Kill Ten Rats

Even in my absence through most of the last Guild Wars 2 beta weekend event, I still lurked on plenty of community sites where I could. The two most prominent complaints I saw were about progression, namely weapon skill unlocking and major trait tiers. We’ve already covered weapon skill unlocks, and I think the most elegant change would be to change it to skill usage instead of critter death. It will be interesting to see the iteration that Jon Peters, ArenaNet dev, hints at. So, that leaves us with major trait tiers.

ArenaNet already put forth a pretty solid argument on why this current iteration is necessary.  What I find interesting is that now traits mirror skills a whole lot more. There are 5-basic skills, 3 more complex, more powerful utility skills, and 1 elite skill, and there are 6 basic traits, 4 mid-level traits, and 2 “elite” traits. Also at the top end only one elite skill or elite trait can be slotted.

Long ago in the days of Guild Wars 1, it was stated many times that Magic the Gathering was a guide to how the skill system was designed. They brought up the collectible aspect many times as well as the need to build a skill deck with only a few of many possibilities. While the Guild Wars 2 system is farther away in terms of build creation in that a large portion of the deck is built for the player with weapon skills, it is much closer in terms of rarity.

Continue reading [GW2] The Gathering Progression

The way leveling XP gain works in crafting is this: For leveling a discipline from 0-400, you will gain 10 levels along the way. By maxing out all 8 disciplines, you will gain 80 levels. That means you could dedicate a character to crafting, feed it all the mats you get on other characters and level it all the way to 80 without ever needing to kill a thing. As hardcore crafters, we think that is pretty cool.
— Linsey Murdock (ArenaNet Game Designer), Guild Wars 2 beta forums

To note, Guild Wars 2 lets you use 2 crafting skills at a time, but you do not lose progress in a skill when you switch to a new one. There is a cost to switch which two are active, scaling to your level in the crafting skill. : Zubon

Your skills with each weapon unlock through use. You start with one skill, and then you unlock #2-5 by killing 5, 10, 15, and 20 enemies. (It counts as a “kill” if you do any damage, so hit those events as AE away.) One-handed weapons only have #2 and 3, off-hand items are always #4 and 5, and two-handed weapons use all five slots. For those off-hand items, you advance them if you already have #2 and 3 done on your main hand.

An Engineer will do this without noticing. Pistols can be used in either hand, a shield in the off-hand, and rifles and (underwater) harpoon guns are two-handers. 50+50+50+35=185 kills to unlock everything, 50 of which must be underwater. Don’t worry, Engineers have lots of options because they get kits in their utility skill slots. A Warrior will be spending a bit more time even collecting weapons, with 11 weapons available in 21 combinations. That’s 520 kills. The Elementalist has just 5 weapons, the second-fewest, but remember that I said each weapon has four elements. An Elementalist needs 200 kills per attunement to unlock everything, so 800 kills, 200 of which must be underwater. Elementalists gets nice AE skills, so you could spend time in crowded events and unlock many of those quickly, but 800 remains a large number.

In the long run of the live game, you need to do that once ever, and you will certainly kill more than 800 enemies over the life of a character. Still, they’re looking at that:

This is definitely a problem that we would like to address. While it only happens once per play through on a given character it still feels a bit unwieldy on Elementalist.
— Jon Peters (ArenaNet Game Designer), Guild Wars 2 beta forums

: Zubon

In GW2 BWE1, I tried an Engineer and an Elementalist. You notice that difference.

I basically missed this beta weekend in Guild Wars 2. It was unavoidable due to real-life circumstances that basically made sure a gaming rig was not available. I read as much as I could. I still enjoyed watching Twitter, Reddit, and hearing tales of play here and there. On Saturday night I lucked out with a single hour of play. Instead of worrying about the server quagmire and guilds issue from last Beta Weekend Event, I just decided to jump in and play. It was an experiment.

In real life, many of us have only a few minutes to play. Work, kids, dishes, wife, dogs, gods, parties, school, and Steam sales all limit free time. Some gamers have chunks of hours scattered through the week to play their favorite MMO. Gamers like Ethic and I (and countless others) have an hour here and there. How would Guild Wars 2 play when I had to jump in, see what I could do, and jump out?

Continue reading [GW2] Experiment in Real Time

I really enjoyed my evening with Guild Wars 2: Beta Week Event 2. (In case other people on your RSS feed are talking about GW2 BWE2, that’s what it stands for. You’re welcome. We love you, too.) I was moving through settled territory, so it was not exactly testing the cutting edge, but it was nice to see how some items had changed since BWE1; “Dat Effin’ Shaman” was retooled, although “Dat Effin’ Effigy” was carving a path through the soloers until it reached a concentration of players.

I was not playing with anyone, but I was rarely alone. I participated in at least a dozen events and hearts over the course of a couple of hours, just wandering around the Plains of Ashford. I may start using Wandering as a term for the low-key version of Exploring. Doot dee doo, there’s a piece of the map I haven’t explored, a heart I haven’t filled. Let’s go over there. Oh, there’s a monster type I haven’t killed this weekend, let’s get one of those. Hey, event, why not? I completed perhaps a third of the zone and gained a few levels. I noticed that my effective level changed as I moved about, which could be a bit more visible, but you just operate on the principle that the content will always be relevant-level instead of ROFLstomp.

For those not playing, you may have read that your skills are weapon-based. Change weapons, and you change skills (for your first five). I was playing an elementalist, so I could wield a staff (2h), scepter (main hand), focus (off hand), and/or dagger (either or both hands). That gives me five combinations of fifteen skills, plus another five using a trident underwater. You unlock them through use, so kill X things with weapon Y to open all your options. But wait, there’s more! The elementalist’s special feature is having four elements, so you can swap between them. Each element has its own set of skills, so the elementalist has 80 skills rather than 20. You can see how you can spend an evening just flipping between weapons, unlocking skills, experimenting, and occasionally making intelligent use of the ones you like. Event with 10 people around? Hello AE skills!

There have been quite a few improvements to the game’s functionality, and one or more of us will post about those in the coming days.

: Zubon