God dammit! I just got through posting my thoughts about the GW2 design manifesto when i’m hit with, well, the following.
Over on the main Guild Wars 2 site, there is an article by the lead designer for GW2, Eric Flannum, who will be telling players about the Races, Professions, lore, and game systems over the next few months. I’m giddy with excitement!
Eric begins by talking about adding “joy of movement” to the game, which for Guild Wars, means jumping and swimming, but this will translate to combat.
“To reinforce the importance of movement in the game, we want your character’s position in combat to really matter. You’ll see a lot of attacks in Guild Wars 2 that encourage and reward tactical player movement and positioning.”
There’s already a bit of tactical positioning in Guild Wars, where you’ll have Rangers with bows sitting on top of high places shooting down at their enemies for extra damage or Elementalists will cast their spells safely under cover to attack foes other classes can’t reach normally, but from the examples he gives it seems there will be a lot more tactics involved with Guild Wars 2, almost like a single-player RPG. Then there’s the mention of skills being visually appealing while being able to tell you what the skill does which was also brought up by Mike in the GW2 Design Manifesto, so it seems to be a big part of their focus.
Does a skill have an area of effect? Is it doing damage? What type of damage? Our goal is to design skills that are visually unique and explain them without overly complex skill descriptions.
Speaking of skills, the skill bar this time around will have ten slots compared to Guild Wars’ eight-slot bar, and then some. First, the first five skills in your bar will be based on the weapons you have equipped currently and NOT decided by the player.
For example, a warrior wielding a mace and shield would get access to strong but slow damage skills like Obliterate, as well as powerful defensive skills such as Block and Shield Bash. A warrior wielding a greatsword would have access to a lot of movement-oriented skills like Rush, and area-of-effect skills like 100 Blades.
I like the idea but I don’t like it. I like being able to have control over what skills I bring. Maybe the system will be changed to have weapon-specific skills you can choose from? I would like that more, but still, you can have two sets of weapons at one time and quickly switch between the two sets giving you more control over what your role is in a party or solo. But, what about the last five skill slots? Well, these will be the traditional BYOB (Bring Your Own Build) skills that are selected from a pool made up of skills depending on your chosen profession and race. One of these slots is a dedicated healing slot to help heal you in combat while another is for your elite skill that “trigger visually spectacular and powerful effects.”
Elite skills are designed to be infrequently-used, ultra-powerful skills that have a dramatic impact on the game. An Elementalist can call upon the power of the wind to shapeshift into a tornado that knocks enemies around and inflicts heavy damage, while a warrior might choose to harness the power of Destruction, to make all of his blows inflict area-of-effect damage.
Sign me up, Tornado Man! I cannot wait to read more articles in the months to come as GW2 looks to be shaping up quite nicely and well worth the wait.
Speaking of elementalists, (not my favorite class in the Guild Wars universe but I still like ‘em) the GW2 site has also been updated with some info for the revision of the profession, but what is super-cool, is the skills. Remember when I said the visuals of the skills seems to be a big focus, well I guess I wasn’t lying.
Tons more stuff over on the main Guild Wars 2 site, but you can just click here. You really should too, this is fantastic stuff, I tell ya! And don’t miss the fantastic comics from PvPonline‘s own Scott Kurtz!
Combat Articles: Part One: Skills via GuildWars2.com