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Guild Wars 2: More on Healing & Death
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
ArenaNet's Jon Peters has released the second batch of questions from Guild Wars 2 fans with regard to the healing and death systems. Peters fleshes out the "downed" status of players and answers one fascinating question about whether or not ArenaNet is making too many innovative changes to the game.
Q: You seem set on fundamentally changing a lot of the MMO established models, and in particular the “holy trinity.” Aren’t you afraid that there are too many innovations for GW2? How can you be sure that it’ll be fun for the GW1 players?
Jon: We are very set on changing established models that we think were not working in general or do not work for our game. Guild Wars 2 is its own game with its own rules, and we want to make sure that the experiences from playing it gel together. If we see something that is an established convention, we are just as unafraid to use it as we are to use something new. We have a lot of GW1 players here at the office, and they are our first line of defense to make sure we are doing the right things, but ultimately it comes down to making the right decisions to make Guild Wars 2 the best game it can be.
Read a few more questions and answers about the downed system.
Comments
Hmm reading the original article just made me NOT want to buy the game. Everything else I have read makes me want to buy the game but really in the end whats the point in playing something you can not lose.
I understand the casual type crowd will salivate at this system but for me its a really really really big downer.
How is it that you get the assumption that you "cant" lose? Nothing I have read makes it look that way. If youve ever played the first GW, this is simply a bit of a change / improvement to their systems and it certainly wasnt an easy PvE game, especially with the way the AI worked (acting more closely in combat to what we would do, focusing priority targets, etc rather than aggro/tanking mechanics (like EQ / WoW systems).
People keep assuming things, as i said in another thread, that things like little/no death penalty = game is too easy, but yet as Arenanet pointed out, in regular RPGs (and othe rgames) usually your "death penalty" is simply a loss of time by restarting at the last save point. Does that instantly make those games too easy? No. They are generally much more challenging than MMOs because it is the mechanics of the game, the combat, the AI complexity, etc that determines how difficult / challenging the game is, not the death penalty (such as stat loss, item loss, etc). Same goes for the healing aspects. Even in games where you have self heals, does it instantly make the game too easy? No. As i said, it is all of the mechanics together that determine the difficulty.
I disagree with the first poster. Guild Wars as a franchise is all about having a winner and a loser, as proven by their guild ladders, Hall of Heroes, etc. There is no reason to change this style, and having a new mechanic in place doesn't change a thing.
It's not like you get a new health bar being downed, I'm sure its probably really easy to kill a downed enemy considering how close to death they are. It will probably be something that will require players to increase their focus and not just move to the next target because of the potential surprise attack that can happen.
Clearly you are not thinking straight and are jumping to conclusions. Being 'defeated' is basically the same thing as death, it's just not a literal death. What's so hard to understand?
It's like people actually WANT harsh consquences that consume their life and their enjoyment. Typical MMO players are just naturally masochistic.
No MMO has a real death. Your character can die as many damn times as you like. I don't see how calling it something else changes anything. In fact it fits the rule system all MMO's use... I'd dare to even say better then most. At least that definition fits the reality of what just happend.
Defeat is death.
The difference is, people won't be able to say, "Why don't you just use ressurect on <some npc> when they die in the story?"