Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Massively's interview with the Guild Wars 2 design team
bronecar
Member Posts: 685
in Guild Wars 2
by Rubi Bayer 
May 28th 2010 (47 minutes ago)
NCsoft
There has been so much new information about Guild Wars 2 lately that it can be a little hard to keep up. While things have mostly focused around dynamic events and personal story, the scope of those two concepts is so large that every new piece of news seemed to trigger another list of questions.
We at Massively have been following the developments closely, so we are as curious as anyone else. We asked the Guild Wars 2 team about several various points -- everything from crafting to the creation timeline.
Lead Designer Eric Flannum, Lore and Continuity Designer Ree Soesbee, and Game Designer John Hargrove were kind enough to satisfy our curiosity on some of these points. Follow along after the jump and see what they had to say.
Massively: One facet of Guild Wars 2 that has triggered the most community interest is the talk of instancing -- particularly personal stories. Will your character be able to transition back and forth between your instanced personal story and the rest of the world at will, or are there set times and places that trigger instancing?
Ree: Instanced areas are specific places in the world that are instances so changes can be shown in a very visible manner. Only a small portion of the game is instanced in any way – your home area, for example. A vast majority of the game is completely open, and promotes fully interactive MMO gameplay. A character must choose to enter these areas, and they can choose to bring others into those areas to see and experience the player's personal story.
Are the instanced areas solo only, or can other players join you to view your story, like they can in the current Hall of Monuments?
Ree: When you enter an instanced area, you may choose to invite other members of your party to come with you. If they accept, they will enter your personal story and be able to help you complete challenges there. While decisions in the story can only be made by the individual character whose story you are participating in, visiting characters can assist and will be rewarded for helping out.
Will there be instanced areas such as dungeons that don't necessarily reflect an individual's personal story?
Ree: Yes, but they are specific locations. Those areas have their own story, too – a story that the player can interact with and visibly affect. But that's another interview, entirely.
Speaking of crafting, how much of a part will crafting play in Guild Wars 2? Are you exploring new avenues in that area, maybe looking beyond traditional crafting items like armor and weapons?
John: Crafting will play a very large role in Guild Wars 2, and while weapons and armor will be a big part of the base of the items that players create, we are doing our best to ensure that players don't have to make a lot of anything that they can use only one of. For example, in Guild Wars 2 you will not have to craft the same sword 10-20 times just to level up your crafting skill. Hopefully our players will find that the only reasons they have to craft any given item more than once are because they can actually use it more than once, because they want to give it to a friend, or because they want to sell it for profit. With this goal in mind it does of course mean we have our work cut out for us when it comes to other interesting items to craft, and we have already spent a lot of time exploring in areas such as upgrade components that can be used to improve existing items beyond the condition that they were originally found or crafted in.
Moving to the topic of the skill bar design for a moment, will skill acquisition be an issue with the five weapon-related slots? Will you automatically pick up the skill knowledge with the weapon, or have to learn to use it?
Eric: Skills in Guild Wars 2 can be acquired in several ways. The primary method of skill acquisition is to visit a skill trainer where you may purchase skills. Skills may also be rewarded for completing different types of combat or gained as loot drops. Every skill in the game is acquired through one of these methods including weapon skills.
Did the scope of what you are doing with Guild Wars 2 grow beyond what you originally envisioned? Was that responsible for the longer timeline?
Eric: In some ways it did grow yes, but in other ways the overall scope also shrank. Over the course of the project we've implemented a lot of different systems and tried them out. Some we keep, others remain in the game partially, while others are thrown out entirely (though we always learn some lesson while implementing them). This is all part of the iterative development process that we like to use here at ArenaNet.
Although we've never stated a release date (and still haven't) our timeline to beta (which we still haven't talked about) has been a bit slower than we'd originally hoped. This is primarily due to a few factors. First the game is really really big, not only just in terms of total world size but also in terms of how dense the world is with content. We could have made the decision to cut all of this content and save ourselves some time but our goal is to create the best MMO ever and we didn't feel like that goal would be served by cutting content. All of this content also meant that we needed to develop some really robust tools to be able to implement and polish things to a high degree. We're also doing a lot of new and risky things with the design of Guild Wars 2. After we created Prophecies it was a lot easier for us to generate entire campaigns worth of content because we were largely working with systems that we had worked with before. Now with Guild Wars 2 there are a lot of things for us to learn and a lot of new things to discover as we develop the game. In any case, we understand how important Guild Wars 2 is to our players and we won't be releasing it until we know it's the highly polished, amazing experience they deserve.
Thanks Eric, Ree, and John for your time!
Comments
I can't believe they're sticking to the skill trainer route. That was the worst part of GW1, you just ran through everything and bought up all the skills. Looks like its going to be another pay at the first level train ride with a high level player for skills again. Hopefully they'll do something to mitigate that, but I haven't heard anything yet.
Apart from that, good information given. I like that you don't have to spend all day crafting.
Any information if there will be open world pvp? I used to really hate pvp servers and despise them until I played Aion and I really feel in love with being able to gank people in there own zones. I know we didn't have that option with GW1 but I think most players really have that same general hope. Those that don't are probably like I was and didn't give it much try.
I know there not going to be using as many skills as they did with previous GW, I just hope that doesn't effect pvp any. I think a big part of why GW1 was the most balanced pvp game ever was the amount of different builds you could make to counter another class.
Also would like to see some bad arse bosses for once. There really wasn't some huge boss to kill that was 30 times the size of you in the first. Or at least that I can remember it has been awhile since I did any pve in GW.
Another thing I realllly love and hated about pvp was how easy it was to switch armor and change ur setup for pvp. It was great in the sense that you can change your character and not have to spend months to change it to just try something new. But at the same time being able to work so hard for an amazing set of armor that puts you above others in pvp makes you feel more interactive with your character and more accomplished. I mean you could do that with GW1 but there really wasn't a real reason for doing it. So just curious about this. I would be satisfied either way.
Though they said the game is mostly open world, it seems open world PvP is reserved for open world "areas" they are calling the mists. Its doubtful you'll see a PvP server.
Here is to hoping I suppose. There isn't a better feeling then ganking someone trying to do a quest and realize there on the other side of the computer yelling and swearing at there cat and feeling like rage quitting lol.
Yeah.... that's exactly what they want to avoid.... I wouldn't be expecting too much if I were you.
Griefing is nothing to be proud of.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
"Griefing is nothing to be proud of."
This about sums it up. That attitude is why most of these games that are being designed to APPEAL to the masses make sure the player doesn't have to worry about a douche bag who is on a mission to ruin someones night. Don't get me wrong joining a PvP game and complaining about being ganked is one thing, but hoping a mixture game will let you grief someone to give a cheap thrill is a recipe for loss in interest. That is hardly any productive entity will want.
END OF LINE_
~V
The point about open pvp is moot. They have already said that pvp will be on the world versus world realm, called The Mists, and arena style competitive pvp matches. In the regular pve world there won't be any pvp.
" Griefing is nothing to be proud of "
I remember when I had that attitude, just remember it can be done right back to you.
Guess I am just silly that way. I'd rather be looking over my back to see if I am getting ganked soon while grinding the same boring mobs in pve to keep it, not so mind numbingly boring. I mean really is there pve in a game that is hard? No, no there isn't so why not add the element of players and mobs to fight.
Did you actually read anything about this game? There's not going to be the typical herds of pve mobs to grind on.
So you are justifying it by using the timeless logic "everyone else does it so I should too." Sad.
Ganking: the unexpected, the rush, it's what makes world PvP... world PvP!
Griefing: excessive ganking, completedly expected ... ruins a game.
Big thumbs up for ganking. Big thumbs down for griefing. They are not one and the same.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
Hmm, it seems no one picked up this very important bit of information.
So far the general idea was that the 5 skills on the weapon were bound to the weapon itself, meaning you pick up some sword and you have pre-determined skills on it that you can use.
The sentence ending with "...including weapon skills." obviously implies something else entirely...
You wont have just 5 skills for the particular sword. Obviously you'll have a whole skillset of "sword" skills to choose from whenever you pick up a sword (the item skills are categorized by item type). Imo this is immensely important and it dispells the doubts that the 5+2+3 skill bar is too restricting.
Let me repeat it again: this means that you will be able to pick and choose the skills you'll put in the weapon skill slots. You will however have to put skills appropriate for that weapon in those. If you want to be the master of swords you can collect dozens of sword skills and pick five that you'll use whenever you pick up a sword. Just like is the case with reserved "elite" and "healing" skill slots - they'll have to be chosen from within those categories but you still get to choose them.
"Will there be instanced areas such as dungeons that don't necessarily reflect an individual's personal story?
Ree: Yes, but they are specific locations. Those areas have their own story, too – a story that the player can interact with and visibly affect. But that's another interview, entirely."
Wow... really? Apart from the DES and the Personal Story, they're also going to need to release another seperate interview regarding unique dungeons. I cant wait to hear the details on that too. Keeps getting better and better.
also...
Eric: "We could have made the decision to cut all of this content and save ourselves some time but our goal is to create the best MMO ever and we didn't feel like that goal would be served by cutting content."
Sounds like theyre doing a damn good job of reaching that goal. I really wish this was the way all devs looked at things when creating their games, rather than the opposite of "what can we cut in order to make a profit, while still leaving just enough in to get enough people interested in buying it (so we can make a profit)"
I said ganking not griefing. And if you don't like ganking well then games with pvp period are not for you and you should perhaps try out a care bear mmo
Your words: "realize there on the other side of the computer yelling and swearing at there cat and feeling like rage quitting lol."
Wanting to make others ragequit pretty much tells us your intentions.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
That is the end result of being ganked. I no way does that determine griefing. But sure ill play along with your game. I wanna grief people over and over so they wanna smash little babies when im done. Better? Did I help your trolling?
As I recall I was only asking a question about the game. Proper response is Yes or No. and ofc the option to troll must have been in fine print.
The post I replied to didn't ask a question. You just bragged about how you got your rocks off. By trying to piss off players who were trying to do PvE. That's griefing.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Nice way to justify aberrant behavior, just make up your own friggin' definitions! People with your mindset make these games cesspits for everyone else. Who do you gank when nearly everyone else gets tired of your crap and stiop playing? There's a reason PvP servers are always whining for people to come play on them. Nobody wants to be your entertainment!
"World PvP" is a blight. That's why no major games give it precedence. Name one successful MMORPG that makes ezxtensive use of this "World PvP". You can't because there isn't one. People don't want to pay to play with griefers. That's why.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
No it doesn't mean that at all. You just assume that only the first five skills can be weapon skills while it's perfectly fine to assume at this point that the free slots might possibly be filled with weapon skills too.
Additionally, in one of the interviews A-Net said that the skills are fixed on a weapon, so you can't tailor a weapon to your exact likings.
So maybe, just maybe, ppl didn't pick up on that info because it's not saying what you thought it does
.
My Signature
I didnt read it like that exactly, even though 5 sword skills are fixed to the weapon ofc, i didnt get the impression yet that those 5 skills cant be chosen out of lets say 25ish sword skills.
Hardly. It's how I define the difference. Is there anything wrong with my definition?
In a PvP world, I WANT to experience something outside of the mundane world grinding that always takes place. I want something to provoke, and I want to be provoked. The need to keep my head on a swivel during otherwise mind-numbing grinding keeps the game fun, keeps the edge.
But you make a huge assumption that is false. My mindset isn't what makes games cesspits. Your assumption leads you to believe that I'm the one seeking out prey. 9 times out of 10 I'm the one GETTING ganked, and I embrace the challenge of having to deal with a cut-throat while a mob's attention is on me, and I'm half health taking on two targets. There is a rush of success when one ends up on top, and a lesson learned when I'm running back to my corpse. (I live by the ROE of 'fire only when fired apon').
Ganking is fun. When otherwise I would be in a trance, I have something to break up the monotony, at a time I cannot predict.
Griefing isn't. When I've taken someone out, I move along. If someone has taken me out, and has established that s/he owns me once or twice, anything beyond that, is just wasted time.
Who wants to play with griefers? No one. That's masochistic. Who wants to play with gankers? Oh damn, YES please! It keeps the world 'dangerous'.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
I like what I hear:) Ambition is the best friend when creating something:))
Good to go guys!:)
I think I actually spent way more time reading and theorycrafting about MMOs than playing them
What if their definition of 'best' is "most profitable"?
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Those 2 often go hand in hand.