Guild Wars 2 MMO News, Guides, and Features at Ten Ton Hammer

Of the more recent gameplay details revealed for upcoming Guild Wars 2, the article on 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.

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.

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 The Evolution of Death in Tyria and No More Healers?, and then be sure to head on over to our Guild Wars 2 forums to add your thoughts to the discussion!