Guild Wars 2

A lot of people have been discussing this so I thought I’d start a new post and take it in a bit of a different direction. Some people don’t like how I’m about to phrase this interview. They may even say it’s taken out of context. So read it for yourself, discuss, etc. I will try to take as much of my own bias out as possible.

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

Here’s the quote I’d like to discuss:

Jon P:When we actually made the decision to not have healers, it wasn’t my job to talk to others about it directly, so I’m unsure how heavily other people were consulted. I know some were skeptical and were worried. A lot of people like to play healers and liked to play monks in Guild Wars 1. That being said, it’s not a secret around the office that I do not like to play healers, so I wasn’t too sad to see them go!

My ‘main’ in Guild Wars 1, though, is a monk. In D&D every character I’ve made, I think I’ve played a Cleric. Pretty much every game I play, I play a healer but I actually despise them. I play them because of what I want them to be, not because of what they are. My current main character on our server right now, in PVE, is a guardian though I have a very different character for PVP.

The guardian is the first time I’ve felt I’m playing that class I want to play, but this profession does it in the way that I’ve been waiting for since 4th grade. That idea that it doesn’t have to be so direct and so specific and you can still feel like you’re doing other cool things whilst still supporting your allies.

Maybe it’s not for every monk player, but some will find their home with the necromancer, and some with the engineer and elementalist and guardian. I wouldn’t go further than that because I couldn’t say for certain a monk player would want to play a warrior or a ranger, but the idea is that there are different play styles those people may like, so we put them in different places.

TL;DR
Jon Peters has a passion for D&D type games and playing cleric. That passion is infectious. Of course, that doesn’t mean there aren’t devs who prefer playing other archetypes. I just thought that was interesting to point out, others may not.

For me, this story gets a neat spin when you consider that I hoped gw2 would be what the archer was always meant to be. Because in other games I play archer not because of what it can do (it’s usually limited), but because of what I wish it would do. That’s identical to how Jon P felt about monks/clerics. And that’s how a lot of us feel so I’m sure ANET can empathize although I don’t expect them to do much about it at this time.

Patience and constructive criticism are critical to getting this done.

Don’t cut people down for being positive

Don’t reinforce negative opinions

Do have fun and bleed your opponents to death then laugh for winning with ranger

Carry on!

Awwww you didn’t like my title? I thought it was so apt! I might stalk the guardian forum and try and find out just how much input he has over there :p

Well your title is very negative with a ranty opening. Many people will skip over that kind of stuff Bryzy. I want this to be read and discussed.

It’s just a shame the devs have very little input on the professions and suggestions forums (i.e. the ones designed to help improve the game from the player perspective). It means that even threads with an objective theme and a valid topic like this that should be acknowledged are overlooked. I get the impression that this is partly why the balance process is so slow. They’re just not looking or listening enough.

News Flash: One of Arena Net’s developers has a favorite style of play and isn’t in love with every single play style they’re offering. Shock and awe. More on this at 11.

… Seriously? It’s one of those threads isn’t it?

You know, this is why developers prefer to stay quiet most of the time. They say anything, no matter how harmless and irrelevant, and some tin foil hat hearer somewhere will twist and wring their words into something malicious every. kittening. time. And then complain developers don’t talk without running every statement through a PR team and a few lawyers…

Pretty much what ProxyDamage said.
I’m pretty sure that just because ONE developer does not enjoy the play style of a ranger or a warrior it doesn’t mean that ALL of them hate both classes.
TBH I don’t think that they hate us or the warriors.They probably just have no idea how to balance PvE without braking PvP, or maybe they don’t know what to do with the pets and the dungeons. Also, for some weird reason, they seem to think that for buffing one bow they must nerf the other. Slowly, they are learning to separate PvE from PvP, so I have my hopes up that someday we will see some improvement for Rangers in PvE.
Quite frankly, I believe they just took a series of bad decisions regarding the ranger and ended up messing everything up further and further while trying to fix their previous mistakes. I don’t think it was on purpose, just to screw with us x)

I thought GW2 was designed so every character could fill every role. No tank, no healer and no dps specific classes.

If Jon would make the Ranger into a version he’d like to play, we might be getting somewhere. Rangers completely lack the ability to affect their party because spirits are so bad at surviving outside of PvP, same goes for their pets.

Proxy, I agree with you about why developers tend to be quiet about things. Clearly they’ve screwed up a lot of their PR in the past. This concept has been discussed at length on these forums and reddit and if you go through my post history you’ll see me saying almost the same exact thing you’re saying now.

The difference here is that this is relevant and it’s not a rant. In that same interview, they talk about how they spent the most time working on the guardian profession.

My point was just to say this:

The ranger is to me as the guardian is to Jon P. That is all.

I used this video to illustrate how I feel sometimes playing the Ranger. At 3: 40 in the video this is exacting how I feel when it comes to Rangers in WvW and in PvE.

The rapper is the Rangers and the 40 oz is the pet.

Where does he say Warriors and Rangers only existed for flavor? All he’s saying is that there is synergy between the GW1 monk class and the GW2 necro, engineer, ele, and guardian classes, and less so with ranger and warrior.

Daemon.4295:

Where does he say Warriors and Rangers only existed for flavor? All he’s saying is that there is synergy between the GW1 monk class and the GW2 necro, engineer, ele, and guardian classes, and less so with ranger and warrior.

I said that. That was my interpretation in the TL;DR, sorry I will fix that. I guess that’s unfair because I didn’t mean for people to interpret it that way.

Edit: I’ve taken unfair judgements out of all comments that I could find, I’m sorry if I offended anyone. Thanks, Daemon, for pointing that out because it was getting ranty and I shouldn’t have let that happen. Everyone is asking how the ranger got here…this is how, I believe. I will change the title of the post to reflect that as well.

There, Proxy, I’ve fixed it and made it fair. Sorry to disappoint/offend you. It reads much better now. Again, Daemon and Proxy, thank you for making this a useful post instead of another rant.

Chopps.5047:

There, Proxy, I’ve fixed it and made it fair. Sorry to disappoint/offend you. It reads much better now. Again, Daemon and Proxy, thank you for making this a useful post instead of another rant. /bow exit stage left

Nah, I’m sure you wouldn’t have turned it into a rant On the positive side, you did get called a “tin foil hat hearer”, which I thought was pretty funny. If it was me that would have gone straight into my signature!

Thanks Bryzy and Chopps for pointing this article out by the way, regardless of Jon Peters’ comments on the Guardian it was an interesting read. I never played GW1 but it’s interesting to get some insight into the thought process behind how the classes were reshaped for GW2. Does anyone know of a good link to descriptions of the Marksman and Warden classes originally considered? I take it one was an archer and the other a sort of beastmaster?

Yes, I also thought it was a good read. There’s nothing really that says anything bad about ranger profession in there. It’s a neat take on some behind the scenes stuff. And I don’t think it was any secret the guardian is in a good place. It just makes sense since ANET spent a ton of time getting it right. You see them doing that with all the professions.

Yeah I have to say the guardian is a really solid and balanced class. I’ve been leveling my guardian alt lately, he’s currently lvl 45ish, and I’m having a tough time choosing between weapons, skills, and traits because there are so many great options at your disposal. With my ranger I rarely regret not picking up a certain skill or trait, so yeah, you gotta wonder what state we’d be in if the ranger had been a developer favorite.

I think the original article illuminates why I feel so lost as a ranger. In game development we have a term that is thrown about. Resonance. Basically resonance is how a player connects to their character through the characters actions. Most of the rangers damage comes (came) through the pet. This pet is beyond (for the most part) the players control. In the meantime the player’s damage is substandard. I think that is why so many players want a shift in the paradigm.

To illustrate lets compare the warrior longbow with the ranger longbow. warrior 1 I shoot 2 arrows. Hey that is kinda neat. Like some Green Arrow stuff going on. 2 a big ole fan of flaming arrows. That’s cool. I just lit those punks on fire. 3 Explosions! AMERICA!!! Now ranger. 1 I fire an arrow. OK its auto whatever. 2 I fire a whole bunch of arrows. Sorta neat, not really. They don’t DO anything but lower my damage. 3 I fire an arrow. 4 I fire an arrow. 5 I fire a whole bunch of arrows. No resonance. Nothing to push the “Wow” button. And I think that is because this is very much a team that doesn’t like to kill its babies (another term) they have styles and archetypes they enjoy and have a clear vision for. Once they step beyond that the creativity nosedives.

I have no idea why though. There was so much they could have done with the attack animations that could have made the ranger a much less egregious class to play. Imagine just working the pet into the attack animations. They could jump and tackle players to push them back and knock them down, maul legs to cripple them, burrow through the earth to ambush them. All in combination with bow animations. Then we would start to generate resonance. Or the ranger could attack with trick shots, shoot behind their back, shoot while flipping in the air. I don’t know, something. something cool.

What I would REALLY like to see is something that builds resonance in the character. I think a lot more people would be patient with the class while it was rebuilt (and it does need a rebuild) I mean look at sword 1. Terrible mechanic. People love the crap outta sword 1. I love me the heck outta some sword 1. Why? Its cool. Its fun to look at. I FEEL powerful. And when it throws me off a cliff I believe I can fly. For a second.

I think the issue with the ranger class actually stems from the transition from guild wars 1 to guild wars 2. Ranger was a near perfect class (imo) in guild wars 1, being able to do multiple things extremely well, especially for a midline character.
However, the biggest flaw with the class in guild wars 1 for rangers was probably pets. Whether it was performance or survivability, they had to completely overhaul the system overtime (including an inherent 30% damage reduction at some point).

Knowing that, they still decided for guild wars 2 to create a Beastmaster (originally there was Marksman and Beastmaster, and they got fused together into the ranger profession) and attempt to streamline basically a failed implementation of guild wars 1, which, regardless of how much people may have enjoyed the pets, are not valuable in any aspect of a competitive atmosphere, especially when instead of having the player work in tandem with the pet, the pet can do one thing while the player can do another and neither have to consistently relate to each other (like pet skills from guild wars 1).

I’m not sure why they chose to streamline such a failed concept knowing full well it would be completely hit or miss, as opposed to making more of a primary archer secondary melee with avoidance and movement speed boosts through stances, multiple ranged condition application, and the ability to call tamed animals into the fight for temporary DPS and utility boosts.

Mr Pin.6728:

I think the original article illuminates why I feel so lost as a ranger. In game development we have a term that is thrown about. Resonance. Basically resonance is how a player connects to their character through the characters actions. Most of the rangers damage comes (came) through the pet. This pet is beyond (for the most part) the players control. In the meantime the player’s damage is substandard. I think that is why so many players want a shift in the paradigm.

To illustrate lets compare the warrior longbow with the ranger longbow. warrior 1 I shoot 2 arrows. Hey that is kinda neat. Like some Green Arrow stuff going on. 2 a big ole fan of flaming arrows. That’s cool. I just lit those punks on fire. 3 Explosions! AMERICA!!! Now ranger. 1 I fire an arrow. OK its auto whatever. 2 I fire a whole bunch of arrows. Sorta neat, not really. They don’t DO anything but lower my damage. 3 I fire an arrow. 4 I fire an arrow. 5 I fire a whole bunch of arrows. No resonance. Nothing to push the “Wow” button. And I think that is because this is very much a team that doesn’t like to kill its babies (another term) they have styles and archetypes they enjoy and have a clear vision for. Once they step beyond that the creativity nosedives.

I have no idea why though. There was so much they could have done with the attack animations that could have made the ranger a much less egregious class to play. Imagine just working the pet into the attack animations. They could jump and tackle players to push them back and knock them down, maul legs to cripple them, burrow through the earth to ambush them. All in combination with bow animations. Then we would start to generate resonance. Or the ranger could attack with trick shots, shoot behind their back, shoot while flipping in the air. I don’t know, something. something cool.

What I would REALLY like to see is something that builds resonance in the character. I think a lot more people would be patient with the class while it was rebuilt (and it does need a rebuild) I mean look at sword 1. Terrible mechanic. People love the crap outta sword 1. I love me the heck outta some sword 1. Why? Its cool. Its fun to look at. I FEEL powerful. And when it throws me off a cliff I believe I can fly. For a second.

+1 to this.

Very good points made.

On a side note to everybody here, does anybody remember when the guild wars 2 site first went up, and they were putting up profession videos, and they showcased the ranger skills, and in one of the videos rangers had arcing shot? (I believe it was arcing shot). Gee, I guess that was too good for rangers. Maybe, I could be wrong though, it was quite awhile ago, but I swear the videos had rangers using much cooler bow skills (barrage is the same though) than what we now have access to.

Ya, totally agree with Mr Pin. I want be able to yell “AMERICA!!” when I use longbow. Agree 100%, spot on. +1