The Vanguard – My Guild Wars Insider Column Debuts
I recently began writing a weekly column for Guild Wars Insider which will focus on the Guardian profession. It will run every Wednesday, and will cover every aspect of playing this awesome profession!
Today’s article is a very brief introduction, but I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to be part of the GWI team!
I had another chance to get some hands on time with Guild Wars 2 during Monday’s stress test. From 11am till 6pm PST, ArenaNet opened the servers once more and allowed us to play the same characters and the same build as the previous beta weekend. My plan was to cram as much structured PvP as possible into the afternoon, but as I wasn’t able to queue up for the first twenty minutes of the stress test, I decided to move on to Plan B.
Plan B ended up being so much fun, I never made it back to The Mists.
It may not seem like much, but the way your character model will account for things like uneven terrain are very nice touches.
I started off running around Divinity’s Reach, just getting a feel for the city and trying to do a better job of capturing its look. One of the main things I love about Guild Wars 2 is the simple pleasure of wandering around a city, overhearing NPC conversations and exploring its streets and buildings. I find myself getting the same sense of wonder and curiosity as I do when I travel abroad in the real world.
While the skyline of Divinity’s Reach is certainly impressive, what blows me away is just how dense it is, and how its streets and alleyways look lifelike and natural. In other MMOs I’ve played, the cities are often laid out in a very simplistic and artificial way. They remind me of the old maps I used to make as a novice Dungeon Master for Dungeons & Dragons. Each of the spaces I designed all fit perfectly within the square block guidelines of my graph paper. They were functional, but sterile and artificial.
In Guild Wars 2, cities like Divinity’s Reach and Lion’s Arch have a very organic look to them much like real cities do. There may be trade districts, but you’ll often find vendors in various areas of the city, seemingly running booths out of whatever space they could find. The alleyways, side streets and dead ends all imply a very natural imperfection – the kind that happens when you take an idea and add the chaos of real people into the mix.
After Divinity’s Reach, I decided to move on to Lion’s Arch and see a few more wonders of the world that I missed during the first beta weekend.
I’m unfamiliar with a lot of the lore from the original Guild Wars, but I do know that the present city of Lion’s Arch rests upon the watery grave of the former city. I had heard you could dive down into its massive harbor and see what remained of the ruins, so I decided to grab my breather and my spear and see for myself. Fans of the original game can probably pick out more distinct landmarks than I could, but even I had to pause and take note of the twin lions still keeping their silent vigil.
Much like the architecture of the cities, Guild Wars 2 does an excellent job at realistically representing the passage of time. My brain knows that the ruins of Old Lion’s Arch are just a collection of art assets, but the attention to detail and the way it complements the lore gives the feeling of a real place that was once inhabited by heroes long dead.
The new city reflects this as well. How do you rebuild a flooded city that is also a graveyard of hundreds of ships? How else? You use what you have on hand and incorporate the ships into the new structures! I respect and admire how logical that sort of thinking is, and how much consideration went into thinking about what real people would have done if confronted with that sort of catastrophe.
After coming up for air, I took a swim over to the diving board that I missed last time I visited Lion’s Arch. I love how fun and frivolous a detail this is for a city that is probably teeming with uncertainty, fear and doubt. As the only city that isn’t associated with one particular race, Lion’s Arch boasts the highest racial diversity of any other place on the map. Bringing together people from all corners of Tyria would mean bringing all of their prejudices as well. The city is run by a Captain’s Council comprised of naval veterans and privateers who were instrumental in carving out a city from the ruins and defending it against the undead minions of the Great Dragon Zhaitan. The threat of the dragon and the walking dead is ever present. It is only natural that a wise ruler would allow his people a means of relaxing and getting some enjoyment out of life.
It’s a long drop off a short plank. I’m sure the humor in that isn’t lost on members of the Captain’s Council or the locals that call Lion’s Arch home.
When you reach the top of the path to the diving board, you can pick up a pair of diving goggles nearby which allow you to twist and tumble during your dive. I tried my best acrobatics, but due to the lag of the stress test event I ended up looking like a man having a seizure mid-air. If you look at the photo above and see the beach far below and to the left…
That is where I am standing in this shot. Even this doesn’t do justice to the scale.
I’ve never played a MMO that rewarded exploration in this manner, and I haven’t even touched upon the hidden jumping puzzle that I stumbled upon while roaming the countryside in Kryta. (More on that in another post.)
Guild Wars 2 is filled with unique places that beg you to find out what is over the next hill or swimming below the waves. After diving, I decided to see just how deep the harbor of Lion’s Arch was. After sinking down into darkness and kelp, I found this fellow who seemed just as surprised to see me.
I could easily go on and talk about every area I visited, but I know I wouldn’t even scratch the surface of what there is to discover in Tyria. In every other MMO I’ve experienced, it was all about leveling as fast as I could in order to play the “real game” at max level. Some of them may have had decent stories; Star Wars: The Old Republic certainly has a stronger personal story than anything I’ve played through in Guild Wars 2 thus far. Other games, like World of Warcraft, may have impressive lore. The problem is that in each of those games, I never really felt a connection with the world around me. I could appreciate what they had to offer, but it was all just window dressing on my way to end game. With Guild Wars 2, playing the game IS the end game. If I want to just jump into structured PvP, I can do that without leveling. I can battle in World vs World from very early on in the game. If I want to backtrack and help a friend in an area that is lower level than I am, I still get a challenge and full experience reward thanks to downscaling. It just makes all other MMOs feel like they were on rails by comparison. The sense of freedom is as refreshing as it can be daunting at times. I’m so conditioned by hovering, yellow punctuation marks that I still catch myself wondering what to do next sometimes.
What I finally realized is that what really sets Guild Wars 2 apart from other MMOs is that other MMOs tell you what you’re supposed to do. Guild Wars to asks you what you want to do.
DISCLAIMER AND INTRODUCTION
Since reviews are just opinions and opinions are subjective, I think it is important to set the stage as to what my gaming preferences are and why I’m playing Tera in the first place. I am not typically a fan of Korean MMOs or JRPGs. The last Final Fantasy I played was FFVII, and while I enjoyed games like Secret of Mana and Xenogears in my youth, it was mainly because they were the only RPGs on the market. Western RPGs at that time were few and far between, and generally weren’t very good. I respect the influence that Asian titles have on videogames, but a lot of the staples of these games just don’t appeal to me. It’s a matter of personal taste. I freely admit it. I like my blue skies to look like blue skies, without random golden runes all over the place. I dislike games which force grinding. I prefer my heroes not all be teenagers with spiked hair. I don’t care for anthropomorphic animals, and I don’t see the need to ever play a character like this one…
Elin. If I understand the lore, they’re ancient beings who assume a child-like, innocent form and not at all the walking fetishes that they appear to be. Maybe in Korea this isn’t creepy.
If Tera was any more Korean, it would come with a side of kimchi. Because of this, when I found myself looking ahead to the 2012 MMO releases, Tera Online wasn’t on my radar. It looked like Aion, and I consider that game to be a dodged bullet. The only reason I decided to give Tera a second look was due to the fact that it comes up frequently in a lot of posts and discussions about Guild Wars 2. Both share a more action-oriented combat style than traditional WoW-based MMOs, and both have fans who claim that their chosen game is the true next gen title. Often these discussions devolve into pointless flame wars arguing the merits of each game while bashing the other. I’ve already purchased Guild Wars 2 and played in a beta weekend, and I already know it will be my MMO of choice once it releases. I love the fluid combat, dynamic events, lack of tanks and healers, the WvW, structured PvP, the quest design and the more familiar western style fantasy setting.
That doesn’t mean Tera doesn’t have anything to offer however, and the passion of the game’s fans piqued my curiosity and made me want to find out what I was missing. Graphically it looked impressive (even if it isn’t my style), and the combat absolutely appeared to be more fluid and skill based than WoW or SW:TOR. I finally convinced myself to try it so I could see first hand what it was all about. I trusted that I could keep an open mind.
I cancelled my auto-renewal subscription within an hour of buying it.
That may sound harsh, but I decided to give Tera 30 days to impress me without any strings attached. Coming off of paying for SW:TOR for five months, I didn’t really feel like making the same mistake of subsidizing a game I didn’t thoroughly enjoy. My goal with Tera is to experience as much of the content as I can in this 30 day window and decide then, and only then, if it is worth a monthly fee.
Please note that I will make frequent comparisons to other MMOs as a means of getting my point across. Game design doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and it is helps to compare and contrast other titles on the market in order to show what makes Tera unique as well as providing points of reference.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Despite my initial reservations, I have found a fair bit about Tera that I really admire. There are plenty of flaws as well, but I’m having fun with the game overall. From a graphical standpoint, Tera is a very pretty game to look at. Character models and the environment are simply fantastic.
My Castanic is a bit too smug for her own good.
My Popori Berserker is named Surly, and he is more fun to play than he should be. The pipe and his disgruntled demeanor just give me joy. The waterfalls of the starting zone make for some breathtaking vistas.
Not everything with the game is perfect in the graphics department however. While I haven’t experienced too many problems early on, issues with model load times can detract from the overall experience.
Greyed out character models aren’t the norm, but they happen frequently enough to be distracting.
Aside from that minor complaint, I haven’t ran into any frame rate or latency issues, despite running the game on high settings on a three year old system. I haven’t visited any major player hubs yet, but everything has been extremely smooth thus far.
The combat is as compelling and action based as I had hoped. Even at early levels it never feels as static and stale as World of Warcraft. Dodging and side-stepping are key to avoiding damage entirely, and it is great to have a game determine your success based on your skill and awareness instead of the stats on your gear. It isn’t perfect, and some classes make more use of mobility than others, but it is certainly a step in the right direction. The only downside is that you have to root yourself in place in order to use abilities. Even default attacks like basic sword swings make you stand in place during the animation. It feels less dynamic and fluid than Guild Wars 2 does, although I suppose a potential upside of this is that victory won’t always mean circle strafing your enemy from range which is a habit I fell into during the Guild Wars 2 beta weekend. Another tradeoff is that enemies in Tera seem to do a much better job (at least at early levels) of indicating when their attacks are coming. If you get hit by a mob in Tera, you’re doing something wrong, but even then you can easily live through a few hits with even lightly armored characters. At least that is how it seems early on. In Guild Wars 2 you can play a heavily armored class and get creamed after only taking a couple of hits, and enemies are much less forgiving in telegraphing their movements. Tera combat is enough to keep me engaged. Guild Wars 2 combat keeps me paranoid – at least in melee.
One feature I’ve found helpful is the ability to adjust your character’s orientation relative to your targetting crosshairs. This allows you to customize the experience to your play style. The following screenshots show examples of the default positioning compared to max right, max left and slightly elevated positioning. I found that using a slight offset of one or two clicks to the left put enemies in the center of my screen, allowing me an unobstructed view of their attack animations. It is a small tweak, but one that I wish more games would take advantage of.
Default position – Centered on Crosshairs
Far Right of Crosshairs
Far Left of Crosshairs
Centered and Slightly Elevated
Another feature of Tera’s combat that I really enjoy is the block ability of the Lancer and Berserker. Blocking attacks replaces your ability to dodge them like other classes can, but it mitigates the damage you would otherwise take from a direct hit. The Lancer excels at this absorption tanking, shrugging off all but a fraction of incoming damage with his block. The Berserker’s block by comparison is more of a parry, and doesn’t deflect as much damage as the Lancer. It makes for interesting combat, and they’re two of my favorite classes to play as a result.
Breaking down the rest of my early impressions is probably best handled with a simple pro and con listing.
PROS
Collision Detection – While I’m uncertain if player collision detection will have a downside at any point, like people crowding around a trainer or quest NPC, I really enjoy enemy collision detection thus far. The fact that you can dodge through enemies makes getting out of tight spots easier, but it still places a lot of emphasis on positioning and control.
Quest Log – Quests in Tera are boring, but at least the log has some nice features. I really like being able to click on the names of NPCs and creatures and have my map highlight their locations. You may not even have to read the quests because of how great the log is.
HUD map and UI – Right out of the gate you can move around all of the UI elements. Being able to resize, hide and customize your UI is something every MMO should launch with. I’m sure even BioWare would agree. The HUD map is extremely nice and functional as well. It almost makes the minimap redundant.
Controller support – This is actually very cool. Chain abilities allow you a brief window to execute follow up attacks in a logical manner. When using a keyboard you simply hit the spacebar to execute the next ability in the chain. With a game controller, I believe your buttons will change on the fly to activate the next ability. I haven’t tried it, but I’m fairly certain this is how it works. It allows you to essentially pair down the controls into a handheld experience, and that is a pretty elegant way to do so. Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
Gathering Buffs – Regardless of if you choose to pursue crafting or not, gathering raw materials gives you a stackable buff to traits like your movement speed, stamina and mana regeneration. It is a small incentive, but it is a nice touch.
Ladders – This may sound like an odd thing to care about, but the addition of surfaces you can climb vertically gives the game an almost platformer feel at times. It also allows for drastic changes in elevation without the need for every bit of terrain to include a wheelchair accessible ramp like other games do. I’m not sure if Tera rewards exploration at all, and I haven’t seen any indication yet that it does, but it would be a shame if not. Combining terrain you can climb with jumping puzzles like those found in Guild Wars 2 could lead to some really devious ways to hide bonus content and rewards.
Ladders, even those made from vines, break up the terrain at points and give you a chance for some nice views.
And since what goes up must come down, it is also important to note that fall damage in Tera won’t kill you. Instead you’ll be taken down to a sliver of health and have to regen or heal yourself somehow. Maybe it changes later on, and I sort of sadistically hope that it does, but it appears you won’t die to cliff bosses in Tera.
CONS
Holy Trinity – Dedicated tanks and healers are still present in Tera. I know some people love that kind of game design, but I’m pretty tired of it. I think it promotes stale PvE content that degrades into formulaic encounters. I could list all of my reasons for not liking the Trinity, but I’ve already written a full article on it. No need to dredge it all up again here.
It is even worse in Tera than in games like WoW or SW:TOR because in Tera your class options for tanks and healers are pretty limited.
Warriors are evasion tanks in Tera, and are highly mobile and fun to play. They require a high skill level. It even says so in the character creation screen. Unfortunately for them, it seems no one wants them to tank. If a bad Warrior gets hit, since he doesn’t have the damage mitigation of a Lancer, he dies. Loose boss. Wipe. Even if he is really good at his job and dodges around, the aggro mechanics mean the boss will promptly turn to face his new position. If this position is facing towards the party or raid, the fight can quickly go badly since all Trinity games rely on bosses NOT doing that. The final barrier to Warrior tanking is that the dungeon finder in Tera currently won’t even allow Warriors to queue up as tanks. I’m not sure how you overlook something like this in a game that launched over a year ago, but they have. So, if you currently want to tank in Tera, you had better roll a Lancer.
Healers are in a better situation, but not by much. There are two healing classes – Priest and Mystic, but thus far it seems far more emphasis is placed upon Priests since their healing style is a bit easier. There is a pretty decent Priest vs Mystic guide on the Tera Forums that helps explain this.
So out of eight possible classes, three are considered highly valuable while the other five are fairly expendable. On the server I’m on chat is filled with people calling for Lancers and Priests to be rolled because you need those two class (along with Mystics to an extent) to run dungeons. This sounds way too familiar to me, and it isn’t something I’m a fan of. I can fortunately get by because I enjoy tanking and my girlfriend is an excellent healer, but it still feels like last generation MMO design to me.
Story and Quests – The story of Tera is window dressing and is in no way important to the game. Something about how reality is two titans dreaming and some kind of darkness and blah blah blah a mysterious island needs explored. I watched the opening cinematics once and it did nothing to ground me in why what I was doing mattered. Even the opening prologue doesn’t make much sense since you start out already at level 20 for the length of it, and then start over at level 1 after it concludes. It’s really sort of pointless.
As far as the quests are concerned, they are all very static and dull and very reminiscent of World of Warcraft. Look for the exclamation point, talk to the guy, spacebar till you can close the dialog box, and then look at your quest HUD to see how many creepy mushroom things need to be killed or who you need to talk to next.
The quests could have remained in Korean for all that it would matter. There is no reason to read any of them.
In a sense, Tera offers the opposite game experience than you’ll find in Star Wars: The Old Republic. IN SW:TOR story matters, and it is easy to get sucked into your character and get a sense of self relative to the world around you. Listening to quest dialog, at least the first time through, really enhances the experience. Where the wheels come off is in the actual combat, which is pretty standard.
In Tera, the story is almost an afterthought. I’ve already logged numerous hours without reading or caring about a single quest. I have no real sense of my character being MINE other than my name showing up near my health bar. I feel no need to do anything except click through it all as quickly as possible so I can get back to the fun and interesting combat the game provides.
Lack of Gear Customization – I know I’ve only scratched the surface of Tera thus far, but gear upgrades don’t really feel like uprgades at this point. Even if they were only cosmetic in nature that would be something, but most of my gear upgrades only offer a change in color. Weapons vary a little in design, but each class is locked to an extremely specific weapon set. Lancers always lance. Warriors always have twin swords. Sorcerers always have Tron discs. I understand there are crystals and glyphs and whatnot down the road that offer means of customization for your character, but I prefer being able to changes things up a bit. If I want my Warrior to use a giant, two-handed mace, then he should be able to do so. Maybe a lot of people won’t mind, but it bugs me.
The difference between a level 1 and a level 20 weapon is almost purely statistical in nature. As a Sorcerer, you’re still Tron in robes.
Gathering Failures?! – Apparently you can fail at mining or picking an herb in Tera, and it is a stupid and pointless mechanic. If I have the ability and skill level to gather a node, then don’t implement some crappy failure chance. This is just a old school grind mechanic and it has no place in modern gaming.
Mob Tagging – Another throwback to previous generations of MMOs, mob tagging and kill stealing is in full effect in Tera. Maybe I am spoiled by my recent experience with Guild Wars 2, but I hate this mechanic. If someone tags a mob, and I am not grouped with them, then I have no real incentive to help them. Additionally, if you have a number of people in a given area working on the same quest individually, you’re actually competing with them over spawns instead of cooperating with them. You always have the option of forming a party, but that’s not a very organic experience unless it is a guild mate or friend. Generally this whole system just means that the players around you are just in your way, and you are in theirs.
I’ve had a handful of times when an Archer tags a mob I am already swinging at with my Lancer. He then turns and fights another mob safe with the knowledge that if I kill it, he still gets the loot and experience. I can run off and drop aggro on the mob, but that usually wastes more time than it saves. It sucks. Any non-PvP mechanic that makes me see people around me as potential opposition is tedious and irritating.
The Keymap – Maybe this is minor, but it bugs me. You can’t click in Tera. Not a real problem for most players, and not one for me, but it means you have to rely on either a game controller or keybinds. What bothers me about this is that the keymap and help messages that pop up during play all reference the default binds. If you’ve taken the time to remap your binds, neither the keymap image nor the pop ups reflect the changes. It is a small complaint, but it is a little aggravating to always see “Hit the F key to interact with this chick in the tight dress” when my F key doesn’t do squat. Don’t even get me started on F1-F12. I use a Naga and Nostromo. I don’t even touch my keyboard except to type. F11 can kiss my ass!
No matter how you change your binds, this keymap stays the same.
No Organized PvP – There aren’t any battlegrounds or warzones in Tera Online. I’ve heard organized PvP is coming at some point, but it seems like half the MMO is missing. Maybe it isn’t fair that a lack of PvP in Tera bothers me while a lack of raiding in Guild Wars 2 doesn’t, but I guess I prefer dynamic content over rinse and repeat boss fights. Someone else may feel the exact opposite.
CONCLUSION
I’ve only just begun my adventures in Tera, and while there are several issues with the game that will likely make this a short term experience for me, I can at least understand why a lot of people would enjoy it. Many of the same aspects of the game that I dislike might be selling points for another player.
What I can’t argue with is that Tera offers a gorgeous and different experience than traditional MMOs like WoW or SW:TOR. It is absolutely worth playing if you’re on the fence about giving it a shot. The combat is challenging and fun almost in the same way that an action game is rather than a MMO, and it makes up for a lot of the shortcomings found in the questing system.
Looking ahead, I’ve talked my girlfriend into playing it with me, so rolling Lancer and Priest should provide us with a chance to duo Big Ass Monsters (BAMs) found in the game and to participate in dungeon content. I’ll post additional impressions of that content, and of higher levels of play, at another time. I’m not sure how much time we’ll spend in Tera now that Diablo 3 is less than a week away, but I’m planning to enjoy my 30 days and see what happens. It’s a big, colorful world out there, and it is fun to see where it leads.
I’ll also attempt to solo as much as I can with my Berserker, only because I can’t pass up the chance to run around on this ridiculous little Winston Churchill, pipe smoking, axe wielding, badger-dog.
This is an excellent video that completely describes the crafting process in Guild Wars 2 as far as the first pre-purchase beta weekend went.
Amazing work, and I look forward to future videos.
I should probably start with the disclaimer that my time with the Thief was a bit less than either the Warrior or Guardian. Seeing as it was my first time playing the game, I found it incredibly difficult to STOP playing to try other things. I consider that the highest compliment I can pay to the game or ArenaNet.
When I did purposefully make time to experience the Thief, I was impressed in many regards and surprised in others.
As with the other professions, I enjoyed early experimentation with the various weapon skills. Running with double daggers was as brutally fun as I had hoped, and got myself into trouble more than once using Leaping Death Blossom when faced with a pack of tightly grouped enemies. Heartseeker is also a great finisher that does more damage to the enemy when he has less health.
What surprised me, however, was just how effective the ranged weapon sets were with the Thief. Similar to the Warrior, when I think of a rogue archetype in a MMO I think melee. The problem I faced in PvE with melee was two fold: First and foremost, during large dynamic quests and events the melee area can become a killing field as particle effects obscure the boss and the outline of any harmful AoEs. Secondarily, and specific to the Thief in solo play, a number of the stealth skills that I tried out completely reset the enemy I was fighting when I used them. While these same abilities may prove to make the Thief a slippery foe in PvP, in PvE is just meant wasting time starting the encounter over again from scratch – often after draining my Initiavite bar.
I didn’t have any such problems with the ranged weapon sets, and each of them were a lot of fun to play, both in a practical sense and in how well done their animations and sound effects were.
As far as sheer fun went, nothing compared to dual pistols!
Go ahead. Make his day.
| Pistol | Stealth Skill |
 |
 0 |
A rapid-fire attack that causes bleeding. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Main hand |
 |
0 |
Bleed your foe with a shot to the vitals. | |
 |
3 |
Make your foe vulnerable with a body shot. | ||
| Pistol + Pistol |
 |
5 |
Blast your foe repeatedly with both pistols. | |
| Off hand |
 |
5 |
Fire a shot with black powder, creating a smoke cloud that blinds nearby enemies. | |
 |
5 |
Daze your foe with a head shot. |
Running and gunning with pistols imbued my Thief with a Swashbuckling feel, and was as effective as it was entertaining.
1. Vital Shot – The default shot stacks bleeds and has zero Initiative cost. Similar to the Warrior’s rifle, I loved having my default ability be more than just a flat damage number. Bleeds are my favorite condition at the moment because as any Predator fan knows – if it bleeds, you can kill it.
2. Body Shot – My set up shot. Vulnerability makes everything else hit a bit harder by reducing the target’s armor. Since it stacks in intensity, softening up tougher opponents in group play with a couple of these shots back to back worked pretty well.
3. Unload – My favorite of the dual skills! The animation is wonderful, and the only thing that could make this any better is if my Thief spit out a toothpick and a group of doves took flight in slow motion just before I fired. The ability to use this twice in a row if you have a full Initiative bar makes the best possible use of a combo field. After all, the only thing better than shooting people with a ridiculous amount of bullets is shooting people with a ridiculous amount of bullets that are ON FIRE!
4. Black Powder – A very solid escape ability, especially if followed by a dodge or strafe. Blind is one of my favorite conditions, especially for PvP since the auto miss can really frustrate an opponent who wasted an ability with a cooldown. I’d use it along with some choice utility skills to gain distance and keep myself out of trouble.
5. Head Shot – Another great way to tilt the odds in your favor. Daze puts all of your opponent’s abilities on cooldown. Weaving in a couple Vital Shots with two of these can shut down an enemy long enough for your heal to come off cooldown or to give your endurance bar a chance to fill up again.
As far as the Stealth skill is concerned, I don’t recall ever using Sneak Attack. I’m inclined to assume that it works rather well as an opener, or mid-fight when you’re in PvP or not the only person fighting an enemy in PvE, but I didn’t employ a lot of stealth abilities by design after a handful of mobs reset on me mid-fight.
The other weapon I had a great experience with was the shortbow.
| Shortbow | Stealth Skill |
 |
|
Shoot an arrow that Immobilizes your foe. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Both hands |
 |
0 |
Bounce an arrow off multiple nearby foes. | |
 |
3 |
Fire a cluster bomb at target area. Detonate in midair for multiple explosions. | ||
 |
|
Detonate your cluster bomb in midair. | ||
 |
3 |
Do an Evasive leap away from your foe while firing a crippling shot. | ||
 |
4 |
Fire an arrow that fills the target area with a poisonous cloud. | ||
 |
6 |
Fire an arrow and shadow step to target area, blinding nearby enemies. |
The shortbow is so potent, especially against multiple enemies, that I couldn’t think of a valid reason to use anything else. It is extremely powerful and versatile. While it probably goes against the grain of conventional thought in the same way a rifle based Warrior does, you can’t really argue with the results or how fun it is to use.
1. Trick Shot – Bouncing shots is AoE damage that will target up to five enemies in range. Without a cooldown or Initiative cost, I found I could handle multiple enemies with ease when combined with the right utility skills.
2. Cluster Bomb – AoE combo finisher. The timing of the secondary Detonate ability takes a little practice, but the fire and forget single shot explosion is enough to make this worth using against multiple enemies.
3. Disabling Shot – Gap opener. Great way to put some distance between you and your opponent and slow his movement at the same time.
4. Choking Gas – Combo field. Respectable damage and the poison condition reduces your opponent’s healing.
5. Infiltrator’s Arrow – Gap closer. Gap opener. Awesome travel ability. Wherever you need to be, Infiltrator’s Arrow gets you there in style. The AoE blind is just the icing on the cake.
I can’t imagine playing a Thief and not using the shortbow even if only for the mobility advantage it provides. Infiltrator’s Arrow isn’t spammable, but it is certainly able to be used with Disabling Shot to create a respectable gap between you and your opponent. If using a melee off set, IA is also wonderful for closing in and buying you time with Blind so you can swap weapons and get stabby. While it won’t work for scaling keeps in WvW, it is fun to see just where you can position yourself with a little creativity.
For my healing skill, I swapped out Hide in Shadows as soon as I could. The Regeneration was great and the stealth would have been nice in PvP, but for PvE I found the mob reset annoying while soloing. Instead I chose to pick up Signet of Malice.
| Signet |
 |
 20 |
 4 |
Passive: Grants health when you attack. Active: Gain health. |
|---|
I love this ability. The more damage I do, the more I heal myself. It is like a point rewards system on a credit card from Assassin’s Bank. If you believe the best defense is a good offense, then this signet has you covered.
The utility skills I chose were:
 |
30 |
5 |
Signet Passive: Grants a 10% increase in movement speed. Signet Active: Blind and immobilize the target foe. |
 |
30 |
1 |
Trick. Scatter caltrops that Bleed and Cripple foes. |
He who controls how the battle is fought usually wins the war. Both of these came in extremely handy for my range build, and kiting enemies through and around a field of caltrops was the kind of nasty business that put a smile on my face. I love them so much than any Thief build I play will make use of the Uncatchable trait in the Trickery line. Leaving behind a set of spiked beauties with every dodge is too good to pass up.
Signet of Shadows is like Christmas morning. All it’s missing is a red bow. Movement speed is a huge advantage in every area of the game, and increasing my mobility while being able to deny my enemy theirs is the key to how an average player like myself can win against a superior force.
In structured PvP I could have fully built out my Thief with the final utility skill and an elite skill, but I find the slow and steady power aquisition of PvE better for learning a class. Now that I have an understanding of the core mechanics, I look forward to taking the Thief out for some quality structured PvP time next beta weekend.
THE JUDGEMENT
I can see where the Thief would be a lot of fun to play, especially if you have a sadistic streak and not only want to defeat your enemies but frustrate them in the process. As with each of the professions I’ve played so far, I was happy to see that there are multiple ways to build out a Thief to suit your play style. Guild Wars 2 is also the only MMO I can recall where a Thief could be built to fill a somewhat supportive role, using traits that give boons to your allies every time you Steal or sharing your venom utility skills with them.
The Initiative system for the Thief works just as I had hoped, and it truly adds another level of strategy to your experience as you can ignore cooldowns so long as you have Initiative points to spend.
The Steal mechanic was another area where I enjoyed a great deal of experimentation, although the system’s major drawback is that it is entirely based upon trial and error. There aren’t any tooltips in the game that will let you know ahead of time what the benefit stealing from a particular mob may be. The idea of using an enemy’s own weapons against them has a lot of appeal, and I think it will only get better as ArenaNet refines it between now and launch.
My only real complaint is with Stealth. It is rewarding to finally have an MMO where being in stealth is the exception instead of the rule, although I am sure many who love their rogues in WoW will disagree. The one major drawback to it is the aforementioned mob reset. My suggestion to ArenaNet would be to have mobs enter an alerted state that was a middle ground between active combat and total reset. It wouldn’t have to be long. Three or four seconds at most would be enough to pop a quick heal or get off a weapon stealth skill and get right back into the fight. I think this would greatly enhance the Thief game play and would also make enemy AI appear a bit more realistic.
Good vs Evil.
Jedi vs Sith.
Star Wars: The Old Republic centers on the classic confrontations between Light and Dark that we all know and love from the films.
The one thing I don’t recall seeing in the movies was a time when members of the Republic just sat around complaining about how they were outnumbered, and how it was unfair, and that George Lucas should stop shooting the movie and do something about it. You think Luke Skywalker would have wasted time on forums? HELL NO! He capitalized on years of practical womp rat killing experience and blew up the friggin Death Star! Unfortunately, I can’t read a SW:TOR forum or listen to a podcast without hearing how faction imbalance in the game is some sort of atrocity that needs fixed or moderated somehow by BioWare. A number of players seem to suffer from the mass delusion that imbalance in SW:TOR actually means something, and they’re all wrong.
This is why.
1. The leveling experience is fairly tame.
Don't worry, Republic. The Imperials aren't threatening till max level.
SW:TOR offers a very insulated and safe leveling experience, even on PvP servers. You won’t cross paths with members of the opposite faction until you’re about half way to max level. Oldrepublic.net features an impressive planet progression map which highlights this. This gives ample time for players to familiarize themselves with their abilities safe from predatory players. A fair number of the planets are even faction specific and don’t even allow the opposing faction to set foot on them. As it stands, there won’t be any sort of plundering and occupation of Coruscant or Korriban unless BioWare decides to create some sort of special instanced event.
Beyond this segregation, the other big factor that impedes spontaneous open world encounters is how frustratingly tedious it is to go from one planet to another. While patch 1.2 has cut down on the number of orbital station load screens we have to suffer through needlessly, that doesn’t mean that getting around is convenient. There aren’t any summoning mechanics or methods of fast travel directly from one planet to another. People tend to stay one whatever planet they’re on and focus on some other non-PvP oriented task rather than roaming the galaxy looking to pick a fight.
Even if you stumble over an enemy player in the open world somewhere, and even if you decide to fight, you always have the option to simply rez at the medical center and avoid corpse camping – essentially eliminating one of the major driving factors of open world PvP. It makes perfect sense from the point of view of BioWare wanting to reduce player frustration. Odd as it may seem however, corpse camping led to escalation of warfare in other games. Many a Southshore vs Tarren Mill battle in WoW began as single player getting camped and calling for backup, and ended up looking like something out of Braveheart. With the aforementioned inconvenience involved with planet hopping, even if you happen to need help, it probably isn’t going to come from another planet. At best you may see a handful of local players get involved, especially on lower population servers.
2. Instanced PvP is King – and the King is Benevolent.
PvP in SW:TOR means Warzones. That’s where the rewards primarily come from, so that’s where people go. Without any incentive for open world PvP, and with Ilum broken and discarded for the time being, Warzones are where players need to go to kill one another with elegant weapons during this civilized age. Faction imbalance in other games can make queues for battlegrounds an extremely hit or miss affair. Prior to cross servers BGs in WoW, it was quite common to wait for over an hour for a single game. Today’s players don’t have the patience for that anymore, nor should they. Luckily BioWare came along and gave us the possibility of fighting in Warzones against your own faction. Even if you’re server’s faction balance is skewed to comical proportions, you can still find near instant queues provided your server has a decent population to begin with. Until patch 1.2 this may have meant a whole lot of Huttball for some people, but we have more inter-faction options available now. Everyone can participate and earn rewards.
At the very worst, one could theorize that faction imbalance may have given one faction more Huttball practice than the other. So what? That same logic means the minority faction got more consistent time in the other Warzones. You could also make the argument that inter-faction Warzones meant that the faction with superior numbers could gear up faster, but even this is pretty thin. With patch 1.2 you can purchase PvP gear with credits so no one has to start from scratch. It still may come down to which team has the highest amount of expertise on their gear, but it probably has a lot more with which team has two partial premades of Battlemasters on it.
3. SW:TOR encourages, promotes and incentivizes cross-faction alts on the same server.
Legacy is a pretty big thing in SW:TOR, and the bonuses apply cross-faction. There are so many incentives to level characters on both sides of the force that some guild leaders complained during the Guild Summit that BioWare was eroding the cohesiveness of their guilds. Everyone has a main, at least in theory, but tons of people have already leveled and geared up multiple characters in both PvE and PvP. It isn’t exactly hard to do in SW:TOR. Not everyone has the same time available to them as everyone else, but that’s sort of a non-issue on a long enough timeline. If you believe the grass is greener on Korriban (it isn’t), then nothing is stopping you from coming to the Dark Side and trying it out.
I love my Powertech. There is no doubt I consider that Bounty Hunter as my main. On the PvP front however, I had the most fun in SW:TOR I’ve ever experienced on my Vanguard. I didn’t have to tank with him. There was never a need to respec or worry over multiple gear sets. It was the mirror class, but offered just enough differences to be unique. Hell, it was worth it for the story alone. If I really wanted to swap sides and center on Republic as my PvP faction of choice, I could do so with my Trooper very easily and without the hesitations or aversions I have towards doing so in other MMOs. You fight your own faction in Warzones half the time anyway, so what does it really matter?
BioWare clearly understands that the strength of their game resides in the leveling experience, so which faction you’re on and who outnumbers who is mostly irrelevant. Go where you have the most fun. You don’t really have to worry about which side of the fence is greener when BioWare added a revolving door.
4. Players say they want an Open World PvP zone, but they really don’t.
James Ohlen, a man I greatly respect and admire from his Baldur’s Gate contributions, is a pretty smart guy.
After the Ilum collapse, he created a poll and forum topic asking players what they want in an Open PvP experience. Here are the options:
What kind of Open World PVP excites you most?
‘Raw’ Open World – faction vs faction, with no faction population restriction mechanics AKA ‘true’ Open World PvP. Factions claim objectives.
PvPvE balanced – bolstering the underdog faction through NPCs, turrets, etc. Factions claim objectives.
Faction population capped – strict balancing in place between faction populations in objective areas. Factions claim objectives.
Guild based – everyone is your enemy except players in your guild. Guilds claim objectives.
The majority of players currently opted for the PvPvE balanced approach with almost 50% of total votes. But that’s not true open world PvP. It’s Wintergrasp 2.0 in the making. Once you create mechanics to make everything ‘fair and balanced’, it isn’t open anymore. Since that isn’t the case, the whole concept of faction imbalance no longer applies.
Ilum was egg on BioWare’s face, and I’d wager it was enough that they lost subscriptions over it when combined with buggy Operations and lack of other basic MMO features that 1.2 has now partially corrected. They’re smart though. Just listen to Georg Zoeller speak, and tell me he doesn’t sound like a Bond villain. I’m willing to bet that, whatever they have in mind, they’re smart enough not to make the same mistakes twice. I’m not sure what form it will take, or how long it will take to implement, but I’m hopeful it will be the last nail in the faction imbalance argument – at least for a little while. You may never fully put it to rest in a game centered on binary factions, but in SW:TOR imbalance doesn’t really count for much.
I have had a few discussions recently involving the usefulness of the Holy Trinity in MMO design, and whether or not a move away from it is the next step in MMO evolution. In this article, I’ll speak of what I refer to as “Traditional MMOs”. MMOs in this category are those including World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic and other similar titles where the Trinity exists. While these titles are certainly successful, they represent old design that makes for static, UI driven combat which brings people together out of co-dependence rather than interdependence. (More on that later.)
Let’s begin with what exactly the phrase Holy Trinity means.
WHAT IS THE HOLY TRINITY?
The Holy Trinity in MMOs refers to three basic and traditional roles that every single character falls into:
1. Tank – A high health, highly damage resistant player who has the sole focus of getting and maintaining the attention of enemies and withstanding the punishment they dish out. The idea is that the demon/dragon/giant enemy crab would kill anyone else in a single blow, but the Tank survives because his or her gear, class and skills/talents are all focused on mitigating or avoiding enough of it to take a few hits. They’re the masochists of the MMO genre, and pride themselves on being able to take a punch. Every fight revolves around the same concept for tanks… “How can I put myself in harm’s way?”
If you’ve ever watched the original Rocky, then you’ve seen a perfect example of a tank.
Meat Shield
While it may surprise you as to which one in the picture I’ve given the title to, the reason for this is pretty simple: tanks aren’t really good for much other than this one, highly specific job. Dedicated tanks often romanticize their role, (I’ve been guilty of it) and there can be aspects of tanking that are dynamic and require precision and timing. At the end of the day however, the boss is a German Shepard, and the tank is a hotdog stuffed inside a chew toy. In a traditional MMO only 1 or 2 players per group are tanks, depending on group size, for this very reason.
2. DPS – Stands for “Damage Per Second” – a basic measurement for how much pain you can dish out over the course of a fight. The higher the number, the better you are at video games and the more attractive you are to members of the opposite sex. The acronym also stands for the people who will make up the majority of your group in a traditional MMO. They are the sadists of the MMO genre. They can be split into melee or ranged DPS, but generally share common traits of being egotistical, completely self-absorbed and dedicated to one thing and one thing only – their own damage output relative to everyone else around them. And by everything else I mean their own survival, the survival of those around them, or even if the enemy you’re fighting dies or not. All of it is secondary. They may possess some utility abilities as well (like being able to crowd control enemies and prevent them for hurting other players), but since there are no meters to track the numerical significance of such things, they generally don’t do them unless tasked to do so. If they die, someone else is generally to blame. If the group fails, it is because of a weak link elsewhere in the chain (and they have the combat log numbers to prove it). DPS players are the least important members of the Trinity, yet suffer from the deepest delusions of self-importance. Certainly there are exceptions to this mindset, but not many.
The fact remains, however, that the only reason DPS is important is because (in most traditional MMO boss encounters) there are artificially imposed fail conditions called “enrage timers” that are put into place to prevent groups from stacking enough tanks and healers to slowly defeat the boss without much effort. Unless you have enough DPS in your group, the boss finally has enough of you, gets bored and finally obliterates you for willingly entering its lair. How he is suddenly only now able to do this requires a suspension of disbelief that good encounter designers must stay up all night thinking about, searching for ways to logically weave the reason into the story. Mediocre designers on the other hand, just don’t give a shit.
Need an example of DPS? Say hello to Clubber Lang.
"My Prediction? Pain."
3. Healer – Last, but certainly not least, we have the healer. If tanks are masochists, and DPS are sadists, then healers are the enablers of traditional MMOs. The reason I list them last is because without the other two, they really have no purpose. They only exist to ensure others can live to do their jobs, and their role is to make sure that no one else has to suffer the consequences of standing in front of a boss and intentionally taking damage, or blindly wandering into areas containing fire, acid, poison or any manner of deadly hazards.
"I TOLD him not to fight. I was OOM!"
They are highly specialized players, like tanks, only their specialization is to sit back and essentially play a separate mini-game from everyone else. This game is usually played by mousing over draining health bars and making them fill up again by pressing different buttons depending on how much of the bar they need to fill and how much available time they have to fill it. The skill of this game centers on managing a limited healing resource – like mana – in order to fuel your heals. This game is generally the same, offering only slight variations in the background location it’s played in, and regardless of the complexity of the encounter everyone else is participating in. In fact, I’d wager anyone with some rudimentary programming skills could make a downloadable app for the iOS called “MMO HEALER!” that simulated this easily enough without costing $15 a month to play.
Good healers will be there for you no matter how reckless you are, or how many times you blame them for your own stupid mistakes. If you’re lucky, they won’t even say “I told you so” and remind you how they told you NOT to pull the next pack of mobs until they were at full mana. Typically you only bring the bare minimum number of healers needed to keep everyone alive since they tend to nag a lot and wear silly red hats.
So… what’s the problem? Obviously the Holy Trinity works. Ten million WoW players can’t be wrong.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE HOLY TRINITY?
Short version: It is stale. It is predictable. It makes content formulaic. It centers on playing the UI and not the game. And it brings people together out of co-dependency instead of interdependency.
Allow me to expand on that a bit.
Familiarity can be a good thing. As my friend Emmet summarized, developers stick with the Trinity because “there is no risk of spending millions of dollars over several years to create a system that is either intrinsically broken or is so unfamiliar to the gamers that you do not succeed”. But familiarity ofter breeds contempt as well. The Trinity isn’t broken, but we’ll never really push the MMO genre forward unless we’re unafraid to take risks. Status quo design leads to stale gameplay and games that are just new versions of ones we’ve all played before.
The same formulaic content that makes group content easy to approach in Trinity games also makes them boring. We live in an era of gaming where boss strategies can be found as fast as you can alt-tab out to a website. Sure, it takes execution to succeed, but it is still essentially paint by numbers. The top 1% of players will kill a boss, the strategies will find their way online, and the remaining 99% just follow it step by step. The very knowledge that you’ll have a set number of tanks, healers and DPS each and every time means encounters have to fall within certain parameters that are predictable. Furthermore, once you defeat the boss the first time and it gets placed on “farm status”, it just becomes a repetitive task. It is static content. I could still log into WoW right now and defeat content based almost entirely on memory.
As far as the UI differences go between games that are built around the Holy Trinity and those that aren’t, I have an entire article about it already on the site . The short version is that games that are based around the Trinity end up being experiences where you play the UI instead of the game. This is especially true for healers. Your screen is not only cluttered with a myriad of different abilities – most of which are situational but that you need on hand in case that one situation pops up – but you also need meters and bars and mods to support your gameplay. Below is an example of what I mean. Grid is a powerful addon for WoW, but it is often the only thing many healers stare at during encounters. This is your game. Everything else going on around you is just scenery. Sometimes that scenery may kill you if you’re not looking, but that’s what peripheral vision and other mods are for.
Image from Mystic Chicanery
So what is with all the psychological references about dependency?
The idea about this article was rolling around in the back of my head, and I just happened to be listening to the Tales of Tyria podcast on the way to work one morning. (ToT is an excellent Guild Wars 2 podcast! Check your local listings.) During this particular episode, at around the 18:30 mark they began discussing a PC Gamer article in which author Chris Thursten asked developers at ArenaNet about Guild Wars 2 and its departure from using the Holy Trinity. In the article, and during the podcast, questions arose regarding teamwork vs dependency and co-dependence vs interdependence. I realized these kinds of themes really helped me put my ideas into context, and how I see it is this…
Co-dependence is relying on others to provide what we are not providing for ourselves.
In traditional MMOs, this is exactly what the Trinity is designed to do. We can’t fully provide for ourselves. Just sit in any city or population hub in a traditional MMO and look at general chat. Try to find a dungeon group as a DPS player. How long do you typically wait? How many times do you see phrases like “Looking for Tank” or “Need Heals” scroll by your text window? The level of specialization offered by the Trinity comes at a price.
Even in player versus player combat, the team with the best healers generally wins. You can get by without a tank just fine (although depending on the MMO and the type of battleground you’re in, a tank can be a big benefit), but fighting without healers is suicide. It gets to a point that controlling and neutralizing the enemy healers becomes the main objective instead of the actual objective the game expects you to focus on.
In fact, in any traditional MMO, you will reach a point that the game becomes unplayable unless you have the right balance of the Trinity represented. That is co-dependence. The other real downside is that once you fill your needed tanking and healing roles, you don’t really need more. It limits your ability to play with the people you want to play with unless they also happen to fill the appropriate role you happen to need. You may hear phrases like “Bring the player, not the class”, but that only gets you so far in a Trinity game.
Independence is being self-reliant and completely capable of providing for your own needs.
In an MMO setting, this is solo play. It’s just you, and maybe a pet or non-player companion, against the world.
This is also what champions of the Holy Trinity rally against and cite as an example of what threatens to make MMOs who stray from it bland and homogenized. After all, if you can do everything, then why do you need other people? It’s a fair point, and one that needs to be explored as more and more MMOs become more solo-friendly. I consider this fear to be unfounded, however, given the other ways we have to differentiate ourselves from other players in different game genres. I think the article quote from ArenaNet developer Jon Peters says it best when he’s talking about shooters like Team Fortress 2. “No-one would tell you that everyone in Team Fortress just does damage,” he says. “No-one would say a Spy and a Heavy are the same because they both do damage – they’re very different playstyles. They have a very good sense of purpose.”
The incentive to group with people shouldn’t be limited to a cost-benefit analysis of the specific buffs they bring or role they fill inside the Trinity. You can remain independent and fully capable and not have that automatically mean you’re a loner or a carbon copy of everyone else around you. In fact, a group of independent people can still come together and become greater than the sum of their parts. Which brings us to…
Interdependence – The synergistic combination of multiple self-reliant people who provide for the needs of the whole.
Taking a queue from Jon, and drawing upon my own recent experience with Tribes: Ascend, I can honestly say there is no way I feel a team in Capture The Flag feels homogenized. I can fill every role as a Technician. I can guard our flag, capture the enemy flag, chase down enemy runners, provide support for our runners, and guard and repair our team’s generator and base defenses. I may be better suited towards generator defense, and there are reasons Technicians excel at it, but I can be just as brutally effective in other ways on the battlefield. On the other hand, I can decide to play a Doombringer or a Pathfinder and have a very different playing experience within the same game even though we’re all similarly equipped with guns and jetpacks. I can choose to do it, but I don’t have to. And even if I stick with my Technician across 20 games in a row, I can end up with 20 different experiences based on what roles my team has covered and what they need most when I join. It is my willingness and ability to adapt to the situation, and that same willingness and ability in others around me, that makes us a team.
That is interdependence, and that is why it is superior to co-dependence.
And that’s why there is not only life after the Holy Trinity, but why better and more dynamic MMO experiences are on the horizon.
OUT WITH THE OLD. IN WITH THE NEW.
So how can we play in a MMO without dedicated tanks and healers? ArenaNet hopes to answer that question with Guild Wars 2 when it launches later this year.
In Guild Wars 2, each of the eight classes are designed to be interdependent. Everyone has the ability to self-heal, and you can heal others with proximity and ground targeted abilities. The lack of direct target healing means you can play the same game as your friends without the need to stare at health bars. Everyone can tank based upon proximity to the mob you’re fighting, but not for long. Tank swapping is something you’ll work together with everyone to do, like a pack of wolves taking down dangerous prey. To top it off, everyone can put out respectable damage while supporting the group as a whole. The specialization and customization comes from how you want to perform these roles and which you’d prefer to focus on most.
You leave Tank, Healer and DPS behind and you move on to Control, Support and Damage.
CONTROL isn’t a totally new concept to MMOs, but the emphasis placed on it in Guild Wars 2 will be a step forward. Most damage in the game is avoidable. You can dodge out of it or control your opponents in such a way as to negate their ability to harm you. This is something new for people coming from WoW or SW:TOR, and it can seem like a bitter pill to swallow for people who love healing and tanking in those games. The good news for these players is they can still be just as valuable. It just requires a new mindset.
I liken it it to a dilemma I recently had. For an upcoming Pathfinder game, my friends and I were all currently deciding which classes to play. No one wanted to be stuck with the healer. It can be a gratifying role, but it is more of a necessary evil than anything. In researching classes, I discovered an article about playing a Wizard in which the author stated that dedicated healers aren’t useful in combat because they are reactive instead of proactive.
He states that, “The Wizard will alter reality to prevent damage, a healer will try to do damage control after the damage has been taken. The mechanics of the game make preventing damage more efficient then healing damage after the fact. That’s not to say a well placed heal never has use in combat – but if you’re doing your job – it should never be required as a primary role.”
In Guild Wars 2, there are all sorts of ways to control your enemies via conditions. You can blind, cripple, fear, bleed, knockdown, daze, immobilize, push, pull and even confuse your enemy – which actually makes your enemy take damage if they use an ability. Tanks and healers can now look to become controllers who prevent damage and dictate what enemies do (and to whom) by use of positioning and conditions. If you want to center your class build around control through liberal use of conditions, you can easily do so.
SUPPORT is the other way you can gain the upper hand on your opponents and boost the effectiveness of your allies. Again, it isn’t a new concept, but it is cranked up to eleven in Guild Wars 2. It isn’t about providing a few class specific buffs before the fight, but rather giving your allies boons they can benefit from in the middle of the action. You can boost their damage output, critical strike rating, health regeneration, movement speed, ability to sustain damage and even make it so enemies take damage if they attack them.
You can also support your allies through interesting skill and talent choices unlike anything I’ve seen in other MMOs. For example, it is possible to build a Thief who every time he uses his Steal ability will poison and weaken his opponent while buffing his nearby allies with increased damage, critical strike rating and movement speed. Furthermore, every time he uses a poison utility skill, the poison will apply to his allies’ weapons as well. It is just one of several ways you can build out a thief, but the fact that you can take a class that isn’t traditionally known for being supportive and have it fill a heavy support role is impressive.
DAMAGE is still very much the same old role, but now everyone can do it. No one has to feel like they need to respec or grab a friend in order to walk around in the open world and be able to hold their own. You can still specialize in damage output, but you have to realize up front that your survival is primarily your own responsibility. Glass cannons won’t have anyone else to blame if they die.
The end result is that combat and content can be much more dynamic. Tanking and spanking won’t cut it. Everyone needs to adapt to situations that can change in a much more fluid way, and no one can afford to get complacent because no one is safe. You can play with your friends regardless of their class and tackle anything the game throws at you as long as you are skilled enough to defeat it.
Only time will tell if ArenaNet’s gamble will pay off, but I have a feeling that its very existence will be enough to bring much needed change to the MMO genre.
If you’d like to delve even deeper into the subject, here are a few resources that can help:
There is an awesome video by WoodenPotatoes that covers the lack of Holy Trinity in Guild Wars 2.
A great article by MesmerPL highlights the transition from Holy Trinity to the Control, Support and Damage model of Guild Wars 2.
Finally, Guild Wars Insider has a page that details all of the conditions and boons present in Guild Wars 2, so you can get a clearer picture of how these all work.
Regardless if you’re talking about the movies, books or the new MMO from BioWare, Star Wars always seems to revolve around defining moments. There is that fork in the path where a character is faced with a decision that will not only affect his own life, but potentially the fate of the galaxy. Han returns to help Luke destroy the Death Star. Luke refuses to kill Vader. Vader refuses to let his son be destroyed. Leia never reveals the location of the hidden rebel base, putting quite a dent in Alderaan’s tourism business.
Now, with the massive Legacy patch to Star Wars: The Old Republic, the defining moment for BioWare’s MMO has arrived. Will this be shot in the arm the game desperately needs? Can it carve out a lasting spot for itself as a AAA subscription MMO? Or will subscription numbers dwindle once again, sending it towards the dark path of obscurity? I won’t try to tackle every single change–that’s what patch notes are for–but I’ll at least give you my initial impressions.
Let me start by saying that I really love what BioWare has done in their game, and for MMOs in general, in regards to storytelling and making your character feel like an individual instead of just another stat sheet. I have more empathy and attachment to my Bounty Hunter after a few months than I ever did for any of my World of Warcraft characters after years of playing them. The leveling experience in SW:TOR is much richer and interesting than in WoW too, and unlike Blizzard’s MMO, I never hear “the game starts at max level”. Companion characters have also been a really brilliant addition to my MMO experience. Not only are they helpful in a practical sense, but they also bring stories of their own and really enhance the idea that your character is a person of real power.
But… as many who play and follow the game know. SW:TOR has suffered from a lot of problems. World PvP is essentially dead. Even on PvP servers, the planet design ensures that factions do not cross paths easily till far into the game. Ilum, a world originally set up to be an entire planet for open PvP, has been put on ice. All incentives have been removed from it, and BioWare is going back to the drawing board regarding its future in the game. Bugs have plagued end game PvE content, sometimes being the only challenging part of a boss encounter. Faction imbalance led the Warzone PvP experience to become endless strings of Huttball. Even the basic need to get around in the game world is lacking, with a ponderous amount of steps and load screens needed to get from one place to another in order to meet up with friends. Frame rate and performance glitches made the game bog down at times on even high end machines, especially in warzones. The stock UI was decent, but completely lacking in customization options or even basic features like target of target frames. It all added up to a frustrating experience despite the game’s potential.
Fortunately, the Legacy patch solves (or at least improves upon) most of these issues.
THE LIGHT SIDE
With the addition of Novare Coast, and the alterations made to Voidstar, players now have three different PvP Warzones where they can potentially compete against their own faction. This adds a lot of variety when it comes to servers with a population imbalance, essentially smoothing over the only real problem population imbalance causes. Ilum is still in development, and there is no world PvP to speak of, so imbalance really isn’t a factor elsewhere. And, while I’m on the subject, even if there was a population imbalance, so what? Open world PvP was never about fairness and equality anyway. If you want a structured, evenly populated PvP environment, queue for a Warzone! But I digress…
Explosive Conflict adds another Operation to the game, much to the joy of raiders everywhere. Not only does this give people the new content and gear they’ve been after, but it also raises the bar with a higher tier of raid difficulty. In addition to this, BioWare has finally put to rest a number of bugs and design problems in their other two Operations. They also released a new Flashpoint called Lost Island which centers on the second half of the Rakghoul plague storyline (space zombies!). The first Flashpoint half was covered in Kaon Under Siege, and I considered it to be the finest and most challenging Flashpoint in the entire game. Lost Island is apparently ramping up the difficulty as well, perhaps too much so, given the fact that you’re still rewarded with first tier gear and commendations despite needing all of that gear to complete it in the first place. I’m sure we’ll see tweaks made to it in the near future, although I hope they increase the rewards rather than taking the Blizzard way out and adding training wheels to the content.
The real gem of the patch (as far as I am concerned) is the drastically improved performance and user interface. I don’t play on a bleeding edge machine, but it is more than capable of running most games at the highest settings without too many problems. This hasn’t been the case with SW:TOR till now. Even with max settings, I am no longer reduced to a stuttering sideshow on the crowded fleet or in warzones. The game just looks and feels better. I adore the Awareness Radius option which reduces the number of other players rendered in crowded environments. While BioWare claims this is for “low end machines” in the same way they write off every performance improvement – as if our machines were to blame, and not their code – I highly suggest everyone use this option. The UI customization is like a breath of fresh air. Finally being able to scale and move things around really helps me make the game my own. The addition of the target of target frame means tanking isn’t nearly as much guesswork in crowded AoE packs or in PvP. The UI still isn’t perfect, but it is a really great first step.
Other quality of life improvements include the gear “match to chest” option that allows you to match the color and pattern of your gear. There is starter level PvP gear for fresh level 50s so they can compete without being obliterated. Crafting has also seen huge improvements, with augmented crafted gear (containing sockets for augments) and the ability to remove mods from end game PvP and PvE gear combining to make for interesting combinations and levels of customization. You still won’t be able to carry over your set bonuses in your old gear, so don’t go too crazy, but if you’re like me and hate your Powertech having quad mufflers sticking out of your back, you can finally do something about it.
I may be a subcontractor, but that doesn't mean I can't try to blend in a little.
The other major feature of the Legacy patch is the fact that our Legacy is finally more than just a useless purple bar. We actually gain some tangible benefits for logging all these hours playing, and it’s pretty cool. The whole family tree business doesn’t really matter all that much to me. I suppose it adds an additional layer of depth to know that my Bounty Hunter has two brothers, a Sith Warrior and Jedi Knight (who are also cyborgs with a striking family resemblance), and that each of them has an ally they work with (Sorcerer and Trooper respectively) and that my Imperial Agent is my Bounty Hunter’s adopted daughter – a young lady who has proven a far more lethal and morally flexible protege than Mako has, and who provides me with intel on lucrative Imperial opportunities. It gives me a nice context to put things in when I play one of them that adds to their individual story arcs, even if that context only exists in my mind and on a family tree screen in game.
The real benefits come from features that encourages the leveling of alternate characters, and making that experience seem like a feature instead of something to do when you’re bored with your main character. These include:
Not only is this a fun system that provides a new mini-game for completionists and some decent perks for everyone involved, it is also a brilliant move on BioWare’s part. The strongest aspect of their MMO by far has been the leveling experience. From the start we’ve been told that the MMO is not only the spiritual sequel to their Knights of The Old Republic games, but that it is like eight sequels rolled into one game. Getting people to play through each of those stories is what BioWare is banking on. It keeps people playing, keeps them paying for their subscriptions, and it buys them time to improve their end game experiences. Even if some casual players out there have no intention of ever raiding or getting into PvP, there would still be hundreds and hundreds of hours of game time they could sink into these story lines. The fact that we’re now provided with rewards for doing so is just icing on the cake.
BioWare should also be commended for the incredible public relations and marketing push they’ve done surrounding this patch, pulling out all the stops with their Legacy Promotion. Free to play weekends. Referral initiatives. Giving 30 days of free play time to subscribers AND to people who reactivate their subscriptions. Pets you earn just from having an active subscription. When you consider this came on the heels of their Guild Summit which was an unprecedented community participation think tank aimed at making the game the best it can be, you know they are leaving nothing to chance. BioWare is committed to making this a great game.
However… That doesn’t mean everything with this patch has been good news.
THE DARK SIDE
Healers have been nerfed considerably, and while I understand that killing a geared and skilled healer in PvP in a 1 on 1 scenario was a huge challenge, I think it points out a drawback of the game. Healers have to be potent because they are the only thing keeping multiple people alive – especially in PvE endgame. If they aren’t powerful enough to do that, then your raid fails. If they are powerful enough, then they become the single most dominating factor on the PvP battlefield. It’s a problem that plagues every MMO that pays homage to the time tested and very effective “Holy Trinity”. Getting that balance right is a non-stop game of tail chasing.
Perhaps there were legitimate problems that needed fixing, such as the Force Bending buff for Sorcerers applying to more than one ability incorrectly. But the problem is that they’ve now changed the implementation of the ability as a whole, and removed the cast time reduction that applied to your biggest single target heal. This means to get that big heal off, Sorcerers have to root themselves in place for 3 seconds. This is a fair amount of time in PvE if there are environmental hazards or boss abilities to worry about. In PvP, standing still for 3 seconds can get you killed, and it gives people a LOT of time to interrupt you. This results in more emphasis being placed on your shorter, and less efficient heals, which means you burn through your Force faster. Sorcerers have the ability to trade Force for health, but doing so can be extremely dangerous. They used to be able to pick up a talent which would remove the health penalty, but no longer. This means on longer fights or in PvP, Sorcerer healers are going to run the risk of running out of heals. Maybe some of that can be compensated by throwing a heal over time on themselves when they pop Consumption and trade health for Force, but I have no idea how efficient that will be. At best you’re wasting two global cooldowns instead of one, and if you’re to the point where you’re starved for resources those seconds can add up.
To make matters worse on the healing front, medpacks have also been nerfed so that you can only use one per combat. This means that players other than healers, who are traditionally already horrible at self-preservation in Holy Trinity MMOs, now have even less incentive to keep themselves alive. They have a single emergency medpack to hold on to, but I can almost guarantee most players will be so worried about saving it that they’ll die before using it. This means healers, who are already less effective, are going to be expected to do more or risk shouldering the blame when things go wrong.
I think a far better solution to at least try would have been to remove the healing boost given by expertise. Let’s face it. No one complains about healers being too powerful in a PvE setting. Removing the healing boost from PvP gear would have been a decent nerf that wouldn’t have compromised PvE healing at all. Ahh… but maybe that isn’t what BioWare was really concerned with.
Time to put on my tinfoil hat!
Perhaps someone does see a downside to healing as it was in PvE – and that someone is BioWare. After people complaining over and over again how their Operations were too easy, perhaps they decided to take the easy way out. The Holy Trinity relies on three pillars. Weaken one of those pillars enough, and you weaken the whole. A nerf to healers can be perceived as increased difficulty in PvE without the need to make the content itself any harder or more dynamic. It’s effective, but it’s also a bit of a cheap shortcut.
Another thing that’s a big downside to patch 1.2 is the lack of Rated Warzones and the ability to queue as a full 8 man group. I know a lot of people were looking forward to this, not only for the sake of competition, but also in hopes that partial premades wouldn’t dominate like they currently do. What many players were looking forward to was 8 mans going up against other 8 mans and the rag tag PuGs competing against mainly other rag tag PuGs. As it stands, this isn’t the case. When you factor in the changes to how medals are earned, the greatly nerfed rewards for losing, AND the complete lack of any sort of deserter penalty for leaving games early – the end result is less than ideal or fun. Partial premades dominate, people on the losing team drop, only to be replaced by people who come into half a game with no time to earn medals, and who then drop out themselves. Repeat until time expires. This may not be the way things are on every server, but it has certainly been my experience thus far.
Perhaps the most troubling thing about patch 1.2 is the feeling of it being too little and too late. Many players feel that this patch contains features that the game should have launched with back in December, and the develops themselves have gone on record saying that they wish a lot of these features were present at launch. While second chances are also a big part of the Star Wars universe, only time will tell if it carries over to The Old Republic. My own guild is scattered and many have gone off to find a more active home to join. Many have cancelled their subscriptions, and many more were waiting on this patch to “save the game” before pulling out completely. Personally I’m enjoying taking a very casual approach and leveling alts, and checking out the new dailies. I will say that solo PvP isn’t very fun, and the lack of any sort of group-finding tool makes running pick-up groups for Flashpoints a less enjoyable task than it already is. If I do continue to play, it will probably have to be as a member of another, more active, guild where I can hop in and out of Warzone, Flashpoint and Operations groups instead of trying to be a driving force in creating and maintaining them.
I will say that if you are even remotely interested in Star Wars: The Old Republic, NOW is the time to play. The experience is much better than it was at launch, and even BioWare is keenly aware that it is now or never.
If you’re playing the game, please share your impressions on it and on patch 1.2. I’d love to read your feedback!
May the Force be with you.
In both PvE and PvP, the overarching goal in many MMOs is to obtain better gear that allows you to excel in your chosen specialization. The more you PvP, the better quality of PvP gear you earn, which in turn makes you more formidable in PvP. The same principle exists for PvE. All of this seems pretty logical and basic for most anyone who has ever played World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic, or any number of similar titles.
It also seems just as natural to many of us that trying to take your PvP gear into PvE, or your PvE gear into PvE, isn’t going to work out so well. The reason for this is because the gear is specialized through the use of stats that only benefit you in PvP or PvE respectively. In WoW, for example, this PvP stat is currently called Resilience and it boosts both your damage output and damage reduction when facing other players. In their next expansion, Resilience is being split into two separate stats, Defense and Power, that will handle each of these roles respectively. In Star Wars: The Old Republic, their PvP stat is called Expertise, and it functions like Resilience with the additional function of boosting your healing in PvP. In Patch 1.2, which releases tomorrow, BioWare is increasing the amount of Expertise found on their end game PvP gear.
A great deal of thought and planning revolves around these specialized stats, and these developers will try to sell you on them as if they’re doing you a favor. You’ll be told that PvE gear just isn’t designed to take the hits that PvP gear is because most players (other than tanks) aren’t supposed to be getting hit in PvE in the first place. PvP stats are therefore a requirement so people don’t get one-shot and so fights will last longer than a few seconds. This allegedly allows time for more complex strategies and battles to evolve during play, which should result in a more rewarding experience.
To me, that is a load of crap, and all it really does is highlight the downside of the holy trinity of PvE (tank/healer/DPS) in a game with PvP. If you didn’t force your players into these archaic roles, and if everyone shared the same overlapping responsibilities, you wouldn’t need to overcompensate for their weaknesses with a PvP stat.
The real idea around specialized gear is simple: developers of subscription-based MMOs don’t want players to be effective in both PvP and PvE without having to participate fully in both gear grinds.
Grinding is time, and time is money.
In SW:TOR, it has been far too easy, up to this point, to participate in both PvE and PvP using a single gear set. You didn’t need to spend time in hard mode flashpoints (dungeons) in order to work up to run raids (operations). You could just PvP and use that gear and clear all of their normal and hard mode PvE content. There was almost no incentive or need to spend weeks gearing up in PvE when you could easily skip that content entirely. This led to people clearing the end game content much faster than anticipated, which led to bored players, and bored players don’t continue to pay subscriptions.
The other thing that specialized gear does, and all end game gear for that matter, is create a status symbol for the player that can be envied by the rest of the player community. If you have the best of something, others want it. The key thing for subscription MMOs is that the best gear MUST exist at the end of a time sink.
I found an interesting article on Psychology Today that highlights a little of what I am talking about:
It’s all about status and exclusivity…
Whether we admit it or not, we all want to feel as if we are a little bit better than the people around us. We begin to establish that – at least in our own minds – with the accouterments of wealth such as branded clothing, jewelry, luxury automobiles, and exclusive neighborhoods. Even the poorest of people find symbols with which to establish their status. The visibility of these status symbols can create the powerfully motivating emotion of envy.
Most happiness that is acquired by achieving status symbols is short lived. Overtime such trappings become meaningless to us… But, status can continue to motivate us long after money ceases to do so. Bestowing a new title with added responsibilities yet without any added pay is a common method for rewarding employees.
This absolutely applies to end game gear in most MMOs, just at it applies to titles like “Gladiator” or “Battlemaster” or “Slayer Of That Totally Kickass Dragon”. And if that status is only temporary, no problem. It only has to last until the next arena season or raid content anyway, which is (surprise!) just long enough for most people to reach that plateau.
Without these carrots on sticks, the only incentive that players are left with to participate in PvP and PvE content is how challenging and dynamic the content is, and how much fun they’re having doing it. For the developer of a subscription-based MMO, that is a chilling thought. They need you to slow down and make sure you only progress in bite-sized increments.
I won’t sit here and tell you that free-to-play MMOs are all innocent of this entirely, but they really don’t need to go to the same lengths to keep you playing every single day, so they don’t need to resort to all of the same tricks. You can stop playing a F2P MMO for days, weeks or even months in order to play something else or engage in other hobbies, just as easily as you can with games in other genres. You can always come back for the next expansion, or after you finish that one Sci-Fi trilogy with the horrible endings.
By contrast, in Guild Wars 2:
At the end of the day, the need for separate PvP and PvE gear isn’t about the game so much as it is about the subscription revenue. That model just doesn’t work for me anymore, because it isn’t honest. It isn’t about making the best game possible. It’s about keeping the grind alive to make the most money.
That’s another reason I’m taking my business to ArenaNet. Guild Wars 2 has a PvP stat as well. It’s called ‘Skill’.
I recently logged back in to Star Wars: The Old Republic after taking a break from playing. My guild has had the current Operations (Raids) on farm for some time, and there really doesn’t feel like there is all that much to do with my Bounty Hunter. Many of our players have scattered to the four winds, some have cancelled their subscriptions, and we’re all waiting to see if BioWare’s big 1.2 patch will be enough to invigorate the game once more. I could PvP, but I’m at a point were hitting the solo queue doesn’t seem like a great deal of fun and setting aside time to find a dedicated group to PvP with seems tiresome. Besides that, my Bounty Hunter was my guild’s main tank, so I have to essentially start the PvP gear grind all over again for a gear set that would actually allow me to survive 1 on 1 encounters. At the end of the day, I’m just leveling a couple of alts and enjoying the stories of different classes, since that is the primary area where BioWare got things right and advanced the MMO genre.
Which brings me to the point of this article.
Why did the honeymoon phase end so quickly with SW:TOR?
While there are many examples I could give, the main reason for me is that it feels like I’ve done all of this before. The same burn out I suffered in World of Warcraft after six years of the raiding treadmill has carried over to my SW:TOR experience. While I’ve defended BioWare’s MMO over and over again whenever I heard it written off as a WoW clone, in many ways it does feel like I’m dating an ex-wife who changed her name and bought a redheaded wig.
Familiarity can be a good thing, especially when you’re talking about a MMO with ten million subscribers. It lowers the barrier of entry, and allows people to start playing your game immediately instead of spending those first few crucial hours learning basic keybinds or the UI. Unfortunately, as the old saying goes, familiarity also breeds contempt. While it is normally a phrase used as a psychological reference to the idea that the better we know people, the more likely we are to find fault with them, I think it applies to games as well.
I’m finding a lot of faults with the Star Wars UI, and while I’m certain the customization options in patch 1.2 will help, some of these issues are found at the core of the game’s design.
As a visual aid, I’ll post a screenshot of the UI for my Trooper alt.
Buttons. So many buttons.
I won’t make any claims about being a keybinding genius. I play using a Razer Naga mouse coupled with a Razer Nostromo gamepad. I try to only use my keyboard for typing in chat and for leisurely keybinds to things like my inventory and quest log. My binding ability isn’t the problem. The problem is that out of all of these buttons, I probably only use about 10-12 of them 80% of the time. The rest are completely situational in nature.
My main binds to my core abilities are all located on the two bars immediately under my health bar near my character portrait – six on top, and six below. These are my bread and butter abilities. The remaining buttons, while useful at times, are really just providing the illusion of complexity. Just because I have 48 total available button slots doesn’t mean that all each of them are vital to the majority of my gameplay.
Beyond that, once I do start to fill up each and every one of these (much like I did in WoW – especially since every expansion includes a mandatory 3-4 new abilities for each class), I start to play the UI instead of the game.
Some of these buttons and binds are used up so that if I swap roles, say from damage dealing to tanking, I don’t have to spend time setting up a new UI. In the screenshot above, I keep my tanking stance, my guard ability (which allows me to share damage with another player if I am in the right stance) and my taunts (both single target and multi-target) on the left side bar. These abilities only exist because SW:TOR, like WoW, forces you into traditional roles of Tank, Healer or Damage dealer (DPS). If those roles didn’t exist, or if everyone shared them to an extent, then there would be little reason to have a UI this expansive.
Likewise, each class in SW:TOR has a specific buff that only they can provide to their group members. I use a slot for my Trooper’s buff. These buffs are designed to make you more powerful when grouping, since you can all buff one another. For organized activities like raiding and team PvP, it also means you’re forced to bring along at least one member of each class so that none of these buffs are missing. The downside to that is that, much like class roles in the “Holy Trinity” of Tank, Healer or DPS, you’re group composition is now constrained by these factors.
Still other buttons on the right side bar are used for temporary buffs that boost my damage or performance in some way. I have three different buffing items stacked together – a stim (like a potion in WoW) and two relics that my Trooper has equipped. The idea being that I hold these items in reserve for when I need an extra surge of power to take out an enemy.
Others binds are used for conditional abilities, ones that “proc” or require a prerequisite of some sort before becoming available. My Trooper’s High Impact Bolt (which is greyed out and bound to my number 5 key) only becomes active for use if I have the right damage over time ability already on my target. Other classes have similar abilities, and they are primarily used again to promote the illusion of complexity. They break up the monotony of a static ability rotation. The premise being that it adds a level of randomness that, in theory, keeps things from getting too predictable or boring.
My least favorite type of ability of all, and one which unfortunately has a place of prominence on bound to my 1 key, is the Filler. The Filler is an ability that you can always use regardless of what else is on cooldown or how much of your class resource you have available. It doesn’t really do much by itself, and it is by design not very interesting. In the case of my Trooper, it is a few rounds of burst fire that hit for mediocre damage. By weaving in a few of these “free” filler shots with my more powerful abilities (all of which use ammo), I effectively manage my ammo resource along with my cooldowns. This is intended to reward skillful play. What it really does is add a fairly useless keybind, and one that I would eliminate the minute I had macro functionality. Once I did, I would just add the filler to each of my cooldown abilities so that if the ability I really want to hit is on cooldown, it would auto fire my backup filler ability instead. Some would argue that this goes against the spirit of the game and reduces the complexity of what divides good players from bad ones. I would counter that it doesn’t require skill to know that if my number 2 bind is grey that I need to hit number 1. It is just clutter.
Thus far I’ve listed a few different categories of abilities:
Add each of these up, and it is easy to see why without macro support and the ability to customize and scale your UI, your screen can easily start to fill up with buttons and binds.
Now, let’s take a comparative look at the UIs of SW:TOR and Guild Wars 2:
A Tale of Two UIs.
Image provided by GuildMag.com
In the image above, we have 24 available ability binds (only HALF of what they support) on top compared to 10 abilities (13 if you count the F keys) for Guild Wars 2 on the bottom.
Which offers the most complexity and fun? For me, the answer is clearly Guild Wars 2.
Instead of massive amounts of clutter for every ability my class can possibly possess, my binds are streamlined, making every ability a Core Ability.
From right to left, and ignoring how this particular player set up his personal keybinds:
Binds 1-5 are determined by your weapon and are class specific. For a two-handed weapon like the Hammer the Guardian is using in this image, all five of his binds are tied to his weapon. If you are dual wielding, the main hand weapon determines your 1-3 abilities while your offhand determines your 4 and 5 abilities.
There is also a weapon swap button for most professions (classes) that allows you to interchange two different weapon presets on the fly, in essence doubling your available weapon abilities without doubling the space your UI takes up. No fluff. No filler.
It is also important to note that the primary attack for each profession (the number 1 ability) is the only one without a cooldown, and it is usually far more dynamic than an auto attack or Filler Ability. Guild Wars 2 makes use of a fair amount of Chain Abilities in this slot – abilities that are essentially three different abilities that fire off in succession with each press of the button. It adds a lot of dynamic feel to the game while still giving you something to do to be effective if you’re waiting for the right moment to unleash your more powerful abilities.
Bind 6 is your heal. Every class has one, although there are three options you can choose from to customize your play style. You don’t need 5 different heals, a medpack, and a PvP specific medpack. One and done. Other heals and healing abilities are tied to weapon abilities, utility skills or are a side effect of traits you pick when customizing your character. Massive amounts of complexity contained within a minimum amount of UI.
Binds 7-9 are your utility skills. You choose three at a time from an available list of around twenty. You don’t need all 20 available at all times. Your utility skills help define you and what makes you different from the guy next to you who is playing the same class. More choice. more complexity. Less UI space.
The number 10 bind is for your Elite skill. This is your big nuke, your game changer, your “Oh shit!” button. You choose one from list of three class-specific and three race-specific Elites.
The remaining F key binds are class specific. Some classes, like the Warrior, have a single powerful weapon-specific ability. The Guardian has three virtues that have both passive and active effects. The Elementalist has four elemental attunements (Fire, Water, Air & Earth) that completely change all five weapon skill slots, giving her 20 different skills for each weapon set.
Complexity. Not clutter.
Just another reason I can’t wait for Guild Wars 2 to release. It isn’t about hype. It’s about the evolution of the MMO, and innovation that rewards skill and personal choice and customization while allowing you to play the game and not the UI.
It is also why last generation MMOs, including SW:TOR, have a hard time keeping my interest. I know a lot of my issues with traditional WoW-like UIs can be minimized or worked around with the use of mods and some basic UI customization features, but in my opinion, that’s masking the problem instead of solving it.
ArenaNet is setting out to solve it.
The Surly Gamer 