Guild Wars 2

“What’s more is that the team is also working very kitten finding a way to make it so that every profession has access to every weapon and their own weapon skills for those previously locked weapons. Engineer plus Hammer? Check.” -Colin

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/7597/ArenaNets-Master-Plan-for-2013.html

Oh god, this quote has thrown my profession loyalty into turmoil.

So, I love every profession in the game mechanically. I mained a guardian first during beta and the head start, but I became bored after a while since I ended up deleting my guardian charr and rerolling guardian norn; I ended up burning out on the game after that.

I came back to roll a ranger, which I also loved. But, oh god, the quote above came out and I immediately questioned my choice to main ranger. You see, aesthetically I like bladed weaponry. Like many players I like the way the greatsword looks. I like how visceral it is (excluding mesmer). I love 1 handed swords, I like axes, I like bows and I like guns too. Hell, I like all the weapons in the game.

So imagine my excitement when it’s mentioned that some day all professions will have access to every weapon. All of a sudden I stopped choosing my profession based on what was there, but what could be there in the future. My choice was more or less dictated by what theme I enjoy more, not what weapons they can use now. With this in mind, Engineer is at the top of my list of professions I would main if they had access to every weapon.

Done and done, right? Engineer, right? Well, it would be if I didn’t doubt the ‘every weapon for everyone’ thing coming to pass. If I know, beyond a doubt, that this was going to happen to the game, I would be on my engineer right now instead of typing this. I like everything about engineer, don’t get me wrong, but the biggest turn off is what isn’t there.

So, help me make up my mind. Should I play engineer in hope that they eventually do follow through with ‘every weapon for every profession’? Or should I just continue to play ranger and ignore the prospect of getting a weapon I enjoy aesthetically on a profession I enjoy more mechanically.

Sorry for the wall of text. I’ve been struggling with this for a long time.

Just go for the one you enjoy more

Play the one you enjoy playing now. If the all weapons for all professions comes to pass, that might not be for a looong time. This was written almost a year ago. Then you would have gotten bored playing a profession you’re not to thrilled about. Also, there aren’t any details. You might have access to the weapon, but what skills would you have? Would there be limitations?

Then, if/when it comes to pass, you’ll have fun with a whole new character!

Sweetblue Huntress.9856:

Play the one you enjoy playing now. If the all weapons for all professions comes to pass, that might not be for a looong time. This was written almost a year ago. Then you would have gotten bored playing a profession you’re not to thrilled about. Also, there aren’t any details. You might have access to the weapon, but what skills would you have? Would there be limitations?

Then, if/when it comes to pass, you’ll have fun with a whole new character!

Yeah, this is the most logical choice. But my interest in ranger wanes just thinking about the prospect of other weapons on other professions. I end up feeling like my time with ranger is going to be wasted if I’m going to jump ship the moment they add weapons to every other profession.

I guess I should be more married to the moment rather than the future though.

Levelling in this game is pretty quick, I wouldn’t really worry about it.

Since Ranger and Engineer are both Medium armor classes if you ever bother to make ascended gear you can trade it over if ever that day comes that Engineers get stabby weapons. If you don’t bother with that it will be pretty cheap to just buy a set of exotics gear for the Engineer (you can also save any good drops your Ranger won’t use in your bank). Since this is likely quite a while in the future you should have enough gold without really trying by then.

And if you make a legendary weapon you’d be able to share that, too.

So, just play what you like NOW and if you really want to you can make and play an Engineer and get them to level 80 as a side project for if they ever become something you’d want to spend more time on.

idk what’s up with Traits and if that changes any of this because I haven’t experienced whatever the new system is. Looks like it might take a bit of time or gold but it doesn’t seem like it would be a dealbreaker especially if you plan ahead.

I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to decide what to play based on what might happen in the future, in any game. You’ll just end up second guessing everything.

If Anet announced that in the next update they ARE going to change something then it’s worth considering but until then, even if they’ve said they want to do it at some point, it’s not been confirmed. They could change their mind, or it might prove to be impossible or bad for the game for some reason, or might just be pushed back indefinitely because other things are considered more important.

I used to be a game developer, and while I was sometimes willing to talk about ideas or plans I had… plans change.

I’d have this list of cool stuff I wanted to work on, and things players asked for that made a lot of sense from a design perspective. And then reality stepped in, and those cool ideas never became plans or the plans never became designs or the designs never got implemented.

(If people ever wonder why devs don’t communicate as much as you might like, it’s partially this, and partially that communicating takes time and effort away from actually developing stuff.)

Anyway. Don’t plan on having access to every weapon in every class. Not unless they announce it’s coming in the next patch (and even so don’t hold your breath because it could fail terribly in QA or testing or something).

I don’t think it’s just game development that works that way. I work in wildlife conservation and part of my job is creating information packs and “how you can help” type guides for the general public. Back in December I identified two new ones we need. My managers immediately agreed both would be a good idea and they’d take me about a day each to create. I’m currently hoping to start in October.

Why? Because all the other stuff I do day to day doesn’t go away when I have an idea for something new and it has to fit in around everyone else’s schedules too. I couldn’t have gotten it done for Spring and the way our public engagement works means introducing new material in the middle of the summer would just confuse everyone, plus we need all hands on deck for more urgent things.

I know some things Anet do work in similar ways. One of the news posts about the wardrobe update mentioned that they got the idea shortly after creating the wallet system, but then had to wait until it would fit in with everyone else’s updates and for all the necessary people to have time to work on it. There’s probably other ideas which have just never happened for various reasons.