Alright, ran to Costco and the grocery store, now it's time to mega-post and reply to everyone.
Weeeeeeeee!
Man, Retro, thanks for linking up this skill calculator. I cannot believe how much variety there is between classes and within each class. On the one hand this would have blown my mind seeing it in game the first time, but I'd only get to see the available skills gradually and class by class. I have a feeling there's going to end up being substantially more depth here than people suspect.
Have you looked at the Traits yet? Because that, more than anything, will wildly affect how each player approaches combat, even two of the same profession. They're the little hexagon on the left side. It's worth mentioning, however, that they're from a previous build and some are obviously missing or placeholders. Each trait line will have 12 major traits at launch (so a total of 60 major traits), and those can be swapped out at any time outside of combat. The actual distribution of points (and thus, the Minor traits) cannot, however, so you'll have to head to an NPC to re-spec. Still, the Major traits are the big ones, so it's not too big a deal.
Seriously, it feels like an enormous amount of thought was put into every class. I had no idea how much there was to Guardians before playing around with this thing.
Yeah, I was really focused on the Warrior, but a few nights ago Arken and I were looking over them in steam and there's some really interesting possibilities in there. For example, Arken was looking at a Burn-heavy build while I was looking at a Blind-oriented build. Same class, wildly different tactics.
Here's a question. On Warrior's 1 skill with a mace, it shows like this with two skills under it:
What does that mean?
As others have said, those are chain attacks; pressing 1 once will use the first attack, again the second, a third time will use the third. Warrior ones are alright, but check out the Ranger's Sword Chain:
Slash: Slash your foe.
Kick: Kick and knock back your foe.
Pounce: Leap at target foe.
Yeah...
nice. And remember, you don't HAVE to follow that kick up with the pounce, meaning you can slash, kick, and then start dumping ranged damage into them again.
So if you happen to be a Charr and go with Charrzooka, rifle, med/flame/elixir/grenade, that's
34 skills in total. You're like a walking swiss army knife.
That's why I'm going Charr Engineer; another trick in an already heavy bag. At least, that's the
theory, as Guesong pointed out. In practice, it may not be effective to run with all of those kits, and a lot of that stuff is situational too (Mines, for example). I can see them being effective if you want to dump a lot of damage in a small space or have some kind of damage spike on demand. Players may also see the mines (assuming they can) and be wary, allowing a skilled Engineer to play mind games. You could mine a control point in PVP and make people think twice about stepping into it.
Also, for those that have been waiting so long for this game? Just how has it been waiting that long? I can't imagine the information trickle over that long. I guess it's comparable to other long developed games, but I guess I get to a point where I would just lose interest until it finally comes out.
I had heard about GW2 being in development early on, but didn't really pay it much mind because back in 2007, I was still aimlessly playing WoW and working quite heavily, so I was just too lazy to get interested in anything else. I still bitched about how broken the game was, but it was a nice time sink when I'd get home from a long day at work.
My interest was piqued in late 2009 when the game was first shown and we started to get some details about the Trinity being gone, etc. Once the Manifesto video hit in 2010 and I heard the ANet developers reading my mind, it was all over. I was hooked. The slow trickle has been agony, but now that we're so close, I don't mind. All signs indicate it was worth it.
Ok. Did not know this existed. It seems like there are a ton of ways they've hidden extra skills within the bar so there's more than just "your weapon gives you 3-5 skills" as it seems at first glance.
Elementalist has a nice one too, where they can summon elemental weapons via 4 "Conjure" utility skills. That other players can then pick up and use. Here is one of them, the Lightning Hammer, in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8-9VEvAmFg&hd=1&t=27m26s
There's also a Frost Bow, Earth Shield, and Lava axe. They also have an Elite skill that conjures Fiery Greatswords.
It really gives me a bit of a Monster Hunter vibe - Yes, your basic palette of attacks is somewhat narrow, but there are a number of ways to alter their usage and power.
That, and you have to dodge, position yourself, manage your own health... actually, when you get down to it, GW2 is a bit like a Monster Hunter MMO, minus the survival aspects (gathering all of your supplies, cooking meat, etc.)
Also have you seen the cross profession combos? Adds another element as well.
Dude, stop blowing peoples' minds, it's a lot to take in all at once.
The mechanics themselves seem craaaaazy polished already.
This is due in large part to ArenaNet's constant iterative design process. Instead of just tossing things down on paper, they test the shit out of all of their ideas. If memory serves correctly, more than one class has been heavily revamped based on feedback. Pretty sure it was Thief.
I understand that many of you guys think, and hope, that the game is basically done and only a few technical kinks need to be worked out but the game is still heavily in development. There are a lot of changes that need to be made. Myself, and the officers stated in the podcast that the game is close to being done but there are a lot of work that needs to be done beyond the "polishing" stage.
Yeah, I think we all agreed that there is still a lot to do before Launch, but at this point a summer launch doesn't seem out of the question. We know that the press and closed beta event were running different builds of the game, and that those builds may not have been the most recent iterations. It's also missing a lot of optimization and such. I think next weekend will be the first real chance that we have to see how far along the game really is. Very exciting.
Aaaand that's it, I guess. If you read this far, get yourself a cookie for lunch. You earned it.
