Guild Wars 2

Recently it was brought to my attention that at some point in the (relatively) near future there will be new skills added to the game. While the thought of adding build variety excites me as a player, the other thought that immediately occurred to me was that it will make build crafting even more confusing for newer players, while making the balance situation worse for more experienced players. This is because some skills (for all professions) are still sub-par, similar to traits that are never used, while a small selection are too good not to pick at least a few from their group, meaning new skills will have be comparably strong, which introduces power creep.

The larger the skill library becomes, the more work it takes to make skills/traits that are both unique and balanced, with at least some degree of universal appeal. However, with the current state of the game, can we really say that we’re close enough to a decent semblance of balance/build variety that it warrants adding new functions to professions? You could achieve the same effect with greater efficiency by simply making a few really bad skills comparable to their amazing counterparts.

In my head the only thing that made sense was temporarily devoting a larger portion of the GW2 team to helping the current state of things before this change occurs, but I do not think this will happen.

Well, using a comparison to LoL, new champs constantly being added (and sometimes items) also makes it harder for new players to settle in, but it works.

I would definately prefer having more, rather than less with balance being constricted tightly by the devs (which hasn’t worked out……. at all… so…), not only would the game be more fun, but there would potentially be more viable builds/playstyles.

Also, considering how important casual pvp is, especially if you want an esports, your casual pvp needs to be fun and varied, more skills helps with that, even if at a top level some skills/builds are viable who cares? It’s way more fun during casual pvp, and that’s important : fun.

Another comparison would be DotA, who has more extreme abilities/heroes with the concept of “everyone is overpowered in their own way” which not only opens up for a ton of strategies but is also way more fun even casually.

There are ways to make a game easier for new players to get into besides dumbing it down really hard and constricting the balance to death. Make it intuitive, clear, and easy to learn from mistakes, that’s really what’s most important (and one of GW2’s biggest problems, not the amount of skills).

i would prefer to have more choices… rigth now, some professions are not able to build certain way because of the lack of skills of desired type… also i like a variety of choices

Please, don’t ask for anything. It’s just a waste of time. They can’t even fix the amazing lags and the broken Solo Q, Leaderboards, different skills….I stop here.

What I want to say is just, don’t ask for new stuff, before the current one is fixed, since it’s still broken like kitten.

Game needs new skills/traits added to support current skills/ styles/modes.
Dont worry about new players new skills won’t turn them off and to begin with most new players aren’t in PvP for their gw2 experience.

Leuca.5732:

Recently it was brought to my attention that at some point in the (relatively) near future there will be new skills added to the game.

Yes we do.
Do you know why GW1 was successfull?
Anet made so many skills, so many hundreds of skills to pick from, that by shear odds, out of that random unthought out mess, there would accidently be a number of deep engaging skills…
Like 2/3 of the skills were utterly useless… but out of the rest there were some extremely well done ones.

In GW2, 2/3 of the kitten is still useless… but since there is only like a dozen choices to a class, there aren’t thousands, the pool of ‘accidentally well made specs’ is depressingly small.
Anet thrives under ‘random spam’ and tossing conquest while going more in that direction (while slowly winnowing out cheese) seems the only way GW2 could ever get anywhere.

garethh.3518:

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Yes we do.
Do you know why GW1 was successfull?
Anet made so many skills, so many hundreds of skills to pick from, that by shear odds, out of that random unthought out mess, there would accidently be a number of deep engaging skills…
Like 2/3 of the skills were utterly useless… but out of the rest there were some extremely well done ones.

In GW2, 2/3 of the kitten is still useless… but since there is only like a dozen choices to a class, there aren’t thousands, the pool of ‘accidentally well made specs’ is depressingly small.
Anet thrives under ‘random spam’ and tossing conquest while going more in that direction (while slowly winnowing out cheese) seems the only way GW2 could ever get anywhere.

I played GW1 for a long time, and while I do see your point I just see more of an opportunity to solve the problem in this game than in its predecessor.

To clarify, I don’t think adding skills is an inherently terrible idea, I just don’t think it should be so soon, when there is ample opportunity to fix skills that don’t see use.

Leuca.5732:

garethh.3518:

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Yes we do.
Do you know why GW1 was successfull?
Anet made so many skills, so many hundreds of skills to pick from, that by shear odds, out of that random unthought out mess, there would accidently be a number of deep engaging skills…
Like 2/3 of the skills were utterly useless… but out of the rest there were some extremely well done ones.

In GW2, 2/3 of the kitten is still useless… but since there is only like a dozen choices to a class, there aren’t thousands, the pool of ‘accidentally well made specs’ is depressingly small.
Anet thrives under ‘random spam’ and tossing conquest while going more in that direction (while slowly winnowing out cheese) seems the only way GW2 could ever get anywhere.

I played GW1 for a long time, and while I do see your point I just see more of an opportunity to solve the problem in this game than in its predecessor.

To clarify, I don’t think adding skills is an inherently terrible idea, I just don’t think it should be so soon, when there is ample opportunity to fix skills that don’t see use.

That’s too much hope for what Anet has shown.
They aimed at GW2 being lag friendly and devoid of cheesey insta-gibs…

The devs just haven’t shown a single reason to for anyone to believe that they actually can fix the game to a purpose. That they can take on tasks like ‘tweaking skills and making the gameplay more ENGAGING because of it’.
Not balanced, flipping a coin is balanced but not a good game, making more skill more viable is only worthwile if the changes make the gameplay more engaging…

You forgot to add one very important part. They said they were adding new skills to PvE and WvW, but made nio mention of them getting into spvp. Cuurently a lot of the newer addition runes are not available in spvp. They have implied that all facets were getting new skills, or it maybe as I suspect, that these new skills won’t be added to spvp straight away.

new skills could fix this game, but theyd have to start with a rebalance of weapon skills and a redesign of gameplay.

make more attacks skill shots, basically – then remove the teleport spam.