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Nine GW2 Follow Up Questions with Eric Flannum
http://www.arena.net/blog/nine-gw2-follow-up-questions-with-eric-flannum

"The possible number of combinations is in the millions"

He's talking about the number of possible skillbars in Guild Wars 2. For comparison, the number of possible skillbars in Guild Wars, with only eight skills on a bar and assuming no PVE-only skills, is in the quadrillions. Quizzical 22:28, May 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * Quadrillions? 2 professions with the most skills are N(145)+E(147), for a total of 292 skills, or 222 normal and 70 elites.
 * 222! / [(222-8)!8!] = 222*221*220*219*218*217*216*215/40,320 = 128,795,283,347,445 (8 non-elite)
 * 222! / [(222-7)!7!] = 222*221*220*219*218*217*216/5,040 =       4,792,382,636,184 (7 non-elite) *70 (+ 1 of the 70 elites)
 * 4,792,382,636,184*70 + 128,795,283,347,445 =                  464,262,067,880,325
 * or about half a quadrillion of mostly worthless builds. Then again, it's 2:20am, and I'm probably doing something wrong.
 * So, if "the possible number of combinations is in the millions," then what's the size of the skill pool? Take into account that they suggest a 15-skill bar, because your second weapon switch adds 5 more. I guess it's too early to do the math accurately, without knowing exactly how the weapon-bound skills work, but what about a crude # of just any 15 skill mix? I'm too sleepy for this... <_< RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 23:38, May 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * There are also 45 ways to pick a combination of professions. Quizzical 00:16, May 6, 2010 (UTC)
 * i like to look at it, we have 5 skills slots, 'normal' skill slots if you will, considering over 99% of good builds have an elite (and ppl whine if you don't bring one) it's only only 1 of those 5 being restricted, the healing slot. i've played healer monk for about 7 months before trying anything else, and i assure you these arguments about 'if the monk is doing his job you wont need healing/defense' are annoying and false, trust me, unless your monk is VERY overconfident, he/she will thank you for bringing some way of easing their workload.


 * so of the 5 normal slots, one of them (the elite slot) is barely being restricted, and the healing slot makes sure you have at least something as back-up. let's face it, shit happens, over-aggro, poor planning, or the obvious, the monks poor at his job. so those 5 are barely restricted, IMO.


 * as to the other 5, they change not just upon switching weapons, but also to use the environment better (environmental weapons). so it's not just 15 skills at all times, it's 5 for sure, and another 10 that can change as much or little as you like to work with your surroundings.


 * as soon as i read about the new skillbar system i immediately thought, a mix of: that sounds awesome, 5 skills to use with our surroundings!, this ought to help make healers lives easier, and wow... people are going to complain ENDLESSLY about this.Akbaroth 00:32, May 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh yeah, that, of course, I knew that! >_< So like over 10 quadrillion (straight *45 gives almost 21 quad, but other professions have fewer skills). And I like the new skill bar so far, I just can't wait to get the rest of the professions, ANet is such a torturing monster when it comes to info. x_x RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 00:44, May 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * A count via spreadsheet returns an answer of 7618081977951470. That allows rez signets, uses the cap of at most one elite, and imposes the restriction of at most two professions.  It doesn't count a build with only warrior skills separately for a W/N and a W/P profession combination, for example.  It does require every skill slot to be filled, however, and exclude all PVE-only skills.
 * I'd see this as confirmation that the five skills for your weapon aren't "pick five out of 30", but rather "these are your fixed five". If you got to pick five skills out of 25 for your weapon, and the same for your class, that puts you into billions of combinations, just for a single class with a particular weapon.  Assuming all one-handed weapons can go in the off-hand as well, there are 66 possible weapon combinations, though some may be impossible to due class restrictions.  The "millions" of possible combinations would then point to somewhere in the range of 30-70 skills per class.
 * On another topic, what I'd worry about is that the game will encourage players to form too large of groups and all run around together, since they all get full loot from anything they kill. Ten people can kill a lot more in a given amount of time than one person solo, and if the ten people each get full loot from everything, that makes soloing not terribly viable.
 * Maybe the restriction that you have to do significant damage will clamp down on that, but even if so, that could make AoE damage dealers have a tremendous advantage. Follow around some other people, run in and tag everything with an AoE attack, and collect the loot after the others do most of the work.
 * This could also make relatively unpopular areas basically unusable. What often happens in games is that players figure out that you get 50% more experience and loot in zone A than zone B, so they spend most of their time in zone A.  If that leaves farmers competing with each other for spawns, then that dampens the effect somewhat, so maybe the benefit is less than 50%.  But if it means that zone A will have ten times as many players running around, so that bigger groups kill three times as fast, then zone A could suddenly get you triple experience and loot as compared to zone B, on top of the natural 50% advantage.  This could also lead to a strong time of day dependence.
 * That's fixable by having copies of zone A than zone B, but only if they're not set on having a fixed number of complete worlds. Right now, if there are 10 times as many players in Cathedral of Flames as in Rhea's Crater, then there will be ten times as many instances of the former as the latter, so it's the same player density per instance.  You can do that with open worlds, too; see how Champions Online tends to have far more instances of Millennium City than of Lemuria, for example, in order to keep the player density comparable.  Quizzical 01:30, May 6, 2010 (UTC)
 * Well 7618081977951470 is still millions, even if it's thousands-of-millions-of-millions. :D On more serious note, my greatest worry about GW2 at the moment is that the skill system will be a dumbed-down version of GW1. Perhaps the biggest thing in GW1 for me, that has kept me going for years, is the incredible versatility of skill choises. There's practically limitless number of combinations to experiment on, and discover new ways to utilize. The ability to switch secondary profession adds even more versatility to that, and lets you 'try before buy' to some extent - I played monk a lot, but realized I kept using ranger skills on most of my skillbars, so I ended up making a ranger. Now I do realize it's a balancing nightmare, and fully understand why GW2 is going towards a more static skill system.. but from player-side, it the impression I get feels a bit lukewarm after being spoiled by the current GW system. For similar reason I don't like the idea of being FORCED to dedicate a skill slot for healing skill, or being FORCED to pick an elite for one of the slots. Sure, about 80% of my skillsets would include -some- kind of healing skill, and about 95% or more would include an elite - but what about those that won't? What the GW2 system would appear to do, is to force you into more cookie-cutter builds. 'Ok, we have warrior for tanking, we have mage for damage, we have cleric for healing.. we just need to find a thief for traps, then we're set to go to the dungeon'. Kitsunebi 10:19, May 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * Do note that GW also has its moments of Trinity-way. Heck, the most recent Elite area builds all featured Shadow Form tanks. Sure, it's not the Whammo tanking, but the point still stands; it's the Tank/DPS/Healbot setup all over again. The hard areas are not going to steer away from that, because it works. Easy and medium range areas never used that setup, however, and I doubt that will happen in GW2. After all, everyone has some form of self-preservation. Another interesting skill to mention for this is Water Attunement. It heals nearby allies continuously, meaning you're less easily pressured to death (degen ftl). Besides, their goal is that it's possible to solo everything. If the Ele can't take a hit, that idea goes down the drain instantaneously. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  11:56, May 6, 2010 (UTC)

"ANet is such a torturing monster when it comes to info." -Kali. See also; Diablo 3. qq. We've seen the Monk, but only know of a tiny amount of skills. We know that the Rune system exists, but have little idea what the runes will do (Energy rune won't simply reduce skill costs I bet). Pretty frustrating as well :P Just felt like venting a little.

There's a metric fuckton of possible combinations. Now, how many are sane and possibly viable? What PvP (Bow-)Ranger does not carry DShot? Who the hell makes a W/Me with 7 Me skills? Let alone having it work a little; half your bar would be energy management, and two damage skills. YES 10 DPS's!

I also wonder if (ex.) different 1h swords will yield different skillbars; A Jitte might give you Riposte v2.0 and Disarm, whereas a Short Sword gets you Sever/Gash. That would be badass, and increases #skillbars/builds. Additionally, there's more weapon types in GW2; 2h swords, daggers, guns... (they've mentioned war + gun fairly often; Hamstorm or truly useful?) --- -- (contribs)  &emsp;(talk)  10:09, May 6, 2010 (UTC)
 * Well you did say it yourself - What BOW-ranger would? And even so, I'm pretty sure there would be a viable set that didn't include the particular skill, although I don't really do PvP so I can't say a whole lot about it (No, after thinking about that a little, I may have to take that one back - you can assume almost everyone carries rez-signet, and against those it would be invaluable skill).  What comes to W/Me, in PvE if your primary profession is warrior, then that's what you are.. but in some particular situation you might need a bucketfull of distance interrupts, and might want to toss in something like mantra of earth.. and in that case, a warrior with 7 mesmer skills might be perfectly viable.  It certainly wouldn't be one-size-fits-all build, and most of the time a 'real mesmer' would do the job better.. but the point is that the warrior primary does still have the OPTION to do it.  Back in days when there was only prophecies, I played through Hell's Precipice (mission plus bonus) as primary monk, with only 3 henchmen and nothing else in my party - and my skillbar had 5 or 6 ranger skills.. simply because in that situation it worked best for me. Kitsunebi 10:32, May 6, 2010 (UTC)

To go back on something said earlier, I find it great that there is a dedicated healing slot (which probably means that all professions will have more that 2-3 heals *cough*warrior*cough*. It prevents morons (like 50% of the RA population) to solely depend on the monk, who is then, as said before, blamed if they die. I'm not sure how the elite-only slot would work at the beginning of the game. Would you get an elite skill from the beginning (perhaps a racial one), or would you be able to still put normal skills in that one too?

Also, the way they have said it, it makes me feel that it's 3/2 set skills per weapon (depending on offhand/mainhand of course). It doesn't sound like you can actually choose the skills your weapon provides.--El_Nazgir 14:57, May 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * The early elite slot might be like the Unknown Junundu Ability. Early game should be easy enough to handle without a full skill set. RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 16:02, May 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd favor one slot being reserved for a heal, just for idiot-proofing reasons. This is basically what El Nazgir said, too.
 * On the other hand, I'd hope that you have the option of having the elite be a healing skill, a non-healing skill, or not having an elite at all. That's how it works right now in Guild Wars (1), and I don't see any reason to change it.
 * I'd favor some restrictions on builds to block the peculiar gimmick builds, such as 55, 600, perma-shadow form, ursanway, etc. But even Guild Wars right now allows a tremendous diversity of builds without having to take a secondary profession at all.  I don't see any reason to believe that Guild Wars 2 will offer meaningfully less than this.
 * Guild Wars really doesn't do the tank/healer/damage dealer approach. The game doesn't have a concept of tanks analogous to that of many other games, as this game doesn't have an aggro system at all, let alone super duper aggro building taunt skills.  It also doesn't have a useful notion of a damage dealer; everyone and his neighbor's dog can deal damage, and if a character can't do anything else, that character is a deadweight.  Some players do try to play the tank/healer/damage dealer approach because that's what they're used to from other games, but it's hardly necessary here--and often doesn't even work all that well.  Quizzical 17:16, May 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * Guild Wars doesn't need Trinity; doesn't mean it's not the easiest way to deal with groups. Cryway and HBNuke (and... and...) rely on this concept; One tank balls everything up, nukers come in and wipe the floor. To boot, it's ridiculously fast; faster than most conventional builds. I don't know how this all works after the Shadow Form nerf (because lolGWs), though, just stating examples. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  18:16, May 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * So basically you mean that overpowered PVE-only skills are overpowered. Quizzical 18:34, May 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * Right, because Shadow Form and Hundred Blades+Mark of Pain is PvE-only. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  18:50, May 6, 2010 (UTC)
 * 'I'd favor one slot being reserved for a heal, just for idiot-proofing reasons' - this 'idiot-proofing' is exactly the thing I'm worried about. If you build a game that an idiot can play, only idiot is likely to bother.  EverQuest 2 had this problem - they simplified things so much the game got boring.  A ten years old could play it.  'click there when the green light flashes'.  I'm not saying that setting one skillslot aside for forced healing skill is going to ruin the game, but I'm questioning the purpose behind making something like that mandatory, and wether the same policy applies elsewhere. Kitsunebi 04:03, May 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * "It prevents morons (like 50% of the RA population) to solely depend on the monk"
 * El_Nazgir, you forgot to mention that generally with the RA population they depend on a Monk, and (knowing this before) go into the Arena only to not have one. A_F_K_sig_2.jpg A F K When Needed 09:02, May 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * That's exactly my point.--[[Image:El Nazgir sig.png|Talkpage]]El_Nazgir 14:14, May 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * It's a question of whether players should be able to gratuitously sabotage their own character. In a solo game, sure, you can give players enough rope to hang themselves.  But in a grouping game, it's not good for players to have undue opportunity to destroy the group.  It's important for game mechanics to restrict ninja-looting for the same reasons.  Quizzical 16:58, May 7, 2010 (UTC)

The Fashion of Guild Wars 2: An Interview with Kristen Perry
http://www.arena.net/blog/the-fashion-of-guild-wars-2-an-interview-with-kristen-perry