“The acquisition of skills is changing. […] A weapon’s skills are now learned by fighting with that weapon. Because weapon skills are tied to weapon use, there is no reason to visit a trainer and make choices about which ones to unlock. Instead, it makes more sense to learn how to use the weapon by, you know, actually using it.”
It will be interesting to learn more about this system, because if there was one thing that stood out as being excellent entertainment in World of Warcraft, it was getting a new shiny weapon of a sort that you hadn’t used in some time, and then having to wander off and beat endlessly on green-con mobs until your weapon skill levelled-up enough that you could actually hit normal-con mobs with it. Unlike the issues highlighted in Tiger’s posts of yore, there does at least seem to be a reason for ‘weapon skill’ levelling in Guild Wars 2.
It’s a tricky one to balance. Having a player’s character improve their skill with a weapon through the explicit use of that weapon is a romantic notion: you pick your favoured weapon and master it, becoming a Nameless, Broken Sword, Flying Snow or Sky. On the other hand we are talking about MMOs, and therefore if essential groups of skills are tied only to specific weapons, then this starts to sound like the typical MMO optimisation nightmare of needing to carry a weapon of every type, and then having to switch between them constantly in order to keep all your skills levelled up.
Here’s hoping that ArenaNet, with their alternative view of what an MMO should be, have some ideas on the subject outside of that usual mantra of the subscription-based MMOs: Grind More, Bitches! Then again, some say that current evidence may point to ArenaNet being wed to the grind.
It was one of those posts that leave more questions than answers mechanics-wise, suppose it’s to be expected when the game is in alpha and a lot can change:
“We have a new long-term replacement for the other benefits that energy potions provided to our system” What other benefits???
About the skills, the way it was working up to now, 2/5 weapons skills were unlocked at level 1, and the remaining 3 were got from trainers after a few levels, so if they are autobestowed just playing the game that’s only to the good. The second skill is got by killing 10 mobs, so it doesn’t seem as grindy as some games.
Then there is the other things that the only mention was that they were updated too but no details given:
Traits: profession-specific challenges, which I love the idea and hope it is still applicable.
Utility skills: used to be trainer, now ???
Elites: ??? (trainer for demo),by the sounds of it these might be ‘captured’ from named mobs like GW1, even though they were against the idea til recently it seems.
I think the most contentious thing is that there is ranks/tiers for skills, which is a bit of a step back considering that WoW got rid of them and Lotro skills scale to level too. This might have been where grind comes in if you need to keep the rank of the skills up to your level, but it seems from the forums that rank/tiers are automatically bestowed when you level up.
I was deeply disappointed by the Jon Peters blog entry… not so much with the fact that ANet are making changes (multiple, core-system changes) but more so by the way they announced these and then completely failed to provide any substantial explanation of what they are changing “to.”
Scrapping this… scrapping that… what are we doing instead? Oh, sorry, can’t talk about that yet.
Very disappointing.
I have no inherent problem with ANet telling me that skills no longer use “energy” but, would you mind dropping a hint about what they are using now? Exactly how does your new skill system work? Any clues?
And if they go back to that EQ system of having to “swing a sword, and hey! I swung a sword again!” in order to acquire skills I’m seriously going to get on a plane to the pacific northwest and punch somebody in the face. (and then punch somebody in the face again!)
@darkeye: “It was one of those posts that leave more questions than answers”
Certainly seems like the first hiccough in the hype machine, but I’m sure they’ll get it back on track soon enough. It’s probably quite healthy, to be honest, because it’s given all their adherents cause to pause and realise that ArenaNet are only human after all.
@ArcherAvatar: “And if they go back to that EQ system of having to “swing a sword, and hey! I swung a sword again!” in order to acquire skills I’m seriously going to get on a plane to the pacific northwest and punch somebody in the face. (and then punch somebody in the face again!)”
Okay, but before you do that, don’t forget you’ll need to punch 30 kittens in the face. Then 80 dogs. Then 240 horses. Then you should have the right punching-things-in-the-face skill level to be able to punch a developer.
That “I swung a sword. Hey, I swung a sword again!” quote is high up on the top 100 list of Hype Claims that are Likely to Come Back and Bite a Developer on the Arse. We won’t know until release, of course, just as we didn’t with the infamous Warhammer Online “Bears, bears, bears!” declaration.
@Melmoth
First, pass me another kitten…
Second, my personal hyperbolic rhetoric aside, you would have to be myopic to not see quotes of that line coming when you tell your community that you’re changing your system for acquiring skills to a “use-based” grind. (And please don’t bother trying to tell me it’s not a grind ANet… performing the same action repeatedly for minimal gains = grind.)
Oh absolutely, it was part of what caused me to query that video initially. Still, in fairness and if I recall correctly, he did simply say “We don’t think that’s okay”, which leaves him with the escape clause “We still don’t think that’s okay, but we haven’t had the time or inspiration to fix it”…