Screw mana, you don't need it. You just think you do because that's what most games have had until now, but Anet doesn't want to make another game that's just like all the others. That's what SWTOR/Rift/WoW/99% of everything that came out in the last 10 years, is for.
When I first played WAR I was dumbstruck by how mana-less combat system works perfectly and so much better than that stupid one-dimensional blue bar thing. Frankly, after WAR I was completely unable to go back to mana-based RPGs.
I was pretty disappointed when ANet first announced that they will use "energy" as a long-term resource and was exhilirated when they finally ditched it. That blue bar is just a useless throwback to the EQ days which actually adds nothing to the game.
energy is good because it prevents mindless spamming of abilities, and it makes combat more interesting than just deducting hitpoints from each other and using skills on cooldown refresh. intelligent use of abilities should be a feature of combat.
If you use skills on cooldown refresh, you're doing it wrong. You're completely ignoring the fact that cooldowns (and combat system as a whole) are balanced around opportunity cost, not resources. In other words, the whole depth is still there, but instead of thinking how to keep your bar blue you have to think when to use your skills for greatest effect. That's not dumbing down, that's shift of focus to idea that's more intuitive.
Isn;t it lovely how some people defend system which is only temporary. ANet said that they would like some different resource instead of mana but they still want one. yet people attack one person b/c he said that there should be such resource to manage to deepen the stragetic aspect of a game. lol.
Isn;t it lovely how some people defend system which is only temporary. ANet said that they would like some different resource instead of mana but they still want one. yet people attack one person b/c he said that there should be such resource to manage to deepen the stragetic aspect of a game. lol.
No, the resource will be long term, the replacement of potions and not energy.
Isn;t it lovely how some people defend system which is only temporary. ANet said that they would like some different resource instead of mana but they still want one. yet people attack one person b/c he said that there should be such resource to manage to deepen the stragetic aspect of a game. lol.
It won't be short term, though. It won't be something you manage on combat basis - it will work more like a way to penalize poor playstyle in the long term, just like Death Penalty in GW1 or potions (or rather necessity to refill them) in previous iterations.
The last part of the read is what interested me. Combat animation blending and combat responsiveness is the extra layer you get in few games where you find the room to get better. Knowing when and why you use this and this skill as you learn the game is definitely what make some combat system more interesting and challenging than others. Also good blending animation is what make the game look good, so its a very good point.
MMo skills + fps control is one of the aspect that made me look at this game more closely. I'm still not sure how well tab targeting will work in all this, in some vids it seam to be player controlled, in other it seam client controlled, so i'm not sure how it will work and how much controls/option you'll have to tweak it. Hope you'll be able to choose, closest, weakest, assist, re-target last and option like those in the options.
I still think the complete removal (read: dumbing down) of resource (energy/mana) management - while initially fun - will dumb the gameplay down to a point where the people who enjoy the deep strategic complexity of GW1 PVP and other MMOs will get bored.
I worry that GW2 will be little more than an arcade game with persistence.
Yes, because running out of mana really makes things complex.
...And I think complexity is overrated. The best games are not very complex, but have depth in other ways.
My favourite examples of this are Chess and Othello. Neither game is complex. Both games have limited move options, and the depth comes not from overly complex rulesets, but from the variety of options available to players within the simpler ruleset.
....
.
You could probably layer a fatigue system on top of chess and make it work in a way that didn't make it unnecessarily complex, as long as there was an 'interface upgrade' for it. But like you say, it isn't needed. Plenty of competitive ground on the chess board as it is normally used. Now, if you were forced to keep track of the fatigue status of each piece on the board in your head...
Originally posted by JoeyMMO
Originally posted by WardTheGreat
Originally posted by Polarisation
..
I worry that GW2 will be little more than an arcade game with persistence.
Yes, because running out of mana really makes things complex.
And fun!
Finishing someone off with your wand when you were both out of E was kind of fun. But yeah, let's just settle it with skills and positioning.
Charr: Outta my way. Human: What's your problem? Charr: Your thin skin.
When you have an extremely large pool of energy (typical of most MMOs), and it's only the extremely long fights that you really have to worry about your energy, is it really dumbing down the game by just removing the resource completely?
you clearly didn't play GW1. energy management is GW1 was a big deal as it was a fast-renewing but highly contestable resource (as in, full regenation in seconds, not minutes), and there were many skills to both buff and debuff the amount of energy available to players. energy denial was a big part of the GW1 mesmer for example.
energy is good because it prevents mindless spamming of abilities, and it makes combat more interesting than just deducting hitpoints from each other and using skills on cooldown refresh. intelligent use of abilities should be a feature of combat.
I assure you, I played GW1 a lot. I was referring, as I pretty much said in the post, to MOST MMOs. I was not referring to GW1, as I try to avoid associating GW1 with GW2 except in lore. The energy system in GW1 may not work in GW2, so I was not even bothering to bring that up. I don't know if it would work or not, as I've only played the demo once. But as a general rule of thumb, I try to avoid referencing GW1 mechanics in GW2, as GW2 is a completely different game other than in lore.
And, as someone said before, if you are using you're abilities on cooldown, you're doing it wrong. Even in GW1, if you used your skills on refresh, you were doing it wrong. Honestly, knowing when to properly use your skills is one of the hardest things for someone to be good at, if not impossible.
Originally posted by Polarisation energy is good because it prevents mindless spamming of abilities, and it makes combat more interesting than just deducting hitpoints from each other and using skills on cooldown refresh. intelligent use of abilities should be a feature of combat.
You're completely ignoring the fact that attacks are not guaranteed to hit.
In Street Fighter, you can spam Hadoukens all day, but your opponent is going to block most of them and start jumping over them or even absorb them for meter in some cases. Some characters can even deflect them back.
It's the same way in GW2. You can get out of the way of attacks. This isn't GW1 or WoW or any other tab target MMO where using an attack when in range all but guarantees it will land. You don't even have to be in range to shoot a fireball. If you press the fireball button, you shoot a fireball. It may or may not hit. If your opponent knew you were going to shoot one because you shoot a fireball exactly every 5 seconds when it recharges, he'll have more than ample opportunity to avoid the damage and punish you every time.
You're not just mindlessly hitting abilities to reduce your enemies' HP. Stop acting like this is GW1 with a few mechanics changed or removed. It's a different game.
The Chess example is a good one. How many resources do you have to manage in Chess? Let's see... There's the pieces you have remaining and... Ohp, that's it. If you have a knight, you can move that knight. There's no cooldown on the knight. There's no energy cost to moving knights. You just move it.
Let's say I'm a new player. I'm having fun with PvE, but I'm ready to give PvP a try. I jump in, run towards an enemy player and... I can't attack. Huh? What happened? Why can't I use any of my skills? Why is all my energy gone? I'm dead already? How did I even die?
This is what GW1 is like to new players. It is an extremely unfriendly experience. In this example, there is no way to learn from my mistakes because I don't even know what mistakes I made. I don't even know if I made any mistakes. I have no idea where to go from here. I have no idea how to improve. Online guides are not an acceptable solution. If players can't learn your game from simply playing it, it's not because it's deep. It's because it's convoluted.
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
When you have an extremely large pool of energy (typical of most MMOs), and it's only the extremely long fights that you really have to worry about your energy, is it really dumbing down the game by just removing the resource completely?
you clearly didn't play GW1. energy management is GW1 was a big deal as it was a fast-renewing but highly contestable resource (as in, full regenation in seconds, not minutes), and there were many skills to both buff and debuff the amount of energy available to players. energy denial was a big part of the GW1 mesmer for example.
energy is good because it prevents mindless spamming of abilities, and it makes combat more interesting than just deducting hitpoints from each other and using skills on cooldown refresh. intelligent use of abilities should be a feature of combat.
You still don't get it.. Yes it was strategic in GW1, but it doesn't fit the system they have created with GW2. And as you scold other's for not playing GW1, you should be scolded for not being informed about GW2. How does it promote mindless spam? If you knew anything, and have listened to balancing interviews you would see that the skill economy is based upon time, and the more important the skill the more time on CD's.
Also, the engine of GW1 is nothing like the tech presented today. They are building a system that doesn't focus on subtleties unseen by the untrained eye, but since they want this to be a successful E-Sport they are focusing on making it noticeable. The engine allows them to make denial an actual physical thing, not some indicator on a UI bar, and a depletion of energy or increase of energy cost on a skill.
You still don't get it.. Yes it was strategic in GW1, but it doesn't fit the system they have created with GW2. And as you scold other's for not playing GW1, you should be scolded for not being informed about GW2. How does it promote mindless spam? If you knew anything, and have listened to balancing interviews you would see that the skill economy is based upon time, and the more important the skill the more time on CD's.
Also, the engine of GW1 is nothing like the tech presented today. They are building a system that doesn't focus on subtleties unseen by the untrained eye, but since they want this to be a successful E-Sport they are focusing on making it noticeable. The engine allows them to make denial an actual physical thing, not some indicator on a UI bar, and a depletion of energy or increase of energy cost on a skill.
Yes, but it is simplifying the combat in a way. In GW1, you not ONLY had skills that were based on time (in that game, too, better skills had longer cooldowns / were elite), but you also had energy denial, interrupts, etc.
Now, they could do something equivelant, in allowing skills which greatly increase the recharge time of certain skills, but I'm not sure they are really going to do that. They are taking the design away from a chess-like system and much more into an action-oriented one.
Originally posted by Polarisation energy is good because it prevents mindless spamming of abilities, and it makes combat more interesting than just deducting hitpoints from each other and using skills on cooldown refresh. intelligent use of abilities should be a feature of combat.
You're completely ignoring the fact that attacks are not guaranteed to hit.
In Street Fighter, you can spam Hadoukens all day, but your opponent is going to block most of them and start jumping over them or even absorb them for meter in some cases. Some characters can even deflect them back.
It's the same way in GW2. You can get out of the way of attacks. This isn't GW1 or WoW or any other tab target MMO where using an attack when in range all but guarantees it will land. You don't even have to be in range to shoot a fireball. If you press the fireball button, you shoot a fireball. It may or may not hit. If your opponent knew you were going to shoot one because you shoot a fireball exactly every 5 seconds when it recharges, he'll have more than ample opportunity to avoid the damage and punish you every time.
You're not just mindlessly hitting abilities to reduce your enemies' HP. Stop acting like this is GW1 with a few mechanics changed or removed. It's a different game.
The Chess example is a good one. How many resources do you have to manage in Chess? Let's see... There's the pieces you have remaining and... Ohp, that's it. If you have a knight, you can move that knight. There's no cooldown on the knight. There's no energy cost to moving knights. You just move it.
Let's say I'm a new player. I'm having fun with PvE, but I'm ready to give PvP a try. I jump in, run towards an enemy player and... I can't attack. Huh? What happened? Why can't I use any of my skills? Why is all my energy gone? I'm dead already? How did I even die?
This is what GW1 is like to new players. It is an extremely unfriendly experience. In this example, there is no way to learn from my mistakes because I don't even know what mistakes I made. I don't even know if I made any mistakes. I have no idea where to go from here. I have no idea how to improve. Online guides are not an acceptable solution. If players can't learn your game from simply playing it, it's not because it's deep. It's because it's convoluted.
Well said.
The thing that impressed me the most from 40 minutes of playing the charr starter area was how incredibly accessible it was. The UI is simple, intuitive and the gameplay is fluid, that fluidity stretches out in to the world through DEs. When you step in to Tyria bang! your there, no steep learning curve, no interruption of play through stopping to take quests or going to see trainers to get your next skill, this is Tyria - get involved! It was a hell of a lot of fun, a great starting experience.
Building up a complex system by allowing it to build as you play seems the right way to go to me, for that to work well it needs to be stream lined so it feels organic, it should feel natural.
Is energy needed as a mechanic and does it dumb the game down by not being there? I don't think it does, there should be enough complexity through active weapon swapping, cross profession combos and movement to keep our minds active enough during combat if we want to play our characters well.
Originally posted by aesperus Yes, but it is simplifying the combat in a way. In GW1, you not ONLY had skills that were based on time (in that game, too, better skills had longer cooldowns / were elite), but you also had energy denial, interrupts, etc. Now, they could do something equivelant, in allowing skills which greatly increase the recharge time of certain skills, but I'm not sure they are really going to do that. They are taking the design away from a chess-like system and much more into an action-oriented one.
Energy is redundant and convoluted. Scroll up for my take on the Chess analogy. I mean, hey, if cooldowns are good, and cooldowns plus energy is better, why not throw in two or three more resources?
>implying action-oriented is bad
Don't like it? Well, you know what to do.
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
Those of you who are saying energy prevents mindless spamming, I have several ways to prove you wrong!
In Guildwars 1, eles can constantly spam skills,, even with energy. Now while the energy will eventually run out, does that keep you from not spamming skills? All energy is is a brief stop in how fast you can spam skills. Of course, it is completely opposite with guild wars 2. In Guild Wars 1, all you did was target and shoot, and it would hit. In Guild Wars 2, you actually HAVE to choose carefully where you place your attacks.
Example:
Guild Wars 1 Ele has Meteor Shower w/ 60 recharge
Guild Wars 2 Ele has Same skill, same recharge.
The Difference? Energy and risk. In guild wars, you press a button and cast meteor shower on a pre-targeted foe. In Guild Wars 2, you have to decide where to place and be careful where you put and where it does the most damage, becuase it is not pre-targeted. Even with energy it wont matter, but the recharge. You have to wait a whole MINUTE before you can cast neteor shower again, amd while in the first it was just mindless spamming on a npc(s) which you can easily return, the other requires thought becuase the npc(s) can move/ dodge / etc. The energy doesn't matter, the recharge does.
Just listen to the attention to detail these guys have... so much love and attention is being showered on the things that really matter and make the gameplay exciting. Contrast this to what we now know about TOR.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Just listen to the attention to detail these guys have... so much love and attention is being showered on the things that really matter and make the gameplay exciting. Contrast this to what we now know about TOR.
Are you on a personal crusade against TOR or something? Every thread I have visited has you there bashing it. I came here, really just enjoying the GW2 information, and here you are brining up TOR.
I agree with you, by the way, ANet sounds awesome. So does GW2, I just wish people could get their chocolate out of the damn peanut butter and talk about one game without having to constantly drag the other one through the mud, or put them on a pesestal.
They are two seperate games, two seperate experiences....and I enjoy and intend to enjoy them both, for seperate reasons.
I still think the complete removal (read: dumbing down) of resource (energy/mana) management - while initially fun - will dumb the gameplay down to a point where the people who enjoy the deep strategic complexity of GW1 PVP and other MMOs will get bored.
I worry that GW2 will be little more than an arcade game with persistence.
You want tab targeting back too?
Some people just fear change and so they attack the changes that threaten what they have grown used to. It's common human nature, nothing to be otherly concerned about and will die down once the game is out and players have had time to grow use to it. Similar to how all modern shooters have some form of regenarating health now.
And some people lack the comprehension that just because something changes does not make it better and just because something is old does not make it bad. Whether the system is good or bad only time will tell. I myself am partial to a system with limited resources that must be managed with no variation of in-combat and out of combat regen. The skill then becomes as much in choosing which ability to use and when to use it for the greatest effect.
In the case of GW2 though it seems that the time length of a skill will be the resource to be managed overall which can work if done right. It appears they are doing it right.
Just listen to the attention to detail these guys have... so much love and attention is being showered on the things that really matter and make the gameplay exciting. Contrast this to what we now know about TOR.
Are you on a personal crusade against TOR or something? Every thread I have visited has you there bashing it. I came here, really just enjoying the GW2 information, and here you are brining up TOR.
I agree with you, by the way, ANet sounds awesome. So does GW2, I just wish people could get their chocolate out of the damn peanut butter and talk about one game without having to constantly drag the other one through the mud, or put them on a pesestal.
They are two seperate games, two seperate experiences....and I enjoy and intend to enjoy them both, for seperate reasons.
Personal crusade? No. I have said in many of my posts that Bioware put all of their eggs in the VO basket, and I think that was a mistake from an MMORPG point of view. I want to see innovations and improvements in gameplay, which is what I am hearing in GW2 and in The Secret World. Any company that does "more of the same" is going to hear from me on it. TOR isn't the first and won't be the last.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Originally posted by aesperus Yes, but it is simplifying the combat in a way. In GW1, you not ONLY had skills that were based on time (in that game, too, better skills had longer cooldowns / were elite), but you also had energy denial, interrupts, etc. Now, they could do something equivelant, in allowing skills which greatly increase the recharge time of certain skills, but I'm not sure they are really going to do that. They are taking the design away from a chess-like system and much more into an action-oriented one.
Okay, you are still confusing complexity for depth. The chess comparison was to explain that depth and complexity are not the same thing. action-oriented games can have depth, and they can be complex, or not. Being action-oriented has nothing to do with the comparison.
Chess has very little complexity, but much depth. When you add, say a fatigue resource, you are adding complexity, but not necessarily depth.
In the same way, having mana (energy) or other resources does not necessarily add depth. In some implementations, it might, but it does not always. It does always add complexity, which is not always a good thing. In the same way they reduced the number of character attributes, they are reducing the unnecessary complexity of their game's systems. Having fewer attributes means the game is less complicated, but will not mean it will not be as deep (by which I mean much to learn and many ways to improve).
They are shifting the focus of the game to other avenues, but that does not mean that the game will not have a great deal to it, and an impressive metagame. These are the same people that made GW1, and they are not trying to make a game that is incredibly easy or simple. They are trying to make a game that is accessible, and that is an important difference.
Remember, there are resources to manage. Adrenaline, initiative, and the like. There will be things that people have to pay attention to while in combat. And someone who plays skillfully will defeat someone who simply pushed buttons on cooldown. But the game will not be so complicated that some new people feel like they need to read guides for a few hours just to understand how things work.
But, if you feel like energy is needed to make a game deep, the way you approach games is probably different from me, and I would say you don't understand the difference between depth and complexity, and I doubt we would enjoy the same games anyway.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Comments
THIS THIS THIS ^^^^^^!!!
Took the worlds right out of my mouth!
When I first played WAR I was dumbstruck by how mana-less combat system works perfectly and so much better than that stupid one-dimensional blue bar thing. Frankly, after WAR I was completely unable to go back to mana-based RPGs.
I was pretty disappointed when ANet first announced that they will use "energy" as a long-term resource and was exhilirated when they finally ditched it. That blue bar is just a useless throwback to the EQ days which actually adds nothing to the game.
If you use skills on cooldown refresh, you're doing it wrong. You're completely ignoring the fact that cooldowns (and combat system as a whole) are balanced around opportunity cost, not resources. In other words, the whole depth is still there, but instead of thinking how to keep your bar blue you have to think when to use your skills for greatest effect. That's not dumbing down, that's shift of focus to idea that's more intuitive.
Isn;t it lovely how some people defend system which is only temporary. ANet said that they would like some different resource instead of mana but they still want one. yet people attack one person b/c he said that there should be such resource to manage to deepen the stragetic aspect of a game. lol.
No, the resource will be long term, the replacement of potions and not energy.
It won't be short term, though. It won't be something you manage on combat basis - it will work more like a way to penalize poor playstyle in the long term, just like Death Penalty in GW1 or potions (or rather necessity to refill them) in previous iterations.
The last part of the read is what interested me. Combat animation blending and combat responsiveness is the extra layer you get in few games where you find the room to get better. Knowing when and why you use this and this skill as you learn the game is definitely what make some combat system more interesting and challenging than others. Also good blending animation is what make the game look good, so its a very good point.
MMo skills + fps control is one of the aspect that made me look at this game more closely. I'm still not sure how well tab targeting will work in all this, in some vids it seam to be player controlled, in other it seam client controlled, so i'm not sure how it will work and how much controls/option you'll have to tweak it. Hope you'll be able to choose, closest, weakest, assist, re-target last and option like those in the options.
The combat part was a great read. Sounds like they are making some smart decisions.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
Thank you for sharing
Much love for ArenaNet
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
I think skills should only have cooldowns. The skill bar is already limited. So, you only have few skills to use in any given situation anyways.
And fun!
You could probably layer a fatigue system on top of chess and make it work in a way that didn't make it unnecessarily complex, as long as there was an 'interface upgrade' for it. But like you say, it isn't needed. Plenty of competitive ground on the chess board as it is normally used. Now, if you were forced to keep track of the fatigue status of each piece on the board in your head...
Finishing someone off with your wand when you were both out of E was kind of fun. But yeah, let's just settle it with skills and positioning.
Charr: Outta my way.
Human: What's your problem?
Charr: Your thin skin.
If they are working on achievement systems and refining class mechanics then they are getting towards the end of the developement cycle.
I hope nothing big comes up in early CB to derail progress.
*fingers crossed*
TRUST THE COMPUTER! THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND!
Stay Alert! Trust No One! Keep Your Laser Handy!
Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues!
I assure you, I played GW1 a lot. I was referring, as I pretty much said in the post, to MOST MMOs. I was not referring to GW1, as I try to avoid associating GW1 with GW2 except in lore. The energy system in GW1 may not work in GW2, so I was not even bothering to bring that up. I don't know if it would work or not, as I've only played the demo once. But as a general rule of thumb, I try to avoid referencing GW1 mechanics in GW2, as GW2 is a completely different game other than in lore.
And, as someone said before, if you are using you're abilities on cooldown, you're doing it wrong. Even in GW1, if you used your skills on refresh, you were doing it wrong. Honestly, knowing when to properly use your skills is one of the hardest things for someone to be good at, if not impossible.
You're completely ignoring the fact that attacks are not guaranteed to hit.
In Street Fighter, you can spam Hadoukens all day, but your opponent is going to block most of them and start jumping over them or even absorb them for meter in some cases. Some characters can even deflect them back.
It's the same way in GW2. You can get out of the way of attacks. This isn't GW1 or WoW or any other tab target MMO where using an attack when in range all but guarantees it will land. You don't even have to be in range to shoot a fireball. If you press the fireball button, you shoot a fireball. It may or may not hit. If your opponent knew you were going to shoot one because you shoot a fireball exactly every 5 seconds when it recharges, he'll have more than ample opportunity to avoid the damage and punish you every time.
You're not just mindlessly hitting abilities to reduce your enemies' HP. Stop acting like this is GW1 with a few mechanics changed or removed. It's a different game.
The Chess example is a good one. How many resources do you have to manage in Chess? Let's see... There's the pieces you have remaining and... Ohp, that's it. If you have a knight, you can move that knight. There's no cooldown on the knight. There's no energy cost to moving knights. You just move it.
Let's say I'm a new player. I'm having fun with PvE, but I'm ready to give PvP a try. I jump in, run towards an enemy player and... I can't attack. Huh? What happened? Why can't I use any of my skills? Why is all my energy gone? I'm dead already? How did I even die?
This is what GW1 is like to new players. It is an extremely unfriendly experience. In this example, there is no way to learn from my mistakes because I don't even know what mistakes I made. I don't even know if I made any mistakes. I have no idea where to go from here. I have no idea how to improve. Online guides are not an acceptable solution. If players can't learn your game from simply playing it, it's not because it's deep. It's because it's convoluted.
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
You still don't get it.. Yes it was strategic in GW1, but it doesn't fit the system they have created with GW2. And as you scold other's for not playing GW1, you should be scolded for not being informed about GW2. How does it promote mindless spam? If you knew anything, and have listened to balancing interviews you would see that the skill economy is based upon time, and the more important the skill the more time on CD's.
Also, the engine of GW1 is nothing like the tech presented today. They are building a system that doesn't focus on subtleties unseen by the untrained eye, but since they want this to be a successful E-Sport they are focusing on making it noticeable. The engine allows them to make denial an actual physical thing, not some indicator on a UI bar, and a depletion of energy or increase of energy cost on a skill.
Yes, but it is simplifying the combat in a way. In GW1, you not ONLY had skills that were based on time (in that game, too, better skills had longer cooldowns / were elite), but you also had energy denial, interrupts, etc.
Now, they could do something equivelant, in allowing skills which greatly increase the recharge time of certain skills, but I'm not sure they are really going to do that. They are taking the design away from a chess-like system and much more into an action-oriented one.
Well said.
The thing that impressed me the most from 40 minutes of playing the charr starter area was how incredibly accessible it was. The UI is simple, intuitive and the gameplay is fluid, that fluidity stretches out in to the world through DEs. When you step in to Tyria bang! your there, no steep learning curve, no interruption of play through stopping to take quests or going to see trainers to get your next skill, this is Tyria - get involved! It was a hell of a lot of fun, a great starting experience.
Building up a complex system by allowing it to build as you play seems the right way to go to me, for that to work well it needs to be stream lined so it feels organic, it should feel natural.
Is energy needed as a mechanic and does it dumb the game down by not being there? I don't think it does, there should be enough complexity through active weapon swapping, cross profession combos and movement to keep our minds active enough during combat if we want to play our characters well.
Energy is redundant and convoluted. Scroll up for my take on the Chess analogy. I mean, hey, if cooldowns are good, and cooldowns plus energy is better, why not throw in two or three more resources?
>implying action-oriented is bad
Don't like it? Well, you know what to do.
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
Energy... Oh Energy... How useless you are...
Those of you who are saying energy prevents mindless spamming, I have several ways to prove you wrong!
In Guildwars 1, eles can constantly spam skills,, even with energy. Now while the energy will eventually run out, does that keep you from not spamming skills? All energy is is a brief stop in how fast you can spam skills. Of course, it is completely opposite with guild wars 2. In Guild Wars 1, all you did was target and shoot, and it would hit. In Guild Wars 2, you actually HAVE to choose carefully where you place your attacks.
Example:
Guild Wars 1 Ele has Meteor Shower w/ 60 recharge
Guild Wars 2 Ele has Same skill, same recharge.
The Difference? Energy and risk. In guild wars, you press a button and cast meteor shower on a pre-targeted foe. In Guild Wars 2, you have to decide where to place and be careful where you put and where it does the most damage, becuase it is not pre-targeted. Even with energy it wont matter, but the recharge. You have to wait a whole MINUTE before you can cast neteor shower again, amd while in the first it was just mindless spamming on a npc(s) which you can easily return, the other requires thought becuase the npc(s) can move/ dodge / etc. The energy doesn't matter, the recharge does.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovation
Just listen to the attention to detail these guys have... so much love and attention is being showered on the things that really matter and make the gameplay exciting. Contrast this to what we now know about TOR.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Are you on a personal crusade against TOR or something? Every thread I have visited has you there bashing it. I came here, really just enjoying the GW2 information, and here you are brining up TOR.
I agree with you, by the way, ANet sounds awesome. So does GW2, I just wish people could get their chocolate out of the damn peanut butter and talk about one game without having to constantly drag the other one through the mud, or put them on a pesestal.
They are two seperate games, two seperate experiences....and I enjoy and intend to enjoy them both, for seperate reasons.
And some people lack the comprehension that just because something changes does not make it better and just because something is old does not make it bad. Whether the system is good or bad only time will tell. I myself am partial to a system with limited resources that must be managed with no variation of in-combat and out of combat regen. The skill then becomes as much in choosing which ability to use and when to use it for the greatest effect.
In the case of GW2 though it seems that the time length of a skill will be the resource to be managed overall which can work if done right. It appears they are doing it right.
Personal crusade? No. I have said in many of my posts that Bioware put all of their eggs in the VO basket, and I think that was a mistake from an MMORPG point of view. I want to see innovations and improvements in gameplay, which is what I am hearing in GW2 and in The Secret World. Any company that does "more of the same" is going to hear from me on it. TOR isn't the first and won't be the last.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Okay, you are still confusing complexity for depth. The chess comparison was to explain that depth and complexity are not the same thing. action-oriented games can have depth, and they can be complex, or not. Being action-oriented has nothing to do with the comparison.
Chess has very little complexity, but much depth. When you add, say a fatigue resource, you are adding complexity, but not necessarily depth.
In the same way, having mana (energy) or other resources does not necessarily add depth. In some implementations, it might, but it does not always. It does always add complexity, which is not always a good thing. In the same way they reduced the number of character attributes, they are reducing the unnecessary complexity of their game's systems. Having fewer attributes means the game is less complicated, but will not mean it will not be as deep (by which I mean much to learn and many ways to improve).
They are shifting the focus of the game to other avenues, but that does not mean that the game will not have a great deal to it, and an impressive metagame. These are the same people that made GW1, and they are not trying to make a game that is incredibly easy or simple. They are trying to make a game that is accessible, and that is an important difference.
Remember, there are resources to manage. Adrenaline, initiative, and the like. There will be things that people have to pay attention to while in combat. And someone who plays skillfully will defeat someone who simply pushed buttons on cooldown. But the game will not be so complicated that some new people feel like they need to read guides for a few hours just to understand how things work.
But, if you feel like energy is needed to make a game deep, the way you approach games is probably different from me, and I would say you don't understand the difference between depth and complexity, and I doubt we would enjoy the same games anyway.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?