Guild Wars 2

Had a question for the developers.

I know that you tweak the game every few days and classes get looked at and abilities get adjusted, changed, etc. It’s awesome to have a game where things get adjusted on the fly, not every few months leaving things broken.

But I had a question about the overall professions.

Q: Will there be a time, like in early WoW, where you dedicate a time period to re-evaluate each profession and spend time just on that profession for possible changes, etc?

In WoW, after the game had been out for say 6 months, the developers went back and overhauled each class. They took into account obviously the data, forum feedback, etc. Classes received massive changes to their core abilities, etc.

Do you think you’ll be doing this for GW2 in some way shape or form? Possibly adding new traits, skills, removing traits, removing skills, possibly modifying classes (like the recent ‘Pet-less’ ranger suggestion) etc.

Like many games…once they are released and you get real world data back and gameplay, some things that worked well in beta, don’t work in reality and you realize some things should be added and others taken away.

Hopefully we get these class overhauls…I think it’s a good thing.

Thanks again for the updates going forward on the most recent blog post. This is the type of communication that makes the community feel like you listen to us and keep us in the loop.

CAN’T WAIT FOR THE HALLOWEEN EVENT!

They’ve done this in Champions as well, take some time to focus on a single framework and overhaul/rebalance the whole thing. I would love it if ANet did that. Looking at some of the weapons/utilities/traits of the classes, I can only say that the game needs that kind of attention. Whether that actually happens or not… maybe in 2014.

It’s very unlikely. As much as I would like the Mesmer to actually be Mesmer-y, instead of Minion-Master-y, I don’t think they’ll do anything that drastic to any class. It’s not the way they’ve run things in the past, and I don’t see anything other then minor tweaks in the future.

arjeidi.2690:

They’ve done this in Champions as well, take some time to focus on a single framework and overhaul/rebalance the whole thing. I would love it if ANet did that. Looking at some of the weapons/utilities/traits of the classes, I can only say that the game needs that kind of attention. Whether that actually happens or not… maybe in 2014.

I think we’ll see something in the next months after the holidays…ANet seems to know that they need to stay on top of things and I love how they have all these individual teams working on certain aspects of the game.

The Elementalist in GW got a major overhaul last year.

You could look at that as we might see major changes to professions in about six years, or that re-work broke the ice for them and now changes will come as needed or at least not every half decade.

I think an important difference between Blizzard and ANet is that Blizzard will see an imbalance and take months or years to fix it by implementing some harebrained major mechanic change to fix it. What ANet will do, instead, is observe the actual imbalance and adjust values accordingly, as we saw yesterday with the changes to damage percentages and cooldowns.

I like to think ANet wouldn’t have let Vanish be broken for 6 years.

AcidicVision.5498:

The Elementalist in GW got a major overhaul last year.

You could look at that as we might see major changes to professions in about six years, or that re-work broke the ice for them and now changes will come as needed or at least not every half decade.

Hmm true. They also did a major rework to Dervish at some point now that I think about it. I guess question is up in the air then.

Fozee.1083:

I think an important difference between Blizzard and ANet is that Blizzard will see an imbalance and take months or years to fix it by implementing some harebrained major mechanic change to fix it. What ANet will do, instead, is observe the actual imbalance and adjust values accordingly, as we saw yesterday with the changes to damage percentages and cooldowns.

I like to think ANet wouldn’t have let Vanish be broken for 6 years.

Nonsense. Blizzard overreacts to imbalances and changes things all the time. In fact, WoW players complain about the constant changes almost as much as they complain about the imbalances that those changes are attempting to fix. Cooldowns and damage coefficients don’t even need patches anymore. Blizzard just hotfixes them in, tells us in a little blue post, and continues working on the next content patch. And, judging from the number of bugs that exist throughout GW2, I don’t share your confidence that ArenaNet could have fixed Vanish any sooner than Blizzard.

All of that isn’t to say that ArenaNet isn’t trying. I do appreciate balance fixes and I do appreciate the frequent patches (though I do wish that they would schedule them instead of just dropping them on us without warning!). But don’t badmouth Blizzard for no reason. :P

engineers just want some love with the kits getting some of our weapon stats (or any +stats)… everything else is just a minor tweak

I think the plan is to periodically randomise the order in which weapon abilities appear on our hotbars, just to keep everyone on their toes

If the overhauls also include major bugfixes I am all for that. The engineer is in a terrible shape, not only balance wise but also because of bugs and imo also flawed design.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Hey-look-buddy-I-m-an-Engineer-that-means-I-have-problems

For me, complete overhauls of professions are the biggest turn-offs that could ever happen.
Tweaking is fine, changing how a profession behaves completely mid-game is not.

My class is something personal.
If you want to tweak damage, effects, etc, I’m fine.
If you want to move skills on my skillbar, remove skills, remove traits, etc, I’m not fine.

Well remember that things change after a game has gone live and months of gameplay have gone on that show strengths/weaknesses/flaws of classes. Adding some things and removing others wouldn’t be that bad of a thing, nor possibly changing some overall elements of a class style (like I said up top, there seems to be a big push for a GW2 Ranger that has no pets like in GW1, and other class requests like new weapons and abilities, etc. ) And no, I don’t have a ranger, I have an Engineer.

I don’t doubt for a minute that new weapons will be coming. Crossbow, 2H Axe, etc. =)

@Cernow if its about the Guardian GS skills I though so too…. then someone in my guild pointed out that its because skills seem to be in order of cooldown duration from low to high.

Cancer.9065:

@Cernow if its about the Guardian GS skills I though so too…. then someone in my guild pointed out that its because skills seem to be in order of cooldown duration from low to high.

That’s the theory, but…

1. I don’t find that to be an acceptable reason to change skill positions when we can’t choose where to put the skills on the bar, and

2. There are other examples in the game that don’t follow this pattern. See: Warrior Sword offhand, Elementalist Dagger/Dagger Air, Elementalist Dagger offhand Earth, Ranger Sword/Dagger combo, Necromancer Dagger/Focus and Dagger/Dagger combinations.

Everquest 2 did a major combat update too.
I remember my favourite profession, the Inquisitor, became more interesting after that.
Got some new abilities, had old abilities tweaked to be more in tune with the profession theme, and got some more strategic elements to their repertoire.
Was a pretty cool content update.

Don’t expect engineer fixes for a while (assuming Anet has decent priorities). The engineer is in a fantastic place COMPARED to the necro and elementalist which are nearly unplayable in a competitive sense.

Based on their track record with the elementalist, the elementalist will be playable in 5-7 years.

Red Falcon.8257:

For me, complete overhauls of professions are the biggest turn-offs that could ever happen.
Tweaking is fine, changing how a profession behaves completely mid-game is not.

My class is something personal.
If you want to tweak damage, effects, etc, I’m fine.
If you want to move skills on my skillbar, remove skills, remove traits, etc, I’m not fine.

In my experience (of GW1) unless you’re copying the ‘flavour of the month’ builds from websites 100% of the time most skill updates won’t really affect you.

I think the only one that actually impacted me was the big Dervish update where they changed almost every skill, including creating a new type of skill (flash enchantments) and changing a lot of existing skills to that. I had to scrap my entire bar and re-do it from scratch, and this was one of my main characters. And in the end I got something I actually prefered, which worked more like what I’d wanted to be doing all along.

Ive seen MMO’s do major class overhauls really right and really wrong in the past. It is way too early to be pushing for one already. 6 months to a year for a major redesign after release, sure. Probably lumped in with an expansion if its a year away. I’m always hesitant about them. Sometimes it is glorious and makes me love a class, other times it is terrible and makes me shelve a class (or game) indefinitely.

I hope so lol.

Necro’s death shroud/life force mechanic has a ton of potential.

Kwami.4356:

And, judging from the number of bugs that exist throughout GW2, I don’t share your confidence that ArenaNet could have fixed Vanish any sooner than Blizzard.

As a tester who is frequently sought out by game studios, I simply don’t come across any alarming number of bugs. Fit and finish issues can be found often, but people should hold no expectations of that, realistically. It isn’t that I’m not looking for them, I’m just not finding many of them.

Only one I could possibly see getting one is the mesmer since the are the newest, and most annoying to play as IMO.

The problem is mainly how useless phantasms and clones are in general PvE and Events.

I mean. The dervish was redesigned. The engineer early on was redesigned. It can happen.

Fozee.1083:

Kwami.4356:

And, judging from the number of bugs that exist throughout GW2, I don’t share your confidence that ArenaNet could have fixed Vanish any sooner than Blizzard.

As a tester who is frequently sought out by game studios, I simply don’t come across any alarming number of bugs. Fit and finish issues can be found often, but people should hold no expectations of that, realistically. It isn’t that I’m not looking for them, I’m just not finding many of them.

Really? I come across bugged hearts and DEs every time I play.