Guild Wars 2

I am curious, if there is a issue with adding new land weapons to the game? Is that something that is hard coded into the game that makes it difficult to add new weapon types to the game?

It’s not impossible. However, skins for any new weapon type would be extremely limited.

It’s probably just too expensive to make skins for new ones, and even if you are able to use the aquatic ones on land, it will be too much work to think of new skills, so again – more money.

I’m tired to see arguments like “it’s too much work or it’s too expansive”. I mean it’s a MMO, it’s a big universe and features like that are parts of this.

I agree with DarcShriek, there would not be many skins but it’s not a big problem.

Nah not impossible.. probably easy actually.. just time consuming and a lot of work for minimal reward..

As DarcShriek said a big problem would be limited skins.. but there is also new animation work to do and creating and balancing new skills for them.

Probably the best way to go would be to make it so Harpoons become usable as land weapons and make a couple of land weapons like the one handed Sword, Dagger and maybe Pistol usable as water weapons with 5 skills.

This would solve the skin problem at least.. but leave animation work and skill balancing.

I’m in favor of it though.. I love Underwater combat in Gw2 and am eagerly waiting for future content that involves anything to do with the Sea dragon and expanding on Gw2’s Underwater combat and amount of water based biomes in the game.

Imo the main reason people complain about Uw combat is simply the lack of build diversity compared to what they get on land as well as it being an area overlooked for balance quite often.
A few new weapons would help with that as would a little more time invested into making more utility and elite skills viable or even usable underwater.

Alneor.3986:

I’m tired to see arguments like “it’s too much work or it’s too expansive”. I mean it’s a MMO, it’s a big universe and features like that are parts of this.

I agree with DarcShriek, there would not be many skins but it’s not a big problem.

^
This

I’ve never seen the too complicated or too expensive remark used in any other game. It makes me think that the devs themselves are posting. It also screams that people’s expectation of the devs are extremely low that they don’t trust them to improve the game.

Anything worth doing is difficult and the very nature of creating a game and maintenance is also difficult. There are different devs there now but a simple loook at Gw1 tells you that those devs weren’t afraid of difficulty. In an age of wowkillers popping up left and right gw1 was one of the few games to survived. It was a great game and that fact it survived were so many have failed is a testament to it. They took the hard path and players made hard requests it’s only a shame that a game that survived that era of chaos doesn’t get more recognition in this game in way of mechanics, weapons, and so forth.

I know I’m going on a bit but I just feel like this game is past it’s prime and nothing screams louder than all this people and the devs themselves making a difficulty excuse. The series would have died with the first game if we had this level of enthusiasm back then.

The game needs whips. So we can play with those whips to this music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKNCo4dWqJg

The time to reward payoff is VERY bad, making this NOT worth doing. That is why you’d only ever see a new weapon type added as part of a full price expansion.

Spear, Trident and speargun could be a nice start of having new weapon skills and land-weapon and there’s alot of skins.

Err, didn’t they do this already? Melee staff is basically a new weapon type, after all as it required new animations for all classes/races using them and well, there is a bit of a skin shortage

But yeah, instead of new classes, races or so I wouldn’t mind some more new weapon types. (eg. “land” spears or other polearms come to mind). Or some of the weapon types of GW1 that didn’t make a return (Cestas! Though I guess they could fall in the Focus category, dunno)

Not sure why aquatic weapons are being brought up. Reads as though the OP just means new weapons, not converting existing aquatic weapons into land weapons.

There is nothing hard coded into the game that prevents the studio from adding new weapons. Since it is something players would be willing to pay for, new weapons would likely only appear in paid expansions. If we are going to Elona, we may see two handed scythes and one handed sickles or two handed pikes and one handed thrusting spears. In GW1 scythes and spears where the new weapon type added for the Elona based, Nightfall campaign.

Issues? Sure.

• There would be the aforementioned need to create skins. Would they retroactively add skins for new weapons to existing sets (by sets I mean something like Chaos Weapons or Reclaimed), or just add them to new sets introduced going forward?
• There would also be the need to create anywhere from 2 to 5 skills per new weapon per profession that can use that weapon.

Those, as far as I can see, the issues. New skins for existing weapons get added all the time. New skills got added with the HoT Elite Specs. Obviously, neither is impossible due to a coding issue.

What’s more likely is that the barrier is the resources issue. ANet has decided that they need to push out new content on a regular, sustainable basis while also preparing a future XPac, all with declining store revenue. Artists are being asked to generate BL weapon skins on a regular basis, and I think we can assume there will be new sets of weapons for each XPac. Skill devs are working on the skills for the (presumed) new Elite Specs to accompany XPac 2. As Psientist says, we may see new weapon types in an XPac, but my guess is that if we do those weapons will be part of an Elite Spec and will only appear in weapon sets going forward.

Alneor.3986:

I’m tired to see arguments like “it’s too much work or it’s too expansive”. I mean it’s a MMO, it’s a big universe and features like that are parts of this.

I agree with DarcShriek, there would not be many skins but it’s not a big problem.

You know that when we tell you that is the reason we don’t mean “we believe this”, we mean, “this is what the developers of these type of games tell us”, right?

Like, it doesn’t much matter what you are tired of about the argument, the people you need to convince are the studios and developers of the game.

Conveniently, there are always studios hiring, so if you are really tired of that argument, you can apply for a job and change things.

They could introduce a new weapon with a specialization in an expansion, specific to one (or a few) of the classes, with a skin that is very plain (and small! I have a lot of characters who use very plain and small skins for their weapons, thinking about the greatsword skin I have on my guardian). Then have a skin that is obtainable in each of the new zones, maybe a collection skin or two. Add new skins with a current event or two down the road.

I don’t think they need to introduce 20+ skins with a new weapon when they introduce it, especially since you wouldn’t need them for level 1, 5, 10, etc, as you can’t even get to a specialization until you’ve complete your base sets. If they could muster like 8-10 with an expansion, that might work, trickle some more in later.

Edit: Well…and the new animations, which is probably not trivial.

Not enough resources™
Very difficult to implement™
Time-consuming™

Alneor.3986:

I’m tired to see arguments like “it’s too much work or it’s too expansive”. I mean it’s a MMO, it’s a big universe and features like that are parts of this.

I agree with DarcShriek, there would not be many skins but it’s not a big problem.

Its a lot of work for comparatively little reward. New weapon types will give a few classes some new skills, which lets them complete the existing content with different skills. But it wouldn’t add any actual content to the game. No new maps to explore, no new enemies, no new fights, no new story. Would shake up PvP and WvW, maybe depending on whether the weapon skills were overpowered or underpowered.

But also, it would make balancing every class much more difficult, since they’d have more weapons skills that interacted with their traits.

It would be massively complex (despite statements above to the contrary). The problem is that the weapon system itself prevents easy changes.

Necros can use several weapons, eles a different set, etc. There’s a matrix of weapons that can be used by the various professions.

In order to add weapons, they would have to be balanced across all of the professions, as they are now. Thus, they would have to add at least three (which would still be terribly unbalanced) to even think about it.

Take a look at the chart about halfway down https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Weapon. Where would you insert a new weapon?

Just coming up with the types of weapons would be nearly impossible, unless they completely rebalance things. They shot themselves in the foot with the original design, and I can’t think of any way to extricate themselves, without totally re-creating the weapon system.

Why do you need new weapon types when all you need is new skills (which will come with Elite specs anyway). The weapons we already have are “skill delivery systems” since the same weapon can be melee on one and ranged on another. All ANet needs to do is make a new and different skin for an old weapon type (for example a whip skin on a sword), give it an elite spec and there you are. People can use the new skin, or keep using one of the old skins.

Now THAT could work. It at least makes the problem a programming issue, vs. an impossible theory problem.