On Friday, Jon Peters updated the Guild Wars 2 blog with a slew of new changes to the game's pet system, the engineer's tool-belt, and gave us some revealing info on the cross-profession combos. We caught up with Jon to ask him a few questions about each.

Jon Peters: We balance everything in Guild Wars 2 around opportunity cost. For instance, using a skill at one point in combat prevents you from using it at another time, and selecting certain weapons or utilities require you to give up another weapon. We can do this by making our skills very versatile, or just by making them very good at the one thing they do. So I’m not really concerned about balancing that particular aspect of gameplay as opposed to anything else in the game. Of course Isaiah and Jonathan—the other guys heavily involved in game balance—will tell you that I’m never worried about anything because they worry about it for me!

Read the rest of our Exclusive Interview with Jon Peters.

that catalog of combos is a nice idea Murphy!

Thanks, it happens sometimes!

I love the fact that 2 random spells don't just make up a combo, since it would be impossible to know what was going on during PVP, thumbs up for that! Other than that, nothing new I guess :) 

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Originally posted by thedarkess
that catalog of combos is a nice idea Murphy!

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Loving the fact that you are going to need to be aware of what other players are doing to fully take advantage of the situation.

I agree, Murph.  LoTRO implemented a similar system for the Warden class to keep track of its plethora of combo potentials.   Its a great tool to plan ahead to make your gameplay more efficient, especially with GW2's skill system where you only have so many up at one time (based on weapons).  As you level and gain more skills, having a reference catalog can help with more tactical choices to get through content that requires some planning ahead. 

I am really looking forward to the ranger.  I love, love, love charming (taming) beasts and using them as pets.  My experiences with EQ1 and EQ2's Enchanter/Illusionist classes, as well as DAoC's Sorcerer, gave me a solid background on the whole process.  WoW's Hunter eventually became the only remaining class I really enjoyed in that game due to this mechanic as well.  Its not just about having a companion that you have to micro-manage to augment your skill sets and combat routine, its going out into the wilderness to track and then tame your pet of choice that's a large part of the fun for me.  I can't freaking wait.

I would like to  hear how they've managed the pet effectiveness now.  After reading the forums on a GW2 site, I saw that the first incarnation made them rather weak in combat so they'd only last (maybe) for one mob before dying.  That seemed to be a general complaint, so it cannot purely be attributed to mismanagement by the player.

Anyway, great interview!

Mesmers?  ;)

Originally posted by EvilGeek

 

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Originally posted by thedarkess
that catalog of combos is a nice idea Murphy!

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I'll second that and loved the fact he will go pester the devs about it too :)

 

Loving the fact that you are going to need to be aware of what other players are doing to fully take advantage of the situation.

 I was totally surprised that he hadn't even considered that feature before.  As soon as combos were introduced, I assumed they would be documented like in other games (Ie. Dragon Age) or like crafting recipes.  GW2 seems to strive to be as user friendly as possible--unlike, say, the FF MMOs, which consistently make players resort to outside-of-game online databases for information on things like skillchains and recipes, or in the case of FF14, the simple control schemes lol... 

Originally posted by Homitu

Originally posted by EvilGeek

 

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Originally posted by thedarkess

that catalog of combos is a nice idea Murphy!

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I'll second that and loved the fact he will go pester the devs about it too :)

 

Loving the fact that you are going to need to be aware of what other players are doing to fully take advantage of the situation.

 I was totally surprised that he hadn't even considered that feature before.  As soon as combos were introduced, I assumed they would be documented like in other games (Ie. Dragon Age) or like crafting recipes.  GW2 seems to strive to be as user friendly as possible--unlike, say, the FF MMOs, which consistently make players resort to outside-of-game online databases for information on things like skillchains and recipes, or in the case of FF14, the simple control schemes lol... 

 

Maybe (hopefully) Jon will task his minions to create it.  Perhaps as a Christmas present to them.  <evil grin>  "Here you go, boys!  Make it so!"

My only worry at this point is that many features of this game might be a bit too easy.

scooby doo meets GW2

Originally posted by kaos78414

My only worry at this point is that many features of this game might be a bit too easy.

Easy to understand, sure. Easy to master, I doubt it. Wouldn't it be difficult as a Ranger to master swapping both his/her weapons & pets in-combat. Or even co-ordinating an AOE stealth cross-profession combo, to save the group from a wipe. Such tactical play will be something that only those who put in the effort, would find much use in it.

Hoping for a way to track combos. Without this, it may get very chaotic. Good interview but hoped a questions would have been asked about the next release date for some more news.

I was expecting them to have a way to track what combos you've personally used or "unlocked".  It would seem vital to plan ahead for pvp or harder dungeons and bosses.

lol......scooby doo

Originally posted by kaos78414

My only worry at this point is that many features of this game might be a bit too easy.

 

I actually think that was intentional on ArenaNet's part.

Make the game really easy to get into but to truly be successful it will take a long time to master. Which I personally love. It allows new players to still have a chance and not get totally steamrolled when they start out while allowing older players to have a better grasp of the concepts and how each profession works together and how to best utilitze the profession mechanics.

Originally posted by rojo6934

scooby doo meets GW2

 

Bah you beat me too it.

Originally posted by rojo6934

scooby doo meets GW2

Scooby Dooby Doo, where are you? I think you're in Ascalon!

Scooby Dooby Doo, where are you? It's time to crush that dragon!

Originally posted by kaos78414

My only worry at this point is that many features of this game might be a bit too easy.

 

I think what ArenaNet intends for the game to be easy to get into, but difficult to master. They want everyone to be able to get into the game and have fun and still acheive things, yet at the same time they want to allow people to go more in-depth with they systems if they want to. Remember the whole thing on "emergent complexities". Yeah you can be good with just takign every skill at face value. But to acheive greatness, you're gonna have to learn all the complexities of the system.

too stoked! lets get rolling on this gaame! 

Yeah reading about this definitely makes me lean toward ranger more than necro now.  Nice stuff.