Games Guild Wars 2

[Soazak]

Can still do organized keep sieges or roams to capture the tents on the map I guess? Doesn't have to be all casual

Yea definately, I just think some people were expecting it to be roaming groups hitting other roaming groups, while this does happen it's more roaming zerg hits roaming zerg. There's still a lot of organisation to be done seige wise, it will just never be Agramon or anything.

What is the the PvE content like? Any fun dungeons or raids? Or is the focus only PvP?

And the no roles idea? hmmm

There are dungeons and high level PvE content, some of the end game events are raid-like, but they're also public. Think dragon raids in daoc rather than molten core in wow...

There are dugneons, but they don't start until level 35, after you've finished the dungeon you can also go back and do it in explorable mode, in which it's fairly different (perhaps a little like Scarlet Mon in WoW with different wings..)

There are roles, they're not so apparent in low level PvE, but in tournaments they become more so, you need support and control specialised classes, the roles are just differnet to other games (DPS, condition DPS, control, support etc).

As elementalist in WvW with my guild I found myself healing a fair bit, but they're on cooldowns of 10-20s so it's not something you can do constantly, support is done through a range of methods like protecting, peeling, shielding etc

 

[Chosen]

What is the the PvE content like? Any fun dungeons or raids? Or is the focus only PvP?

And the no roles idea? hmmm

I just quote Himse "I am actually enjoying PvE for once, what is wrong with me!?"

The PvE is something else, the dynamic events & the exploration through the landscape. There is countless of different events that you can do, and I have never spent more then 15-20minutes at one place. That means you never get bored by grinding the same monsters over and over again.

I also like the "checkpoints" that you have in this game, you discover points which you can teleport too. But you actually have to physically go there first to actiave it(There is many of them), which means to get them all you are forced to explore the entire game.(ArenaNet also stated that they will never implement flying mounts to this game, for the pure reason that people actually has to explore the game the normal way.)

The PvE system is also good in a way that actually rewards people for grouping up, both staying in the same group or just tagging along random people. By hitting another monster that another player is working on, you don't steal experience(like DAoC) and you get the same amount yourself. This way you wont encounter players yelling "F*** off this is my spot, I'm reporting you" etc. And the players are more friendly to eachother!

There is also a exp reward for ressurecting other players, which is quite high compared to what you get for killing a monster. So it never takes long before quite the few players rushes towards you just to get you back up on you're feets.

There is also suprinsingly few bugs in the PvE aspect of this game, even tho I have countered a couple of glitches(Once being stuck).

 

[svartalf]

But on the flip side, WvW is not 8v8 and likely never will be. A lot of ex-daoc players were expecting it to be just like RvR, and it is, but not the part of RvR that made daoc great for a lot of us. It's more like the pure keep seige side and the mile gate standoffs which is fun for casual players and the masses,

This actually sounds like my kind of thing. I've played RvR with about 40-80 people in voice comms, I think it was, and it's really impressive to see zergs responding. It takes a very bold, confident, flameproof leader to do it, though - ours kept getting banned for abusing people in chat/forums. He was well known for saying "push push push push push" as our zerg approached theirs, it worked brilliantly and we beat superior numbers many times.

but the more competitive side of pvp is in the structured mode which is objective based arenas, which isn't to everyones taste after experiences with other games 'battlegrounds'.

Meh.. could be good, depends how much it is dominated by premades or how much the objectives can be completed without combat. -Won a few Warhammer BGs by doing objectives while being creamed by enemeis. I read about the battlegrounds having catapults and suchlike, which might help to even the sides, perhaps?

HUGE discussion going on in #GuildWars2 on Quakenet about combat animations not synching up, cast time on melee abilities etc that mean the combat overall doesn't feel as fluid, responsive and polished as, for example, WoW's. In part I agree.

But I do think ANet will listen up and fix what is reasonable to change.

I don't know if they're reading Quakenet. Reddit seems to be their choice for feedback. http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2I think the animation issue plagued early Warhammer (but I didn't play, so I don't know) and many of the other games I've played. It makes a massive difference.

 

[svartalf]

I like the way this guy thinks: http://www.youtube.com/user/taugrimtaugrim

 

[Athan]

Meh.. could be good, depends how much it is dominated by premades or how much the objectives can be completed without combat. -Won a few Warhammer BGs by doing objectives while being creamed by enemeis. I read about the battlegrounds having catapults and suchlike, which might help to even the sides, perhaps?

Currently no pre-mades as such in sPvP. You join solo and even if you join the same server as a friend you may well be on opposite teams. You can use the scoreboard to switch. but only if doing so would make at most a 1 player difference in teams, i.e. if it was 5 vs 6 before and you swap from the 6 to the 5 to make it 6v5. There are lots of people, including me, asking them to add some form of 'join as group', even if it involves a per-player option to 'Join Group Games' so people can still avoid it if they choose to.

Instead you have to form a 5 man tournament team, which uses the same maps/concept, but puts you in a 16 team elimination tournament, so if you go all the way through, 4 games.

I don't know if they're reading Quakenet. Reddit seems to be their choice for feedback. http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2I think the animation issue plagued early Warhammer (but I didn't play, so I don't know) and many of the other games I've played. It makes a massive difference.

Yeah probably not the best place to discuss GW2 things and get noticed, just so happens to be where I hang out.

Oh and animation issues were evident in SWtOR on launch as well. In theory you should have been able to interrupt a channel/cast and do something else, but in practice the game would wait for the animation to finish before starting the animation, and actual effect, of the other ability. They did fix that within a month or two though.

 

[Soazak]

This actually sounds like my kind of thing. I've played RvR with about 40-80 people in voice comms, I think it was, and it's really impressive to see zergs responding. It takes a very bold, confident, flameproof leader to do it, though - ours kept getting banned for abusing people in chat/forums. He was well known for saying "push push push push push" as our zerg approached theirs, it worked brilliantly and we beat superior numbers many times.

Agree, our alliance is gearing up for this, some very big scandanavian guilds co-ordinating in our mumble server (1k slots but we have more members than that so might have to expand).

Meh.. could be good, depends how much it is dominated by premades or how much the objectives can be completed without combat. -Won a few Warhammer BGs by doing objectives while being creamed by enemeis. I read about the battlegrounds having catapults and suchlike, which might help to even the sides, perhaps?

They've done a good job of seperating premades and casuals tbh, if you use the hot-join server browser, it works like Counter Strike would, in that you just join a game and it randomly sorts teams. You can only join as a solo player; although friends can join your server through the friends list, the teams are random each round so you end up fighting against each other half the time. Sometimes guilds do get as many members as they can to flood one server, but the teams still balance out. It also match makes you with people of a similar glory level (kinda like cumulative account wide RPs) to prevent very new players from being put with very experienced.

To join as a group, you must use the Tournament browser, where it puts you against other pre made groups. These are ad-hoc tournaments so they're constantly running as long as there are other premade groups there. Also, it wasn't in beta, but they will also be adding a function to join a tournament as (example) a group of 3, and it will put you with a group of 2 to make the full 5man team.

At some point there will also be private servers so you can use your own settings.

Effectively, they've done it more like a FPS than a MMO when it comes to the BGs. You can hot-join the constantly running games as a solo, in which you're put on a random team, or you can do clan matches through the tournament system, but both systems are seperate to prevent premades from just stomping randoms (although you do get non voice-comm pugs joining the tournaments, but that can never really be balanced properly).

 

[slaughtererer]

i dont know if anyone here was in the stonemist siege on shiverpeaks late last night , but that was an epic defence , over an hour , maybe two lost track of time lol , holes all over the place enemies in lord room countless times , took me back a long ways to lord room defences in new fronteers , the lack of lag would have made it better , but still was great fun , unless u were on the german server ofc lol

 

[Fefner]

Magus Falls server wasn't on the list this time so we decided on Blacktide server and still didn't get to fight you guys on FSP. All in all a very nice weekend and lots of testing for final character choice. I was amazed how much i loved the seige part of the game, i hated and found it boring most of the time in doac but in gw2 it was fun. Had trebs, arrow buckets, catapults hitting us then our group flanked them then they flanked us then the other server came along for a massive 3 way battle with no lag at all, stuttered a bit but you'd expect that with all the fireworks going off. Two things only put a damper on things, the queues but they did say they had to reduce the cap as there was a nasty bug messing up their CPU or something and the mobs...they really do need to cut them down a lot more. Had a few group v group fights in the sticks ruined by mob interference but had some great fights with a guild tagged TT at the supply camps. This will be the longest 5 weeks ever!!

 

[Poag]

Well there are a few classes that can be specced heavily into healing. Water Mage or Staff guardian for example.

Also tho an engineer with Heal Pack, Elixir gun and some turrets puts out some respectable healing, so long as people run over the packs

There are some significant engine problems still in this BWE. At a guess I would say there are some wait cycles in the engine which wait a server response and that drags down the frame rate waiting for that thread to complete. For example in a nice empty area i'd get 102-120 fps, about 60% cpu load and 80% gpu load.

In a big WvW battle, it would drop to 20-25..not so unexpected youd say...but cpu and gpu load would also drop aswell. CPU down to about 40% and gpu down to 45%...which is highly unusual.

 

[Killgorde]

i dont know if anyone here was in the stonemist siege on shiverpeaks late last night , but that was an epic defence , over an hour , maybe two lost track of time lol , holes all over the place enemies in lord room countless times , took me back a long ways to lord room defences in new fronteers , the lack of lag would have made it better , but still was great fun , unless u were on the german server ofc lol

Was a blast. Battles were very fluid and TTK (other than treb) was fine. I think I was there about 4 hours.

One point everyone has to grasp is your self-heal is the biggie, rather than relying on support classes to prop you up. Feels odd to begin with, but with the flexibility each class has in skills and traits paths, Anet have done a very good job of breaking that Holy Trinity and making combat a lot more unpredictable...and fun.

<sighs>

It's sometimes difficult to adjust to not having Runoff healing your ass off when the red mist takes over...

 

[svartalf]

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BCNxPTgrIHQ

 

[Chosen]

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BCNxPTgrIHQ

So you decided to play yet Svart ?

 

[svartalf]

So you decided to play yet Svart ?

I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer I gave a few pages ago:

I'll be playing, but [irrelevant crap, nothing to see here, move along, move along.]

 

[svartalf]

Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2 skill points, traits, and you!
by Elisabeth Cardy on Jul 31st 2012 11:00AMFantasy, PvE, Opinion, Guild Wars 2, Flameseeker Chronicles, Guides0


There comes a time in every Guild Wars 2 adventurer's life when her progression begins to go through certain, well, changes. These changes begin when an adventurer reaches level 5, and they get even more pronounced when she hits level 11. It might feel confusing and embarrassing; suddenly, you've got red exclamation marks on your hero panel and a nearly uncontrollable urge to allocate your skill points. Your skill bar starts to fill out. It's OK. It's totally natural.

You'll have questions. Where do utility skills come from? Which skills do you take, and in what order? What if you give your first point to the wrong trait line?

Skill point acquisition and use

When your character hits level 5, and at every ding after that, you'll be rewarded with a skill point. You can also earn skill points by completing tasks in the open world. These tasks are marked on your map as little blue (are they teal?) chevrons that show as an outline when you have yet to complete them and are filled in upon completion (similar to the UI states of renown hearts and vistas). Skill challenges can be everything from drinking a particularly interesting beverage, communing with a place of power (like the sunken statues of the Temple of Ages), or defeating an NPC (there are a lot of those types). You can take part in the event that pops up for Battling an NPC multiple times or commune with a place of power 'til you're blue in the face, but you'll only be given a skill point on your first success.

Earning a skill point either by leveling or task-completion will make a little red circle with an exclamation point appear over the hero panel icon in the upper right of your UI. A matching image will show up on your traits and skills tab when your hero panel is open.

When you open that traits and skills tab, you'll see a list of how many unspent trait and skill points you have. There are three viewing choices: weapon skills (which shows a complete list of weapon skills available to your profession and which ones you have and have not unlocked), utility skills (same thing as before, only with utility skills instead of weapon-based ones), and traits (which we'll get to in a short while). Our interest now lies in the utility skills tab.

Skills in this tab are sorted by what they slot into. You've got three types of slots to manage in this window: your heal slot, your three utility slots, and your elite. Just because you can see all the skills and slots doesn't mean you can make use of them all yet. You unlock skills with skill points, and you unlock the slots by leveling. Your healing skill has been unlocked since you made your character. At levels 5, 10, and 20, you unlock the utility slots, and you'll be able to start using elites at level 30. Just because you can't use skills yet doesn't mean you can't unlock them, though. Go ahead and unlock as many skills as you have points for.

You'll notice that the utility skills are sorted into three tiers. This has nothing to do with what slot they go into; this is about the order in which you unlock skills. You'll have to unlock five of the first-tier skills before you can move onto the second tier and five tier-two skills before you can move onto the last group. Elite skills are similarly arranged, although they have only two tiers and there is a lower threshold for advancing. There are multiple healing skills to be unlocked, but those are not tiered.

Each skill has a little number representing how many skill points are required to unlock it, and skills on the same tier have a similar cost. Just click on the skill, click again to confirm, and whammo! you've bought yourself a skill.

To put a skill in an unlocked slot (or to switch out your healing skill) click on the little arrow at the base of the skill slot either in your window or on the skillbar proper (this works only when you're out of combat).

Traits

Trait points are unlocked by leveling and only by leveling (in PvE and WvW; in structured PvP you will have access to max trait points and all of your slot skills will be available). You'll get one at level 11 and one every level after that until you hit the max of 70 when you're level 80.

To allocate trait points, you'll want to be in the trait, rather than slot skill, portion of your hero panel. You'll see a number (five, specifically) of rows representing slottable trait lines. There's a big white number at the beginning of each row. If this is your first time distributing trait points, all those numbers will be zero, as they represent how many points you've invested in a given trait line.

Next to the big number will be two small symbols and numbers. These represent the boosts and bonuses that a specific trait line is giving to certain stats. You can hover over the symbols to figure out what it is a specific trait line is affecting. As an example, the Warrior's trait line of Discipline directly affects critical damage and burst skill (the Warrior's profession-unique mechanic) damage.

You can invest up to 30 points in a line, and every five points invested nets you a trait perk. The minor traits at 5, 15, and 25 points are predetermined (you can hover over their symbols to see what they are) while the major traits at 10, 20, and 30 can be selected from a table. There are 12 traits in total for each line, and you'll be able to access six, then 10, then all 12 of them as you unlock the three major traits.

If you make a mistake or want to open up the next tier of trait progression (up to 10 points is considered Adept, 11-20 is Master, and 21-30 is Grandmaster), you'll have to visit a profession trainer, often found in and around big cities, to buy a training manual of the appropriate level.

Making the numbers work for you

Since everyone playing a member of any given profession has a prescribed set of weapons (and therefore weapon skills) available to him, utility skills and traits are where the fine-tuning of your character really comes into play. Do you want to be more of a generalist, able to handle pretty much anything that comes your way but maybe without a single, shining strength? As a Warrior, do you want to leap quickly around the battlefield, building up rage and dealing out damage mercilessly, leaving others to worry about silly things like safety and health? Or are you more of the group support type who wants to be able to bring friends safely through the battle?

The good news is you don't have to wait until the game is live to at least think about what you want to do with a character. Information is your friend! Read up about the trait lines and how they vary from profession to profession. Figure out what trait perks suit you and which ones, well, don't. Maybe your Guardian is all about the mace and shield, with a little staff action thrown in for good measure. The Valor trait line has some possibilities to augment your mace and shield play, whereas you might find yourself a little light on options with the Zeal line, which has more choices for greatsword, focus, and torch.

If you're big into number crunching or just want to toy around with how things might work out and can't wait to be in a PvP lobby to see how the numbers stack up, there are loads of fan-built calculators out there for you to start playing around with.

You know the basics of how stuff works now, and you've got everything you need to start tinkering with build ideas. Go and do amazing things, adventurer!

And other stuff

It's not quite long enough for four weeks to be accurate, but neither is it close enough for three weeks to suit, and I'm not one for half measures. So let me say: soon.

Do you remember hearing the announcement of Guild Wars 2 5 years ago? You do? Want to write about it? GuildMag is hosting a blog carnival about that very topic and is looking for submissions. Maybe give it a shot if that's your sort of thing.

Elisabeth Cardy is a longtime Guild Wars player, a personal friend of Rytlock Brimstone, and the writer of Flameseeker Chronicles here at Massively. The column updates on Tuesdays and keeps a close eye on Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, and anything bridging the two. Email Elisabeth at elisabeth@massively.com.



Tags: anet, arenanet, fantasy, featured, flameseeker-chronicles, guide, guild-wars, guild-wars-2, gw, gw1, gw2, gw2-primer, introduction, ncsoft, opinion, primer, skill-guide, skill-points, skills, skills-and-traits, trait-guide, traits, traits-and-skills, utility-skills

 

[Athan]

ANet have launched a shinier web page for GW2: https://www.guildwars2.com/en-gb/

It includes a countdown timer to when Headstart access begins. Note that this is currently only correct if your local system time is in USA Western/Pacific. It's not properly taking timezones into account. Given the time to go it currently shows would put the start at 25th August 12:00 UK time for me, that means it's actually 8 hours later than that, so mid-day Pacific time.

Source is the official GW2 twitter: https://twitter.com/guildwars2 (see specifically: https://twitter.com/GuildWars2/status/230495838642794496 https://twitter.com/GuildWars2/status/230504308255358976 https://twitter.com/GuildWars2/status/230506215854202881 and https://twitter.com/GuildWars2/status/230507376023830529 )

 

[Moriath]

where are you guys buying it from for head start. In the UK

 

[Athan]

I caved/played safe and simply bought off the actual GW2 site way back in April. It seemed the safest route as I couldn't be 100% sure anywhere else offering pre-purchase actually still had stock. Yes, this means I paid the full £49.99 for the standard Digital edition.

 

[Madmaxx]

Yeah I pre-ordered it quite a while ago too now from the official GW2 site, quite a few places like tesco and sainsburys have had it for 29.99 or £26.99 before though.

 

[Athan]

Note there's since been another official tweet:

https://twitter.com/GuildWars2/status/230717628174446592

Guild Wars 2 ‏@GuildWars2
Those of you looking forward to headstart, it will begin on August 25 at 00:00 PACIFIC Time. ~RB2 #GW2

 

[Madmaxx]

Aug 2 Stress Test...

We will be conducting a stress test on Thursday, August 2 from 12:00 Noon PACIFIC Time to 4:00 PM PACIFIC Time.​

​

Unlike previous stress tests, we will be actively working on the game during the event, so you might experience connectivity problems or discover features that are not working as designed. Any issues you experience are a result of the rigorous conditions of the stress test, and are in no way representative of the state of the game at launch. By participating in this stress test, you’re helping us make Guild Wars 2 a better game. Thanks for your cooperation—we’ll see you in-game! ~RB2​

 

[svartalf]

More WvWvW gumph. Nothing new.
http://cdn.static.viddler.com/flash/as3/full-publisher.swf?ref=&key=afc14982

 

[Athan]

Aye, that's more them hoping it'll get seen by people who'd not yet had much interest in GW2/WvW.

 

[Madmaxx]

Sorry but it had to be done I tried the OP condition build that someone posted on youtube on bwe3 on this stress test, seems it wasnt nerfed

EDIT: Even though gw2 was brighter fraps still recorded with low gamma still in 1080p though.


View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW3YMRvYPgY&feature=g-upl

 

[Athan]

EDIT: Even though gw2 was brighter fraps still recorded with low gamma still in 1080p though.

I know at least one other person had this problem during the stress test as well. I'm wondering if this is specific to either ATI or Nvidia cards (or versions of drivers), what were you running ?

 

[Madmaxx]

ATI HD5870

but quite a few ppl in the guild and some on region chat had same problem, Changing the Resolution option to Full windowed mode instead of 1600 x 900 or 1980 x 1080 solved it real quick for me no problems. I think they turned down all the graphics to minimum afaik.

 

[Madmaxx]

where are you guys buying it from for head start. In the UK

Back on at sainsburys, £29.99

http://www.sainsburysentertainment....med=aff&product=E11088992&esrc=cj&AID=1546795

 

[Athan]

I see no mention on there of 'headstart' or 'pre-purchase', it looks to be only a pre-order for the 28th.

 

[svartalf]

http://digitalgaudium.com/?p=10924

[..]
We Talk to ArenaNet About Professor Yakkington, Mobile App Development Progress, Lore and Structured PvP in Guild Wars 2




Ree Soesbee, Jeff Grubb, Jon Peters and Matt Wuerffel from ArenaNet were nice enough to set aside some time to answer our questions below, we thank all of them for their time and effort.

Q: I really like design of the Asura, from their character animations to their architecture. What were the primary inspirations when you were creating the race for the Eye of the North expansion and in what ways did you expand on that race’s attributes for Guild Wars 2?

A: The Asura were originally conceived as a highly magical race, and the nature of that magical ability quickly took a turn towards the idea of a race of mad wizards with teleportation gates, golems, and floating citadels. They have been small races of tinkerers before, but the big thing with the asura was that their creations actually worked.

In Eye of the North, the Asura had arrived on the surface, chased there by the champion of an Elder Dragon. In the 250 years since, they have settled in. The biggest example of that is Rata Sum, their main city, where they have levitated a huge cube of stone into the air and have carved it out into their own magical citadel.

Q: MMOs are constantly evolving and changing in many ways, will there ever be events that occur that affect everyone in Guild Wars 2? e.g: An Elder Dragon is killed and stays dead permanently or a notable city is destroyed.

A: All events affect everyone in the game; those who are in the map with the event have the option of joining in, or not, but the event plays out around them within the shared world. For the most part, those events are cyclical, returning when a certain set of conditions has been met, to allow Player Characters to play through the events of the chain once more.

Story dungeons, on the other hand, are designed to be played through only once (although a player may choose to do so multiple times). When a player has completed the story version of the dungeon, those events are considered to have played out for that Player Character.In the world, some events (typically holiday ones) will come and go, playing out temporarily and possibly leaving permanent changes to the world. We’ll have to leave that up to the Live team!



Q: I really enjoyed exploring the continents of Cantha and Elona in the original Guild Wars. It’s been 250 years since the original game, have any elements of those cultures bled over into Tyria in Guild Wars 2?

A: Elements of those cultures have absolutely made their way into Guild Wars 2. The city of Divinity’s Reach has notable sections that are shaped by Elonan and Canthan culture; some naming practices, legends, and the histories of great heroes all still exist within GW2. If you choose to play a human, you can pick racial features and skin tones suitable for a character with those backgrounds, and in some of the story chains, you have the option to identify yourself as a descendant of one of those great nations.

Q: My friend and I developed a love for Professor Yakkington while trying to fill out our Hall of Monuments in the original Guild Wars. So I really want to know if Professor Yakkington is immortal and will he be present in Guild Wars 2?

A: Sadly, no. Professor Yakkington has gone to the wide fields and joyful plains of the Mists. But he hasn’t been forgotten! If you visit the Ascalonian fortress of Ebonhawke, you will find a memorial to him — and to Nicholas, who loved him so well. Much like you, we never forget our loyal and beloved friends.



Q: I was pretty excited about the announcement of the Mobile and Web Apps, from the blog post it seemed like a much more complex project than your traditional MMO Companion App. Will the Apps be ready for launch day?

A: For launch we won’t have any GW2 apps available for use for players. However, soon after launch we’ll be launching a robust app development program in conjunction with our community that should allow for the development of some truly spectacular GW2 app and website development. We’ll discuss this more post ship, right now we’re focused on making the release of the game the greatest it can be.











Q: Have you considered adding more weapons for classes down the road or changing the weapon skills they have?

A: We have definitely talked about new weapons for the professions. However, it isn’t something we take lightly because once a weapon is introduced it needs to compete with what is already out there for that profession, including not just how effective it is, but what roles it fulfills. Weapons are the heart of your character’s tool set or “build,” they really set the tone for how your character will play so it is important that we get them right. I don’t think we would consider changing skills on a specific weapon unless they were not working in any parts of the game.

Q: Some players have complained about being underleveled in the early zones of the game, have you balanced the game in any way or added any tooltips that will guide players in the right direction?

This is definitely something that we’ve looked at very carefully, and we’ll continue to monitor long term. We’ve made a couple major changes to address some of these concerns.

First, we overhauled the hint system, adding a panel that shows you the full text of all the hints in the game. You can track your progress in each category, and you can access this panel at any time to review hints that you might have missed in the heat of battle. There are even achievement points for getting every hint.

Second, we made some significant changes to the way that our low level areas play to make sure that the challenges you face are level-appropriate. Part of this update was on the code and mechanics end, by changing the way that our content scales. We also went into each start zone and looked at where players were congregating and how we could make changes to direct players a little more. After analyzing the maps and feedback, we added a bunch of new content to each starter zone to help address issues with flow and scaling.

Those are just two of the ways that we’ve balanced the early game and guide players, but there’s always room to improve. We’ll continue to iterate and explore new ways to provide an awesome experience for our players.





Q: Unexpectedly I have found that Structured PvP is my favourite part of Guild Wars 2, and will probably dedicate a large amount of my playing time to it. What were your main goals that you had when you were working on Structured PvP and what are some of the most useful pieces of feedback you have received?

A: We had a lot of different goals with our structured PvP, but the most important ones were to make it accessible and fun, skill-based to keep players playing, and to support it well (a goal which we look forward to achieving). We worked hard to build a combat system that had the depth that players expected from an MMO, but had more of the action and strategy that we think has been lacking. I think the most important feedback we receive in general is about usability. Structured PvP is no exception. At each beta event, players wanted to be able to play more with their friends. This is an extremely important aspect of any online game, so we worked hard to make changes to the system to account for this feedback. From BWE1 to BWE2 we added tournaments so players could take organized five-person teams and compete with other teams. We also added the ability to follow your friends from your contacts list into games, as well as inviting party members to follow you into a game through chat links.

From BWE2 to BWE3 we allowed users to queue into tournaments with partial rosters so that 5 players was not a requirement for joining with your friends. Speaking of supporting the game, there are more social features we have talked about for PvP that we will continue to work on. From allowing players to “rent” servers, to spectating games, and other community features we will continue to work towards making Guild Wars 2 structured PvP a fully fledged gaming experience.



Q: Are you working on more Structured PvP modes or do you feel that the current mode is all that is needed? Do you envision that game modes as complex as what we saw in Heroes Ascent to make a return?

A: Throughout the development process, we worked on almost 10 different game modes including Capture the Flag, Deathmatch, and a two-track Golem map where teams tried to push their own Golem to the finish line. Each of these modes had some merits, but ultimately Conquest was far and away the most fun mode in our internal tests. At some point we realized that the best thing to do was to fully support this mode, from polishing the map creation pipeline, to the score UI, we put all of our effort into this game mode. This was really the internal turning point for structured PvP that started us down the path to the enjoyable game that we have now, so we will continue to focus on making this mode as fun as it can be. That being said, we would like to introduce new game types at some point, however we feel that simple objective based modes that encourage positioning, a healthy amount of group fights, as well as force interesting tactical team splits are the key to making successful games types for our game.



Q: As there are far less skills in Guild Wars 2 compared to Guild Wars 1, I feel like the impact of changing the effects or properties of one GW2 skill is much larger than changing a GW1 skill. Do you feel it is easier or harder to balance the game this time around?

A: I think the number of skills is a bit of an oversimplification. There are actually almost 1000 player skills in Guild Wars 2, but we have built a very layered infrastructure that makes balance a lot easier. In fact, changing a single GW2 skill has much less impact because of all of these layers. We have worked within this system for a while to build a strong baseline of balance. How this works is that while there are many skills, a specific skill isn’t competing with all of them. For instance any given heal skill must find a place of balance within the subset of <30 heal skills. A given weapon skill must be useful on that weapon, but the balance of the game rarely depends on that skill because it exists within the rest of the skills on that weapon. All of these things give us a good understanding of the context in which a skill will be used.


Guild Wars 2 is set for release on the 28th of August, 2012 (25th for those with the 3-day headstart) on the PC (Windows only for now folks). Continue to check out Digital Gaudium throughout the month as we drip-feed you more Guild Wars 2 content to keep you going till release.

Posted by Andrew

 

[Jupitus]

I've kinda decided I'm going to give this a go... anyone help me out with a preview access?

 

[Chosen]

Servers up!