one pitfall i usually see in complex strong games is the large bucket of customizations and specs people could choose from, and over a period of time when elistists and eggheads pick apart the game from top to bottom, the realization sets in that out of say 300 customizations , only 10 percent of that are not only viable, but mandatory if you wish to remain competitive, esspecially against other players. 10% of 300 builds is more variety than 50% of 30 builds. then the eerie visual setting of armies upon armies of vanilla specs (flavor of the month or next to fotm) will be all over the game, negating the idea of complex gameplay, ushering in a world order of laws of "Use this spec, or Die".
yet of course, you do have a few brave, overly insane, or genetically gifted individuals that strive to be original with their own customizations, but commonly they are usually ignored by the masses if they fall short of pulling off the impossible.
A simpler design is more prone to cookie cutter builds than a complex one, not less.
Variety is thrown out the window if the rest of the builds hit like a wet paper bag, they can easily preach about how many endless builds they have, but the truth reveals itself when people start looking around at the best guilds, seeing what they are using that keeps them on top.
Was reading the Guild Wars 2 interview and something the interviewee said I found concerning. When asked the diferences from GW 1 and GW 2 the dev said among other things "Combat will be less complex and there will not be as many skills." To me, which is not all GW 1 fans but I doubt i am alone, really enjoyed the depth of customization pretaining to skill layouts of your individual character or different group class and skill combinations and the effect it had on group strat and tactics. Dumbing down the system would be like putting stock 4 cyninder engine in a Ferri. Taking away a key element of guildwars that made it standout from the crowd is counter productive. It reminds me of Mythic changing RvR in Warhammer to what they thought was better then DAOC. Or Cryptic making Champions online as a better version of COX. A better version of guildwars does not included a dumbed down combat system with less skills. Unfortenatly I think the Dev's disagree and we will have a world like EQ and Wow but instead with better graphics and different names for the same thing.
Sorry for the rant I am getting dismayed when these experainced MMO companies on 2nd time around make worse games then the first.
I'm sure anet knows that such a diverse set of skills is one of the good things about guild wars, letting players make builds that are truely unique and "theirs." So, i'm positive when they say they are cutting down on the skill count, they'll prolly keep more than enough to let players continue creating their unique builds. The reason they are cutting down on skills is to focus more on making each skill better, or whatever their words were... I don't mind them cutting the skill list up to focus on skill quality.
I really don't think Guild Wars 2's combat system will be a dumbed down version of Guild Wars 1's. I think they'll just remove duplicate skills, thus making their job of balancing far easier and the game more competitive as a result.
I don't think they meant it like that. But I didn't really find combat all that complex in GW1 anyway. By less skills I guess they mean the total number, which as long as there aren't 15 skills to choose from for each class, won't make all that much of a difference. Anyway I think GW2 will be awesome.
Waiting for Guild Wars 2, SW:ToR and STO. Currently playing Guild Wars, LoTRO). Played WoW, GW, CO, DDO, RoM, WAR, LoTRO, Allods (Beta) + Tons more that aren't even worth mentioning!
Many of us thinks gw2 will be awesome, me included... now for those who think it won't... and it will suck and yadda yadda yadda... don't forget gw1 will still be up and running... if you really loved the first more then you trust you'll love the second... just go back to the first... if the game turns out to be not your liking, im sure there's plenty more people feeling the same as you and they will either go back to the first or join another mmo... which is obviously the solutions here... the devs are making the game... you can try and say your opinion, but what matters is the majority... and Anet apparantly listens to the majority... no point making this a big deal if its not even in beta as mentioned before... whatever the devs say whatever the devs claim... you'll only know it when you try it... everyone has opinions on everything and like/dislike things... that's just the way it goes.
Actually this makes more sense. I mean in Guildwars1, there were many skills no one ever used, what is the point in even having those skills in game if no one ever uses them? So weeding out the stuff no one uses just makes sense.
Streamlining it to what players actually use and want just seems practical.
Its still pretty unclear at this point how classes will even work. They have said several times they arent sure if they want a high level cap or any level cap at all, which to me would mean possibly something like UO, SWG Pre-cu or even a Fallen Earth style system where building your character is completely up to your own choice for design and you arent locked into pre determined classes.
That being said, I still play Guild Wars as a secondary to AoC and one of my favorite things to do is to design builds and then go try them out in AB's. The biggest problem is that 1 there are a ton of duplicate skills that do the same, or just slightly different than other skills, rendering them useless as it just makes your skill list even harder to read through, and 2 is the fact that a lot of skills werent that good, or required several other skills to work with them in order to make them viable to put into your bar. You add ontop of this stuff like 15 different ways to rez someone, or a bagillion skills that simply heal someone, and you wind up with a lot of redundancy. So while its still fun to try and make these skills work, you often find yourself sticking to a certain list and mixing and matching from that list. My guess for the expansion is they will eliminate some of that and pull it back to a lesser amount of skills thus making it easier.
Arena Net isnt dumb, and it was shown by Guild Wars 1 that they had no intention of making the standard MMO from the start. The only reason they really did not want to continue GW1 was how hard it was to completely keep building off the type of model they had as it did not allow for a great deal of freedom in design and was difficult to continually have to keep releasing content every 6 months on the scale they were doing.
It actualy doesn't rly freighten me that the combat system is a bit less complex, but what rly concerns me is that it pace will be brought down. What i rly liked about GW is it's FAST combat system. Every fight was against multiple enemies, and it is fluently. In only a matter of seconds, the outcome is decided. U had a party wipe, or u exterminated ur enemeies. And that is what I like. Not the WoW-like slow combat.
The only thing in GW one that lacks to me is some mature content, in the sense of Blood and better animations. Take for example some combat animations. If I cast Meteor Shower, I wanna see huge f*cking fireballs coming out from a red sky, smashing my oponents to bits and pieces. If I cast lightning, I wanna see real lightning flashes and intimidating roaring sounds. if I heal my partymembers, I wanna feel the divine power I cast upon my mates by seeing Dwayna's hand reaching out of the sky... All of this alone would alrdy make the game so much more immersive, and would alrdy be the title of GW2 worthy.
But as I look upon it now, it feels as if they are trying to make GW mainstream... Meh anyway, I just hope they can distinguish themselfs again from a overcrowed MMO mass of bullcrap.
Complex combat should be like in vanguard where you need to constantly think about what ability to use when, not like eq2 where you put 12 abilities on a hotbar in order of greatest damage and whack them as their cooldowns come up.
Try playing guild wars, then you'll understand the comment. But to give you an example:
In total, GW! has over 1300 (!) skills. Sorry, did i say 1300? Its 1319 skills that are usable at all times. Then there's junundu, wintersday, monster specific, ally specific, pve skills, polymock (yes, the minigame)... The total is.. dont get scared.. over 1700 different skills. Tell me, have you even managed to use 1000 different skills in the time playing guildwars?
So, by cutting it down to... lets say, 1000 skills the customization will still be far more then you can handle as you can only bring 8 skills in a build. It is however a 'decrease' as the dev's have stated. So just focus on the context, not just the writing.
Was reading the Guild Wars 2 interview and something the interviewee said I found concerning. When asked the diferences from GW 1 and GW 2 the dev said among other things "Combat will be less complex and there will not be as many skills." To me, which is not all GW 1 fans but I doubt i am alone, really enjoyed the depth of customization pretaining to skill layouts of your individual character or different group class and skill combinations and the effect it had on group strat and tactics. Dumbing down the system would be like putting stock 4 cyninder engine in a Ferri. Taking away a key element of guildwars that made it standout from the crowd is counter productive. It reminds me of Mythic changing RvR in Warhammer to what they thought was better then DAOC. Or Cryptic making Champions online as a better version of COX. A better version of guildwars does not included a dumbed down combat system with less skills. Unfortenatly I think the Dev's disagree and we will have a world like EQ and Wow but instead with better graphics and different names for the same thing.
Sorry for the rant I am getting dismayed when these experainced MMO companies on 2nd time around make worse games then the first.
lol!when gw2 was announced dx11 wasnt out!does it mean dx11 wont be in gw2 ,beat me.
so until the game is shown we dont know how it will be.but ill give the benefit of the doubt to arenanet
hell compare gw1 to wow a lot less button in gw1 right ,it is still one of the most strategic game out there
trying to do what gw1 player did woould be too complex for average gamer in wow
so until i see the final result i ll give arenanet a very good chance since gw is the only title that came to be second only to wow for a freaking long time
If you played the original you would know that the game had far too many skills and it became a mess to balance. There will be less skills for each class but that does not mean that variety will not be there because they are keeping the dual class system.
In my opinion Guild Wars skill system sould be like CCG Magic the Gathering card system. With each expansion there should come new skills. More build choice.
Metagaming is not a reason to not create a large diversity of skills. This variety works with MTG so it will surely work with GWs.
Understanding what is MTG and how it seduces people who play it, might make GW2 the most successfull mmo.
To early to tell but i definitely think it will be a very hyped game like Aoc and War. I do not think it will be a champions though. Champions was less COX 2.0 and more "Shit we lost the marvel IP what can we do with what we got".
I kind of like champions if the game can clean itself up it will be better then COX ever was especially with its skill based system.
"Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars combat, exploration and character progression. In Alganon, in addition to these we've added the fourth pillar to the equation: Copy & Paste."
Just relax, every game Jeff Strain touches becomes good.
I am also a bit of worried about making combat easier but it is way too early to say how it really will work. On the other hand are the other features of the game great and Arenanet are not the guys planning a good game and then cut all good features a few months before launch or saying that they will patch them in later.
Everyone will still not like it no matter what they do but you can't compare it with WAR, AoC and CO, those games offered very little new things even though they planned to add a lot of cool stuff from the beginning (well, except Cryptic).
I wont hide my initial dissapointment about the diverse races on offer. This to me wasn't what GW was about. They should have kept it to humans only and made itemization more diverse instead. Regardless, as a GW fanboy, I'll buy this without blinking.
Comments
A simpler design is more prone to cookie cutter builds than a complex one, not less.
Variety is thrown out the window if the rest of the builds hit like a wet paper bag, they can easily preach about how many endless builds they have, but the truth reveals itself when people start looking around at the best guilds, seeing what they are using that keeps them on top.
"Combat will be less complex and there will not be as many skills."
Less complex means dumbed-down. No other way to look at it.
Pls come on MMO_Doubter , you are ignoring the post that quote what developers have said that contradicts you and go on rambling !
I'm sure anet knows that such a diverse set of skills is one of the good things about guild wars, letting players make builds that are truely unique and "theirs." So, i'm positive when they say they are cutting down on the skill count, they'll prolly keep more than enough to let players continue creating their unique builds. The reason they are cutting down on skills is to focus more on making each skill better, or whatever their words were... I don't mind them cutting the skill list up to focus on skill quality.
I really don't think Guild Wars 2's combat system will be a dumbed down version of Guild Wars 1's. I think they'll just remove duplicate skills, thus making their job of balancing far easier and the game more competitive as a result.
I don't think they meant it like that. But I didn't really find combat all that complex in GW1 anyway. By less skills I guess they mean the total number, which as long as there aren't 15 skills to choose from for each class, won't make all that much of a difference. Anyway I think GW2 will be awesome.
Waiting for Guild Wars 2, SW:ToR and STO.
Currently playing Guild Wars, LoTRO).
Played WoW, GW, CO, DDO, RoM, WAR, LoTRO, Allods (Beta) + Tons more that aren't even worth mentioning!
Many of us thinks gw2 will be awesome, me included... now for those who think it won't... and it will suck and yadda yadda yadda... don't forget gw1 will still be up and running... if you really loved the first more then you trust you'll love the second... just go back to the first... if the game turns out to be not your liking, im sure there's plenty more people feeling the same as you and they will either go back to the first or join another mmo... which is obviously the solutions here... the devs are making the game... you can try and say your opinion, but what matters is the majority... and Anet apparantly listens to the majority... no point making this a big deal if its not even in beta as mentioned before... whatever the devs say whatever the devs claim... you'll only know it when you try it... everyone has opinions on everything and like/dislike things... that's just the way it goes.
Actually this makes more sense. I mean in Guildwars1, there were many skills no one ever used, what is the point in even having those skills in game if no one ever uses them? So weeding out the stuff no one uses just makes sense.
Streamlining it to what players actually use and want just seems practical.
Its still pretty unclear at this point how classes will even work. They have said several times they arent sure if they want a high level cap or any level cap at all, which to me would mean possibly something like UO, SWG Pre-cu or even a Fallen Earth style system where building your character is completely up to your own choice for design and you arent locked into pre determined classes.
That being said, I still play Guild Wars as a secondary to AoC and one of my favorite things to do is to design builds and then go try them out in AB's. The biggest problem is that 1 there are a ton of duplicate skills that do the same, or just slightly different than other skills, rendering them useless as it just makes your skill list even harder to read through, and 2 is the fact that a lot of skills werent that good, or required several other skills to work with them in order to make them viable to put into your bar. You add ontop of this stuff like 15 different ways to rez someone, or a bagillion skills that simply heal someone, and you wind up with a lot of redundancy. So while its still fun to try and make these skills work, you often find yourself sticking to a certain list and mixing and matching from that list. My guess for the expansion is they will eliminate some of that and pull it back to a lesser amount of skills thus making it easier.
Arena Net isnt dumb, and it was shown by Guild Wars 1 that they had no intention of making the standard MMO from the start. The only reason they really did not want to continue GW1 was how hard it was to completely keep building off the type of model they had as it did not allow for a great deal of freedom in design and was difficult to continually have to keep releasing content every 6 months on the scale they were doing.
My Guild Wars 2 Vids
It actualy doesn't rly freighten me that the combat system is a bit less complex, but what rly concerns me is that it pace will be brought down. What i rly liked about GW is it's FAST combat system. Every fight was against multiple enemies, and it is fluently. In only a matter of seconds, the outcome is decided. U had a party wipe, or u exterminated ur enemeies. And that is what I like. Not the WoW-like slow combat.
The only thing in GW one that lacks to me is some mature content, in the sense of Blood and better animations. Take for example some combat animations. If I cast Meteor Shower, I wanna see huge f*cking fireballs coming out from a red sky, smashing my oponents to bits and pieces. If I cast lightning, I wanna see real lightning flashes and intimidating roaring sounds. if I heal my partymembers, I wanna feel the divine power I cast upon my mates by seeing Dwayna's hand reaching out of the sky... All of this alone would alrdy make the game so much more immersive, and would alrdy be the title of GW2 worthy.
But as I look upon it now, it feels as if they are trying to make GW mainstream... Meh anyway, I just hope they can distinguish themselfs again from a overcrowed MMO mass of bullcrap.
Complex combat should be like in vanguard where you need to constantly think about what ability to use when, not like eq2 where you put 12 abilities on a hotbar in order of greatest damage and whack them as their cooldowns come up.
Try playing guild wars, then you'll understand the comment. But to give you an example:
In total, GW! has over 1300 (!) skills. Sorry, did i say 1300? Its 1319 skills that are usable at all times. Then there's junundu, wintersday, monster specific, ally specific, pve skills, polymock (yes, the minigame)... The total is.. dont get scared.. over 1700 different skills. Tell me, have you even managed to use 1000 different skills in the time playing guildwars?
So, by cutting it down to... lets say, 1000 skills the customization will still be far more then you can handle as you can only bring 8 skills in a build. It is however a 'decrease' as the dev's have stated. So just focus on the context, not just the writing.
lol!when gw2 was announced dx11 wasnt out!does it mean dx11 wont be in gw2 ,beat me.
so until the game is shown we dont know how it will be.but ill give the benefit of the doubt to arenanet
hell compare gw1 to wow a lot less button in gw1 right ,it is still one of the most strategic game out there
trying to do what gw1 player did woould be too complex for average gamer in wow
so until i see the final result i ll give arenanet a very good chance since gw is the only title that came to be second only to wow for a freaking long time
If you played the original you would know that the game had far too many skills and it became a mess to balance. There will be less skills for each class but that does not mean that variety will not be there because they are keeping the dual class system.
The more skills the better the game will be.
In my opinion Guild Wars skill system sould be like CCG Magic the Gathering card system. With each expansion there should come new skills. More build choice.
Metagaming is not a reason to not create a large diversity of skills. This variety works with MTG so it will surely work with GWs.
Understanding what is MTG and how it seduces people who play it, might make GW2 the most successfull mmo.
To early to tell but i definitely think it will be a very hyped game like Aoc and War. I do not think it will be a champions though. Champions was less COX 2.0 and more "Shit we lost the marvel IP what can we do with what we got".
I kind of like champions if the game can clean itself up it will be better then COX ever was especially with its skill based system.
Nah i believe GW2 will deliver
if they dont over promise they deliver by default in my book.
so GW2 = Ursan's "blessing" round 2?
"Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars combat, exploration and character progression. In Alganon, in addition to these we've added the fourth pillar to the equation: Copy & Paste."
Just relax, every game Jeff Strain touches becomes good.
I am also a bit of worried about making combat easier but it is way too early to say how it really will work. On the other hand are the other features of the game great and Arenanet are not the guys planning a good game and then cut all good features a few months before launch or saying that they will patch them in later.
Everyone will still not like it no matter what they do but you can't compare it with WAR, AoC and CO, those games offered very little new things even though they planned to add a lot of cool stuff from the beginning (well, except Cryptic).
I wont hide my initial dissapointment about the diverse races on offer. This to me wasn't what GW was about. They should have kept it to humans only and made itemization more diverse instead. Regardless, as a GW fanboy, I'll buy this without blinking.