My Thoughts on Guild Wars 2....

[emptyglo]

My Thoughts on Guild Wars 2....

Since I've started researching this game, various topics came to
my mind and I've noticed some things I like and a few dislikes.
ArenaNet seems to want to change everything we know about MMO's,
and sometimes I wonder if their not changing too much...

1. Dynamic Events

Most of you should know what they are, and turns out it is a
feature I really liked in the game... What I don't understand
and would like answered is how all this is going to add to the
lore... Also, I have come to comparing it to something like a
scatter plot, and I believe that it all builds up to the final
event... Unlike other games, where it is just a straight on line
of quests, GW2 seems to enforce this "randomness" am I right?
Do Dynamic Event quests just appear randomly? If so, how could
that add to the general lore? Where is the story?

2. No more Holy Trinity

Like I said, ArenaNet is changing a lot of things, one
of them is that they are getting rid of Holy Trinity. What comes
to mind is: How could they want to enforce teamwork with things
like Cross-Profession Combos when Holy Trinity is what makes
teamwork possible? It isn't something I like, or dislike. It's
just that Holy Trinity also makes the game different. Like when
You're the one tanking and it's this big boss you're fighting
and all you see is your life going Up and Down and you're
like totally freaking out! Or when you are the healer and you
feel as if the success of this dungeon depends on you! ArenaNet
is really changing a lot, and I have no idea how they are going
to make this happen. Even if every profession CAN heal and do
everything, their has to be SOMEONE over there distracting the
boss and tanking up the damage. It's too difficult to distribute
ALL of the damage between ALL players...

3. Sidekicking

Sidekicking is their system in which they will boost
or decrease your level to match the difficulty of the game.
This is a system that I ABSOLUTELY HATE!!! Like for example in
PvP: All you're gonna do is just skip all of the game content,
haven't you heard on how They will boost you up to 85 and
ALL of the spells, skills, and armors will be available to you?
Like I know how they're trying to make a game for everyone, but
isn't this getting a little too casual and EASY? Where's the
sense of accomplishment of when you spent like a year getting
up to 85 and some idiot who was level 1 appears there with all
the armor? I really don't know how they are going to do this.

ArenaNet really has to do something about all of this... Things
are great and I love how they are changing a lot, but many
things don't add up...

I really don't know...

[Drow]

hello emptyglo, welcome to these forums. heres my opinion
1. I think there will be randomness in events that are like side-quests, not really important, only that will be random so i suppose theres no need to worry about lore. important stuff wont be random im sure of it ^^
2. was thinking about this myself, after watching some videos about it on youtube..There will be teamplay with all those spells u can combine and stuff like that, and trinity does exist, its just deep inside of all professions, since all can take role of something
here is one stupid example: 3 necromancers making holy trinity. one will tank, one will heal with his wells or whatever its called and the 3rd will dps with creeps. Holy trinity will exist, players and their good teamplay will create it
3. fully agree. i hate it. its stupid. it shouldn't exist

[emptyglo]

I see what your saying, and I guess you're right. Story-related things wont be random, also I never really saw what your trying to say with each profession can take a roll, as I understand your saying that there will be a small amount of Holy Trinity, as in each profession can take any part and each roll is not limited to each profession...

[dragonofmalice]

In defense of sidekicking-

I think this system is a really nice way to work on community and let's pvp be what it should be.

Pve- sidekicking let's friends play together no matter their level without drastically changing the game. People sidekicked down will be more effective than someone only at that level but not be gods in lower lvl areas removing all challenge and the need for the lower lvl to do anything. With sidekicked up characters they will be weaker but actually able to help rather than just ridding on coat tails. I like this system for because it let's people play where when and with whom they want.

Pvp- this makes pvp about skill and only skill. Everyone that I have heard dis this system is concerned about not being able to show off epic gear. In php you show off by beating people on an even playing field. People with lots of free time should not have an innate advantage in the arena.

Typed on my phone sorry for typos and odd autocorrects

[roshamjoe]

Hello,

1) The dynamic events are going to be based in the lore, ie there are dragons and minions running a muck and it's up to you to stop them. I think it's more like there is lore and the dynamic events are based off that, not there are dynamic events creating lore, (though my own sentence confused me just now enough to edit it). Also, the main lore will likely be from your own personal story that changes based on decisions you make. The larger changes will likely come by with expansions where we will get to see, fight, get owned by and perhaps kill the elder dragons.

2) Expanding on what Drow said, since everyone can take on any role in the fight at any time the fight becomes really dynamic. Having a dedicated tank/healer to me never really made much sense to me because too much hinged no a very small part of the group. My favorite days of warcraft were playing my druid, pre burning crusade when the talents were terrible, and running around UBRS in a 15 man group, substituting for every role as people died. I'd start as dps, see a healer was hurting and throw a couple of heals over the group, battle rez the tank and run up as a bear to grab whatever aggro I could while the tank was getting back on his feat and healed/buffed back up. This made groups fun for me and I feel like it's the type of gameplay we'll see in GW2. People constantly swapping roles based on how the fight evolves. Will there be better classes with traits that make them better at one or another role, probably. My hope though is that it will take more skill and team coordination than spec and team composition to be successful in things like the explorable dungeons and higher level events.

3) The sidekicking feature comes in a few variations:

In competitive PvP, aka 5v5 in the mists and what not, you're bumped up to max level and given a set of gear and weapons to make you competitive with the other people. I'll use WoW as an example as it's where I have the most experience. Battlegrounds used to be about skill and coordination with teams. As soon as the focus got swapped to what gear you had it broke battlegrounds. People no longer played the game to get better at PvP, they played the game to get better gear so they would "be better" at PvP. By giving everyone the same, class equivilent, gear, you're taking away the focus from gear and putting it back onto gameplay. The people who PvP more often will still have an edge over someone who just started the game because they will know more than that new player. They will be "battle hardened" and react quicker with better plans. The feeling of accomplishment will come from titles and vanity rewards you got. To me, it's more of an accomplishment to have beaten someone on an even playing field because of how I play versus beating someone into a pulp who never had a chance.

In WvWvW, I believe the idea is to "sidekick" you up to level 80, however you will never be as powerful as a true level 80, you will just have stats that are equivalent to a level 80. You will not have the traits, the damage output or the survivability of a normal level 80 but again, you will be able to at least compete a little bit before getting beat.

In the PvE world, I don't see any reason not to have this feature. When you enter an area that is approximately lvl 40 and you're level 80, you will be dropped down to the highest level for that area, so we'll call that 41 in this case. You are stronger than most things, if not all things, in that area but the content is still relevant for you. You're not one shotting all mobs and being bored by the content. You also still receive rewards equivalent for whatever level you are, in this case 80, based on the difficulty and your participation of the event. The ability to scale up to is incredible as you can bring in someone who is a level 10 to join you in a level 80 event, and while they won't stay level 80 permanently, they're still getting to experience the event and play along with you rather than have to wait.

Edit* Also, instances will be the same. You will be dropped to the max level allowable in an instance so you can continue experiencing the content at a difficult level. Even more so since the explorable dungeons are supposed to be much more difficult than the story mode.

Of course that's just my long winded take on points you brought up. I also thank you for bringing up points because if no one ever questions how things are then we end up with the same stale stuff over and over.

[Drow]

too much text, i gave up

[emptyglo]

In defense of sidekicking-

I think this system is a really nice way to work on community and let's pvp be what it should be.

Pve- sidekicking let's friends play together no matter their level without drastically changing the game. People sidekicked down will be more effective than someone only at that level but not be gods in lower lvl areas removing all challenge and the need for the lower lvl to do anything. With sidekicked up characters they will be weaker but actually able to help rather than just ridding on coat tails. I like this system for because it let's people play where when and with whom they want.

Pvp- this makes pvp about skill and only skill. Everyone that I have heard dis this system is concerned about not being able to show off epic gear. In php you show off by beating people on an even playing field. People with lots of free time should not have an innate advantage in the arena.

Typed on my phone sorry for typos and odd autocorrects

yes i understand what you are trying to say, but as i said it allows people to skip game content (in both pvp and pve) i think it would feel really unfair for people who are actually high level and went through everything to get their and have that pride that they are there and someone just shows up in a party to help out even though they are technically lower and do not really deserve to do the awesome fun hard raid type quests when everyone else had to go through the more boring parts...

[Centaur]

Hi emptyglo, welcome to these forums. roshamjoe gave a very good explanation of the sidekicking system, but I'll just give you my take on all the 3 points you raised:

1) Most Dynamic Events are definitely not random, although the exact time at which they occur may have some random factor. They are tied into the area and into the lore. For example, ArenaNet's popular example of centaurs raiding a human village... if you know a little bit about GW lore, you know that just like was the case with the Charr, the humans have on invaded centaur lands and driven them out. The centaurs won't just take this lying down, and they want to get their lands back. That is why they try to take over some human settlements... which starts a dynamic events at some point. Depending on the outcome of that dynamic event (success or fail), the next dynamic event (or chain of events) is triggered. There are a lot of (large and small) events like that, all tied into the area you're in at that time. A lot of them may not have such obvious links to the lore as the centaur example (for example, helping a farmer drive off the worms that are terrorizing his farmlands), but they do fit into the region you're in. Some events are even triggered by the players themselves (for example, a player may move a rock that closes off a mountain cave, triggering a new dynamic event).

2) I definitely do not agree that it's the Holy Trinity that makes teamwork possible. It's the willingness of players to cooperate that makes teamwork possible, and the Holy Trinity is just one mechanism that helps in this... by forcing players into specific roles. Guild Wars 2 doesn't take away your ability to take on specific roles, it just takes away the limitation that you can only have these roles for the entire duration of the battle. So you can still choose to tank, dps, or take on a support role... you just don't have to do only that for the entire fight. So for example the guardian in the party may start in a support role, and the warrior in a tanking role, but in the heat of the battle, when the warrior is about to go down, the guardian may run in and take over the tank role, and the warrior can retreat to the backline, either for ranged dps, or for support (whichever he chooses, and whatever that stage of the battle calls for). This still requires that same willingness of the players to cooperate, but it allows for much more dynamic combat, and it doesn't force players into one specific role (which they may not like all that much) for the entire duration of the battle. So the lack of Holy Trinity doesn't mean that roles are gone completely, it just means that players don't have to pick a dedicated role before they team up, and stick with it for the duration of the event.

3) There is a big difference between sidekicking in pve, and sidekicking in pvp. In competitive pvp, everyone is automatically raised to max level, with all skills unlocked, and access to all weapons. This makes competitive pvp matches fair and on equal grounds... there wouldn't be much fun for a level 2 to try competitive pvp if everyone else in the match is already level 80, as he'd just get slaughtered over and over again. And it's not a case of skipping content either... there simply is no lower (than max) level competitive pvp content.

In PvE, players are raised (or lowered) to the level of the content they are playing, so that they can team up with friends and play together, but they will still have their original equipment and their original skills. So although someone sidekicked from level 10 to level 40 will be more powerful than they were originally, they will not be a true level 40 character, and they will not suddenly have all the skills and equipment of a level 40 character... you will still need to go back and play the rest of the game, to unlock all that. So it's definitely not designed to be a means to skip content!

World vs World pvp is similar to PvE, with a small difference... players are all raised to level 80 (max level), and their current weapon and armor is scaled up, but other than that, again they don't automatically have all skills unlocked and access to all equipment... so they still have their original (PvE) level skills and equipment, and they still need to play the game to unlock those... either in PvE or in WvW. So the level 80 there is also not a means to skip content, it's just a means to prevent you from being one-shotted by higher level players, so that you still do have a chance (although you will definitely be weaker in a 1v1 match).

Other than that, Guild Wars 2 is set up to not have a difference between how you play the game at lower levels and at max level... in GW2, playing through lower level content is not supposed to be a boring grind to get to endgame... the game you play at level 10, is intended to be the exact same game as what you're playing at level 80... and is supposed to be equally fun. So in GW2 you shouldn't find that difference in 'awesome hard raid type quests' at higher level and 'more boring parts' at lower levels that you find in so many other current MMO's... that's why you won't see things like 'kill ten rats' at level 1... you'll be thrown straight into the big battles and you will quickly encounter your first big scale boss fight.

PS: sorry about the length... I think I got a bit carried away there

[emptyglo]

In reply to Centaur:

True... so in competetive pvp it will kind of be like a little arena that you go in and everyone is the best that they could possibly be... although I still think that they should have a pvp thing that you can battle at a lower level... otherwise you don't really get to experience pvp at a "weaker" stage

p.s. forgive me if im being too stubborn lol -these topics just give me more doubts about the game and i want to clear them-

[roshamjoe]

I can relate in that lower level PvP is fun, however the reason it was fun for me was because people are on a much more even ground. Most of the gear in MMOs is reserved for max levels so lower level PvP typically sees people much closer in stats to each other. Far more so than the range you see when first entering max level PvP and a few months of grinding.

One huge benefit for me, perhaps not everyone, is that I love to jump around between classes and try my hand at each. I can't really gauge how a character is going to play based on the first 10 levels if my max level is 80, so in current MMOs I have one option: Grind out to max level and then grind gear to be able to participate in PvP. Most skills that define a class aren't even available until 2/3rds of max level so you won't know how the class fully plays until you've invested a lot of play time. In GW2 you will be able to create a new character, play through the tutorial and then join in PvP with everyone else. This, combined with the whole free to play aspect, helps draw in people who only like to PvP and don't want to spend hours upon hours in PvE content to get to max level and then PvP.

One final point as I'm trying to keep this slightly shorter than my last post, people who to create a level 1 and jump into PvP will have the same gear as everyone but will always be at a disadvantage to anyone who played for hours and hours in PvE or WvWvW because of a lack of abilities. Character will be given abilities based on weapon set and will be given a pool of normal talents to choose from. However, the higher level abilities and elite abilities have to be unlocked while playing the game. So for me, I'll likely be trying out a lot of the classes in PvP, finding one I enjoy playing and then work on that toon in PvE and/or WvWvW to get my elite skills and to really sink my teeth into.