Guild Wars 2

[No1newts]

But guild wars 2 is encouraging the importance of servers again with WvW. How are server transfers going to work though with WvW that is my only concern. Surely people will swap to the server which dominates in WvW.

Didn't think of that. Everyone piling onto the "winner" server to get more wins, though this will dilute the server and people will move on, probable be like a round about with a few people sticking regardless.

I'd rather take a great group to the bottom ranked server and spsnk the other bad servers for easy wins

That's another point, they have said you win your server gets a benefit. What's to stop everyone jumping on the winning server for the benefits and the losers being ghost towns?

 

[BlastRadius]

Just watched the latest BlueXephos?? youtube vid on necros. Damn I need this game so much, I remember GW1 basically being the game that sucked me into PC gaming and I want GW2 to save me from retiring to my Xbox.

 

[Deleted User 234324]

But guild wars 2 is encouraging the importance of servers again with WvW. How are server transfers going to work though with WvW that is my only concern. Surely people will swap to the server which dominates in WvW.

They have already covered that afaik, server transfers will be limited and cost money and they are also considering the possibility of not allowing you to gain WvW bonus's for a while after transfering.

 

[Monkeymatt]

Don't think you totally understand the system Paddy.

Just because there is no holy trinity, doesn't mean everybody is just a DPS with a self-heal.. The idea is that ALL classes can fill ALL roles, so you might be dps'ing, your group being slaughtered so you switch weapon and help heal. Then if your tank dies you can switch again and tank.

"I'd hazard to say that there won't be a bigger difference in playing two of the polar-opposite professions in GW2 - say, a warrior and a mesmer" After seeing videos showing Mesmers and Warriors, I can say this appears to be extremely inaccurate. The Mesmer seems to rely a lot on creating weaker versions of itself whereas the Warrior does nothing like that..

 

[thezakarum]

They have already covered that afaik, server transfers will be limited and cost money and they are also considering the possibility of not allowing you to gain WvW bonus's for a while after transfering.

It won't cost any real life money, but it will probably cost a little bit of gold.

This is from the guild wars 2 website;

"Every account has a home server where your characters are created. You can only fight for your home world in WvW. You can visit other servers, and while you are visiting, you still get the world bonus from your home world instead of the bonus for the world you are visiting. If you switch your home server, you lose the bonus from your previous home world and are not eligible for the bonus for your new server at least until the beginning of the next battle for the Mists. We may extend this disqualification into the next match or possibly even longer to discourage people from switching servers right before a battle ends in order to get an awesome bonus."

 

[PaddyMC89]

Don't think you totally understand the system Paddy.

Just because there is no holy trinity, doesn't mean everybody is just a DPS with a self-heal.. The idea is that ALL classes can fill ALL roles, so you might be dps'ing, your group being slaughtered so you switch weapon and help heal. Then if your tank dies you can switch again and tank.

"I'd hazard to say that there won't be a bigger difference in playing two of the polar-opposite professions in GW2 - say, a warrior and a mesmer" After seeing videos showing Mesmers and Warriors, I can say this appears to be extremely inaccurate. The Mesmer seems to rely a lot on creating weaker versions of itself whereas the Warrior does nothing like that..

I think I do, actually.

My point is that the "jack-of-all-trades", "switch roles on the fly" model means there can't realistically be a way you can play as specialised a style as a main tank or a main healer in other MMOs. I didn't say it was entirely bad - no idea how people have read into my post as being anti-GW2 - but I simply cannot see how it can be argued that the definitions of the three roles haven't been narrowed to incorporate them into something each profession can use at any given time.

I know exactly how a Mesmer plays, and how a Warrior plays. At the end of the day, if your role is to be the one beating down on the enemy, you are playing similarly to anybody else that is. Like I could say there's an argument for a mage and a rogue in WoW requiring a similar style to play once you strip them down to their bare-bones.

With the trinity you can absolutely, 100% guarantee that the experience will be different depending on which one you play. "A bit of this and a bit of that" is appealing, especially if you aren't somebody that wants to have multiple characters, but I stand by my point that the range between playstyles of the most contrasting professions in this game can't feasibly be as wide as it is between the two most differing classes in a game that uses the trinity.

All I'm doing is making a case for the holy trinity. People seem to lauding its abolition as one of the main reasons GW2 will succeed, but I say the trinity is the reason other games have succeeded and shouldn't be scoffed at.

 

[m4rk84]

I think I do, actually.

My point is that the "jack-of-all-trades", "switch roles on the fly" model means there can't realistically be a way you can play as specialised a style as a main tank or a main healer in other MMOs. I didn't say it was entirely bad - no idea how people have read into my post as being anti-GW2 - but I simply cannot see how it can be argued that the definitions of the three roles haven't been narrowed to incorporate them into something each profession can use at any given time.

I know exactly how a Mesmer plays, and how a Warrior plays. At the end of the day, if your role is to be the one beating down on the enemy, you are playing similarly to anybody else that is. Like I could say there's an argument for a mage and a rogue in WoW requiring a similar style to play once you strip them down to their bare-bones.

With the trinity you can absolutely, 100% guarantee that the experience will be different depending on which one you play. "A bit of this and a bit of that" is appealing, especially if you aren't somebody that wants to have multiple characters, but I stand by my point that the range between playstyles of the most contrasting professions in this game can't feasibly be as wide as it is between the two most differing classes in a game that uses the trinity.

All I'm doing is making a case for the holy trinity. People seem to lauding its abolition as one of the main reasons GW2 will succeed, but I say the trinity is the reason other games have succeeded and shouldn't be scoffed at.

I think the reality is we will have to see how it plays out. I'm not as firmly in the same camp as everyone else who believes it's an amazing thing.

However one thing to remember is why this will supposedly work, and that is because of the weapon switching which changes your skills to fulfil your role, this mechanic doesn't exist in any other game so its hard to tell how well this will work.

So you wont be the "jack of all trades" because switching your weapon effectively means you go from being the master of one roll to the master of another.

 

[Tenzo]

I think the reality is we will have to see how it plays out. I'm not as firmly in the same camp as everyone else who believes it's an amazing thing.

However one thing to remember is why this will supposedly work, and that is because of the weapon switching which changes your skills to fulfil your role, this mechanic doesn't exist in any other game so its hard to tell how well this will work.

So you wont be the "jack of all trades" because switching your weapon effectively means you go from being the master of one roll to the master of another.

Sounds like an interesting concept and if I understand it correctly, it is almost like a talent respec? A Paladin in wow is a good example, it can fulfill all roles, effectively the switch of a button - the difference being that in GW2, you do not need to carry 3 sets of gear to achieve the swtich completely?

So, while not reading up fully, GW2 has not gotten rid of the trinity system, just found a way to circumvent the restrictions that it can cause? That to me, is a very positive thing.

To be revolutionary would be to find a replacement to the trinity concept in it's entirety - is that even possible?

 

[arknor]

is guild wars 2 even going to have different servers?

in guild wars one everyone was in the same server but split over different instances

 

[bhavv]

You can still heal and tank in GW2, its just that every character is able to fulfil those roles, so you dont have to look for specific classes only to fill your group, you can play with anyone.

is guild wars 2 even going to have different servers?

in guild wars one everyone was in the same server but split over different instances

OFC it is, or else how would WvWvW work if there is only one world?

 

[m4rk84]

Sounds like an interesting concept and if I understand it correctly, it is almost like a talent respec? A Paladin in wow is a good example, it can fulfill all roles, effectively the switch of a button - the difference being that in GW2, you do not need to carry 3 sets of gear to achieve the swtich completely?

So, while not reading up fully, GW2 has not gotten rid of the trinity system, just found a way to circumvent the restrictions that it can cause? That to me, is a very positive thing.

To be revolutionary would be to find a replacement to the trinity concept in it's entirety - is that even possible?

Its actually trying to redefine the trinity, it's kind of hard for me to explain the roles of the game but I believe they describe them as "Control, Support and Damage".

So weapon switching changes you between these very distinct rolls rather then the stereotypical Tank/Heal/DPS, it's also worth noting that all the roles deal damage, you weave in your control/support/damage between your core attack abilities. Theres no stand still and only heal here.

Control is abilities that actively CC mobs/bosses and I gather CC is much more prevalent in this game even on bosses and it's balanced around them, in other games they just tend to make them "immune".

Support is a light sprinkle of healing abilities as well as various buffs for your allies such as shields/speed buffs/dmg buffs the usual. What's very important to note in this game is that allies in this game are not even target-able. That means that every single support spell in the game is actually cast on the floor in a small aoe type ability. This is because they want to completely lose the staring at health bars style of play.

Tanking is where this becomes interesting, if I understand the concept correctly tanking is done on the fly by the whole group. That's right there's no active tanking. Agro isn't the traditional number formula where the mob kinda hits the tank unless the damage dealers don't watch their threat meter. Agro instead is ran by a combination of proximity to the boss plus some other unknown factors, the result of this is that players effectively take turns getting closest to the boss in order to "tank". However tanking seems to be much different and it appears to come down more to how well you can actively dodge the abilities of the mob/boss, this is important as you can only dodge for so long because you have a traditional style energy bar that goes down with each roll/dodge out of the way of abilities. All classes have this bar.

So your right in that changing weapons is kind of a respec, however it's very different in that you can do this on the fly. You can change your weapon in combat and this is very important to actively switch rolls while you play.

I'm not 100% sold, however I do have to say ArenaNet seem to be very impressive in everything I have seen from them thus far regarding GW2 I'm gonna be very very surprised if they have got it wrong.

 

[bhavv]

Yea CC is very important in GW and comes in lots of forms, such as knockdowns, blind, weakness, slower movement / attack rate, and also not to forget protection type roles with damage reduction.

One very unique feature with the first game was how equally important protection and damage mitigation was to simply pushing red bars up. If you tried to play many of the elite areas on hard mode with nothing but heals for support, you would get squished in no time.

Most other games only revolve around 'red bar up' healing mechanics, with no where near as much protection and shutdown roles as GW has.

In fact one of the best things I loved about the first game was that my elementalist could play the roles of damage, tank, healer, protection or shutdown. Due to how underwhelming elemental damage was in hard mode, I turned to playing protection and healing roles and thoroughly enjoyed being able to swap my build to whatever was needed in the group. Monks were always so rare to find, even while I was in an active end game / HM guild I would often play an E/Rt restoration healer, or E/Mo protter so that the group was filled and ready to play a lot quicker than having to wait for a healer.

It was also surprising that as time went by, Necromancers and Elementalists became the primary choice for healer and protection roles over monks due to their vastly higher energy pools, while player monks were better off using the smiting elite ray of judgement as it did far higher damage than elemental nukes due to being armor ignoring.

GW1 was a rather big balancing failure - too many classes, skills, and cross profession combinations made it far more difficult to keep everything balanced compared to other games. This is why I believe that GW2 is having far fewer skills, no more secondary professions, and 5 locked skills based on weapon choice because this is far easier to balance than GW1 was.

Just have a look through these Elementalist traits for GW2:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_elementalist_traits

Fire - Full AoE Nukage and Burning
Air - High Single target spike damage, speed, plus CCs in the forms of knockdowns and conditions
Earth - Tanking, CC and condition focused and damage
Water - Healing, buffing, survivability and damage

I would assume that similarly to the first game, earth and water would do less damage than air + fire, each role being situational and preferable based on what area you are playing and what your group requires.

Another great thing about GW / GW2 is that you can respec anytime with no cost or cooldown attached to respeccing like most other games have. If you somehow build your character wrong, or want to play a different way, you can do that by pressing a few buttons, no need to start over again or make a new character, one character of each profession will always be able to play any role that profession offers, you dont need to have any specific gear either.

 

[Tenzo]

Thanks m4rk84, that's some great info. I particularly like the "aoe" idea, as health bar watching is kind of painful.

I've tried to avoid reading too much about it, especially after my massive overexcitement and subsequent disappointment with swtor.

Applied for beta, so I'll try it and see how things pan out

 

[No1newts]

Its actually trying to redefine the trinity, it's kind of hard for me to explain the roles of the game but I believe they describe them as "Control, Support and Damage".

So weapon switching changes you between these very distinct rolls rather then the stereotypical Tank/Heal/DPS, it's also worth noting that all the roles deal damage, you weave in your control/support/damage between your core attack abilities. Theres no stand still and only heal here.

Control is abilities that actively CC mobs/bosses and I gather CC is much more prevalent in this game even on bosses and it's balanced around them, in other games they just tend to make them "immune".

Support is a light sprinkle of healing abilities as well as various buffs for your allies such as shields/speed buffs/dmg buffs the usual. What's very important to note in this game is that allies in this game are not even target-able. That means that every single support spell in the game is actually cast on the floor in a small aoe type ability. This is because they want to completely lose the staring at health bars style of play.

Tanking is where this becomes interesting, if I understand the concept correctly tanking is done on the fly by the whole group. That's right there's no active tanking. Agro isn't the traditional number formula where the mob kinda hits the tank unless the damage dealers don't watch their threat meter. Agro instead is ran by a combination of proximity to the boss plus some other unknown factors, the result of this is that players effectively take turns getting closest to the boss in order to "tank". However tanking seems to be much different and it appears to come down more to how well you can actively dodge the abilities of the mob/boss, this is important as you can only dodge for so long because you have a traditional style energy bar that goes down with each roll/dodge out of the way of abilities. All classes have this bar.

So your right in that changing weapons is kind of a respec, however it's very different in that you can do this on the fly. You can change your weapon in combat and this is very important to actively switch rolls while you play.

I'm not 100% sold, however I do have to say ArenaNet seem to be very impressive in everything I have seen from them thus far regarding GW2 I'm gonna be very very surprised if they have got it wrong.

Sounds great but would be interesting to see how it plays out in practice

You are (once again) relying on everyone else doing their part...

... Which once again makes me think that every event out in the world is going to be a pointless damage race with no real mechanics to the fights. Otherwise if something takes any form of co-ordination or teamwork your game experience can essentially be wrecked by the rest of the people in your party not wanting to tank or heal and you die because of this.

GW2 seems to be either;

A) Taking a huge leap of faith in the ability and decency of the common MMO player to get along, help each other out and generally work together really well (GULP!)

B) Dumbing down the mechanics in every single thing in the open so that you can do anything you want by slapping your hand on the key board whilst browsing other webpages. (GULP!0

This games sounds so great and interesting and I am just worried it will be too easy or wrecked by the normal horrible MMO communities of today. There is of course the chance that the fights will be difficult and everyone will be great and work together fantastically in immeasurably challenging content but we all know the likelihood of that

I actually really hope I get into beta on this game becasue I can see it being an amzing game which becomes the best MMO by a mile or nose dives straight into concrete more spectacularly than any other MMO before it I would rather find out and save myself £40 if it will be the second!

 

[bhavv]

A) Taking a huge leap of faith in the ability and decency of the common MMO player to get along, help each other out and generally work together really well (GULP!)

But this wont be anywhere near as bad as GW1 was because everyone has 5 fixed skills on their skill bar which should always be useful to have in a group. No more useless mending warriors, firestorm monks, or terribly specced healers will be around as they were in the first game

I actually tried random blind skill bars several times in random arenas in GW1, just close my eyes, move my mouse around and pick whatever skills it lands on

The ability to completely gimp yourself on useless skills was too great in GW1, it wont be that way in GW2.

 

[PaddyMC89]

I think the reality is we will have to see how it plays out. I'm not as firmly in the same camp as everyone else who believes it's an amazing thing.

Of course, I'm not criticising Guild Wars 2 here - innovation is the only way the genre will progress and nobody wants another 7 or 8 years of games trying to copy World of Warcraft. I'm just criticising the attitude being taken that this particular change is, without any shadow of a doubt, better than what came before and will put the old model completely to shame.

 

[Evilsod]

But this wont be anywhere near as bad as GW1 was because everyone has 5 fixed skills on their skill bar which should always be useful to have in a group. No more useless mending warriors, firestorm monks, or terribly specced healers will be around as they were in the first game

But you can't tell me they didn't make for some hilarious missions if you weren't playing it to complete it yourself.

At any rate. Who is to say the skills available will be good in all situations? It just seems like a massive dumbing down of GWs system. I can't claim to have read that much on it and obviously I've not experienced it first hand but to me it sounds like a huge step backwards.

 

[bhavv]

Well no more mending hammer monks or firestorm warriors is a huge step up from the first game

The number of skills in the first game was pointless when 90% of them were crap and never used.

 

[ChrisJSY]

GW2 seems to be either;

A) Taking a huge leap of faith in the ability and decency of the common MMO player to get along, help each other out and generally work together really well (GULP!)

B) Dumbing down the mechanics in every single thing in the open so that you can do anything you want by slapping your hand on the key board whilst browsing other webpages. (GULP!0

A: No different from any cooperative game in existance, except rather than relying on what class AND skill of the person you're with, it's more the person.

Removing the need for the most part, certain classes, a healer that isn't online, a tank that isn't online. It's the same requirement, with the lack of one condition which makes it better.

B: I'll admit, you have a point, a lot of the reviewers are bad players and some of them are average; most aren't attentive to their skills, what they do, when they get them/unlock them, their surroundings..nothing.

Watched a german review, in the entire 32 minutes he used his second ability in the fire and water stance once. ONCE . He just auto attacked his way through everything, said ability would do 10x the damage of auto attack, but nope he's content to just sit there and cast 10 attacks rather than 1.

That's not to say it won't get harder later!

Yogscast, funny guys, I like them and they do play well but they often forget to dodge, they unlock abilities and sometimes it takes them ages to realise they just unlocked it, they always split up from each other (which leads to funny outcomes!) and never focus, rely heavily on auto attacks.

But, knowing the skills of my friends and I we'll be taking on higher level content as soon as we can to make it a challenge, as equal level starter area mobs (1-15) are too easy. Something like +2/+3 max it seems you can do before damage turns into low numbers.

In fact, a shocking amount of people really do seem to like sitting there with 1 spamming away, as an MMO vet we know we'll have to deal with these in large events, dungeons, pvp... give them an inch and they'll take a mile, in terms of being able to play and do hardly anything.

 

[Evilsod]

Well no more mending hammer monks or firestorm warriors is a huge step up from the first game

The number of skills in the first game was pointless when 90% of them were crap and never used.

Well yes it did go so far that some of the skills were obsolete or just completely unusable or just outright useless. But this just seems to be the exact opposite.