Staying Flexible: What Guild Wars 2 Does Right

[Marius]

All races can play all classes. I think all classes can heal to some extent.

For example, a thief, which is often thought of as a DPS class, can also throw up a 'shadow refuge' which stealths team members and heals them.

Or the thief can overload their pistol with blackpowder and throw up a smokescreen that blinds everything around them.

This information just comes from the publicly available wiki. You can visit it to get an idea of the different abilities.

[Bluefire]

Is there no threat at all, or is there just no threat multiplier for tanks ?
Ie: If Im shooting away and am top dps on fight, do I get threat 100% till someone else passes me or will it be rng threat at timed intervals ? Maybe a mix of the two depending on the fight ?

Assuming its the first option, top dps = get threat = switch to defensive stance + stop doing any dps and pray another dps passes or heals you before you die ?
Im totally playing a "ranged" class with an agro dump/vanish.

[Marius]

I don't know about the threat mechanics. Someone who actually played the dungeons would have to answer that. However, I don't recall seeing any threat abilities on the warrior/guardian classes on the wiki.

It wouldn't make much sense to have threat DPS meters without any other threat abilities, though. You can't really take just one aspect of a system alone.

I'm assuming that if there's no threat abilities, then the mobs are liable to just turn around and smack you at random.

I think the way it would work is if you get aggro then you have to use your defensive abilities, which should keep you going until you run out of resources/abilities to use.

[Tim Colwill]

I've run the Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon as a level 30 engineer and didn't see any threat-rating based mechanics. I also ran around as a warrior in the previous beta weekend and didn't see any there either, actually, now that I think about it.

[Mythor]

What it basically means is that DPS will need to learn how to save themselves through the use of switching to 'tanking' weapon sets. So if a thief is blasting away with pistols and someone suddenly comes for them, they'll need to break out the sword and start parrying, just like in a real fight - archers have swords for a reason.

If you've built your character around ranged combat then switching to melee should be a last resort, when you've exhausted other options. If something swaps to targeting you as a pistol wielding thief you'd be better off dodge-rolling out of the way, firing off some kind of snare ability if you have one and continuing to maintain range from your target. Throw in some more dodge rolls or snare/stun abilities as necessary and, if in a group, hope someone more sturdy can intercede and add some slowing effects of their own.

If you don't have any way to slow an opponent down, there's nobody around to help you and you can't run and dodge out of the way enough - or the enemy is slowing you down - then you might want to swap weapon sets, sure.

I imagine there'll be some sort of threat related number within the game, simply to assist the AI in deciding who it should bother attacking, given its current status. With everyone expected to be a lot more self reliant I think you'll see a lot more management of what an enemy *can hit* as opposed to the focus on making it want to hit a specific person.

[Tim Colwill]

With everyone expected to be a lot more self reliant I think you'll see a lot more management of what an enemy *can hit* as opposed to the focus on making it want to hit a specific person.

Exactly!

[Marius]

If you've built your character around ranged combat then switching to melee should be a last resort, when you've exhausted other options. If something swaps to targeting you as a pistol wielding thief you'd be better off dodge-rolling out of the way, firing off some kind of snare ability if you have one and continuing to maintain range from your target. Throw in some more dodge rolls or snare/stun abilities as necessary and, if in a group, hope someone more sturdy can intercede and add some slowing effects of their own.

I dunno, I think it'll be perfectly possible to build a weapon switching thief. Few of the thief traits and utility skills are weapon specific.

[spawneh]

What's done to prevent the game from just feeling like a big zergfest? Seems if everyone can do everything, that almost no pre planning or strategy is required.

[Fenryrbr]

I'm mostly looking forward to it not having any of those Resilience, etc garbage. No PvP only stat.

[Mythor]

If you look at the thief traits, most of them aren't ranged vs melee, they're based on how you do damage - critical hits vs conditions vs stealth attacsk etc. A thief should by able to swap at will, and there's even a trait that gives you initiative back for weapon switching often to encourage this.

I'm sure there'll be situations where you'll need or want to swap weapons, certainly. But realistically most people aren't going to have two sets of great weapons, at least not while levelling up, so you'd mostly be sticking with what your primary setup is good at.
My objection was more based on the idea that ranged fighters will have to have a melee backup plan in play. Not that you'd never want to use the weapon swapping thing.

[Bronze_D]

What's done to prevent the game from just feeling like a big zergfest? Seems if everyone can do everything, that almost no pre planning or strategy is required.

correction: everyone can do everything PROVIDED that they are set for it because you only carry limited set amount of active at any time, and while you can change them out of combat, in combat you better damn well have a clue of what's going on and what your plan is with the team.

so the key essentially is getting the right combination that works with your team and when to apply them and where.

It's more or less similar to GW1 but expanded in some ways and streamlined in others, in GW1 each class have literally myriads of skills but only carry a handful active so they must build their character around the handful of skills they carry ... for many players it'll take ages for a player to get intimate with the skills and how and where to use it and when, and what COMBINES well with it

In other MMORPGs tanks hold the aggro by using their aggro boost or what not..

In GW we don't exactly have a tank but if someone wants to hold aggro on the monster (say a warrior) they do so by FORCING the enemy to attack them, a melee foe that is crippled for example by a warrior only have 2 choice... either attack the melee warrior that is crippling him and stabbing him in the back, or limp around trying to reach the other party members at the speed of a snail. Alternatively they body block the enemy or knock him down, anything essentially that will remove the ability of the enemy to reach and harm someone else.

[Vencha88]

Tim your articles on this are turning me into a true believer, but I'm still worried that running around with elves, Orcs(with fur!) and gnomes is going to drive me batty, because it's so cliche.

[Marius]

Guild Wars is definitely high fantasy, but it's more fairy tale high fantasy rather than pop-culture high fantasy. In other words, they actually do it right.

[Krogan]

This isn't just an optional way to make an mmo compared to the WoW clone style it is a far far superior way to make an mmo in every possible way.

Flexibility might be one way to explain what GW2 does but I would much rather use the word Freedom. The freedom to play with your friends no matter what quest line they are on, no matter what level their char is, no matter what faction(as their is only one), the freedom to play your char however you want(finally going to be able to make a melee focused ranger again, been such a long time), the freedom to do any "quest" I come across...this list is going to get much longer then I feel like writing atm.

I believe GW2 had about 3 million sign ups for their beta in just 3 days and the word of the game is really only starting to spread. This won't be just a successful MMO, between ArchAge and GW2 this is the end days for WoW(as the dominant MMO).

[Vencha88]

Guild Wars is definitely high fantasy, but it's more fairy tale high fantasy rather than pop-culture high fantasy. In other words, they actually do it right.

Oh I'm going by the images, it's just a world I really really can't be bothered with (from what I have seen!) but the combat talk is getting me very interested.

EDIT: And from what I am seeing, chain mail bikinis =(