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Post here AMA answers...
QSatu
Member UncommonPosts: 1,796
Q: Trait tiers: many dislike it other are not sure, what was the reason behind it?
A:
There were a number of problems with the old system that we felt required a change. We believe this new system keeps the spirit of the old system, while actually working better in the long run. Here are the problems we believe this change solve:
1) Best builds were all 30,10,10,10,10. There was always a super strong trait in every line which made each player only put 10 points into that trait line and still gain a very powerful benefit. In the new system this will still be true, but it will be tempered because people will be giving up going 20 or 30 points into multiple lines. This has allowed us to shift traits around so that more of them get play at different levels, meaning they don’t all have to compete against each other at tier 1.
2) This system is so much easier to balance. It is not reasonable to make 12 equally useful traits, particularly given how some of them had niche effects. Making 12 equal traits is harder, takes longer and ultimately leads to some traits seeing a lot less use. Finally an important point is that balance creates more choice as well because unbalanced and bad builds aren’t really options. The old system created a very small subset of über-builds which stomped out a lot of the good builds along with the bad ones.
3) Opportunity Costs are what make interesting choices. Trait tiers allow us to split the traits. 6 allowed in slot 1, 10 (6 tier 1 and 4 tier 2) allowed in slot 2, and 12(6 tier 1, 4 tier 2 and 2 tier 3) allowed in slot 3. The final 2 tier 3 traits are "elite"-like, in the sense that you can only ever have one of them on your build at once. If I'm making a damage warrior I am going to put 30 points into strength, same as every other big damage warrior, but now those characters are all guaranteed to be split at least in half forcing you to not take one of the two exclusive final traits. Before, anytime a character went 30 points in a line they were taking the same 3 (maybe 3 out of 4) traits.
4) Option Shock. New players at level 20 were clicking on a trait line for the first time and seeing 12 options which was very overwhelming. This gives them a bit of a reprieve to pick between a smaller number of traits at first and then learn more as they have played their character more.
5) Putting 30 points into a line left you with a climax of picking the third most interesting trait which did not feel good. Players want to feel like that decision to go 30 is a big decision and that when they make it they get to make a big decision that simply could not happen in the old system. Now when you commit to 30 points you are rewarded with an important choice as well as options that you didn't previously have.
Finally, these are not the final balance numbers or often even the final traits/functionality and we will be iterating on this system as we move towards release. I know for certain there are already a number of changes I wish I could have made before this weekend, but they will have to wait until next time. If you had a really fun build before this change and it is lost now, post it in our beta forums and we can figure out how to make it viable. The intention here was not to remove fun, good builds but to create more viable builds that will increase the variety of characters in the game.
Jon P
Q: Can you fix the ability queue? Currently, if you press a button several times, it fires off several times. Can we have an option like “No ability queue”, “0.5ms”, 1ms”, etc?
A:
There is a timeout on the queue. We are always tweaking this, but often it still has some issues that we are still working out. We have tried removing the queue, but that felt even worse than some of the issues we still see now. We have made improvements to queueing since the last BWe and there are still more to come before release.
Jon P
Q:
I'm really frustrated at the rate we are able to unlock skills in WvW. It seems (from the last BWE) you would have to land the killing blow on an enemy invader to up your progression on the skill you are working on.
Is there a plan to somehow get credit for attacking the target and get progress on a skill without having to land a killing blow?
A:
This was a bug and should now be working as intended. Some of the problems may stil exists but it is our intention that WvW is on equivilent footing reward wise in every way to PvE.
Jon P
Comments
Q. Will the WvW mini dungeon be instanced or will it be part of the WvW map?
A. It is part of the Eternal Battlegrounds map, not an instance -Ferg
Awesome! Basically an open dungeon
Q: Will the Commander Rank for WvWvW have a working 50man Squad UI? To Elaborate:In BWE1 the "raid-like" group UI to allow for 50 members to be in a Squad together under a person who had read the Commanders Rank Book wasn't working. Will it be for BWE2/release?
A:
The followers tab in your contacts panel will show you the members of your squad. There is no limit on squad sizes.
We made a bunch of improvements to the squad system over the last month or so and will definitely be looking for feedback on it over the weekend to determine if we need to make additional improvements.
- Ferg
"4) Option Shock. New players at level 20 were clicking on a trait line for the first time and seeing 12 options which was very overwhelming. This gives them a bit of a reprieve to pick between a smaller number of traits at first and then learn more as they have played their character more."
i took a look at a trait thing.and not even playing the game yet,could figure it out with no "shock"
i mean,if they wanna dumb down the system.it would sound better to get rid of dodge and weapon swapping first then mess around with traits
Q:
GP10. What is the status on fixing Pet AI?
A:
We have fixed a large number of bugs with pet AI, but there are still some lingering ones. Anyone that finds a good case for reproducing them, please don't hesitate to post about it in our beta forums or somewhere on the internet and hopefully it finds its way to us.
Jon P
Q:
GP5. Is first-person-view going to be available? Can we disable the camera-swing?
A: We are going to making a number of improvements to camera between now and ship. First person is something we want to do but might be a post release things. Yes we will disable the camera swing. Someone just showed it to me.
Q:
GP6. What is the thought behind the mechanics of the different profressions downed abillities? Some classes get really useful abilities like interrupts and stealth, others get long-cooldown abilities that won't save them.
A: We are aware that some professions downed skills are, lets say, less than or greater than desirable. We will need to take a close look at these and I suspect we will do so "soon" TM.
Q:
GP3. Sense of moving is a great idea, what about a sense of being connected to the ground with walking/animations? Players also experience a 'sliding' effect when walking.
A: We have worked hard on this issue. Just like any game there are cases where you can make it look crazy, but we feel like those are mostly edge cases at this point. We still have some things in mind that we want to do here, but what you see now is close to what you will get.
I will explain a bit how it works.
Visually we have transition animations that help blend between different states, but for those worried about responsiveness those transitions are purely visual so as soon as you press strafe left you are moving at full speed to the left. This disconnect is what sometimes causes the floaty feeling.
Jon P
Q: What is the status of the Engineer re-work? What kind of changes are being made?
A: Still in progress. I think the key piece is getting their kits to inherit some of the benefits that you get from collecting and customizing weapons.
Q: Will there be WvW ranks and rank abilities/gear?
A: There will not be ranks in WvW. -Ferg
Q:
Thanks for your questions. Will Asura and Sylvari be playable in a BWE? Watch this space (-:
In regard to our event cadence, this is very much dependent on the feedback we receive and internal readiness to ensure that not only is each event up to scratch but more importantly ensuring we have everything in place to guarantee we are going to get the best feedback possible which in turn builds towards the overall quality of the game and launch.
Sorry i can't be more specific but we take our Events very seriously from a development perspective and therefore there are a plethora of considerations when it comes to timing.
Thanks for your support,
Chris
Q:
• D3. What is the status on performance optimization?
We’ve worked on improving client and server performance between BWE1 and 2 and plan on focusing more on performance and polish as feature development winds down.
Q:
P7. Can we get class icon's above the Mesmer illusions, as to help with them being actual illusions? Right now it's easy to identify which one isn't the real one!
Nice catch. Putting in a bug on this right now!!! Bug #249954!
Jon
Q: What is the intent with game performance as it applies to multi-core processors (2, 4, 8 core etc)
A: As part of our performance improvements we plan to push more processing on to multiple cores. We're already utilizing multiple cores though!
-Peter
Q: How come Guardians are the only Profession that are limited in range abilities? Everyone else has true-ranged skills, but Guardians have skills that can't go up inclines/ledges (they don't travel through the air, but on the ground)!
A: I actually updated those skills since the last BWE. Give scpeter a try I tried to make this the ranged option, particularly in WvW for Guardian.
Jon P (YESS! - QSatu)
I think it's a lesser concern. I really think the BIG deal for them was the "301/10/10/10/10 was where all the uber builds were, because you could gett eh uper trait in efvery line for 10 points"
And don't you DARE suggest for them to get rid of weapon swapping and dodge. The more tactical mechanics I can get in a game, the better!
Where I can see the full conversation? Currently I'm watching here: http://www.reddit.com/user/ArenaNetTeam/
But I only see answers not questions. I freaking hate reddit so user unfriendly!
Guild Wars 2 Youtube Croatian Maniacs
My Guild Wars titles
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uodjr/im_a_guild_wars_2_developer_ama_about_the_next/
Q: Item preview?
A: We are working on an item previewer right now. It unfortunately didn't make it in for BWE2, but we'll definitely have it prior to ship! -Ferg
Q: Will there be wandering mobs of a pack of creatures, a la Guild Wars 1? It gave a sense of immersion to know I was fighting a group/pack of dogs, as opposed to like, one dog. Thanks for doing this AMA.
A: Depending on the difficulty of the area you can already see things like this. In Queensdale near the Orlaf Escarpments there are roaming packs of wargs and in the western side of Snowden Drifts you can find raptor hunting packs. The further you go off the beaten path the more interesting things you might discover!
~z
Where you were click "context" under Anet's comment. it will show you the question and answer =]
Q: During this beta weekend will we be able to transfer characters to different servers for free or will they cost gems?
A:
As we did last time, we'll have a period of free transfers at the start of the event to help people find their friends. Then we'll test the full system for the remainder of the weekend.
~ MO
so so much true. all my build was 30,10,10,10,10 or 30,20,10,10. im start like the reason why they add tier traits. never tough this before but since stats from line arent much important (amulets/etc are) what left are the traits, and that is the reason why 30,10,10,10,10 was so powerfull, because exist at least 1 amazing trait in each line for any build
Discussion about traits:
Q: I understand wanting to create more choices. I'm not a fan of filler traits that are there just to take up space and no one takes. My solution would be to make those traits people aren't taking more worthwhile, not restricting choice. Maybe there was too much choice before, but I'm still concerned (even moreso really) that cookie-cutter builds will now just be everywhere.
Hmm, let me ask this. When you say 'elite traits', are you speaking of their impact on gameplay? Basically traits that players feel compelled to take because it will make a massive difference as to how their character performs? Or just that there's only two to choose from. If these 'elite traits' are that powerful, then players are..'compelled' to take them. And there's only two, so that leads to not much variety. And also tier 3 still having 6 tier 1 and 4 tier 2 options is moot if everyone only choose the elite trait when they get to that tier.
A: The basic fact is we made this change because your solution wasn't working despite how much we tried and this solution solved this problem of not enough viable builds while also solving a bunch of other problems. Does that make sense?
Q: Well, we're not really on equal footing in this discussion =cP. I'll have a much better idea of how the system functions in a few days. But I don't want to monopolize your time, so I'll bow out.
However, I still have concerns. My mind just has a hard time grasping how eliminating potential choices somehow creates more choice. And I know you've mentioned that weak traits no one takes means less choice. My -hope- would be that there's a viable reason to take every trait. That even a spec of taking three tier 1 traits is viable. Which means that tier 2 traits aren't that much better than tier 1 and 'elite traits' (that term still scares me) aren't mandatory. Maybe some nice synergy between lower tier traits could make those builds feasible.
Anyway, cheers and thanks for your time. I appreciate it.
A: Ok I saw this analogy on the GW2 thread on Penny Arcade so I will steal it.
Imagine an ice cream shop has 100 flavors but 3 of them taste good and the rest are terrible. This is probably because they spent time making each one instead of making them all good.
Now imagine an ice cream shop with 10 flavors. They are all good because they took 10x as much time improving each flavor as they did in the other version where only 3 were good by chance because its too time consuming to make 100 ice cream flavors.
Anyone else like Strawberry ice cream?
Jon
Hopefully those elite traits won't be so elite, otherwise only 30/30/10 will be viable and we won't see any 30/20/20 or 20/20/20/10.
Well, I am very satisfied with this AMA. They didn't dodge a lot of bullets, and managed to answer an ungodly amount of questions in a very thorough manner. The no-bull policy is still going strong at Anet.
Kudos for that.
first i tough i would hate tier trait (skill trait i liked) but after saw this answers i think im gonna like very much the changes.
in fact before this tier traits we were "limited" to 30-10-10-10-10 builds since are by far the best builds, so the feeling of freedom was just that...a feeling. you could choose any build but in the end you will choose the 30-10-10-10-10.
Which they would have elaborated as to why there will be no ranks in WvW
I just want to thank you QSatu for doing this. Made it easy for me to check real quick in between today's multiple crises (per dictionary.com crises is the plural for crisis, but it sure looks weird) at work.
A lot of good questions where answered there, this was a great idea to do a QA like this i hope we will have more in the future.
They dodged the Engineer question...
They didn't have an answer I suspect, it probably hasn't been worked on enough. Which to me is enough to justify switching my main profession. As it stands now .. from what I can see, its all pointing to the Engineer being one of those tough to balance classes. ( I.E Engineer or Magus ala Warhammer ) Some people will stick by it, kudos to them, they might also flesh the class out pre-launch. I still would rather use the BWE's to thoroughly test a profession and master a few builds.
/sigh
Oh man this gets me excited, good stuff good stuff.
Played-Everything
Playing-LoL
2) This system is so much easier to balance. It is not reasonable to make 12 equally useful traits, particularly given how some of them had niche effects. Making 12 equal traits is harder, takes longer and ultimately leads to some traits seeing a lot less use. Finally an important point is that balance creates more choice as well because unbalanced and bad builds aren’t really options. The old system created a very small subset of über-builds which stomped out a lot of the good builds along with the bad ones.
This sounds like taking the easy way out. I've been watching GW2 very closely from the fence and statments like this are concerning.
4) Option Shock. New players at level 20 were clicking on a trait line for the first time and seeing 12 options which was very overwhelming. This gives them a bit of a reprieve to pick between a smaller number of traits at first and then learn more as they have played their character more.
Isn't this what the people who don't like the new system have been saying? Like that one thread about "WoWified."
Q-> Why did you guys decide to make Amulets have such a huge impact on the stats of a character? And do you have plans to add more options (since they seemed limited in the BWE1)?
A->We moved all statistics to amulets in PvP in order to make it easier to understand and easier to balance. There are a few more and different amulets this time around and we will continue to iterate here.
Jon
great news, more amulet options
They must have a system that promotes flexibility while still being easy to expand and balance. Some people might not like it, but it is a very realistic and honest answer, from a design and business point of view. Much better that sidestepping the issue or inventing ludicrous, far-fetched anwsers.
The Option Shock is probably the worst answer of the bunch, and much more similar to usual MMO Dev blurb. But as I pointed out in the beginning, it is one poor answer among a lot of honest and matter-of-factly ones. So, I think we can postpone burning their houses and raping their pets.
If all the numerous answers were like this, you might have a point.
It's one thing to balance 12 traits for one class, but to balance 12 traits for multiple classes, making all their traits balanced on the play field, is what takes time, a tweak here means a tweak there, add too many in and it takes too much devotion to be worth it, it is the easy way out, but it's the viable way out.
The "shock" factor i think they just threw in there haha, i think it's mostly about cookie cutter 30/10/10/10.
The "Youtube Pro": Someone who watches video's on said subject, and obviously has a full understanding of what is being said about such subject.
Q: Why Amazon is offering bonuses of pre-purchases for pre-orders. (all BWE's and 3 day head start)? Confirmed by a number of people who only pre-ordered gW2 there.
A:
We're still working with Amazon to figure out what they'll be able to do, so I don't have a final answer for you.
But the basics are this. We have limited server space, so while we guarantee beta access for people who have committed to purchasing the game, we don't guarantee it for everyone who just walks into a store and says, "yeah, reserve me a copy".
Some online stores, not just Amazon, are not able to actually bill the credit card until shipment. But the customer has still made his intent to purchase very clear. It's more like purchasing but being able to get a refund later, which we're fine with, than it is like just adding a name to a reservation list and then having to come back and purchase later.
Because we know Amazon is important to a lot of customers, we want to find a way for Amazon to be part of the prepurchase program. It would be unfair to exclude them for being up-front about a policy that's actually already being used behind-the-scenes elsewhere.
~ MO
And later on they said that we can get a refund directly from ANet if we want. We have to contact customer service.
Edit: A: Yes, most places will refund. If you ordered directly from us, contact our customer support team.
~ MO