Interview pro Guild-Hall.cz !
Interview with: Eric Flannum (Lead Designer), Jon Peters (Game Designer), Jeff Grubb (Game Designer), Colin Johanson (Lead Content Designer), Ree Soesbee (Game Designer)
If a player chooses a norn as their character and then they se lect one of the animal forms they worship primarily, will they be able to transform into other spirits’ forms too? While in a raven form, would I be able to fly? For example over the mountains?
Eric: The question that players answer, about which totem they favor, does not influence which forms they can take. A player who answers that they favor bear can indeed change into raven form if they bring that elite racial skill. Raven form does not allow the player to fly in any way.
Will I be able to change my attributes distribution (as well as traits) if I realize that I selected the combination that doesn’t fit my play style, or it will be fixed once I spend my points?
Eric: Yes, we’re still working on finalizing how this works but there will be a relatively easy and pain free way to respect your attributes.
Will the attribute system and items affect the overall performance of a character more than a player’s skill?
Eric: It really depends upon how large a spread in level you are talking about. For really large level spreads of say 10 or more levels, then the gear and raw power of the character is going to be a huge factor. When you are talking about smaller level differences then skill plays a very large role. We want player skill to play a significant role in Guild Wars 2.
In the original game, characters had hundreds of points of health. From the demo we saw that in Guild Wars 2, you will have thousands of points of health. Is this more for effect or it does it have something to do with the fact that there is no healer class, so your character can withstand more incoming damage?
Jon: We made this decision for a few reasons.
1) Balance – The larger numbers make it easier to balance because we can be more granular with our balance changes.
2) Progression – With the larger number of levels and the more epic content, we felt it was important that players feel a greater sense of progression as they go through the game.
Will it be possible to craft items comparable to end game items, or will the best items will be only available through rewards and boss drops?
Eric: It will be possible to craft items that are comparable in power to the best items available through drops and other rewards.
How will the thief in stealth appear to other players? Will it be something like predator’s stealth—like from the Predator movie, where it was possible to see some shapes?
Eric: To friendly players the thief looks very much like the predator effect that you mention. To enemies, stealthed characters are invisible.
Is it possible for other players or creatures to cancel the stealth by hitting the thief with a non-direct attack or AOE damage?
Eric: Hitting a stealthed character will not break the stealth but will cause the character to “flash” revealing them for a very brief amount of time. Therefore if you were able to keep hitting that character you would effectively be able to see them.
Could you describe your favorite dynamic event?
Eric: My current favorite starts with a norn named Gareth. He is looking after his son and his two daughters. These children are a bit of a handful (as most norn children are) and occupying all of his time so he’s asking generous adventurers who pass by to bring him dolyak meat so he can get his smoker going and make some much needed money.
It’s a chain that involves his children wreaking havoc at the homestead and culminates in their attempt to use a “ritual” (which involves spreading honey all over the floor) to get the spirit of bear to send a bear play mate for them to wrestle. It turns out that their ritual is perhaps too good and much to their surprise an entire horde of bears descends upon the homestead.
Jon: There is an event chain where two ogres are trying to fill up barrels of water. Their dialogue is amazing and the struggle they go through to just fill 2 jugs of water is both epic and comical, from fighting off harpies, to thwarting thirsty animals to finally fending off an attack from rival ogres from another village, this event just has a little bit of everything.
Colin: One word, “Cattlepult”. A brilliant, or insane, depending on how you look at it; charr Iron Legion engineer has invented a device to help get food to charr towns that are under siege by enemies and running out of food. The device, the cattlepult, flings charr’s favorite food—cattle—from massive distances over the walls of besieged cities to deliver food to the friendly forces trapped inside. In the event, a rancher brings a small herd of cattle up from a nearby cattle ranch and delivers them to the Iron Legion engineer. Using his prototype Cattlepult, the engineer begins lobbing cattle at a nearby hill to test the velocity and angle for the Cattlepult to prepare it for use on the front lines. The first cow that a lands on the hill enrages a group of harpies who live on that hill, and an event begins to protect the cattle and the engineer from the rampaging harpy horde. If players can manage to drive off the harpies and save the cattle, a mini-game begins where players in the area can bet on where each cattle launched by the Cattlepult will land. Each correct guess of a cows landing location awards the players a cow token, which they can turn in to a nearby merchant for a number of cool and unique rewards, like cow bells.
Ree: I don’t want to be too descriptive, because it might spoil things in the story, but my favorite involves an all-out attack on a beachhead. It feels very real, and very epic! The dynamic events I like best are the ones that feel like they change the world or cause large-scale impact. The world we’re building really has wonderful opportunities to feel as though you’re a character in an epic movie, and that your actions can really affect things. It’s tremendous fun to be part of a massive army on the march, attacking enemies and saving the world. Those are the kinds of events I love best.
Jeff: Currently, I came across one in Queensdale just the other day in a playtest that I didn’t know was there. I topped a rise and found an asura with a magical holding pen, who was hunting for pygmy moas, flushing them out of the bush. I went out and herded some pygmy moas (yeah, sounds like herding pigs in pre-Searing, but cooler, because I was dodging raptors as well at the time). Then after I herded enough them, the asura started training them to dance, and I had to escort them to Beetletun (fighting off skritt in the process). Dancing moas to Beetletun! That’s cool.
What is the best moment you can remember from the process of creating Guild Wars 2?
Eric: There are so many of them, I feel really lucky to be working with the people around me and on the game I’m working on. When I first read the question, the moment that came back to me was playing the game just before we were going to debut the playable demo at gamescom. I remember at the time feeling somewhat anxious about how the game was going to be received by people once they actually got to play it. We were testing the Shatterer fight and running through his blasts to help a downed ally while explosions from mortars and cannons were going off around me had me. The encounter had me totally immersed, and I was having so much fun that I had a moment of clarity where the anxiety fled and I knew that everything was going to be fine and we’d do well at gamescom. Of course, the actual reaction we received dwarfed anything I could have possibly imagined.
Jon: In a recent PvP fight, I was attacking an enemy objective. When I realized the attack wasn’t going well I dropped my Warrior Elite Battle Standard knocking the enemies back and buying some time. During that down time I switched over to Greatsword and began kiting enemies using the Whirlwind Attack. After continuing to harass them for a little while, I saw my health was running low and began to plot my escape. On the way out, I used some change of direction, a dodge roll or two, and some blocking terrain to avoid the attackers’ projectile attacks. As I turned a corner while fleeing, I saw some allies and reactivated Whirlwind Attack while passing through my allies, buying myself enough time for a heal, at which point the two enemies chasing me had engaged my allies. I charged back in, used Stomp to throw the enemies off my teammates, and then finished one of them off with an Impaling Throw, Hundred Blades combo. At this point the second enemy turned to run. I pulled back out my Rifle, hit him with an Aimed Shot to cripple him, and then powered up a Kill Shot that fired off killing him just before he got out of range. It was at this point that I stopped and realized the game is still pre-alpha.
Jeff: We have eureka moments, when something comes in from some odd angle – a piece of concept art or an idea, and just fits in perfectly with what we’re doing. We got a piece of Daniel’s concept art – a tibetian monastery on an iceberg with sails (Daniel never dreams small). Could we use it? What was it? Where did it come from? Who lived there? We had another set of art from Kekai showing these polar-bear men that didn’t have a home. The polar bear men (now the kodan) lived in the monastery and have sailed south to flee the dragon. And since they lived in a monastery, they tended to radically believe in maintaining the balance of the world. And we ended up flooding one of the maps so we could put the big icebergs there. I love it when a plan comes together, even if we didn’t know what the plan was.
Ree: Our team is made up of the friendliest, funniest people in the world. One of the things I love is the quote file – one of the guys keeps a file of strange, odd, and crazy things that people say around the office, and every few weeks (especially in crunch time) he sends some of them out in an email to the team. It is *hilarious*.
What is the best moment you can remember from meeting with fans and showing them the game?
Eric: At gamescom, I met some fans who were complaining to me that they wanted English copies of Ghosts of Ascalon, but that we were only handing out copies in German and that English copies were generally hard to find. At the time I thought that we had only brought German copies of the book, but the next day while I was working in our press room I noticed that we had some copies in English. Since the fans I spoke to were really excited about meeting Jeff Grubb and getting their German copies signed, I thought that I might be able to find them waiting in line for a book signing he was doing. So I brought several copies of the book in English with me and found them waiting in line. It was really cool to be able to get them copies of the book in English and just in time to be signed by Jeff as well!
Jeff: There was a jaw-dropping moment when people first saw the Shatterer. I stopped watching the screen and started watching the fans’ eyes go wide as it lands.
Jon: At PAX East, someone came up to me and asked me if we were giving away the ArenaNet lanyards(the thing you put around your neck that holds a convention badge). I told him we only brought enough for ourselves, and he seemed disappointed so I took off my lanyard and traded it to him for his.
Ree: Telling the story of Malchor and Dwayna to the fans in Paris; one of GW’s most important stories of love, to the city of love. It was wonderful.
We know that in structured PvP and most PVE, there will be a party limit of 5 people. But how will that work in World PvP, where there will be tens or perhaps hundreds of players battling together? Will there be any opportunity to make larger party? And if so, what numbers of people we are talking about?
Eric: There is no formal mechanism for players making a party larger than 5. Due to the mechanics of Guild Wars 2 it is not really necessary to know the exact status of anyone beyond your own party members. Instead it is our expectation that players can coordinate the actions of multiple parties through the use of shared chat channels or other means of communication.
Some PvP players feel like you are investing too much time in making PvE content. Could you tell us if PvP will still be of high quality like in the original game, or whether your priorities have changed to focus on PvE?
Eric: First, let me say that the idea that a game can have either great PvP or great PvE but not both is a myth. It is true that many times developers will choose to develop one as the primary mode of play while neglecting the other, which does result in the appearance that there must be a choice between the two. During the development of Guild Wars 2 we have had both PvE and PvP in mind the entire time we’ve been developing the game and we believe that we can deliver a fantastic experience in both cases.
Thank you and the whole team, your fans in the Czech Republic and Slovakia will love you for this exclusive interview.
http://www.guild-hall.cz/index.php/guild-wars-2-interview/252-gh-cz-interview-od-zailyho?start=3
