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List of GW2 Innovations
cali59
Member Posts: 1,634
I wanted to put together a comprehensive list of GW2 innovations. This is no substitute for the "Everything We Know about GW2" thread which is already stickied and provides links.
These are innovations away from the current traditional themepark MMO standard. It doesn't mean they're all going to be huge revolutionary changes. It also doesn't mean that these haven't been done somewhere else before. But I do believe that ArenaNet tries to add their own spin to them if possible.
There's no need to dissect the entire list, but if you want to object, suggest, clarify, or simply have a question, how about we take it on a point by point basis?
Many thanks to Fozzik for helping me compile this. He also makes an excellent point about cohesiveness two posts down.
Combat:
Casting while moving
No auto attack (you can set any skill on your bar to autocast, and one of them will be spammable)
Attacks don't need a target, they'll hit whatever gets in their way
Dodging attacks and projectiles
Shield stance blocks projectiles from hitting you and people behind you
Limited skillbar
No holy trinity, players aren't locked into one role to the exclusion of all others
Skills fit into broad categories of damage, control, or support
Weapon(s) determine half your skill bar and give different skills than other weapons
Players can potentially switch roles in combat (if weapon/skill choices plan for it)
No ally targeted abilities
Everyone has a self-heal ability which is the most powerful heal
Downed state before dying, killing an enemy rallies you
Downed state gives you a new, limited skillbar to fight back with
Any player can rez anyone mid combat anytime, including NPCs.
Very minimal death penalty.
Picking up an environmental weapon changes your skillbar
Thieves can steal environmental weapons from enemies
You get full xp and loot for helping kill a mob whether grouped or ungrouped
Hundreds of cross profession combos to enhance the effect of your skills, even ungrouped
Mob aggro based on proximity and other factors
NPC enemies can dodge your attacks
NPC attacks may be deadlier due to ability of players to dodge and revive
No mana/energy for any class (subject to change)
Only four attributes. Power affects melee, range and spell damage
All professions viable at both melee and range
Underwater:
Desire to have underwater be huge part of the world
You have underwater only weapons
Skills change to underwater versions
Skills use the Z-axis
No breath meter
Drowned state, it's like downed state, but you can also get to the surface to rally
Underwater friendly races and towns
Rangers have underwater pets
Dynamic Events:
Completely replace quests in the open world
Run whether players are there or not
They actually happen instead of just being told about them
Failable and not necessarily repeatable on failure
Allow for victory and failure conditions not easily accomplished with quests
Run in cycles so they're repeatable
Encourage community by letting everyone participate at the same time
Instantly scale up or down with number of players participating
Reward everyone involved based on their amount of participation
Chain together to keep people working together longer
Affect the world in terms of what merchants sell and which waypoints are available
Don't always run so you'll see different things when revisiting a zone
Constantly adding new events to enhance replayability
Boss fights which scale with number of players up to 100
Open World:
Entirely PVE
No factions
Designed to be as griefless as possible
No race/class restrictions
Phased gathering nodes that allow everyone to have a shot at them.
Everyone can gather everything so no waiting on others/making people wait
No set path through zones
Automentoring keeps entire world's content rewarding and challenging
Manual sidekicking to a higher level friend
City to city ports so you can play with friends immediately.
Teleportation to any waypoint you've unlocked
Hidden events to reward explorers
Day/night cycle which can affect your weapons' procs as well as trigger DEs at certain times
Dynamic weather can trigger DEs (when snow falls) or be changed by DEs (NPC causes snow)
Tasks to fill hearts in the open world, for completionists and NPC goodwill
Boss fights at the end of all the tutorials put you right into the action
Personal Story:
Everyone has one big storyline from creation to level cap
Choices made at character creation affect it
Choices in game have consequences and can branch it
Each player has a Home Instance section of town
Character personality gives different dialog options and affects how NPCs react to you
PVP:
3 Faction World PVP against two other servers in large 4-zone maps
No fixed limit to number of participants (though eventually technology would limit it)
W/L record is kept
After 2 weeks, your server is matched up against new, equal strength servers
Winning server gets PVE buff of some kind
Castles and keeps to hold, dynamic events to fight over, trade routes
Destructable environments
Players can level up entirely in World PVP
Enemy players drop loot as if they were PVE enemies
Hot joinable Structured PVP
Structured PVP with custom rulesets
Players in structured PVP are max level with all skills and gear so it's a level playing field
PVP balanced separately from PVE
Dungeons:
Dungeons have a story mode separate from your personal story
Completing story mode unlocks 3 explorable mode paths
These show the consequences of the story mode
There are random/hidden events in dungeons
No raiding
Get a token for armor/weapon everytime you complete a dungeon, no hoping for random drop
Miscellaneous:
Flat leveling curve
Players can be in multiple guilds
No endgame vertical gear progression in power
30+ Minigames in cities
400 dye colors, each piece of armor has three color sections
Gear that can take up more than one armor slot
Grindless crafting with discoverable recipes
Use an iPad to see what your friends are doing in game and send them messages
Auction house available from outside the game
Translatable fictional languages
Unconventional NPC races with deep lore
Add your own music to ingame playlists, your battle music will start when you enter combat
Playlists revert to in game music during cinematics
Carrier pigeons deliver your mail to you
No subscription fee
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Comments
nice list
theres a few things i actually haven't hear about like being able to add your own music to the playlists. that's pretty cool, but idk if i'd do that anyways....i like the composed music a lot
great job, Cal.
It's important to note that although some of the items on the list have been done in some form in other games, putting them all together in a cohesive way like ArenaNet has makes for a very different game. The sum is greater than the parts... just having all the innovations above isn't enough. It all has to work together to support the right underlying philosophy. ArenaNet is all about rethinking the fundamental elements of the genre, and building community.
wowowow lol when you put it in a list OMG so cool i can't wait, ty
That's a pretty impressive list, but I doubt all of them can be called GW2 innovations. There are definitely things in there that are innovative, either in concept or in the way they're done, but the list doesn't quite fit the title.
God I wish I could time travel back to PAX and play this again
Can't wait for beta news.
Thanks for the compliation
now this is a game to get very excited about
so many new things to look forward to
and so many good elements from other games brought into it
just hope they can pull it all off
fingers crossed its either going to be the biggest game ever or the biggest let down ever
I would put some *'s next to these. Whilst there isn't a strict auto attack, there is a cooldownless skill that you can put on autocast which gives the same effect.
Player can switch weapons, ele attunements, engineer kits in combat, whether their role changes depends on the weapon and profession. Second half of the skill bar remains the same as will traits and whatnot.
Hundreds may be a bit optimistic, I wouldn't anticipate more than 80~120 in terms of professions, or ~20 if you go by the effect. (i.e. instead of counting Rifle, Pistol, Bow shooting through firewall, fireball, firestorm you count it as Projectile going through Fire Effect)
I'd put an asterisk around this as well, while they haven't mentioned one, realistically, there will be an upper limit.
For clarification, I'd add, "...for a specific drop from a boss" to the end of "no grinding" because you may still be repeating the dungeon for enough tokens
---
Rest of it looks solid, nice!
Thank you for your comments.
As far as I know, any of the skills, not just the first one, can be set to autocast, so I changed it to reflect that.
I added a part about being able to switch roles if you planned for it.
http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/part-two/ does say "literally hundreds" of cross profession combos, so I kept that.
I changed it to say no fixed limit in pvp, but that technology would eventually pose a limit. I think I've also heard it said that there is a limit, but that it shouldn't be reached. I'll be happy to update it when more info on world pvp comes in.
I changed the part about dungeons to say token every time and not hoping for random drops.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
It's not "no strict holy trinity" but "no holy trinity." Without healing throughput, aggro mechanics, and the like, you just can't have a Holy Trinity. There's nothing that indicates Holy Trinity mechanics are supported at all.
Nice to see you finding ways to spend your time, while we wait for some that juicy GW2 news in the next couple weeks.
It would be nice to see this sticky!
Guild Wars 2 Youtube Croatian Maniacs
My Guild Wars titles
Rather than go over each item, i'll just say ... NOPE
I stopped half way down the list because every item I read had been done before, many of the multiple times...
hm? Is there some double speak going on here?
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
Very nicely done guys. I only question the day and night cycle weapons as well as the weather DE stuff. Not that I doubt you because we all know there has been a lot of information released on the game and I know I have forgotten quite a bit, but can you let me know where that information was so I can read through it. This sounds like something that I would have enjoyed reading about. I think you have explained that not all of this is Anets innovation, but I wholeheartly feel that after looking at the list it shows that they are not merely following the current trend. Thanx for the work !!
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
Yeah, no reason to ever make any more cars. Henry Ford did that already. *rolls eyes*
Innovation is different from invention. Also, I'm going to call BS...if you read half-way, you would have seen at least a few things which have never been done in an MMORPG.
hm? Is there some double speak going on here?
Your server is your "faction"... you and everyone else from your server does PvP against everyone from two other servers. So it's basically three faction PvP.
Very very little if any in that list that is new or innovative. Just and FYI. It's all been done before. Not saying it won't be a great game, but it is a LOT less than some think.
(-_-)
It's not open world PvP either, its a big instance pvp.
(-_-)
Say where and who, or it didn't happen.
"Basically" three faction PvP =/= Three faction open world pvp. Might be fine for some but I guess Im more of an MMO purist.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
It doesn't say "open world" it says "world pvp" because it is "world verses world verses world" or WvWvW as they officially say.
I dont think this is exactly what he stated but is an example of the point he was trying to make.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ghastly_Weapon
What they look like during the day.
http://youtu.be/STsjcWT4XSA?t=6m25s
What they look like at night.
http://youtu.be/MgjOyq5MsIc?t=9s
You'd be correct in saying that it won't be like in DAOC, where other factions could show up and slaughter people questing. The PvP in this game is separated from the PvE.
I used to have a lot of fun with open world pvp, but with the last few MMOs, it's just so poorly implemented that I wouldn't mind doing without it this time around.
EDIT: Also, very nicely done OP. I'm sure that list took quite some time to make. This game does have quite a lot of innovations indeed.
I agree. GW2 has an interesting approach thats for sure. I like what The Secret World is doing in regards to PvP. That is quite innovative imho.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
This little excample shows that most things you name where done before by other games...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)