[Kvinna]

Hello everyone! Today we have two Q&A's to present the community, the first one involving the thread I made last week asking for gameplay questions from the community. In both interviews we have answers from Jeff Grubb, Matthew Moore, Martin Kerstein, and Mike Zadorojny. (And a big thank you to Amira from TERAFans.com for asking the questions for us!)

Without further ado, here we go!

Q: The numbers for HP, energy, and damage have changed a lot from GW1 to GW2. Can you give any insight as to why that has changed?

A: Well, the easy answer would be that they've changed because the level cap has increased, but it's also something where we're still looking at the numbers. Part of it also is that we're changing how the game works. A lot of times, gamers will judge the difficulty of an encounter on “Oh well, how many times did you die?” In GW2, we didn't want death to be the end-all.

Q: Will skill descriptions eventually show damage and healing numbers?

A: Final decisions haven't been made about that to my knowledge because we really do want to make it very visual. We want to make it very apparent what's happening with you; how badly you're being hurt by how low your HP goes. So no, no final decision on that.

Q. Will all elite skills have the 720 second cooldown? Or will it vary depending on the skill?

A: Some will be faster and some will be longer, it will vary depending on the skill.

Q. Do all elite skills have the same recharge timer? Is it possible to switch them out before another battle?

A: The plan that we have for all elite skills and utility skills is that when a skill's in recharge you can't actually swap it out. We're still trying to figure out how we're gonna plan to do that and make it easy. But the idea is that you can't use a skill and then swap it out while it's on recharge, we don't want that.

Q:Will all professions have the ability to focus on “interesting” traits? Or will all professions be forced to use number increasing skills?

A: Well the idea is that we want to make everything interesting. We want players to be able to make a lot of decisions regarding traits. We are trying to make it so that it's not like the numbers just go up, for example, on the warrior with the longbow, he has the fire arrow skill and one of the traits is to shoot more arrows. So clearly, it's going to do more damage, but it's going to be visually appealing and it's going to be interesting to the player.

Q:Will the character naming rules remain the same in GW2 as in GW1?

A: Well straight up no because right now you can actually have characters that have only one name.

Q: Will there be more biography questions other than the ones showcased in the demo?

A: Definitely. Every race is going to have their own set of biography questions. There will be different questions depending on profession as well.

Q: To what extent can you control your relationship with NPCs that are involved in your personal storyline?

A: To the extent that you can allow some of them to die as in some of them will always be alive and some will always be dead. You can also upset an NPC and they won't like you for the whole rest of the game.

Q: In regards to the scaling of difficulty of dynamic events based on participants, how will the event scale once players join or leave?

A: Pretty fast. It changes pretty fast. If it's a wave event, then it'll happen in between waves. If it's a collection event it's just a couple seconds, it's very fast.

Q. Will being disconnected from the server immediately affect my event participation bar? Will I be safe from that while I reconnect?

A: We are always looking to minimize inconvenience. We want you to play to have fun and not worry about situations like these.

Q: Will there be any dynamic events in capital cities?

A: Well we have the actives, I'm not sure if they're called dynamic events but there's plenty going on the help the cities feel alive. As we develop the game, if we feel that full on events should go on in cities, then we'd consider it.

Q: Will every starting zone have a boss fight at the end?

A: Every starting section will be cool. It will feel awesome to get into the game. You won't just be give immediate tasks.

Q: Will we be able to meet characters from Ghosts of Ascalon in game?

A: Yes, definitely. Some are already in the world, in fact.

[Greibach]

Good interiew, thanks a lot!

[Thalador]

Very nice interview! We'll have more questions than what was showcased at PAX and gamescom! That's so cool!

Thanks to the interviewer and a big thanks to you too Kvinna, for putting it up.

[Kvinna]

I'll add the interviewer's name to the OP. :D

[Grimm]

Kvinna said:

Q: Will we be able to meet characters from Ghosts of Ascalon in game?

A: Yes, definitely. Some are already in the world, in fact.

If I get to meet claag (or did he die) I think I will be mean to him. :D

[Lyssa]

Cool interview. Not much new stuff there but its nice to have the confirmation on things like single word character names.

Cheers,

[Ryuzaki]

Thanks a lot for the interview. Some good questions. :D

[Vorsakan]

Ooh; interesting stuff - especially that recharging skills mightn't be swappable. :cool:

[Lyssa]

Oh, on the note of the skills not showing actual damage and stuff - I love it the way it is!

When you start adding loads of stat-crunching details on all the skills it becomes a bit alienating for new players. Especially players who are new to MMOs in particular and would just rather an action game over a maths game thats been disguised with a fantasy world.

So yeah.. hope they dont change it.

[Caelus the fallen]

That was a n interesting read, thanks for posting it.

As food for thought on skill numbers:
A common stance is that numbers serve the "hardcore" crowd, and drive a wedge between the power-gamers and the casual players. I'd argue that quite the opposite is the case; the power-gamer will work out the numbers anyway ,through testing and communicating with other power-gamers, and the casual player wont - not giving quantifiable numbers in skills will decrease the casual player's capacity to make a value judgement.
There are basically three camps:
Those who don't care about making skill judgements, and never will. Thesse people are irrelevant as it doesn't matter either way here.
Those who care somewhat, but don't care to spend copious amounts of time on the matter.
Those who really care. They will work out the numbers either way, and by not giving them, you just create some work for them.

Group 2 is the important one. Not giving them numbers creates a barrier to entry when it comes to decision making, and disadvantages them against group 3. Giving them numbers helps them compete against group 3.

The bottom line, the game IS one of mathematics. The whole game hangs together with numbers. Hiding the numbers doesn't change this fact, it merely obscures it. If you don't want to do the maths for yourself, then the best situation for you is one in which most of the maths has already been done - that situation is the one in which the numbers are shown on your tooltip and you don't need to set up an experiment to determine what they are.
If you have numberless tooltip... well you can hide from the numbers, but your opponents wont. Then you are severely hindered.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaanyway....
Now I want to see what the other elites are going to look like! Also curious to see where they will fall on the numerical inflation issue.

Edited by Caelus the fallen, 06 September 2010 - 04:32 PM.

[Lyssa]

Well I would argue that the number of players in group three make up the vast minority.
If you remove the numbers you shift the emphasis away from number-crunching and more onto the actual skill in playing the game.

A great example is FPSs. Most of them you dont get any numbers on the weapons and how much damage they do. Players just learn what weapons are more effective and when by using them. Sure some people work out the exacts, but their knowledge is never needed. Barriers dont exist between people who know the exacts and people who can play effeciently without knowing them.

[Matthew Browne]

Hum, nice tidbits here and there. Good work on putting this up.

[KQ]

Kvinna said:

Q: Will we be able to meet characters from Ghosts of Ascalon in game?

A: Yes, definitely. Some are already in the world, in fact.

Yup, yup, really nice.

This has already been known, however.

[Morhilane]

Thanks!

I really like that traits can change skills too, not just "stats boosters".

[Malchior Devenholm]

Some interesting tidbits here.

Thanks, Kvinna :)

[elixabeth]

Cool interview, thanks for posting it up!

[Sniper1122]

Monks, interrupts, hexes (yeah they need a new balance for gw2), same hp pools, energy management, no potions, full build customization... yeah that's part of what they're taking away that made gw1.

The only good thing they added to gw2 is persistent world, dynamic events, personal story, dodge, jump, swim, and targetable aoe. Yeah those are all great, but they don't make up for everything they took away. This interview pretty much just confirms where they are going with the game.

[Turambar]

A ton of good questions and answers. Impressive.

There still appears to be a lot of tweeking and polishing, it seems, which is no bad thing. :angel:

[Grodan16]

Sniper1122 said:

Monks, interrupts, hexes (yeah they need a new balance for gw2), same hp pools, energy management, no potions, full build customization... yeah that's part of what they're taking away that made gw1.

The only good thing they added to gw2 is persistent world, dynamic events, personal story, dodge, jump, swim, and targetable aoe. Yeah those are all great, but they don't make up for everything they took away. This interview pretty much just confirms where they are going with the game.

I'm glad we got rid of monks, they didn't say interrupts won't be in the game, only that they won't have such a big role, energy managment sort of had to be dumbed down and I don't get the build part? You mean we can't freely choose the first 5 skills? We've got traits now. Keep in mind that GW2 will be a very different game from GW, not necessarily better or worse.

[Caelus the fallen]

Lyssa said:

Well I would argue that the number of players in group three make up the vast minority.
If you remove the numbers you shift the emphasis away from number-crunching and more onto the actual skill in playing the game.

A great example is FPSs. Most of them you dont get any numbers on the weapons and how much damage they do. Players just learn what weapons are more effective and when by using them. Sure some people work out the exacts, but their knowledge is never needed. Barriers dont exist between people who know the exacts and people who can play effeciently without knowing them.

I think you underestimate group 3. Consider that Guild Wars became Build Wars...

Comparing to FPS's is a bit of an apples to oranges in my opinion. FPS's do not have umpteen weapons, they typically only have a few. The ones that do have a lot (I'm thining BC2 here, for example) have graphs of performance (which amounts to the same as giving the numbers). There is also a lot of received wisdom in FPS games (like "this is a shotgun, obviously it is more effective at close range than at distance). When you only have such a small number of weapons, people can instinctively do the DPS experiment Ultimately, you cannot escape from the fact that even in the FPS, the guns are numbers in the end. Just fewer numbers.

You can only escape the maths if you aren't being asked to make choices. In the FPS you have far fewer choices, so you need less maths; so yes, there you can get away with not giving them (even at that, people can and do take apart config files, and work them out). In GW2, I would hope at least, that you are being asked to make choices, a lot of choices. If you are going to make that level of judgement, you are going to need the facts. Frankly, if GW2 turns out to only have all the customisability of an FPS, I think they are doing it wrong.

[Volfen]

Lyssa said:

Oh, on the note of the skills not showing actual damage and stuff - I love it the way it is!

When you start adding loads of stat-crunching details on all the skills it becomes a bit alienating for new players. Especially players who are new to MMOs in particular and would just rather an action game over a maths game thats been disguised with a fantasy world.

So yeah.. hope they dont change it.

I completely agree. . . /ducks.

I've made a few suggestions how it could be done, side by side, with traditional stat-filled servers. So to sell to both MMO 'number fiends', and non-traditional MMO prospects. I'm betting female gamers would find it far more appealing.

Time/Progress Manifold.

Destiny servers.

The idea is like combining aspects EoTN and Adventure Games, with Traditional MMO features. Not been done yet, as far as I know, but GW2 is a good canidate for developing/fleshing-out such a concept. Hopefully ArenaNet checks the forums from time to time.

[Elk]

Quote

Q. Will being disconnected from the server immediately affect my event participation bar? Will I be safe from that while I reconnect?

A: We are always looking to minimize inconvenience. We want you to play to have fun and not worry about situations like these.

Quote

Q: Will there be any dynamic events in capital cities?

A: Well we have the actives, I'm not sure if they're called dynamic events but there's plenty going on the help the cities feel alive. As we develop the game, if we feel that full on events should go on in cities, then we'd consider it.

really hope they consider this ^^. thanks for the questions, nice not to have "but will Guild Wars 2 have guns?" or something being asked.

[Vorsakan]

I love that picture, Elk. :cool:

On topic: the numberless system isn't just a matter of taste - numbers are going to be in a constant state of flux:

* Levelled up/levelled down by content.
* Effects modifying character e.g. boons, weakness, who-knows-what-else.
* Effects modifying output e.g. fire skills, signets.
* Critical hit rates in double digits, sometimes buffed to 100.
* Enemy armor & defenses, which are also dynabmic remember (scale with players).
* Facing of enemy.

Essentially the only conceivable merit of putting numbers on skills is to compare them to each other, because in combat the number shown on a skill is going to correlate to the number we see floating off an enemy/ally likely no more than 1 time in a 100.

In that light, I'd personally rather not have them shown at all and gauge effectiveness purely by result rather than get caught-up in math theory that has little meaning in practice; attack/projectile speed, AoE, how often a skill can be fitted into a 10 second 100% critical buff, all of the above list and more.

I suspect that the talk of playing MMOs like a spreadsheet only works in MMOs with the pace & dynamicism of spreadsheets too. ;)

Edited by Vorsakan, 06 September 2010 - 05:51 PM.

[ziel]

Better skill descriptions should be there. It's just plain dumb... Look at the necro elite: It says something like: This skill turns you into a plague and inflicts various conditions to the enemies around you.

If I read a description like that I have no clue as to what it will do. And this way it will be very hard to value a skill.

Gee which utility skill will heal more/which effect will be longer/better and which conditions does it apply? I don't know I guess I'll have to test them all out and waste like 1000 minutes before I can decide which skills to pick.

[Brise Bon Bons]

Caelus the fallen said:

There is also a lot of received wisdom in FPS games (like "this is a shotgun, obviously it is more effective at close range than at distance). When you only have such a small number of weapons, people can instinctively do the DPS experiment...

I think the idea with GW2's skills is that there will primarily be instinctive decisions, rather than purely mathematical ones. For example, look at an elementalist with a dagger compared to one with a staff - this decision has more to do with range than numbers - it's the shotgun option, which you can see the moment you use the skills. Similarly, consider a warrior with a sword versus a warrior with an axe. You simply won't take the sword for burst damage, no matter what the exact numbers look like.

Quote

You can only escape the maths if you aren't being asked to make choices. In the FPS you have far fewer choices, so you need less maths; so yes, there you can get away with not giving them (even at that, people can and do take apart config files, and work them out). In GW2, I would hope at least, that you are being asked to make choices, a lot of choices. If you are going to make that level of judgement, you are going to need the facts. Frankly, if GW2 turns out to only have all the customisability of an FPS, I think they are doing it wrong.

Keep in mind that a lot of the time the spreadsheets only come into play in MMOs under tightly controlled conditions, with very specific, narrowly focused goals, where you're trying to squeeze a couple percent more damage out of a build in a situation where you can play "optimally". For example, in WoW raiding, where you can stand and do the ideal rotation for long periods of time.

In contrast, in WoW PvP no one runs spreadsheets to try to find the highest DPS talent spec, they just talk about utility and how spec A is good in an outlast game, and spec B is good if you like bursting down a target. Yes, some hardcore player still does tests to determine the exact mechanics underlying the system, but I don't think that gives anyone a particularly large advantage - you just want every little advantage you can get at the top, so knowing exactly how a given spell scales with a given stat is better than not knowing it.

I'd argue that based on what we know, we should assume GW2, even in PvE, plays more like WoW PvP than WoW raiding. A spreadsheet can't account for a player's ability to dodge-roll, or aim, or make sure that they're in range when they burn their big damage skill. Those kinds of mathematical calculations rely on the traditional MMO system, where you're hit capped, expertise/spell pen capped, and otherwise have removed the possibility of random events or misses/dodges/not being "good" at using a skill. I don't think GW2 will feature many scenarios that work like that.

[Lyssa]

ziel said:

Better skill descriptions should be there. It's just plain dumb... Look at the necro elite: It says something like: This skill turns you into a plague and inflicts various conditions to the enemies around you.

If I read a description like that I have no clue as to what it will do. And this way it will be very hard to value a skill.

Gee which utility skill will heal more/which effect will be longer/better and which conditions does it apply? I don't know I guess I'll have to test them all out and waste like 1000 minutes before I can decide which skills to pick.

Interesting take on things. But dont you think it would be fun testing out new skills and seeing what they are like? It adds a bit of mystery to the game.

And in any case, theres always the wiki for the people who have to know what skill does what and cant stand testing stuff out themselves.

Elk said:

really hope they consider this ^^. t

Me too! Though i'd definatly rather have non-combat events in the cities. I had this image of being able to chase something, like a chicken, all around town as a part of an event. Or hide and seek events and such.

[N.Nick]

Quote

Q. Will all elite skills have the 720 second cooldown? Or will it vary depending on the skill?

A: Some will be faster and some will be longer, it will vary depending on the skill.

Noooaaah , please faster rechange ..... 12mins = useles skill even to add ...

[Vorsakan]

N.Nick said:

Noooaaah , please faster rechange ..... 12mins = useles skill even to add ...

We know (from someone speaking to a dev at PAX) that there are 3 minute skills and 5 minute skills, at least. :)

[Pie]

Vorsakan said:

We know (from someone speaking to a dev at PAX) that there are 3 minute skills and 5 minute skills, at least. :)

There will also be traits that willl reduce the cooldown of certain skills, if the worst happens Anet can always rebalance the skills.

[skullmount4]

Nice interview even if the first couple of questions answers don’t really pertain/answer the question.