[Vorsakan]

An interesting piece from Eurogamer...
http://www.vg247.com...ild-wars-2-pvp/

It's hard to be 100% confident in sites you're not very familiar with, but if this is fully accurate reporting then there are a few bombshells within. :surprised:

Quote

One bold design choice for the competitive PvP is that your PvE character level is entirely irrelevant. Indeed, you can choose to play an entirely different character class or profession to your PvE character, or even, forget PvE altogether and play competitive PvP exclusively, should you so wish.

Quote

“For competitive PvP you’re automatically set to level 80 and all skills, weapons and armour is unlocked and set to max levels,” Johanson tells me. “Plus, you get a max number of trait points and then you set your build any way you like it."

It's been hinted we won't have the same attribute choices to make when levelling up (under the unseen new system), so maybe 'trait points' are the replacement?
Allocated or spent though...

~ Update:
Colin Johanson clarified (6 posts below this one!) that the first quote simply refers to the fact that you can make a new character and be into structured PvP in only 5-10 minutes. :cool:

Edited by Chalky, 10 October 2011 - 03:49 PM.

[Arngrim Einheri]

Quote

“We’re looking at doing a map with a dragon that flies over breathing fire and you have to dodge the dragon’s attacks in between attacking and defending.”

Suddenly, Demon Souls!!!

[cold2]

The dragon sounds awesome. And this is my favorite bit.

Quote

“For competitive PvP you’re automatically set to level 80 and all skills, weapons and armour is unlocked and set to max levels,” Johanson tells me. “Plus, you get a max number of trait points and then you set your build any way you like it. In fact, you don’t ever have to play the PvE if you don’t want to. So, if you love PvP games you can play Guild Wars 2 entirely as PvP and by unlocking everything for everyone when they enter this mode we make it about skill, not about what you’ve unlocked."

That's awesome. I'm really glad they did something like that.

[Lord Xaldin]

Trait points sound interesting. But that is also kind of worrying to me. We already have the 4 main abilities that you level up to increase health/damage/armour/etc. It seems kind of silly to make a new system involving more trait abilities like that. (I.E. leveling up your skills strength/cast time?/etc.)

Unless... Every skill has an individual set of abilities to be leveled up. Whether it be power, speed, or bonus (more meteors for meteor shower? new conditions?) That would be an interesting and cool way to upgrade your skills.

[Mordakai]

Quote

One bold design choice for the competitive PvP is that your PvE character level is entirely irrelevant. Indeed, you can choose to play an entirely different character class or profession to your PvE character, or even, forget PvE altogether and play competitive PvP exclusively, should you so wish.

I think you're reading a bit too much into that. My take is they are simply saying it's easy to make a new character and race and take it into PvP. (that you don't have to level a character before PvP.)

[Vorsakan]

Lord Xaldin said:

Trait points sound interesting. But that is also kind of worrying to me. We already have the 4 main abilities that you level up to increase health/damage/armour/etc. It seems kind of silly to make a new system involving more trait abilities like that. (I.E. leveling up your skills strength/cast time?/etc.)

Unless... Every skill has an individual set of abilities to be leveled up. Whether it be power, speed, or bonus (more meteors for meteor shower? new conditions?) That would be an interesting and cool way to upgrade your skills.

We won't - seemingly - have the 4 main abilities to level up under the new system: the devs didn't find it "compelling" enough in practice.

That's the impression I've gotten anyway - always so hard to glean the truth from so many little snippets mashed together! :o

~ Update:
Realized I was a bit vague there - it's the ability to spend allocate a few attribute points upon level up that I think may have been removed, not the whole attribute system!
Past maths showed that only 10% or so of attributes points were assigned that way anyway (roughly 60/30 for base growth/gear), so I can see why it might be in line for replacement.

Edited by Vorsakan, 06 October 2011 - 06:44 PM.

[Colin Johanson]

Mordakai said:

I think you're reading a bit too much into that. My take is they are simply saying it's easy to make a new character and race and take it into PvP. (that you don't have to level a character before PvP.)

That is correct yes, as it is currently stands you'd need to make a new character if you wished to play as a different race or profession. It's just extremely easy to do so, and then hop right into competitive PvP once you're out of the tutorial area (5-10 min tops). That is of course all subject to change, but right now that's how it works, you CANNOT swap your characters profession or race at will.

[Mordakai]

Colin Johanson said:

That is correct yes, as it is currently stands you'd need to make a new character if you wished to play as a different race or profession. It's just extremely easy to do so, and then hop right into competitive PvP once you're out of the tutorial area (5-10 min tops). That is of course all subject to change, but right now that's how it works, you CANNOT swap your characters profession or race at will.

Thanks Colin!


While you are here, is there any chance you could answer some questions on not being able to equip a Greatsword until level 10? Like, is that set in stone?

Thanks!

[On_Slaught]

Vorsakan said:

We won't - seemingly - have the 4 main abilities to level up under the new system: the devs didn't find it "compelling" enough in practice.

That's the impression I've gotten anyway - always so hard to glean the truth from so many little snippets mashed together! :o

~ Update:
Realized I was a bit vague there - it's the ability to spend allocate a few attribute points upon level up that I think may have been removed, not the whole attribute system!
Past maths showed that only 10% or so of attributes points were assigned that way anyway (roughly 60/30 for base growth/gear), so I can see why it might be in line for replacement.

I certainly hope those numbers are wrong. There is very very little room for build diversity if everyone has within 10% of each others stats in PvP.

"Oh I want to go full crit? Well i'm a necro so I guess i can't be good at that."

"I want to go full vitality? Your a thief. Sucks to be you. You'll never get your vitality stat close to your power one!"

The trait system could allow for some real diversity in PvP, but if we are stuck with literally the same stats (which would be god awful b/c there is zero diversity then) or we can only change a small % of our stats in PvP, then PvP just got a lot shallower.

[Waar Kijk Je Naar]

I'm dissappointed.

An interview with Colin Johanson, with no (Colin-)pics in the article?

Pff

[Gigashadow]

Vorsakan said:

=
It's been hinted we won't have the same attribute choices to make when levelling up (under the unseen new system), so maybe 'trait points' are the replacement?

That is how I think they will end up going with the new trait system, as it allows them to price each trait differently, rather than you getting X minor and Y major, and traits having to be either one or the other. So maybe you will get X trait points, and you spend them how you want, on traits of varying costs. I guess we'll have to wait and see how they decided to go with it.

[Sard]

Mordakai said:

Thanks Colin!

While you are here, is there any chance you could answer some questions on not being able to equip a Greatsword until level 10? Like, is that set in stone?

Thanks!

sneaky mordakai...lol...


very cool info. nuggets here...thanks!

[Vorsakan]

On_Slaught said:

I certainly hope those numbers are wrong. There is very very little room for build diversity if everyone has within 10% of each others stats in PvP.

"Oh I want to go full crit? Well i'm a necro so I guess i can't be good at that."

"I want to go full vitality? Your a thief. Sucks to be you. You'll never get your vitality stat close to your power one!"

The trait system could allow for some real diversity in PvP, but if we are stuck with literally the same stats (which would be god awful b/c there is zero diversity then) or we can only change a small % of our stats in PvP, then PvP just got a lot shallower.

You have a huge margin for customizing builds, but you do so via gear.

The 60% (approx!) you have no control over from base growth is even across all attributes - so you cannot make ridiculously squishy or ridiculously deadly characters.

Someone putting all their gear bonuses into a single attribute could have double the number of someone else who spreads their gear bonuses across multiple/all attributes though - there may well be caps in place to discourage that though!

The points you assign when levelling up are rather trivial though, because there are so few of them - if you watch PvE videos for instance, you're not going to see any discernible difference between a player who levels up and doesn't assign their few points, versus one who does.
Over 80 levels those points will amount to something of course, but individual 'pings' aren't very dynamic - which I expect is what the devs are addressing. :)

[Tib]

Didnt we just have a pvp interview where they talked about splitting their attributes equally for one team build, and adjusted them up and down for another team build?

[Nemui]

Quote

In fact, Eurogamer Expo marked the first opportunity for the European press to go hands-on with PvP.

wrong, PvP was accessible to anyone at gamescom, which was before eurogamer. or are they implying because everyone had access, it wasn't good enough for the press ?

[Ziz]

Colin Johanson said:

That is correct yes, as it is currently stands you'd need to make a new character if you wished to play as a different race or profession. It's just extremely easy to do so, and then hop right into competitive PvP once you're out of the tutorial area (5-10 min tops). That is of course all subject to change, but right now that's how it works, you CANNOT swap your characters profession or race at will.

THANK YOU!!!

I think its great that you cannot change your race/class
one big problem with Rift imo was that you could respec super easy and be completely different
this make fotm very easy and annoying as well as you never felt connected to your charecter

[Vorsakan]

Tib said:

Didnt we just have a pvp interview where they talked about splitting their attributes equally for one team build, and adjusted them up and down for another team build?

Yar - but that section was the equipment section. :D

Quote

Equipment

I didn’t list all the equipment that we used, but we have three main equipment setups we set up for the demo games. Among the hundreds that we use internally, we found these three setups to be the strongest. We limited our choices in the demo games to keep it simpler, but as we added or tweaked our items, equipment became a very important part of our build.

You change attribute specs by changing gear, not clicking assignable attribute points up & down hundreds of time. :D

[LastDay]

Lord Xaldin said:

Trait points sound interesting. But that is also kind of worrying to me. We already have the 4 main abilities that you level up to increase health/damage/armour/etc. It seems kind of silly to make a new system involving more trait abilities like that. (I.E. leveling up your skills strength/cast time?/etc.)

Unless... Every skill has an individual set of abilities to be leveled up. Whether it be power, speed, or bonus (more meteors for meteor shower? new conditions?) That would be an interesting and cool way to upgrade your skills.

I was thinking of these when I heard "trait points":
http://wiki.gtm.guil....com/wiki/Trait

Although as the page says it's out of date info, so who knows how exactly they work now.

[Mordakai]

Ziz said:

THANK YOU!!!

I think its great that you cannot change your race/class
one big problem with Rift imo was that you could respec super easy and be completely different
this make fotm very easy and annoying as well as you never felt connected to your charecter

For PvE, I agree, characters should have weight to them.

But for PvP, I honestly wouldn't mind a "PvP" slot. I know, I know, "it's only 5 minutes". But that's going to be an extremely annoying 5 minutes the 20 time you've re-rolled your PvP character. (I guess the solution is just buy more slots!)

[Saosin]

Mordakai said:

For PvE, I agree, characters should have weight to them.

But for PvP, I honestly wouldn't mind a "PvP" slot. I know, I know, "it's only 5 minutes". But that's going to be an extremely annoying 5 minutes the 20 time you've re-rolled your PvP character. (I guess the solution is just buy more slots!)

I think its safe to assume we will have at least 8 slots so most people will have one of each profession made. I can't see anet restricting us to less than 8, doesn't exactly go with their philosophy. But yea maybe you will be able to buy more like GW1

[Mordakai]

Saosin said:

I think its safe to assume we will have at least 8 slots so most people will have one of each profession made. I can't see anet restricting us to less than 8, doesn't exactly go with their philosophy. But yea maybe you will be able to buy more like GW1

I don't think it's safe to assume that at all... GW1 had 6 professions, and only had 4 slots (to start).

I can see GW2 having 5 - 6 slots. (one for each race?)

I think characters slots in the store is a given.

[Whiteraven]

Yeah I agree with Mordakai, I see around 5 minimum with extra slots available. Which is reasonable with their business model. I will be buying 3-4 slots on release depending on how many we get.

[Cloudpiercer]

Mordakai said:

I don't think it's safe to assume that at all... GW1 had 6 professions, and only had 4 slots (to start).

I can see GW2 having 5 - 6 slots. (one for each race?)

I think characters slots in the store is a given.

Someone let it slip a while back that there were gonna be 5, they came in later and said that number wasn't final but I don't know if that means we will get more or less. I'm pretty set on buying however many slots it takes to get to 8 on day 1, I'm not a huge alt guy but I want to try every profession and experience as many storylines (hopefully the end doesn't get repetitive) as I can. It will also be nice being able to jump into pvp on any of those characters.

[upier]

Colin Johanson said:

That is correct yes, as it is currently stands you'd need to make a new character if you wished to play as a different race or profession. It's just extremely easy to do so, and then hop right into competitive PvP once you're out of the tutorial area (5-10 min tops). That is of course all subject to change, but right now that's how it works, you CANNOT swap your characters profession or race at will.

*crosses fingers to see this changed*

[On_Slaught]

Vorsakan said:

You have a huge margin for customizing builds, but you do so via gear.

The 60% (approx!) you have no control over from base growth is even across all attributes - so you cannot make ridiculously squishy or ridiculously deadly characters.

Someone putting all their gear bonuses into a single attribute could have double the number of someone else who spreads their gear bonuses across multiple/all attributes though - there may well be caps in place to discourage that though!

The points you assign when levelling up are rather trivial though, because there are so few of them - if you watch PvE videos for instance, you're not going to see any discernible difference between a player who levels up and doesn't assign their few points, versus one who does.
Over 80 levels those points will amount to something of course, but individual 'pings' aren't very dynamic - which I expect is what the devs are addressing. :)

I'm talking about PvP. Namely, structured PvP. If 60% of my stats are always the same, and another 30% or so comes from gear which is limited severely b/c this is supposed to be equal pvp, then I lose customization.

Apparently we can change armor sets in PvP but since they all need to be balanced equally i'm very curious to see how this works. Are there set pieces of armor with different stats which we pick from? Obviously we won't be bringing our own armor to PvP statwise since everyone needs to have access to the same stats.

Personally I wish we could just assign every individual stat to PvP armor. Just give me a piece of blank armor with 50 points on it and let me pick where they go. That is balanced and adds to complexity.

Edited by On_Slaught, 06 October 2011 - 10:06 PM.

[Gigashadow]

On_Slaught said:

Personally I wish we could just assign every individual stat to PvP armor. Just give me a piece of blank armor with 50 points on it and let me pick where they go. That is balanced and adds to complexity.

Way back when, in one of their blog articles about loot, they described how when you get a piece of loot, you will get more total stats if they are spread across multiple attributes, than if they are all assigned to fewer attributes (or even all to one attribute). Letting you assign 100% of the attribute points affecting your character in pvp, gets around that particular limitation. Then there is also the fact that damage is roughly attack squared divided by defense (this part I asked Jon Peters about at PAX, as I was very curious about how damage was calculated), which might get a little too crazy if you really do assign 100% of your attribute points, rather than just the portion of points that don't come from loot.

[Skyy High]

"Trait points"?

...go on....

Also: changing professions / races while in competitive PvP only would be awesome. Unless there is a truly compelling reason to not allow it (and I can't think of one, beyond the obvious tech issues and the fact that your appearance would either have to be randomized or picked by default), I would love that. I don't want to have to log out to character select to play a different class; I can swap loadouts and classes in every major FPS in between matches (and sometimes in between deaths!), so I see that as an unnecessary nuisance that just prevents GW2 from being as good a PvP game as it could be.

Edited by Skyy High, 06 October 2011 - 11:08 PM.

[Doctor Overlord]

Nice interview but I disagree with the comment about separating structured PVP into level tiers

The one absolutely fundamental element of PvP is not balance. It's having available players to fight. Diluting the player base with tiers can lead to issues seen in WAR like the long wait times for scenarios or desolate, low-level PvP zones.

As GW2 matures, the lower level PvP tiers would become wastelands and PvP would devolve into an 'endgame' content only for max-level characters. ArenaNet seems to hard to try to avoid that sort of thing (which I really approve).

I smile when I hear them say GW2 will be the same game you play at level 1 as level 80. We won't have to level grind to open up the fun parts of the game. Make PvP tiers would do just that.

Waar Kijk Je Naar said:

I'm dissappointed.

An interview with Colin Johanson, with no (Colin-)pics in the article?

Pff

They should have at least had a close up of his grin :)

[Xo1o]

Colin Johanson said:

That is correct yes, as it is currently stands you'd need to make a new character if you wished to play as a different race or profession. It's just extremely easy to do so, and then hop right into competitive PvP once you're out of the tutorial area (5-10 min tops). That is of course all subject to change, but right now that's how it works, you CANNOT swap your characters profession or race at will.

I said this before:

I'm very interested in PvP and I can understand that letting people PvP with a fully unlocked max level class of their choice makes many things a lot easier (i.e. no need for low level PvP balance or systems, easy access and setup in an esport environment), BUT...
I'm also interested in PvE and enjoy progressing my character through leveling and other means, which over time gives me a sense of connection and pride toward my alter ego.
The fact that in PvE I have to "work" and spend many hours (which I enjoy if the game is good!) in order to fully unlock my character and in PvP I don't, kind of devalues the PvE experience for me. It's like opening your advent calendar all at once on december 1st.
This is why I think there should be some form of prerequisite to free PvP chars, a driver license if you will.

[Skyy High]

@Overlord: I was just about to comment on that.

Here's the section, for everyone else:

Quote

A viable alternative would have perhaps been to introduce this level playing field on a more staggered basis. With different tiers of competitive PvP locked at, say, levels 20, 50 and 80 thus allowing players to choose a PvP entry point and still leave room for progression to a higher stratum as they progressed through PvE and learn to juggle a greater number of abilities and traits.

My opinion: this guy never played GW1, at least not in Prophecies' days. We had this, and while it was pretty cool for a while (mainly because PvP played significantly different when the pool of skills was drastically limited), it got old, abused, neglected, and abandoned within a year of the game's release, if not earlier. As Overlord said, the playerbase needs to be consolidated. No one campaigns for "newbie" CS servers where guns do half damage and run speed is reduced; you learn the game that everyone else is playing, find a server that has players of roughly your level, get better, and move on to better servers / organized play. That's how this works. If all these press people can get a decent feel for the PvP, enough to at least know where to go and what to do, within an hour or two play session, I don't see the need to break it up by level and dilute the playerbase. This is on top of the obvious issue of breaking the PvP down by level would require players to play through PvE to get to lvl80 in order to PvP at the highest level, something that this system is specifically designed to avoid.

In summation: it's a terrible suggestion, we know it, ANet knows it, I wish the guy writing this didn't bring it up.

@Xo1o: Instant-UAX is a godsend to the competitive PvP community, period. If the fact that people are playing in PvP with max level characters that they can under no circumstances transfer to PvE or even WvW bothers you, you are the problem. Specifically, you should not be bothered with what other players are doing in a format that literally can have no affect on you or your character. It's like getting annoyed that people use cheat codes in their single player games while you struggle through without them, except even more ridiculous because you're not even playing the same game mode.

Better comparison: it's like asking Notch to force everyone who wants to play creative mode in Minecraft to first play through survival mode to some arbitrary goal (hours alive, structures built, mobs killed, or something else equally silly), because you worked your tail off to build your castle in survival mode, and it's "cheapened" by the fact that someone else did it in creative mode much more easily. The two modes are incompatible, people play them for different reasons, and most importantly it shouldn't have an affect on your game how someone else chooses to play their game.

Was that clear enough of an explanation? Look, I'm all for choice, but not when your preference is to put artificial, meaningless barriers in front of other players' fun so you can feel better about your own experience.

Edited by Skyy High, 06 October 2011 - 11:25 PM.