Yeah I'm also pretty sure a while back Anet explained a warrior skill called "I will avenge you" or something similar where he put down a banner I think and when he killed an enemy he could rally someone.
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Guild Wars 2 Press Beta [Prepurchase Is Live]
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Yeah I'm also pretty sure a while back Anet explained a warrior skill called "I will avenge you" or something similar where he put down a banner I think and when he killed an enemy he could rally someone.
RepairmanJack
Member
The downed state is the one thing I really don't like. Something that essentially takes two people out of a pvp fight (the one downed and the one trying to finally kill him) just doesn't fit in something that is aiming to be competitive esport. So there is a 1 vs 2 pvp fight does this mean the player who is alone has no chance of winning? He gets a player down he either has to focus on him to kill him and leave himself open to attack and probably die or he focuses on the other player while the downed one rallys back. It just seems like a complete interruption in the flow of pvp, it seems like it would be fine in pve but in pvp it just doesn't make sense to me.
Daze, knockdowns, interrupts, blocks/dodges, all off the top of my head directly or indirectly affect cooldows.
Daze is a condition that blocks all skill usage.
Knockdowns, Lanchers (uppercuts), Pulls, and Punts all leave you unable to use a skill for a period of time, and effect your movement. These are a lot more plentiful over GW1.
Interrupts just block a single skill, and can either have some other negative effect attached, or be attained from doing one of the above. There are many repeatable causes of the former type of instance.
Blocks and dodges come in a multitude of forms across all classes, from profession specific mechanics to boons to just regular old dodge roll evasion. There are a ton more ways to do this than in GW1, and they are all unified under the theme on making you waste a skill doing no damage.
Edit:
Looking at the wiki, looks like I was wrong about the rez spells. They just seem a lot rarer now. The Warrior one, for example, is an elite. Looking at current skill videos, though, I don't see Smelling Salts anymore.
Breaking news: Guild Wars 2 is not Guild Wars 1.
All the new stuff they're adding means certain mechanics need to be added, changed or dropped altogether, and energy management is one of them. Sorry, that's their decision, they're the ones making the game and you should probably accept it or find another game.
Whether the features they've built in place of these sacrificed mechanics are your cup of tea or not is your preference and calling Guild Wars 2 'appealing to grandmas', 'dumbed down' or implying that ANet is lazy and 'taking the easy way out' smacks of fanboy-ish trolling no matter how deep you bury those comments in your otherwise reasonable explanation.
It's not only way too easy to start in on that sort of venomous WoW Forum-esque 'lolcasuals' bullshit considering the game has had all of one decent weekend of Beta, but it also lowers the bar for discussion and makes it hard to take your argument as more than "I don't like change, I want Build Wars back". You're doing your argument and yourself a disservice. I'm not trying to be a dick and I'm not telling you to fuck off, I'm just saying that this is how it is and the daily scuff over every single feature somehow being a step backwards or whether GW2 is worthy of following in the footsteps of GW1 is getting a little old. Just sayin', we haven't even played it yet.
The Mesmer-exclusive condition, "Confusion" causes damage to players whenever they use a skill. It's screwing with the other player's skill use in a more interesting way than having their energy bar drain, in my opinion.
"I will Avenge you!" is a short-term buff that grants Might, Regeneration and Swiftness to the warrior and will rally any nearby downed (not defeated) players when you slay an enemy while active. It looks like it lasts about 5-8 seconds according to this video; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qES7L16Jvcc&hd=1&t=1m.
It's also worth pointing out that anyone in a downed state is probably already trying to kill that enemy anyways, so I'm not sure what purpose it serves beyond getting lots of people up at once. It's just one of a thousand things we'll just have to wait and see.
All the new stuff they're adding means certain mechanics need to be added, changed or dropped altogether, and energy management is one of them. Sorry, that's their decision, they're the ones making the game and you should probably accept it or find another game.
Whether the features they've built in place of these sacrificed mechanics are your cup of tea or not is your preference and calling Guild Wars 2 'appealing to grandmas', 'dumbed down' or implying that ANet is lazy and 'taking the easy way out' smacks of fanboy-ish trolling no matter how deep you bury those comments in your otherwise reasonable explanation.
It's not only way too easy to start in on that sort of venomous WoW Forum-esque 'lolcasuals' bullshit considering the game has had all of one decent weekend of Beta, but it also lowers the bar for discussion and makes it hard to take your argument as more than "I don't like change, I want Build Wars back". You're doing your argument and yourself a disservice. I'm not trying to be a dick and I'm not telling you to fuck off, I'm just saying that this is how it is and the daily scuff over every single feature somehow being a step backwards or whether GW2 is worthy of following in the footsteps of GW1 is getting a little old. Just sayin', we haven't even played it yet.
The Mesmer-exclusive condition, "Confusion" causes damage to players whenever they use a skill. It's screwing with the other player's skill use in a more interesting way than having their energy bar drain, in my opinion.
"I will Avenge you!" is a short-term buff that grants Might, Regeneration and Swiftness to the warrior and will rally any nearby downed (not defeated) players when you slay an enemy while active. It looks like it lasts about 5-8 seconds according to this video; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qES7L16Jvcc&hd=1&t=1m.
It's also worth pointing out that anyone in a downed state is probably already trying to kill that enemy anyways, so I'm not sure what purpose it serves beyond getting lots of people up at once. It's just one of a thousand things we'll just have to wait and see.
It does if your opponent does. Which is how it should be.
You're putting too much emphasis on killing players. Downing them is quite an achievement in itself; finishing your plate is not quite as critical in GW2 as in other games. There's nothing inherently easy or wrong about that.
Dinosaur Tamer
Member
I just double checked this and you are right. Must have read about it on the wiki and mixed it up. It seems to have been replaced by Elixir R (using the same icon), which has no resurrection effect.
There is a video showing the Guardian resurrection - Signet of Mercy - in the press beta. So that is still in the game.
Vigilant Walrus
Member
Well, some people are not going to listen to this, because there is no way that reality can be different than how they perceive it. Ohh, the arrogance.
I personally think they stuck with the cooldown for these reasons, and removed energy.
1) Having two systems clock it up. You already have type, range, energy amount, cooldown, and sometimes other condition and terms - These descriptions often made it glocked for a lot of people to really understand a skill.
2) People look at their left side of their skill bar (1-5) and think they will have to watch the cooldown go down constantly. But that's not entirely true, because you actually have 10 skills.
Are you a warrior with a sword and off hand axe, and 2-5 are on cooldown, you are SUPPOSED to switch to your other weapon. You get 5 new skills, that are not on cooldown. When you have fired off those 4 cooldown skills with your new weapon, you can switch back. then you have an elite every 2-3 minutes. then you have a heal you need to pop on a lot with a 20-30 sec cd. then you got 3 utility. these can be buffs/debuffs/stuns/escapes/aoe/dots/hots/whatever and they also have a cooldown ranging from usually between 5 to 40 seconds.
on top of this you get a spamable basic attack on both weapon sets.
3) your not supposed to be do things constantly without getting tired. Remember bungies 30 seconds of fun philosophy.
you pop 8 cooldown weapon based attacks + 3 utility + 1 elite + 1 heal + 2 spamable main attack bread'n butter attacks - then you got all your running away, into cover, dodging away, getting killed and running back.
on top of all this you get LOTS of new skills depending on your class in different circumstances. warriors get an additional 5 new skills with their banner. eles got 4 atunements, so thats 20 offensive skills right there. the micro management between them, with 5 on each x4 = you dont need the mana for that depth.
your not dodging your way in generic hot key mmo. your not shifting your skill bar like that on the fly. your not your own primary healer. You need to spend much more time putting the symbols, buffs, and area effects both on enemies and allies down correctly, as well as for combos.
4) Traits can dramatically decrease the cooldown of many of your favorite skills.
5) mana is reloading. that's all it is. cooldown is reloading too. the 30 seconds of fun are not there otherwise. this IMO is game design 101.
Kos Luftar
Member
Enable notification from Twitter onto my phone for the first time just so that I can get this exciting new info as soon as it is posted. I don't like wasting my data on my phone on Twitter notifications but this time I had to make an exception.
I am really liking all the changes in Guild Wars 2. The only thing that seems kinda of weird is the lack of skills that are not tied to your weapon. I know in GW1 there was so many skills that some skills barely got used so hopefully in the end this is a good thing. I wonder if they will be adding skills with expansions or just new professions and races.
I am really liking all the changes in Guild Wars 2. The only thing that seems kinda of weird is the lack of skills that are not tied to your weapon. I know in GW1 there was so many skills that some skills barely got used so hopefully in the end this is a good thing. I wonder if they will be adding skills with expansions or just new professions and races.
Like I said (or edited in once I realized I didn't say it explicitly), I was making what I saw as an equal simplification. Just as there are energy management skills that combo well with others, the same exists in GW2.
High cost with a short cooldown is just another way of saying burst damage. And then you're unable to do anything unless you use a management tool or just wait, with the mana acting as your actual cooldown. That's what I mean by having the same mechanical aspect. The main difference is from using one skill for that damage rather than a combination of skills. In fact, with cooldowns as they are, there's a higher consequence for blowing through your more powerful skills like that, but it doesn't mean it's suddenly not viable.
As for energy hiding via weapon swapping, as I said, we don't know the full weapon customization system in GW2. Or maybe I just don't know, and someone managed to grab it all, but I doubt that considering what could be gated by high level areas.
As for depth, are you worried about depth for the designers or the players? From the design aspect, if mana caused so many problems then you'd get more freedom removing that and finding other ways to achieve the same answer from a balance perspective.
perfectnight
Banned
Why are you listing all these things, most of which were already in GW1(excluding dodging) in one form or another and are separate from energy management and energy denial?
You asked for what affected cooldowns. And as I said in that post, some of them exist in GW1, but are greatly expanded upon in GW2.
Around 13 min or so you just see Mesmers with greatswords shooting lasers. lmao
I'm loving this video, pretty sure I'll be rolling Guardian.
Rather than jump into what 'some people' are or aren't going to do or how they're going to perceive reality, let's just leave it alone and assume the 'other guy' is just a passionate fan like you rather than some kind of rabid zealot who defines his existence by how many people like or dislike a video game.
As to the points you suggest in the rest of your post, those are all pretty good reasons. To your second point, cooldown management also extends to weapon swapping; do you swap to your second set to use a skill knowing you won't be able to switch back for 5 seconds or do you just make do?
And of course, that's a mechanic that professions can play with; the Warrior has the "Weapon Master" trait that reduces the cooldown on weapon swapping (at least according to the GW2 wiki which is admittedly outdated). So there's some room customization in there and we haven't actually seen the final version of traits yet.
Environmental weapons are in that category too. I saw a Guardian elite ability from the Beta Footage called "Tome of Wrath" that changes the first 5 skills to some high damage/low cooldown abilities, but forces the player to remain stationary if they want to use them (it lasts about 20 seconds). You can see that here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7crErSlSmak&hd=1&t=3m50s
They also have a "Tome of Courage", but I haven't seen the exact description for it yet (though I would guess it's more support than damage).
And who knows what other skills are going to be added before release? They've established this new rule ("The first 5 slots are weapon-based and do not change") and have shown mechanics in previous builds that bend those rules ("Okay, but "Trait X" changes it a little". Who's to say that they won't have stuff later in the game that breaks those rules ("Trait Y" completely changes the skill in slot 3).
We just don't know That's pretty much the end of every discussion there.
AppleSmack
Banned
Anyone know of a video that goes over and describes all the classes at once? I can only find vids that go class by class showing them indepth instead of just a general one.
I don't know of any videos, but you could probably just read the profession descriptions at guildwars2.com and walk away with a working knowledge of each.
For a lightning quick summary, the professions page at the GW2 wiki is good; http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Profession
AppleSmack
Banned
Oh thanks this is perfect. The only reason I asked was cause the massive article about each class on the OT thread kind of intimidated me a bit lol. I'd only read that for a class that interests me not for all of them.
No problem. We're kind of at that point where everyone wants as much info as possible rather than less, and a quick summary of each will be more useful to someone just starting to poke around. Jira's massive OP in the old GW2 thread is also pretty good; http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=29942742&postcount=4
That does bring up a good point though; maybe the OT needs less information on the classes and more of a general overview, written in a way that makes it easier for people to kind of find which professions are up their alley.
If you're looking for help finding the profession for you though... in all honesty, pick the coolest one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soF5yBolsfI
Yogscast uploaded a new video of the Human starter area. Will probably follow soon-ish with a part 2 and 3.
Yogscast uploaded a new video of the Human starter area. Will probably follow soon-ish with a part 2 and 3.
Kos Luftar
Member
What's all the G4 stuff? GW2 preview on XPlay?
I'm so glad I have dual monitors, being able to refresh this thread and videos full-screen at the same time is great. /stealth brag
All we had was "BIG NEWS for a certain video game franchise is coming tomorrow at 8 AM ET on G4TV.com! A certain fanbase is going to be very, very pleased." The only news item this morning that I would call 'big news' is the release date of Borderlands 2.
perfectnight
Banned
What you listed does not cover all the options that energy denial skills in GW1 provided. GW2 ONLY has the skills you listed (which don't really behave the same way as Ancestor's visage or fear me) and no other way to experiment with resources. Thus, GW2 lost options and builds which were available to players in GW1. You keep saying that energy just comes down to cool down timers when simplified, and you are right but it is the way in which energy allowed players to interact with those Cooldowns that made it such an interesting resource. In other words the depth it added to the game.
Vigilant Walrus
Member
The problem Retro,
is that the line of thinking that other-games-did-it-like-this-so-thats-the-right-way-to-go-about-it. After all, playing it safe is what killed a lot of other games. dynamic events worked less good in Tabula Rasa(dont know if you played that) and probably also rift(didnt play that) and for sure in warhammer - it's not that dynamic events are not well done, but they were playing it safe by also offering the standard... the standard mmo mechanics to not upset all the MMO gamers who are afraid of change, or afraid of change they can't perceive.
I know GW2 will have significant problems. I expect it. I expect people to get angry over how the cash shop will evolve over the years, and I think the game will be compromised in other ways by going full MMORPG without a fee. maybe in services, maybe in latency, maybe in resource management or something, but everything has offsets.
It's dangerous to have a playerbase (or listen to a playerbase) who think they are more expert at the game than those who are making it. Particularly when those people are perceiving things through a monitor, but not with proper hands on through a long time of testing.
In fact this is one of the most interesting things about GW2 (for me at least). Lots of people seem so horrible conditioned by other games, that they wouldn't know how to play it. In this great talk; http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1013691/Designing_Guild_Wars_2_Dynamic_Events
The developers are describing how their testers wouldn't "get it". They didn't know how to go out and explore - The conditions from past game had inserted a mantra about being told were to go, and what to do. Breadcrums had been obligatory, and just exploration had been reduced to pure time of waste.
Exploration is not time efficent. And what if you run into enemies that will kill you because they are not your level? That's less productive than going to a traditional quest hub and complete 40 quests and call it a day.
My point is, that this probably also translates to combat. How can you remove energy in the game? It created so much depth! < This is just an assumption, that a person would have because he/she is not used to NOT having it.
Sometimes rules and obstructions just create more problems. In games like WoW, it's fine because you're looking at your bar, and your enemies bar all the damn time. That's what that is.
I see mana/energy removal as a big positive because it puts more creativity into it. With Mana a system you're basically being allowed to be able to fire of abillities (from your entire pool) for a certain amount of time. Not having mana, but just relying on cooldowns, puts more emphasis on the skills themselves, and create a more high risk / high reward system - if you fire of skill 4 as a Warrior with a certain weapon and it's some AOE, and you missed your chance to use it correctly - you missed your chance. instead of doing it with mana when you can just go 4, 4, 4, 4, ...(mana depleted) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 4 4 (mana depleted) 1 1 1 .. instead you can change to your other weapon - 5 new skills, pop up the other AOE.
it means fewer combat abillities of the same time in exact order, but it means more using ALL of your 10 weapon skills across the two weapon sets.
If you look at this thread you can see lots of posts about being a greatsword mesmer, or a longbow ranger. that stuff is probably the mentality of other games, but not guild wars 2.
if you think about it, It's almost like that having two weapon sets is a smaller form of the dual class system from GW1.
Particularly if you consider that healing/self support is in every class (monk/rit was such a popular secondary class in gw1) it makes sense, that subscribing to a weapon set, is almost like its own sub class, as it has its own skills and own chance of specialization.
Kos Luftar
Member
Ehh, doesn't seem as exciting as the tweet from one of GW2's community guys. https://twitter.com/guildwars2/status/172124153711837185
Hoping they announce dates for more beta weekends.
Hmm? That's the exact opposite of how I feel on Guild Wars 2, I like that they're throwing the Standardized MMO Design Playbook out the window and making something radically different. What initially drew me in to Guild Wars 2 is that it's going in the directions I've (quite loudly and quite often) wished other MMOs would go in (no aggro/threat, no healbotting, no quest hubs, no 'hallway of trash with loot pinata boss' dungeons, etc.)
I dunno where you got the impression otherwise. I will respond to the rest of your post, but seriously; I'm the last guy you need to convince.
I never played Tabula Rasa, but Rift's Rifts and Warhammer's Public Quests were both short-term events and layered on top of regular questing. PQs were stuck in singular locations and repeated every couple of minutes, while Rifts never had any more variety than "See a Rift > Kill everything > Seal a rift > Go back to what you were doing". You'd occasionally have invasions and such, but those got old too. The forces that came out of rifts were just wandering mobs of trash that most people ignored (until they killed off all the Quest NPCs, heh)
This was mainly the reason for the post you quoted; people (on both sides of the argument) are making a lot of assumption and the conversation has flirted with "the developers are stupid." several times, which just isn't fair to the developers (who, compared to other MMO developers, are very open about the design process and infectiously passionate about their work) and doesn't really contribute to the conversation as a whole.
Dude, you have no idea. I played WoW pretty much exclusively for 3 years or so and going back to games I used to be a MASTER of was like being 6 years old and starting over from scratch, skill-wise. I'm not talking about reflexes or anything, I mean the psychological approach. You get into the "MMO Mindset" and suddenly find yourself relying on potion spam rather than avoidance (noticed this at first playing Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia), trying to brute-force fights and burn down enemies before they kill you (lots of games), etc.
As somewhat of an armchair game designer, I also have my old notes on concepts I was working on back then, and a lot of the concerns I voice for games that aren't even multi-player are frighteningly influenced by MMO concepts.
When look back on my time playing WoW and realize just how much damage it did to just my ability to play games, it's a little disconcerting. How quickly the skinner box-centric mentality sets in and how deep it takes root.
GasProblem
Member
Pretty sure I'm rolling a Human Warrior as my first character, could change him into a Charr though, I love collecting weapons in MMO's, and the Warrior has acces to a lot of them.
Every class seems to be proficient with a lot of weapons though so you'll probably be happy with anything you play.
I can't believe I just started to follow the hype of this game. I waited Star Wars: The Old Republic for mostly two years and only played three weeks, getting bored and all. I guess I'm ready for something new in the MMORPG universe.
Probably rolling a Human (or Sylvari) Ranger.
It's well and good that you're making a simplification, but your simplification is pretty meaningless, because it wasn't and isn't actually that simple. Energy, as implemented in Guild Wars, was more diverse and deep than any cooldown-only mechanic could be. Energy and cooldown, working in tandem, produced much better results than that.
You clearly don't understand what I mean if you think that a single high-power skill with a long cooldown is functionally identical to having the option to: 1) Fire off several high-cost skills in quick succession to produce burst damage with long cooldown, 2) Fire off a single high-cost skill while still keeping at least half of your Energy in the pool to be used for support, shutdown, stances, to save for later, or to use a different method of Energy-based attack entirely, or 3) Fire off the first skill to deal some damage, and then delay the use of the second instance of that skill until sometime afterward - perhaps after the target's defensive skills expire - or perhaps because the first cast was a feint, and now after the enemy has used their defense on protecting the first target, you're free to lay the rest of the assault down on the real target.
And you can't just handwave away "unless you use an Energy management tool". That's a huge difference in the way the two systems play out. Energy is a universal mechanic, and can be easily quantized. Cooldown is not. "Cooldown management" A) Doesn't seem to exist in any universal capacity in Guild Wars 2, anyway, based on information that we have, and B) Does not achieve the same goals even in theory - what exactly is one 'point' of Cooldown? Which skills would it even apply to? There's a huge discrepancy between reducing (or increasing) the cooldown of a skill with a 4 second cooldown and reducing (or increasing) the cooldown of a skill with a 180 second cooldown. Cooldown is not a universal mechanic. Energy is, and that underlines the fundamental difference between the two. You cannot make them equivalent, unless you 'simplify' things to the point where you're saying things that don't actually mean anything.
And no, you don't achieve better results by giving the designers 'more freedom', because the thing that was 'restricting their freedom' is the exact thing that allows them to create that depth in the first place. Balancing Energy in Guild Wars was fucking hard. It dominated much of the metagame for huge portions of the game's lifespan, and I don't think they ever really got it 100% right (of course, you could argue that the reason they couldn't was because of the ridiculous influx of new skills coming in from the expansions, but that's a whole different tangent). But the fact that it was a headache from a design perspective doesn't change the fact that its inclusion (and overall implementation) was one of the single best design decisions that made Guild Wars what it was, and doesn't justify removing it. People are absolutely right to question the decision to remove it from the game's design - and if I can make an argument in favour of Energy in Guild Wars 1 that doesn't boil down to "Well, you just have to go play it!" then someone should be able to make the argument against Energy in Guild Wars 2 that doesn't boil down to the same thing.
Dinosaur Tamer
Member
We don't know yet. It's 9am in Seattle so I guess there will be no reveal for at least a couple of hours. They are based in Seattle, right?
Bellevue, Washington. Maybe at 12am PST?
(Actually, this is kinda suprising when you look at all those people bitching about the lack of a classic resource for skills, the thief is the only one that still has it.)
Kos Luftar
Member
Thieves/Assassins always seemed like weak Warroirs to me. Never had any interest!
Kos Luftar
Member
Thieves in GW seem so weird because why would anyone try to steal something while in battle? Also I don't think you will be able to steal from NPCs like Skyrim. To me they are the one profession that doesn't seem as interesting.
Well, while the comparison between Skyrim and an MMO is pretty stupid, I also think ArenaNet should make stealth the special skill and put stealing in the slot skill caetgory.
The #GuildWars2 beta sign-up page is live! It will be open for 48 hours, so sign-up for a chance to get in! http://t.co/sXKurapm ~RB
The #GuildWars2 beta sign-up page is live! It will be open for 48 hours, so sign-up for a chance to get in! http://t.co/sXKurapm ~RB
The #GuildWars2 beta sign-up page is live! It will be open for 48 hours, so sign-up for a chance to get in! http://t.co/sXKurapm ~RB
The #GuildWars2 beta sign-up page is live! It will be open for 48 hours, so sign-up for a chance to get in! http://t.co/sXKurapm ~RB
The #GuildWars2 beta sign-up page is live! It will be open for 48 hours, so sign-up for a chance to get in! http://t.co/sXKurapm ~RB
The #GuildWars2 beta sign-up page is live! It will be open for 48 hours, so sign-up for a chance to get in! http://t.co/sXKurapm ~RB
The #GuildWars2 beta sign-up page is live! It will be open for 48 hours, so sign-up for a chance to get in! http://t.co/sXKurapm ~RB
The #GuildWars2 beta sign-up page is live! It will be open for 48 hours, so sign-up for a chance to get in! http://t.co/sXKurapm ~RB
The #GuildWars2 beta sign-up page is live! It will be open for 48 hours, so sign-up for a chance to get in! http://t.co/sXKurapm ~RB
ForzaFerrari
Neo Member
You haven't played a MMO before am I right?
WHAT
Edit: Fuuuuuuuck, I'm away from home this week, and have only my Macbook Air with me, I can't get in!
razgriz417
Member
Escape Goat
Member
I hope sign up isn't time sensitive. Those of us not at home can't submit system specs
Dead Prince
Banned
done. Just in time for 500 error lol
GasProblem
Member
Yup, signed up 
And got my confirmation email.
Oh my god, getting into this beta will be the best thing ever.
Ever.
And got my confirmation email.
Oh my god, getting into this beta will be the best thing ever.
Ever.
krameriffic
Member
Getting network errors on everything.
- Status