Jon Peters (“Pepperjack”) and Jonathan Sharp (“Chaplan”) gave me so much information, my simple sheet of paper with a few questions looks like five different people wrote across the page as fast as possible. There are arrows, sideways sentences, boxed off areas, and I’m not sure it will even all be able to be translated here. Whereas other developers at the NCSoft Meet and Greet at PAX East represented the content, lore, or art departments. These guys represented all things mechanics. With that there was one dominant theme in my talks with Peters and Sharp, they are still iterating on nearly every mechanical feature in Guild Wars 2. It is important to keep in mind that even things fans “know” now because of the demo, interviews, or official articles might be obsolete on launch.
I’ll give an example, at the outset, with the vitality attribute. With a blog article on the newly condensed attributes, many fans were unhappy with vitality. Toughness seemed like the cool attribute reducing the damage per hit, but vitality simply gave more health. Peters said that a necromancer, for instance, is still going to love vitality because it synergizes so well with their skills and Death Shroud. Yet, they understand that vitality might need a twist, similar to how the precision attribute garners crit effects. If toughness is the straightforward “reduce damage,” and vitality gets that twist, then the pair will more closely mirror power vs. precision. This is not to say that vitality will definitely change, but it is important to note that even the most basic mechanics are still being viewed with a careful eye.
