Welcome to part three of May’s State of the Game for Guild Wars 2.
Solo Queue Separation
One of the repeated questions regarding the eventual solo queue mode is how separated it will be from team queueing. Sharp was clear, they consider solo queue to be entirely separate. He uses the example of MOBA games like League of Legends where the queues for teams and individual players for ranked matches are kept completely separate to prevent the types of one-sided matches a team’s coordination against a pickup group can create.
They will, however, be listening to players before deciding on issues such as duo queueing in the solo queue or players who want to solo queue against teams. This would have them joining a three or four man team and opening up the option of forming teams at less than capacity.
Templates
Templates in Guild Wars 2 are saved builds. They would keep track of weapons, skills, and traits to enable players to switch between builds very quickly and easily to avoid having to dig through inventories and reset traits or go to a shop to purchase the skill reset. Lesh let us know the template system is intended to function with online build sites, allowing people to potentially upload a build from the web directly into the game. Templates are coming, but there is still no formal ETA.
PvP, specifically, has been looking forward to the implementation for ages. PvE is unlikely to get templates, given Arenanet’s firm belief in the price of resetting skills to make builds something a player actually has interest in making work, rather than changing based on the flavor of the day. Another advantage the templates will bring is giving beginning players several options of builds and playstyles to start with.
GvG
Something Grouch brought up was the game mode from the original Guild Wars known as GvG, or Guild vs Guild. It worked similarly to Legacy of Foefire, where each side has a lord the other side is trying to kill. In Legacy that lord is worth 150 points, where 500 wins. In GvG, killing that lord was the only objective.
Legacy is similar, but the capture points make it different enough for people to wonder if they are considering a dedicated GvG game mode. Sharp confirmed the answer as no. In GvG it was often tactically best to use a defensive build to wait until the timer ran out and all the lords ran to the center of the map to fight each other. More than anything else, it was boring to watch, and so for a potential e-sport, it simply is not a viable alternative.
What Arenanet has been considering is possibly making the point value the lord is worth vary over the course of the game, worth more and more as time goes on, to give teams that are behind a better chance at a comeback victory. Making the lord game-winning from the start, however, just turns the map into a zerg against the opposing lord.
Secondary Mechanic Importance
Grouch asked the devs if they have trouble making ideas for secondary mechanics, quickly answered with a no. Arenanet has a list of potential secondary mechanics they would like to implement and a blank gray map to try them out on. Loading the map and throwing the given mechanic onto it gives them basics of playability while they consider how clutch the secondary mechanics can be, prioritizing the mechanics that promote comeback gameplay.
He then asked if they or the players felt any of these secondary mechanics might rob teams of an otherwise-assured victory. A team could outplay an opponent soundly and then still lose on Legacy, for example, if that other team just happened to group stealth and get through to the lord without being seen.
Zoose spoke up, agreeing that the lord was possibly worth too much, if only because of how difficult it is to stop a skilled, determined team of damage-dealers from killing him. Phantaram agreed 150 points for the lord was solid, but the ability of certain builds to actually take him out alone was unacceptable. The consensus was the lord needing to be harder to defeat for the reward.
The other secondary mechanics were generally agreed to be interesting from a gameplay side, but not as exciting for spectators.
More links for more parts of the State of the Game!
Part 3
