Guild Wars 2 Year End Development Update

[JohnnyV]

Hey, there! It’s time for another update on some of the new things we’ve been working on. Jon and I have a lot to talk about this time, so I’ll get started with our achievement system before I hand things over to Mr. Peters, who’ll talk about some more subtle combat refinements as well as recent changes to the thief.

Be an Achiever

We’ve spoken about and even shown achievements briefly in the past; however, we’ve never really spoken in much depth about the system.

The first thing you’ll need to know is that there are now three different types of achievements located in your achievement panel. First, there is what we refer to as just “achievements.” You’re probably familiar with these: they tend to be similar to the achievements in the original Guild Wars and many other games, which means they tend toward things that are difficult or time consuming to achieve. These types of achievements are designed to reward long-term progress and are all account based. They include things like the Centaur Slayer achievement, which tracks how many centaurs you’ve killed, as well as achievements specific to each of the different story arcs. Achievements encompass all aspects of the game from WvW to PvE to PvP, and even noncombat activities, such as trading and leisure games. Each achievement is divided into tiers, and every tier you complete awards you with achievement points. As your achievement points accumulate, they are reflected in your account’s achievement score. This score is easily viewable in both the friends and guild panels and is an easy way for you to compare your overall level of achievement progress with your friends and guild mates.

“…there are now three different types of achievements located in your achievement panel.” Comparing scores with your friends and guild mates can be good fun, but we also wanted to provide rewards other than just a higher achievement score. This is where titles come into play. A title can be earned by completing certain achievement tracks and is displayed beneath your name for everyone to see. For example, a player could choose to display the Dungeon Master title if they’ve completed the explorable mode for every dungeon at least once. Those who are really into earning achievement points can also unlock repeatable versions of some achievements after completing the base set. For example, anyone earning the Dungeon Master title will also earn access to a repeatable achievement that gives them points every time they finish a dungeon in explorable mode.

We also track what we call daily and monthly achievements in the achievement panel. Daily achievements are what we used to call daily feats and have been in the game for quite some time. We were looking for an easy way for players to track their progress on their daily feats, and rolling them into the achievement system made a lot of sense. Daily achievements are a list of achievements that reset every 24 hours. They are very easy to accomplish, and players are expected to complete them in a short period of time. For example, one of the daily achievements tracks the number of monsters of any type killed by the player. Once an achievement has been completed, the player is rewarded with some achievement points as well as a chest containing gold and experience orbs. The player can now progress toward completion of the next tier of the achievement. There are a finite number of tiers for each daily achievement, and the numbers are skewed such that more casual players should finish a high percentage of them in an average play session. If a player is able to complete enough daily achievements, they will also unlock a special bonus chest. This system makes the first couple of hours of play each day extremely productive and helps equalize experience and gold gain between casual and hardcore players.

Monthly achievements are a new addition to the game and serve the purpose of bridging the gap between the short-term goals offered by daily achievements and the long-term goals offered by regular achievements. Monthly achievements are intended to be more difficult to complete than daily achievements and usually encompass a variety of different types of content, from completing dungeons to social activities to participating in competitive PvP. As a player completes tiers in their monthly achievements, they will receive achievement points as well as a chest containing gold and experience orbs. Much like daily achievements, any achievement points earned also contribute toward a special bonus chest. Monthly achievements reset every month, but unlike daily achievements, they change to a completely new set of achievements.

So to sum up:

Achievements are long-term goals with purely cosmetic rewards.

Daily achievements are short-term, easy-to-complete goals that reward you with gold and experience.
Monthly achievements are medium-term goals that encourage a variety of play and reward you with gold and experience.

Titles can be earned by completing certain achievement tracks.

That just about covers achievements! Now, let me turn things over to Jon to talk about improvements we’ve made to the thief and combat.

Click to read full update.

http://www.arena.net/blog/guild-wars...lopment-update

[Ruse]

What stood out to me is from part you didn't post, the Combat and Fine Tuning section.

There were skills such as Savage Leap, which moved the player into range of their target, and big control attacks like Shield Bash, that you wanted to be able to quickly follow with another skill. The problem was that the animations for these skills had follow-through that was preventing players from using another skill until the animations were finished. You could stun or chase someone, but it was hard to capitalize on it.

Our programmers added technology to our skill data to allow us to specify a point in an animation at which the player could start moving again. This made skills like Savage Leap not only more functional but tremendously fun to use. This technology came in right before gamescom, so we were able to showcase it with a few important skills in that demo. Now that the technology has evolved, not only does it allow players to specify when they can start movement but it also allows us to transition into queued skills so that we can improve responsiveness.

This could be awesome! ...but since playing DCUO, all I see is "animation clipping." And I really, really hope that's not what this is about.

[Warshade]

What stood out to me is from part you didn't post, the Combat and Fine Tuning section.



This could be awesome! ...but since playing DCUO, all I see is "animation clipping." And I really, really hope that's not what this is about.

I would imagine that it will be handled as well as possible, but if I had to choose between either extreme, I would definitely choose playability over perfect animation.

[Ruse]

Likewise. I've seen what it did to both AoC and DCUO (in even greater extremes). I get that they don't want you to be locked into superlong animations (and the examples they've given make sense for skill chaining) it just makes me very, very leery of unintended consequences.