achieves the desired result while doing it in a way specific to that class.

Also, enmity/hate/threat/etc. works much differently in the game. The person with the most enmity, from what I understand, is always the person closest to the mob. It's built to require people to work in concert on larger enemies while being self-sufficient on smaller/regular mobs. No one person will be able to steady tank a large beasty, no one person will be required to heal the entire thing, people will be capable of shifting in and out of positions during the fight and it will make it quite possible for several viable solutions/strategies to any given fight.

XIV suffered because it's combat system had a traditional enmity mechanic that didn't work very well, and it's class design was uninspired and lazy. ArenaNet has been forthcoming saying that they've gone through several stages of exactly how many classes they were planning on introducing, wanting to bring it down to a bare minimum of classes that each had a specific purpose in being. Each class needs to be able to perform each of the desired roles, but they also have to be unique and play differently as well. They specifically set out to make sure that playing the different classes didn't feel the same, and they've been constantly adjusting them to ensure that.

That's just a little bit of it, and I don't really know how well I explained it. Hopefully Taki or Dragir or someone with some links to direct word from ArenaNet will post something also.


Edit: There's more and I can't seem to find where I was reading it for some reason (and I could swear I ran across it more than once tonight), but here's a direct quote from this page on the GW2 site.

Choice of profession will of course have a huge impact on how the game plays. There are eight professions in Guild Wars 2, many of which will be familiar to fans of Guild Wars, as well as a few professions new to the Guild Wars world. Each of these professions is roughly categorized by the type of armor they wear: scholars wear light armor, adventurers wear medium armor, and soldiers wear heavy armor. Currently there are three scholar professions, three adventurer professions and two soldier professions.

When designing our professions it was very important to us to make each of them feel as unique and different as possible. In addition to weapon, armor and skill choice, we've developed a number of cool profession mechanics for each one. We'll be revealing new professions on our website, so it should start becoming apparent just how much we've tried to push the unique play style of each of them.

Many players from Guild Wars are familiar with the concept of secondary professions. We included secondary professions in early versions of Guild Wars 2, but due to the unique mechanics of each profession and the increased role of race in character customization, they are no longer a feature of the game. We feel that this decision will allow us to create a more balanced game with really distinct professions that are fun to play.

[Vimes]

I have not read every Q&A with the devs, nor watched hours of GW2 videos, and I don't pretend to be an expert on the game, so if someone can just do a quick "here's why this isn't going to go utterly tits up like it did in XIV" I'd appreciate it.

I'll keep it simple:
- Every profession can fulfill every role.
- The way they do it is what makes the profession unique. Every skill you can use is unique to your profession. Different weapons have different skill sets, again unique to your profession. A ranger with a broadsword has different skills than a warrior with it.

Arenanet tests every dungeon with 5 elementalists, 5 necro's, 5 guardians, etc. Just to see if it's possible.

[Elrina]

Man, you answered much more efficiently than I did Vimes.

I can be so awful sometimes about over explaining. Totally blame my mother.

[Tonka]

It's so offensive to compare GW2 to FFXIV. Lol

[Zerocool]

Well another big problem with FFXIV combat is that it's slow and clunky, while GW2 will be fluid, fast paced, and more dynamic. You'll have to dodge and move around and pay attention to what's going on on the screen, rather than just sitting there pushing 1,1,1,2,3.

[Tonka]

What's the variation between melee classes and individual attacks on FFXIV? And almost every spell for either caster class is the same casting animation with a different color explosion. Lol. The variation is just elemental strength/weakness or DoT or not. There's nothing interesting about it. GW2 has you moving all over the place and each ability has its own special flare or neat twist to it.

You can pair up each similar type class on FFXIV to GW2 and I can tell you why GW2's class is infinitely more interesting.

[Dantrag]

The most annoying part about XIV for me was when casting(cnj) you would fill your bar and then the spell would go off 1 - 3 seconds later. SO fucking annoying. And it wasn't fluid enough so that you could easily chain spells back to back. In the end you could get pretty good, but it was a pain. And the normal attack animations were horrible and so slow.

[Dragir]

Just posted today, CynicalBrit's two-part cam-video of the Eurogamer Expo "developer talk."

Addresses my favorite thing about ArenaNet and Guild Wars/Guild Wars 2 early on,
that players won't be struggling against one another to succeed but rather will be
encouraged to work together to achieve a common goal without worrying about
"partying up" in order to share the experience.

Also covers character customization, personal story, dynamic events... basically
a quick summary of the game for those who've not yet watched videos already.

There's quite a lot of technical difficulties on behalf of Eurogamer Expo's presentation
hardware in part 1, good for a laugh if you don't just skip over it.

Part 1 (HD link)


Part 2 (HD link)

[Takiwaki]

Very nice, didnt get to see these yet.

[Crab_Cake]

I admire their ambition. You don't hear many people say they're trying to make the best PC game ever made.

Agreed... though sorry I have to say that the best "PC game" ever is the Starcraft 2 map editor (not SC2 but the SC2 map editor). Previously the best PC Game ever was the Warcraft 3 map editor.

As soon as Blizzard reimplements *<insert removed feature that was removed through a patch> in the editor (Blizzard isn't doing a good job with replying to map editor feedback.)

*One example is removing the ability to have 16 players through a patch.

As for SC2 editor being the best game ever - I mean you can play Bejeweled in Starcraft. Can you play bejeweled while playing GW2? Pfft I thought so.

I'll keep it simple:
- Every profession can fulfill every role.
- The way they do it is what makes the profession unique. Every skill you can use is unique to your profession. Different weapons have different skill sets, again unique to your profession. A ranger with a broadsword has different skills than a warrior with it.

Arenanet tests every dungeon with 5 elementalists, 5 necro's, 5 guardians, etc. Just to see if it's possible.

To the first point - That sounds good.

One of the more disappointing things with FFXI recently was that SE nerfed/removed the ability for RDM to tank and also removed the potential for WAR/DNC to tank (nerfing DNC's healing when used as a sub.)

SE just decided "hey only PLD is allowed to tank".

That is a huge problem with FFXI - It had a lot of potential but SE decided otherwise.

For example imagine (back when people were still exping traditionally) if BLU, PUP, *DNC, DRG, **SMN, or SCH had some +15% haste spell (well this is just an example) - Instead of spending hours looking for WHM or RDM you could instead obtain a BLU, DNC, PUP, DRG, SMN, or SCH.

Notice all these jobs that can heal but sadly don't get to because they lack one or two things ?

*DNC did have Haste samba (can be improved up to 10% instead of 15%) but the DNC's contribution to the party was sadly subpar to other jobs (in terms of merits, I know they rock at lower levels.)

**SMN does have Hastega but SMN lacks Cure IV (which helps a lot.) Imagine if they just gave SMN (the job) Cure I-IV as spells (hey in FF4 Rydia could cure [well when she was still young] and so could <insert other FF SMN characters in the series>.) Alternatively they could have made Light Spirit (and spirits in general) cost less MP and cast more often (Light Spirit rocked - It could cast Curaga IV on other parties in the alliance [something players can't do])

But yeah if GW2 allows each class to do whatever, that's good (though I know gameplay is not the same [no dedicated healer or DD? All classes trying to do all 3 roles])

[Dragir]

As for SC2 editor being the best game ever - I mean you can play Bejeweled in Starcraft. Can you play bejeweled while playing GW2? Pfft I thought so.

Activities – Games Within the Game

It isn't Bejeweled (well, maybe Bejeweled is in there somewhere), but... I rest my case.

[Elrina]

I want them to put chess in the game.

Don't get me wrong, I can play chess over MSN, or in a dozen other ways with people online if I want to.

But I just think it would be cool to sit down in-game and play with someone there on one of <insert as many different chessboard types as they felt like putting in> different boards (maybe even have to collect the different chess boards, and only have a standard board available default), have my character move the pieces, and just sit and chill with the game with someone in the virtual environment. Besides, then some of the boards could be battle chess and we could watch the pieces duke it out in front of us in a way we couldn't in real life. :3



>_>;



Edit: But yeah, this is exactly what it would have been like if SE had put Tetra Master into FFXI and enabled people to challenge/play with each other. Would have made card collecting an enormous sub-activity in the game itself, which would have been beyond awesome. (iirc, they once said the reason they didn't/couldn't was because of ye olde PS2 limitations).

Always thought it was an excellent idea to add to an MMO though, to put mini-games like this in. They probably don't take an enormous amount of time to design, it's easy and simple fun, and they can easily continue adding more to the game over time, including some which could include collectibles such as cards and chess boards scattered throughout the rest of the game.

[Purrrfect]

But I just think it would be cool to sit down in-game and play with someone there on one of <insert as many different chessboard types as they felt like putting in> different boards (maybe even have to collect the different chess boards, and only have a standard board available default), have my character move the pieces, and just sit and chill with the game with someone in the virtual environment. Besides, then some of the boards could be battle chess and we could watch the pieces duke it out in front of us in a way we couldn't in real life. :3

I approve of this addition.^^ Maybe a step further, there would be a set of game pieces of each race in gw2 that you have to find/quest for.