Continuing with part two of the breakdown of the Guild Wars 2 State of the Game for February…
No New PvP Modes
Jon Peters addressed how players have often asked for new game modes to play in PvP such as capture the flag. He explained that Arenanet is more concerned with polishing the current game mode and adding in variety by adding new secondary objectives, like the buffs on the new Temple of the Silent Storm map. Getting the formula for the existing system perfect is the priority before even considering new game modes.
The conquest mode is the one they prefer because it forces players to fight for capture points while the nature and shape of those capture points promotes the type of positioning and play that the combat system in Guild Wars 2 is based upon.
Daily Tournaments
When asked if the single-round tournament system will be coming to the free tournaments, Sharp took the opportunity to bring up the idea of the tournaments being part of the daily and monthly achievements. The concept is that most PvP would use the one-round system but that the eight-team tournaments would take more importance in both daily and monthly achievements, allowing for those larger brackets and the excitement they involve to still have importance.
e-Sports
Lowell had a question about the actual e-sports future of Guild Wars 2, wanting to know if they are planning on partnering with someone to form a league of some sort for competition.
The response from both of Arenanet’s devs was that it is not a matter of if, but when. They want to ensure they have everything polished and ready but that once they do, both with the features available and the level of polish of those features, that they absolutely are going to be making immediate strides to set themselves up in the e-sports community.
Sharp hinted very vaguely that there are already certain plans that have been made and are waiting to get the go-ahead, implying that when Arenanet does finally decide Guild Wars 2 is ready for the e-sports world that it will explode onto the scene very suddenly and in a major way.
New Map
Asked about what is expected regarding the meta and game play of the new map, Peters noted that the map will be almost a hybrid in function. The point-capping will remain important, but that it is actually possible to score as many or even more points through running the objective to capped points as it is to simply hold the points.
They want it to be possible to vary strategy to do things such as taking one point and then focusing on the objective (the orb that is the ‘flag’ of this capture the flag mechanic) or ignoring the orb and going for a three-cap. This can let teams create unique and dynamic tactics that are not only exciting to play but to watch and try to predict, adding new elements to Guild Wars 2’s PvP.
Meta
Grouch mentions that any time a team can run more than a single player in a single class that it might be an indicator that class needs to be toned back some. The ability of certain classes to magnify their capabilities by having a second or third person on the five-man team in the same class is not equal amongst the different classes, with elementalist being the one mentioned first as possibly needing some balancing.
Peters notes that they are wanting to avoid making any huge changes, as they feel the game is reasonably well-balanced and want to give players a chance to find possible counters to certain builds before simply nerfing those builds.
He also wants to focus more on strengthening the builds and abilities that are currently weak more than nerfing the skills that are currently very strong, using the Guild Wars 2’s heals as an example. If a class has three heals and two are bad, that effectively limits the choice to only a single viable option, which is not fun to play, watch, or design around.
Click below to get to part three.
Part 2
