Guild Wars 2 Design Manifesto

http://www.arena.net/blog/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto

Interesting how they comment that there was inspiration from M:tG. I am always seeing parallels between the 2 as I used to be pretty into T1.

I don't know if I care for some of their design targets. For example the whole emphasis on storytelling. Sure I think storytelling is important in some games but I don't play GW as a RPG. Instead, it is more like a co-op 3rd person action game. I don't see any of that changing in GW2.

Things that might appeal to me like more tactical combat where positioning mattered more and cover being an element are not present. They might not even improve the gameplay. Instead, that design paper says to expect more of the same, for the most part. Only better it says. I'll have to see how it all plays out but I can't say I expect a lot. Things I like about GW are the ways it ISN'T about grinding. Instead, most of the more recent content is nothing but grind. Grind for zcoins. Grind for titles to make your PvE skills more effective. None of this has gotten me what I enjoy out of the game: doing missions with other live people.

I think the combat is just fine in most areas. One area bieng that a warrior can attack someone on a bridge while he's under it, but they said they're fixing it by adding all the axis. I like the idea of making your own story for your character, and having awhole town or whatever go and hunt a boss together... I think Guild Wars 2 will completely surprise WoW newbs, and end this long debate over Guild Wars vs WoW. I have my $50 saved and ready....

Did they say any new classes? We all know theres new races... but what about classes?

I didn't see mention of new classes. But the article did make /. That's the big time for geek stuff.

Meh. I think theres enough classes... I can't think of much more possibilites for a new ones.

There are some nice images floating around on the Guild Wars 2 facebook page. In terms of new professions, seems they have unveiled the Elementalist, or at least an equivalent assuming they haven't changed the name.

http://yfrog.com/j0img4unj

Instead, most of the more recent content is nothing but grind. Grind for zcoins. Grind for titles to make your PvE skills more effective. None of this has gotten me what I enjoy out of the game: doing missions with other live people.

I agree, Scienter. I absolutely dislike grinding, and I hope they keep that out of GW2. (I haven't read the new article just yet). My favorite thing is doing elite content with other players (guildies particularly and allies), but all this title grinding doesn't really help with that.

I do like story driven RPG type games, so if GW2 is more story driven, I will definitely like that.

scienter wrote:Things that might appeal to me like more tactical combat where positioning mattered more and cover being an element are not present. They might not even improve the gameplay. Instead, that design paper says to expect more of the same, for the most part. Only better it says. I'll have to see how it all plays out but I can't say I expect a lot. Things I like about GW are the ways it ISN'T about grinding. Instead, most of the more recent content is nothing but grind. Grind for zcoins. Grind for titles to make your PvE skills more effective. None of this has gotten me what I enjoy out of the game: doing missions with other live people.

Keep in mind that they initially just intended to keep going with GW1, but found it's core engine to be too broken to be worth continuing it with expansions. Some of the design concepts from the GW1 expansion "Utopia" can already be seen in the GW2 screenshots and information available.

That said, GW2 started as an expansion to GW1, rather than being designed from the ground up as a completely separate and new game. It started as the Utopia expansion pack specifically, and has been gradually evolving into GW2 ever since they decided to make the switch to it being a standalone game instead. And the main intention of this switch is to free the designers from the broken engine and gameplay of GW1, and create GW the way it was ideally envisioned to be from the start. Given this, it seems appropriate to think of GW1 almost more as a playable beta version of GW2 rather than a prequel, at least in terms of their gameplay.

And there's plenty of incentives in built into the game to make it worth doing team activities. The only thing that's ever stopping players from doing missions with other live people in GW1 is the players themselves.

http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/elementalist/#

Theres some ele video, gonna watch in just a second and see how they update the graphics.

Kaeda wrote:http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/elementalist/#
Theres some ele video, gonna watch in just a second and see how they update the graphics.

Looks great to me! Although I see that ANet hasn't improved their voice acting at all.

I was very disappointed to hear the ridiculous phrases the eles were saying as they fought in those videos. I find that type of thing rather annoying, and would prefer if they only stated the skill name instead if A-net really wants them to talk. Personally the phrases they are shown saying currently will hurt the RP aspect of the game because personally my ele wouldn't say those things. It isn't cool to make a persona for your character and have it shattered by cheesy vocalizations like that.

If they don't nurture the RP part of GW2, they will NOT win that aspect of WoW player who enjoys RP. I know they are competing with WoW. It is obvious, and I think GW2 will be better overall, but I just hope they fix those silly vocalizations.

I don't care about the vocals.... I turn off all vocals in guildwars to have room for music and other stuff... It's been 4 years since sound has been on in my client.

http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/part-two/

No secondary professions. 3 armor levels. 8 total classes. 3 light, 3 medium and 2 heavy armor classes. Cross profession combos! Pistols and rifles.

Dig the cross profession combos. Really think 5 skills set from race/class/weapon is ... I have to see it in play but I don't expect to like it. Firearms make me think of an old game called Arcanuum. And that's really interesting.

I saw the videos of the combat. The talking was indeed unforunate. They seem to talk WAAAAAAY too much. But the voice acting is still not as bad as Prince Rurik. That Meteor Shower was cast very very quickly. I'm thinking it was just to show off the animation and not the timings. If anything, I was reminded of Diablo type games.

Also, from the looks of it, solo play seem to be the standard. It goes with the design target, I guess. And fluid cooperation. But I actually liked how GW puts you in teams for everything. You take henchmen if you want to play without other humans but things are not designed for solo play (though if you wanted to be a stud or if you wanted to farm...). But the design goal was a team for missions and quests and pretty much everything except for the few things that put you specifically alone (like Orchard). Is this progress? Not from my seat and not by how I want to play. That team approach was one of the appeals of GW. And yes, I get that you CAN play with others. But that's very different than how it is in GW where you almost always play with others.

scienter wrote:Dig the cross profession combos. Really think 5 skills set from race/class/weapon is ... I have to see it in play but I don't expect to like it. Firearms make me think of an old game called Arcanuum. And that's really interesting.

I think I still have a boxed copy of that game. Interesting game concept, but man the balance was so broken in that game...

scienter wrote:Also, from the looks of it, solo play seem to be the standard. It goes with the design target, I guess. And fluid cooperation. But I actually liked how GW puts you in teams for everything. You take henchmen if you want to play without other humans but things are not designed for solo play (though if you wanted to be a stud or if you wanted to farm...). But the design goal was a team for missions and quests and pretty much everything except for the few things that put you specifically alone (like Orchard). Is this progress? Not from my seat and not by how I want to play. That team approach was one of the appeals of GW. And yes, I get that you CAN play with others. But that's very different than how it is in GW where you almost always play with others.

I love everything I read in this second article. I was initially confused about the whole weapon skills concept, but now that it explained it in more detail, I'm really excited about it and think that it could potentially be one of the best systems I've seen in a game so far. And I'm guessing they're going to balance out the solo play / team play issue similarly to how WoW did it. That is, you can potentially solo your way through most of the storyline, but you'll have to group with other human players in order to do any of the high-end stuff. And it sounds like the cross-profession combos are specifically designed to discourage solo play in general on top of that.

I notice that I was right in my assumption that they may replace secondary profession with race, and turn the races into their own professions. I really like this, as I've thought that the secondary profession system in GW1, while interesting, has generally produced more negative than positive effects on the game overall.

Scienter, you know I'm with you on the team play aspect, but that has sort of hurt this game in the sense that you can't really do things solo. This created the need for heros which I especially do not like. The heros in turn ruined the team play anyway because people just end up going alone with heros most of the time anyway.

I like the concept of being able to do things solo or with people. Leave the stinky heros out of it.