Guild Wars 2

I was looking back at an old interview, that has information that actually happens to stay true till this day. I took the part of what was dealing with engineers to show the thought process behind us. It is some pretty good information that engineers should be aware of, as many of our engie problems of today such as RNG are replied to here.: I have some direct question quotes and a few asked by the community in general.

Q: Was the engineer at some point considered to be a heavy class?
A: “At some stage we also talked about the engineer being a heavy armored profession, and then he became medium.”

Q: Was the engineer really the last class to be included in the game?
A: “The reason I keep referring to seven professions is because for a while we thought that was going to be the final number. The reason why we went to eight was because the engineer was not part of the final seven.”

Q: “Is it fair to say that some classes will be easy to master and some difficult, or is this assessment too simple? Was it always ArenaNet’s intention to have some classes seen as ‘easy’ and some ‘difficult?’”
A: “We said the engineer is very complex because his complexity limit is very high, but you could run an engineer with simpler utility skills and fewer kits which would make it a relatively straightforward class.”

Q: “What logic went into assigning skills to certain hands?”
A: “It’s a complex question of animation and design. For instance, we built an offhand retreat skill, in terms of animation, because we wanted it on a number of different professions, because we felt like it was going to be a powerful skill for those professions. The more powerful skills tend to be further along the bar, so we built it on off-hand, that’s why we also put the engineer’s glue shot on the same hand, as it’s a retreating skill also.”

Q: Guild Wars 2?s engineer and Warhammer Online’s are incredibly similar by their use of turrets, grenades, rifles and emphasis on pre-planning. How much were ArenaNet influenced by Mythic’s failures and successes with this class?"
A:I wouldn’t say they are a great deal, but when you build a combat engineer you expect grenades, rifles and turrets. These are a staple of the class. There are similarities, but there are a lot of engineer classes out there in different games whether or not they are ‘engineers.’ In Guild Wars 1 the ritualist is pretty much an engineer in the style of how you’re playing, but is flavoured very differently.
A2: “’d rather say that in other games, but certainly us, we were heavily influenced by real life combat engineers such as World War I, World War II, mortar firing and so on.”

Q: “Many of the current engineer’s skills seem to lean more towards mid-line combat, whilst their close quarter skills are seemingly in abundance. How do ArenaNet envisage them being played; will a player who doesn’t regularly change kits be disadvantaged against one who does? Can they cope well against pure ranged attackers?”
A: “If you equip kits and don’t use them often then you’re definitely at a disadvantage. Their weakness against ranged opponents isn’t because they don’t have the range, it’s because they don’t have the mobility. Much of it depends on how you play the engineer.”
A2: “I see the question a lot where people ask whether an engineer can be played without kits, and if so won’t they just be weaker? And the answer is no, they will just play very differently. Kits make the profession more difficult to play and if you take advantage of that, that’s great, but it depends on the situation. If you’re trying to defend a location, there might be an event where some place is getting attacked and you brought turrets — that’s good — but a turret engineer is probably not going to be very useful in an escort. It’s the reason we let you swap out your skills out of combat.”

Q: “In recent interviews it has been said that an engineer’s elixirs have a random element. How is this being managed; how are you ensuring all random skills are worthwhile? Can the disadvantages associated with ‘randomness’ be overcome by the player? Inevitably skills without certainty are often ignored in a PVP setting…”
A: "People really hate the random element! To me, random elements are what create strategy and good players, what makes them good and what makes their strategies good, is how they react to those random situations. You don’t need everything to be a spreadsheet because when it is you are not actually making strategic decisions, you are just following a robotic set of things to do.

When something random happens as the engineer, and you get the swiftness boon because you drank Elixir B, it becomes a case of “Ok, I was just shooting around but these guys are running away from me, here I go!” and you can use your flamethrower to chase enemies down. You have to make that decision to change and how you react to the random element is part of the strategy. That separates to me what the difference is between players who are good and bad."
A2: “To address the engineer’s randomness, specifically with his elixirs, the effects aren’t taken randomly from every skill in the game. We determine what skills we want to have on each one of those skills, so you are not pulling from a completely random pool. We want to make sure you get good skills for your profession, but they are random.”
A3: “The caveat to what I’ve said is that doesn’t mean we want everything in the game to be wildly random, as there is a threshold. If you go over that the game will feel horribly broken and not fun, but there is a certain threshold where if you go under a certain amount of random, it feels like you’re not in control of your strategy. We are trying to find that in-between.”

Q: “Have ArenaNet determined what makes an engineer mine beep and light up?”
A: “I can answer that really quickly; you need to be able to see it! It’s a really small lore piece and overall we try to stick to lore as much as we can to ensure consistency, but feel free to make up your own clock-work reason as to why we have a flashing spark in there.”

Source: http://tap-repeatedly.com/2011/06/exclusive-interview-arenanets-jon-peters-and-jonathan-sharp/

Thanks for dropping this into the forum.

I love the optimism expressed in their answers:
“We said the engineer is very complex because his complexity limit is very high, but you could run an engineer with simpler utility skills and fewer kits which would make it a relatively straightforward class.”

“I see the question a lot where people ask whether an engineer can be played without kits, and if so won’t they just be weaker? And the answer is no, they will just play very differently.”

“When something random happens as the engineer, and you get the swiftness boon because you drank Elixir B, it becomes a case of “Ok, I was just shooting around but these guys are running away from me, here I go!” and you can use your flamethrower to chase enemies down.”

“To me, random elements are what create strategy and good players”

Or put another way, Engineer is the class for stealth nerfing the good players ;p

That’s actually very refreshing. It seems that the devs saw pretty clearly the strengths and weaknesses of the profession before the game went live.

It seems they expected swapping utilities out of combat to be more effective than it actually is, though. I can see how you might possibly switch to turrets for defending something and kits for escorting something, except traits would be a mess and turrets are generally bad. Also, not being able to switch anything in tournaments seems to be a bigger deal to a profession they expected to be switching constantly to fit the situation.

It’s interesting that they knew players didn’t like RNG but still included it. I can understand their rationalization, though I’m not sure that randomly getting swiftness would ever change anyone’s strategy.

It’s too bad that you can’t chase people down with the flamethrower anymore, it used to have that great gapcloser pull…Oh well, at least they were aware that engies weren’t going to have good mobility.

tl;dr—devs seemed to have a very clear idea of what they wanted our strengths and weaknesses to be. Along the way, some things got muddled, and not in our favor. But at least they understand what’s going on.

LOL a Flamethrower to chase ppl down! Those were the days!

Shouldn’t more professions have RNG then if that is what separates good players from bad players?

There is a threshold to the RNG they want in the game and I guess that threshold is the last minute profession that wasn’t in the original profession lineup.

Okay lets go ahead an make this engineer profession.
Grendades, Rifles, Turrets, check, check, check.
What about the rest?
Just pick some skills and skins from the other 7 and mix them up somehow.
How?
iono just get some random stuff and make it work.
OK make random stuff got it.

tl;dr – It seems to me the devs intial goal was to make the Engineer a high skill cap profession but when all the elite players started dominating everyone when they reached that skill cap the Engie gets watered down. So the average players have it even worse and the Elite players have to work that much harder or roll Ele.

all hail the mighty RNG-goddess and make daily sacrifices to her! or she will only bring you pain and tears..
this was so frustrating when i first got the game, now i heal when at 40% health and not as a last resort panic button that one is now elixer S xD

the only other class i know that has RNG is mesmer with staff, the chaos field and autoattack give random conditions to foes and random boons to allies

how can an engineer run an enemy down ???

““I see the question a lot where people ask whether an engineer can be played without kits, and if so won’t they just be weaker? And the answer is no, they will just play very differently” <—- you roll another class… “very differently”…

eldain stenlund.4306:

how can an engineer run an enemy down ???

““I see the question a lot where people ask whether an engineer can be played without kits, and if so won’t they just be weaker? And the answer is no, they will just play very differently” <—- you roll another class… “very differently”…

Flamethrower used to have an area pull as its 5 skill, so it was very, very effective at running people down. We no longer have much in the way of chase abilities.

That rng stuff is complete bullkitten, good info

This should be stickied so devs can monitor the feedback on this interview thread.

The thing that bothers me most about this is that one of the tatics the Devs state the Engineer can excel at (chasing with FT pull) was one of the first (and imo biggest) nerfs to the profession.

Later the FT was (imo) nerfed again when Juggernaught was changed.

It just seems like because they threw together a profession at the last minute and now they don’t really know how to balance it. They seem too afraid to give us and advantage because it could be seen as OP and they give us unnecessarily strong nerfs because of how things look on paper.

I can only hope that at some point a greater focus will be put on the Engineer to make it a more appealing profession to use.

Pipedream sidenote; To pull a group out of their Zerg just past your BoB laying ontop of your flamewall and watch them fly through the air in flames to their awaiting death!

ahhhh what a great combo that would be!

Random elements are fine…sometimes. For example, if I’m going to spike someone, I use toss elixir S first.

If I get stealth, I sneak up on them and spike. If I get stability, I overcharge shot them and then spike. Both work and the random element is actually nice.

However, if the situation calls for me to sneak up on the enemy, I don’t want stability! If I’m trying to get past a trap that KDs me, I don’t want stealth! There are some situations where I don’t care what it gives me, but there a whole host of them were it is the determining factor between failure and success.

I don’t get what they don’t see!

Random elements are disastrous in PVP based scenarios because they take away skill in favor of luck. Whatever you’re doing yourself should be 100% predictable.

NevirSayDie.6235:

eldain stenlund.4306:

how can an engineer run an enemy down ???

"“I see the question a lot where people ask whether an engineer can be played without kits, and if so won’t they just be weaker? And the answer is no, they will just play very differently" &lt;--- you roll another class... "very differently"...

Flamethrower used to have an area pull as its 5 skill, so it was very, very effective at running people down. We no longer have much in the way of chase abilities.

i honestly think that the mechanic of Exploit Weakness trait *needs* to be built in to the FT, it needs to cripple foes to make them walk slower at all times. 1sc tick every other strike of the main attack, with opposing "other" strikes granting 1sc burn rather than just the last one. (crip/burn/crip/burn/crip/burn).

that or each successive strike of ft 1 on the same foe stacks the duration of the burn to make it last longer (ie make people GET OUT of the fire, staying in it is bad).

imo, this would make the FT complete.

and this is very true:

marnick.4305:

Random elements are disastrous in PVP based scenarios because they take away skill in favor of luck. Whatever you’re doing yourself should be 100% predictable.

unless the RNG elements are overpowered to compensate for their lack of reliability, there is absolutely NO benefit to RNG skills. As it stands, anet thinks our RNG skills need to be underpowered to compensate for their ’variety’

His take on randomness is far from the mark, unfortunately.

Randomness by itself does not encourage skill, it dilutes it. It’s why “family” games like Candyland and Monopoly tend to be so heavily based on randomness, so mom and dad can play with junior and still have a reasonably competitive game.

On the other far side of the spectrum is Chess, which is totally lacking in randomness, or a more modern example of Starcraft 2, in which randomness doesn’t exist beyond determining starting points in a map.

A truly skill based game has little room for randomness.

Because I know that some one will bring up Poker, I’ll point out that the true skill in Poker is not in playing a hand but in betting a hand, and that aspect of the game is not random. It comes down to well established mathematical principles and psychology, neither of which are random. It’s also recognized by players of all skill levels that the most skilled player often doesn’t win the hand, and even a skilled player can be beaten by a total neophyte, given sufficient luck. Overcoming poor draws is an indicator of skill, but not an aspect of skill.

Randomness is largely a handicap when using an ability, and needs to be compensated in the form of each possible outcome being more powerful than what would be justified if it were not random.

In other words, the tool belt version of Elixir B would be balanced in its current form if it always provided the same buff, but given the fact that a player is expected to use it, then recognize the effect, and THEN utilize it to proper effect, those effects should be much greater than they are currently.

When a thief steals, he can know exactly what he’s going to steal, and yet most stolen abilities are actually more powerful than the corresponding abilities they’re meant to mimic. An engineer often has no idea what he’s going to get when he uses an elixir, and even if he gets the effect he planned for or wants most, it’s still going to be a fairly weak effect or have a large drawback of some kind.

marnick.4305:

Random elements are disastrous in PVP based scenarios because they take away skill in favor of luck. Whatever you’re doing yourself should be 100% predictable.

At the very least, if it’s not predictable, it is a disadvantage, and the possible outcomes should all be better than what would be fair in a non random scenario.

If it’s balanced for a utility skill to give me 5 seconds of quickness with a known drawback, it’s probably not balanced with a random drawback pulled from a list of known drawbacks. Either the drawbacks should be slightly less, or the benefit should be slightly greater.

I see Anet’s response to RNG as nothing more than an excuse trying to justify a bad design decision. If they truly thought RNG brings as much strategy and skill as they claim they would have put RNG into more professions or would have stated that

“We believe in RNG and think it is fair and for the future are looking for ways to bring RNG into other aspects and professions in the game.”

I think the reality is that RNG is just another consequence of having a last minute profession that didn’t have as much practical development and testing as the other staple professions.

The Engineer and Mesmer are the most unique classes in GW2 and it is obvious that the Mesmer received much more attention than the Engineer did.

Lets just hope that eventually the spotlight will shift to Anets greatest sleeper achievement, The Engineer.

CriSPeH.8512:

It just seems like because they threw together a profession at the last minute and now they don’t really know how to balance it. They seem too afraid to give us and advantage because it could be seen as OP and they give us unnecessarily strong nerfs because of how things look on paper.

It’s probably conceited or narcissistic of me to quote myself, but I am lazy and agreed with your post so much that I wanted to reply with something, so here goes:

…If you have rolled other a few characters, you’ll notice more than half of our traits and some skills come from other classes, so we are the sudo class; what makes this bad, is that our class FEELS like it was thrown together at the last minute. The only unique thing we have are elixirs, kits, and turrets, and turrets don’t work. And you can go even further arguing that most of our kit skills come from other professions…
…I’m just tired of this word, “versatility.” If our overlords are having a hard time figuring out what “versatility” means, remove it altogether. As of right now, any class that was supposed to be “versatile” is under powered. All the while, the classes that were not formed around “versatility” are insanely overpowered. What ever happened to this so called balance that or overlords were trying to achieve? If we were truly balanced, we would only have to press 1 and 2 to be on par with the Warrior; or the Warrior would have to use every single ability to kill one mob.
Our overlords need to give each class a role, in both pve and pvp, and build that class accordingly. Quit trying to build your classes around a single word…

nakoda.4213:

unless the RNG elements are overpowered to compensate for their lack of reliability, there is absolutely NO benefit to RNG skills. As it stands, anet thinks our RNG skills need to be underpowered to compensate for their ‘variety’

I agree with that. I would have thought the random chance would have actually meant we would get a stronger version of the skill. They got some of it right though, like elixir x actually lasts longer than the ele/warrior counterparts.

Penguin.5197:

nakoda.4213:

unless the RNG elements are overpowered to compensate for their lack of reliability, there is absolutely NO benefit to RNG skills. As it stands, anet thinks our RNG skills need to be underpowered to compensate for their ‘variety’

I agree with that. I would have though the random chance would have actually meant we would get a stronger version of the skill. They got some of it right though, like elixir x actually lasts longer than the ele/warrior counterparts.

Stronger version, or lower cooldowns would have been nicer.

With Elixir U, it’s almost neither.

They need to read Voxdeus’ first post there repeatedly until they understand where they went wrong. Nice post man.