Guild Wars 2

Source

http://dragonseason.com/Front/tabid/124/EntryId/211/Lunch-with-Colin-Johanson-Part-II.aspx

One of the aims of the game was to make every class feel unique, but also viable and fun to play in a variety of ways. What professions have been highlighted as a falling short of this target and what crazy ways have been tried internally to spice them up?

Colin: For me, every profession actually has a lot of different variety available to it. It’s just a matter of if you enjoy that playstyle or not. So I think people look at each profession and they’ll judge it based on “Do I enjoy playing the ways of this profession offers me to play?” And so just going around the table, everybody is playing a different main for the most part. There’s no thieves or warriors here but there’s plenty of them in game. So we know those are represented. We talked about that graph that’s up on the wall. We look at that every day based on what profession people creating and it’s almost always very close to being even across all professions. That’s a really good sign, that is very, very hard to do. In Guild Wars 1 it was not even relatively close to that. It’s a big difference between viability of playstyles versus, you know, not at all. I’m actually really impressed at how generally balanced the professions are. There are certain skills or abilities that all need to get better but across the professions it’s actually pretty decent. It’s just a matter of what playstyle are you interested in. The thing that we have to improve is look at weapons sets that aren’t interesting for that profession or don’t fit the playstyle that we’ve said that profession should have and bring those up to the point that are.

+1 for data feedback Anet!! So what I take from this is that they feel like pretty much every profession plays pretty much close to how they envision.

Interesting, but I bet it would be even more interesting to see that data weighted against the time the players spend in the 3 major areas of the game: pvp, wvw, and pve. While the professions may appear to be balanced in general, you might find that they are not so balanced in specific areas of the game.

I’m not complaining about balance issues really – my opinion is that there are some minor balance issues (I pvp mostly) but not nearly as bad as the forums would have you believe.

they still have no clue that pve<>pvp<>wvw in terms of balance…

DanH.5879:

they still have no clue that pve<>pvp<>wvw in terms of balance…

I am sure the model goes something like sPvP balance, WvW+PvE balance. I honestly don’t have a problem with that. There are a very large amount of things different in WvW and sPvP. Thief for example since it uses the PvE ruleset in wvw as do all classes if you nerf it then you hurt it in PvE were it is already lacking. If you give WvW the sPvP ruleset then you have to do it for all the classes. Then you have to adjust all the mobs in WvWs health etc then if your rolling bunker its gonna take you an extra minute or 2 or more to kill a sentry, vet scouts, probably forever to take a camp your dps will drop dramatically since Crit damage is different in sPvP than PvE/WvW.

DanH.5879:

they still have no clue that pve<>pvp<>wvw in terms of balance…

Balance the game around PvP first and then adjust the PvE accordingly.

I mean, the only real difference between PvP and PvE is mobs stand still in PvE.

ComeAndSee.1356:

DanH.5879:

they still have no clue that pve<>pvp<>wvw in terms of balance…

Balance the game around PvP first and then adjust the PvE accordingly.

I mean, the only real difference between PvP and PvE is mobs stand still in PvE.

Crit damage
Food buffs
Confusion damage
Some skills do different damage in sPvP than PvE
Gear
defiant buff on champs
Lets remove that so PvE can be even more faceroll than it is lol.

If Anet came out and said ok we are gonna rebalance everything around sPvP stats and tweak from there. It would be ascended gear complaining all over again. That would also take them a while to do that. Each one of the things I listed above is on 5 but those 5 connect like a spider web to everything else.

Colin: I’m actually really impressed at how generally balanced the professions are. There are certain skills or abilities that all need to get better but across the professions it’s actually pretty decent. I

Lol really Colin, you actually believe that?

It would be absolutely fabulous to have WvW use the sPvP ruleset / gear / etc.

Because it’s a kittening PvP game mode.

But they won’t because they’re still stuck to WoW design paradigm.

EasymodeX.4062:

It would be absolutely fabulous to have WvW use the sPvP ruleset / gear / etc.

Because it’s a kittening PvP game mode.

But they won’t because they’re still stuck to WoW design paradigm.

Never gonna happen

I would never play this game if they made WvW just like sPvP. If anything I want more DAOC style progression in WvW. Fairness is fine for FPS and LoL but in my MMO I want things to be “fairly unfair” in an open world PvP environment. As in, everyone can easily max out but not everyone will due to whatever reasons. It’s fun to have awesome 1on1’s with great players and it’s just a fun to troll 10 uparrows trying to finish the JP.