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Of
the more recent gameplay
details revealed for upcoming
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/gw2">Guild
Wars 2,
the article on
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/86589">Healing
and Death at the official site
for the game
contains perhaps the most interesting announcements to date. Between
the vastly different approach to how death will work and the lack of a
dedicated healing class, these mechanics certainly help illustrate a
very divergent path from traditional MMOG templates the team at
ArenaNet is taking with their newest title.
When we first read about the
removal of a dedicated healing class and
the additional downed state, rallying and revive mechanics, we here at
the Ten Ton Hammer Guild Wars
2 community site were curious
to learn
more. Jon Peters, Game Developer for Guild
Wars 2 at
ArenaNet was
awesome enough to provide us some fresh insights on each of these
areas, as well as some expanded info on whether or not we can expect
things to function differently in PvP.
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Ten
Ton Hammer: While the ability to
revive fallen allies or help them
rally back into battle should make for some excellent group play,
what's to prevent the "downed state" from simply prolonging the
inevitable dirt nap when playing solo?
Jon
Peters: The short answer is
rallying. You can use the fact that you
rally back to life from downed when you get a kill to setup tactical
situations where you keep yourself alive in more difficult battles. If
you should fail to rally, you can wait for someone to revive you.
Because everyone in Guild
Wars 2 can revive anyone else,
and because we
do some things to encourage reviving other players, our experience is
that if you just give it a little while someone will come revive you.
Of course, failing that, you can always revive yourself by travelling
to a waypoint and then get back into the action quickly.
Ten
Ton Hammer: While not nearly as
fun as the systems announced for
Guild Wars 2,
the death penalty in the original Guild
Wars does help to
turn the tide of battle in PvP once you manage to defeat key members of
the opposing team. Will the downed state and associated abilities, and
the rally mechanic function differently in PvP than it does in PvE
situations to help prevent stalemates in the same way?
Jon
Peters: Predominantly, death,
rallying, and revival works the same
way in PvP as it does in PvE. The one distinction is that in the same
way that a player interacts with an ally to revive them, a player can
interact with an enemy in PvP to do a strong finishing move that sends
them straight to defeated.
Of course this does help break
stalemates,
however, Guild Wars 2
PvP is just a different beast and the concept of
the Guild Wars
1 Mexican flag standoff, where everyone is just
posturing until there is a tiny opening that has a small chance of
accomplishing anything is something we are trying to avoid. Guild
Wars
2 is a game about killing, not
a game about not dying. It is more about
taking risks and heroic actions and that is one of the reasons that the
death penalty system has been removed.
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Ten
Ton Hammer: Our readers seem
very intrigued with the idea of groups
centered around the roles of damage, control and support. With no
dedicated healing class for the game, will players who still enjoy
offering that style of support be able to create builds within certain
professions to essentially function in a dedicated healing role, or
will "healing" as we know it take on a broader meaning to encompass the
interactions between various professions within a group?
Jon
Peters: There is no way for a
character to make a completely
dedicated healing or support roles. That being said, there are builds
that can be made that do have a significant amount of support, and we
find that our active and dynamic combat creates support situations that
don’t rely on skills that would normally be considered
support skills.
For instance, if an ally is low
on health any other
player could simply step between them and their enemies and force
ranged attackers to hit them instead. Similarly, if an enemy is
unleashing a powerful attack on an ally that might send them to downed
or defeated, any player that has built there character with some
control might stop the attack from happening which is a very active
sort of defense. To paraphrase a common catch phrase: The best defense
is a good offense.
Ten
Ton Hammer: The concept of
skills between professions interacting
in interesting ways has come up once again in the most recent reveal.
Will there be any way of knowing which skills can be used in
conjunction with one another during combat (like shooting arrows
through an elementalist's fire wall) such as on-screen alerts or
highlighted skills on your bar, or will that come down to a matter of
trial and error for teams to find the most effective skill combos?
Jon
Peters: For the most part,
cross-profession combos come down to
trial and error. These things are fairly natural combinations in the
world and we want players to discover this emergent gameplay though
experimentation.
Ten Ton Hammer would like to
thank Jon Peters and the rest of the Guild
Wars 2 team at ArenaNet for
providing us with some additional
information on how the downed state, rallying and healing will work in
their upcoming title. For further reading, be sure to check out
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/gw2/features/editorials/death">The
Evolution of Death in Tyria
and
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/gw2/features/editorials/no-more-healers">No
More Healers?,
and then be sure to head on over to our Guild
Wars 2 forums to add your
thoughts to the discussion!
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