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[Fatalis]

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GWI recently had the chance to sit down with some of ArenaNet’s Systems Designers currently working on Guild Wars 2. Our guests for the show include PvP Systems Designers Matt Witter, Mike Ferguson, and Jonathan “Chapman” Sharp.

Later this week we’ll have a set of all-new WvWvW and PvP screenshots coming your way, so be sure to drop by our forums let us know what you’d like to see.

For those of you interested in more ArenaNet interviews, be sure to check out our previous podcasts with Ree Soesbee and Jeff Grubb.

Enjoy!

http://www.guildwars...pvp-roundtable/

[Yalu]

Great interview, so much info and I'm only half-way through :P

Loving the bits about keeps and resources!

Edited by Yalu, 24 January 2012 - 04:10 PM.

[Grotar]

Thx so much been waiting for this :) Reading now :D

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GWI: In WvWvW, you’ve mentioned siege vehicles several times before in the past. Can you give me an example of one in development or how it is working?

Matt: Trebuchet! Best one yet! Well, one of the best I’d say. They just fire these giant, molten boulders at your target, it’s just crazy. They go map-wide, with a great animation and effect, it’s just epic.

Mike: A lot of people have seen the trebuchet in the Kylo map. The trebuchets in WvWvW are much, much, larger. It’s really hard to describe how far they can shoot in terms of range, just know that we had to put in special code so you could even see it. It is seriously epic.

We’ve got catapults, we’ve got…

Matt: Siege Suits…

Jonathan: Well, we’ve talked about it internally, so we might as well let the cat out of the bag.

Mike: Well… go for it…

Matt: They’re our little twist on battering rams that we’re currently testing out and playing around with. Basically, you spend your supply to build these Siege Suits….

Mike: They’re essentially Giant Asura Golems that you go in and bash doors down with.

Matt: Exactly! You transfer the player into it, and now you’re just this giant, Asura, Battle-MechWarrior sort of thing. You can just walk up and start punching in the gates, punching in people’s faces if you feel the need to; it’s another great, epic siege weapon.

Edited by Grotar, 24 January 2012 - 04:13 PM.

[Myramar]

great stuff!
Didnt they announce Screenshots? -sadface-

but still a very interesting read. Thank you!

[Seven]

Myramar said:

great stuff!
Didnt they announce Screenshots? -sadface-

but still a very interesting read. Thank you!

Likely coming Friday. Weather threw things off a bit and we didn't want to wait any longer.

[IDarko]

Five pages? Oh.. this is going to be good!

[Zetesofos]

Screenshot's Friday.

GWI:  In maps like Kylo, the environment plays a big part of it. Anything else from a WvW standpoint where you can just knock something down, take out a bridge even?
Mike:  All the keeps and towers, we talked about, have walls that can get treb’ed down or you can break those down. You’re bashing through doors all the time. We’ll try to add more of that stuff but we definitely want to have the environment play a big part.
Matt:  We’ve seen it a lot too.  In closed beta there’s been countless times where keeps are getting attacked and you roll up on this keep that you anticipate that’s going to be this awesome epic defense, but your just a little too late.  Now you have your keep’s gate down, you pushed them back, but then they get on the Trebuchets. Now there’s holes in every wall and they are just pouring in in.
It gets to the point where you slowly go “Ok, what are we really defending here?”  At this point its completely destroyed.  So, things can break down fast and change the course of action.

All buildings can/have to be destroyed and rebuild with resources!  XD

[upier]

On first read-though:

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GWI: For balancing purposes any plans on having additional PvP only skills or adding PvP specific rules to skills that differ from how they would be used in a PvE environment?

Jonathan: Sure sure. Yeah we have talked about some skills and we might need to split into a a PvE or PvP version. We have the tech to do it, but we’ve want to avoid that if possible. We have seen some very specific skills that we think that this might work better. For instance it would be more fun in PvE if it does this, but have the same skill in PvP can do this.

That means we'll finally get PvE that will emulate PvP, right? I mean, if PvE doesn't function under the same rules as PvP, then trying to not split skills is insane.

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Matt: I guess my victory was when we were fighting against Chap, Izzy,
Tirzah, and the crew that we took to Germany and PAX. I remember using an Elementalist skill “Lightning Flash”, up onto a wall that Izzy was on shooting arrows down from. He was really close to death and I used a knock-back skill that kicked him off the wall and he actually died to fall damage.

And that was the best moment in my life.

I’m married with two kids, and that’s the best moment of my life.

Love you, Matt!

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GWI: Some people had questions around the Thief being able to play the support type role, can you explain your view of the “Support Thief”, and how do you see the “Steal” ability coming into play when it comes to PvP?

Jonathan: Same thing as a Mesmer, they’re very similar in that way. What’s awesome about them is the traits, I know we keep coming back to traits, but those are the things that help determine your build and play style.

Let’s say you’re fighting a Guardian; he’s this big, huge, awesome dude, and you start to chip away at him with these little bitty hits. He’s a Guardian, so you think he might try to get off a big hit by using his Aegis again, so you jump and you daze him first. So all of a sudden this ability that was great against the “eviscerate” from the Warrior, the Thief preemptively gets in there and shuts it down first, making it useless.

So it’s just that – it’s that style that ‘I can get in there first and do things’ and then after he’s stolen from you, you probably have something that’s really awesome that he can stun you with or knock you back with. The Thief is going to daze you first with a trait and then he’s going to knock you back. So he’s really going to shut you down and really control you. The Thief is just one of the classes that if you let him get a hold of you it’s bad; more than anybody else if he gets a hold of you it’s bad, it’s very bad.

Matt: Yeah if he gets control of you he’ll take you down if given the chance.

Jonathan: It’s very bad.

So Thief's SUPPORT is CONTROL?

[Grotar]

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Mike: The keeps are a much larger space in comparison to the Kylo PvP map, and they all have unique terrain features. One keep climbs up the side of a mountain while another is based around a lake; so you have some underwater entrances you’ll need to defend.

We have towers, which are basically like smaller versions of keeps. They’ll have a couple of walls and a door you can bash in so you can try and take over.

We’ll have resource camps, which are more of an “open field” style of battle. They’ll have a capture point in them so you can fight for control of the resources.

Man this interview got me more excited than yesterdays blog post !!!

[ensoriki]

awesome news

[Seven]

Glad to see this got moved from the news section. Call me crazy, but there's a pretty good amount of NEWS here.

Oh well... should have made a poll.

Edited by Seven, 24 January 2012 - 04:52 PM.

[IDarko]

I was right about Arenanet not wanting to split skills too much. I'm glad that they explained it here for the people who wondered about it.

I'm getting the impression that a support thief will be very trait-dependent after all. At first i thought that every profession would have the new trinity available in the core skills and weapons. Now it's clear that the thief is damage and control focused while having the option to get a supportive playstyle by using the right traits. Honestly, i can't wait to know more about the new trait system.

[Rummy the Mad]

Wow!  That was a hell of an interview!  I mostly played PvE with some casual PvP and occasionally some GvG in GW1, and I am completely excited about all of the PvP modes in GW2.

WvWvW sounds amazing - right up my alley as far as scale and play style.  Competitive PvP sounds like a blast as well.  I'm going to have a hard time deciding what to play at any given time, and I'm looking forward to it!  What a great problem to have in a game.

[TriggerSad]

Hrm... If there are 4 WvWvW maps, and each has 3 servers fighting in them. Does that mean GuildWars2's server amount is divisible by 12? Interesting...

Edit: Or did it mean that a single WvWvW location has four maps to fight in? /confused

[Xinful]

TriggerSad said:

Hrm... If there are 4 WvWvW maps, and each has 3 servers fighting in them. Does that mean GuildWars2's server amount is divisible by 12? Interesting...

Edit: Or did it mean that a single WvWvW location has four maps to fight in? /confused

A single WvWvW map comprises of 4 maps. 1 neutral center map and 3 home maps for the 3 worlds/servers.

[Yalu]

TriggerSad said:

Hrm... If there are 4 WvWvW maps, and each has 3 servers fighting in them. Does that mean GuildWars2's server amount is divisible by 12? Interesting...

Edit: Or did it mean that a single WvWvW location has four maps to fight in? /confused

The WvW consists of 3 maps, one for each server, plus 1 center map to fight over.

[Myramar]

no, you are wrong here:
there are 4 maps, while 3 of them are "home" maps and 1 is a central map.
So 3 servers are fighting in 4 maps, so the amount of servers would be divisible by 3.
So there is a starting/home/base map for every server (what can also be attacked by the other servers but what is easier to defend for that server), and one neutral center map.

[baels]

This is epic D:

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It actually came down to us stopping all the 3 control points at 499, and we were at 300. We were able to come back and won 500 to 499, and a lot of that was the Mesmer bouncing around and creating chaos. People thought they would be fighting me at a certain point but those were just my illusions. Then they would kill those and I would be back capping another point. I was using portals and running around taking two different points at once; bouncing back and forth between them creating a lot of chaos. I couldn’t stand there and take it like the other classes can, like the Warrior or a Guardian; the Mesmer is not nearly as strong, but creating all that chaos allowed us to come back in the game. It was a really fun game

[Vahkris]

I recommend listening to the audio if you can.  The transcript is 99% accurate, but there are bits and pieces here and there that are not quite synced up with what is being said in the audio.

Looking forward to seeing the screenshots!  I want to see an army taking out a keep.

upier said:

So Thief's SUPPORT is CONTROL?

This is something many of us have been saying for a while now.

Seven said:

Glad to see this got moved from the news section. Call me crazy, but there's a pretty good amount of NEWS here.

Oh well... should have made a poll.

Yeah, I feel this probably should be in the main news section because it's an interview with the designers.

Edited by Vahkris, 24 January 2012 - 04:54 PM.

[the butcher]

WvWvW will be my home. And I love the part that they have different unique terrain settings. Huge mountains, maybe some nice forest, etc. Can't wait!!

[TriggerSad]

Yalu said:

The WvW consists of 3 maps, one for each server, plus 1 center map to fight over.

Myramar said:

no, you are wrong here:
there are 4 maps, while 3 of them are "home" maps and 1 is a central map.
So 3 servers are fighting in 4 maps, so the amount of servers would be divisible by 3.
So there is a starting/home/base map for every server (what can also be attacked by the other servers but what is easier to defend for that server), and one neutral center map.

Alright, I figured as much when I really thought (and finished reading) that response.
I knew the divisible by three part, I was just flummoxed by the amount of maps.

[Garegare]

Nice interview, thanks!!

[Memilish]

Interesting. I'm usually the kind to not care a whit about PvP but somehow I'm starting to warm to the idea here for tri-W. What is wrong with me..?

[Wothan]

This interview hyped me up more than anything else in 2 years

[Syipher]

Ahh nomnom pvp news

[Psydrome]

I really enjoyed this interview... I really want to get into PvP in GW2...
I would love to go 1 on 1 with Jonathan (Chap) :D

Edited by Psydrome, 24 January 2012 - 05:21 PM.

[SunRoamer]

upier said:

So Thief's SUPPORT is CONTROL?

I feel like people are focussing way too much on seeing Damage, Support, Control as a hard trinity like Tank, DD and Healer used to be.
It's not a hard trinity! Debuffs are generally seen as control, but depending on how you use those you can play support as well. Seeing a warrior disemboweling a nearby ele? Support your teammate by controling his enemy! Slow him, daze him, knock him back to allow your mate to flee. Hell, you could just start unloading all your DAMAGE on said warrior, forcing him to react to you and back off, essentially also controlling him and supporting your team.

[IDarko]

SunRoamer said:

I feel like people are focussing way too much on seeing Damage, Support, Control as a hard trinity like Tank, DD and Healer used to be.
It's not a hard trinity! Debuffs are generally seen as control, but depending on how you use those you can play support as well. Seeing a warrior disemboweling a nearby ele? Support your teammate by controling his enemy! Slow him, daze him, knock him back to allow your mate to flee. Hell, you could just start unloading all your DAMAGE on said warrior, forcing him to react to you and back off, essentially also controlling him and supporting your team.

No you do not get it. The whole new trinity is also to give a name to the playstyles for communication and other purposes. You can't just say that everything is support because we are talking about the support playstyle. Wich is healing, protecting, blocking so that you feel like a savior. Sure, there is a lot more overlap than with a hard trinity. But when someone tells me that he wants to be a supportive thief, i will know that he means something else than control oriented. And you should know that to.

And really, these three playstyles can be found in all the other professions. So why not the thief aswell? Some people are wondering exactly that.
edit: I'm not talking about myself btw. I'm not really much of a supporter in games.

Edited by IDarko, 24 January 2012 - 05:57 PM.

[Bubblebeard]

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Matt: I guess my victory was when we were fighting against Chap, Izzy,
Tirzah, and the crew that we took to Germany and PAX. I remember using an Elementalist skill “Lightning Flash”, up onto a wall that Izzy was on shooting arrows down from. He was really close to death and I used a knock-back skill that kicked him off the wall and he actually died to fall damage.

And that was the best moment in my life.

I’m married with two kids, and that’s the best moment of my life.

Pretty much my favourite part of the article - you can see that the developers are just massive gaming nerds too, not just corporate suits. And that makes me so excited for the game; they're producing something they want to love and enjoy as much as the average gamer. I know it sort of goes without saying really, but that impression comes through so strongly in this interview. It's all great stuff! The news about WvWvW is very exciting. I wasn't sure how much it would interest me, but now I can't wait. Especially for siege suits - whaaaaaaat? Tears of joy.

Also, forgive me if I'm oversimplifying, but to respond to concerns about the support/control viability of the thief, did they basically say the thief is great at control by just being annoying? With stuns, locks and knockdowns etc? Because if that's the case, it's a beautifully simply tactic.

[ledieujs]

No I think he actually answered the support question with traits, then he talked about steal abd talked again about traits. I think that mesmers and thiefs will be more traits dependant wich isnt a good or bad thing, it only adds more differences between their builds.