Guild Wars 2 Intervju

Odgovori so prispeli! Kljub velikemu številu vprašanj, se je ArenaNet potrudila in dostavila zanimive odgovore o dinamičnih eventih, PvPju, splošnem gameplayu, karmi in še marsičem. Hvala Regina Buenaobra!

Za celoten intervju kliknite tukaj.

If events scale according to number of active players, how exactly does that happen without killing the immersion? Let’s say 3 golems are attacking a house defended by one player; how do more of them appear if another player joins the fight? Does the next wave just spawn somewhere nearby, or does this happen in a more discrete way?

Event difficulty can scale in a couple of ways. The next wave could have more monsters, higher level monsters, or both (depending on how much the event needs to scale). Or, monsters can “unlock” new abilities when the scaling factor increases, which could cause them to summon reinforcements or increase their overall power level.

How does an event scale if there’s only one foe (a boss-like creature for example)? Does the system scale the difficulty of enemies (health points, attributes, damage output etc.) or just their numbers?

In the case where players are fighting against a single boss, that boss would “unlock” new skills and use those. The skills could do things like buff it, summon reinforcements, or its attack might unleash a higher amount of damage.

Imagine a scenario, where players attack a Flame Legion Charr base and all the Charr players that participate in this event have the choice to take sides and actively defend the base alongside other NPCs, and against other players for the duration of the event. Is this something you have considered or is the persistent world with dynamic events strictly PvE and players strictly “good” at all times?

Events present shared goals to players, and when they encounter an event, players can choose to either help meet those goals or not. They choose to either participate in the event, or not. One of the main goals of the dynamic events system is to bring players together, working towards a common goal. However, in PvP formats like World versus World (WvW) play, there will be plenty of opportunities for players to take sides and compete against each other.

Will players need to grind karma in order to buy rewards from merchant NPCs or will there be other NPCs, like collectors, that will accept different payment methods?

There are many ways to gain equipment in Guild Wars 2, including collectors and merchants. Karma can be used for different things besides exchanging for items, so it’s possible that a particular player might want to have a lot of karma to use for different things. In this case, we hope that this player doesn’t feel that what they’re doing is grinding, but instead that they’re playing the game and having a good time. However, it really depends on what a player’s priorities and goals are. If they want a lot of karma for something, and they want to play towards that goal, it’s their choice. We don’t want to force or encourage players to do something they don’t enjoy.

Say you are traveling from one town to another. In GW1 you quite often have to kill a few dozen enemies picking daisies along the way. How dangerous compared to that will most areas be for people just going from point A to B? Will there be random mobs just standing around or will most mobs be actively doing things in the form of events?

Compared to the original Guild Wars, it is easier to travel while avoiding combat in Guild Wars 2. There are mobs wandering around the world like you might see in a typical MMO game, but they tend to live away from main roads and high traffic areas. On the other hand, events can take place almost anywhere, and can sometimes block a road, causing players to make a decision on whether to deal with the event, or take a dangerous detour around it. The mobs living in the world tend to outnumber mobs spawned by events, but the density of event mobs may be higher in a given area, but it depends on factors like event scaling and how many events are running in an area.

Will personal story missions scale in difficulty if we choose to play them with our friends and will they be repeatable?

A character’s story is personal, and a player can invite friends along to experience their personal story. While a character’s personal story is enjoyable for a solo player, it can scale up in difficulty to allow others to participate. Because a character’s personal story represents the progression of a character, and their deeds are recorded in their biography, events in the personal story are not repeatable.

Just to clarify; while revealing information regarding elementalist class, you mentioned that first 5 skills will be related to weapon type (staff for long range spells and scepter/focus for close range spells) but you also mentioned that those 5 skills will be influenced by elemental attunement. Which one is true?

Both statements are true. If I use a staff, I have different skills while attuned to earth than I have while attuned to air. I also have different skills while I am attuned to fire and wielding a staff than I have while attuned to fire and wielding two daggers. This means that an elementalist has access to 24 skills—5 from each attunement plus the attunements themselves—at any given moment. Elementalists cannot wield multiple weapon sets because we didn’t want anyone to have to deal with memorizing and learning 44 skills at once.

We know you can’t really comment on World PvP itself at this time, but many GW PvP players worry about the statement that levels and maybe even gear might matter in this game mode. Can you maybe elaborate on how much of a difference gear and level would make compared to player skill or compare the system to other games like Aion or WoW that have gear/level biased PvP? Will it take players months to get the best possible gear or max level (if there even is such a thing) or is Arenanet still true to the “no grind” motto for this game mode as well?

WvW will feature our sidekick system, which equalizes levels between players. We will automatically apply this system to players in WvW to make it so a level 5 player can still do some damage to a player that has a far higher level. That level 5 player will not be able to beat another player who has a significantly higher level character all by themselves, but that level 5 player can certainly contribute to a fight. For players who want a dead even playing field, they can always play in our structured PvP formats.

In a recent blog post Eric Flannum mentioned achievements and collections. What kind of achievements and collections can we look forward to and what use have they for the player? Are they like GW1 titles?

We’ll be covering both of these things in the future either on the blog or website. We can say that, although these systems appeared in the original Guild Wars, they are quite a bit different in Guild Wars 2.

Big thanks to Regina Buenaobra for taking the time out of her very busy schedule and for answering our questions!