When playing Guild Wars 2 in PvP mode, you’ll never face someone stronger than your characters; the game will make sure you’re equally matched.
There’s a massive desire to keep trying to find the best items in order to be PvP king in a lot of MMORPGs, but developer ArenaNet has insisted this won’t be the case in Guild Wars 2.
“We feel it’s crucial to the success of Guild Wars 2’s PVP,” systems designer Jonathan Sharp and programmer John Corpening explained speaking to Guild Wars 2 Guru.
“We want new players to come into the community and be able to focus on learning the game, not grinding in an effort to ‘prepare to have fun.’ We want you having fun as soon as possible in PVP!
“We offer aesthetic rewards, but never power rewards. You will never be at a statistical disadvantage when playing PVP. If anything, being a new player will get even easier down the road as we add more features.”
PvP has always been a pretty huge part of Guild Wars. Teams of skilful players got pretty good at working out exploits against their opposition and carefully built their characters to work perfectly with teammates.
Player versus Player was such a hit in Guild Wars 1 that fans of PvP came to the game in droves, and this is something ArenaNet is hoping to happen with its sequel.
“[eSports mechanics have] been a concern the entire time PVP has been in development,” the ArenaNet duo added, “as far back as day one, meeting one.
“We’ve learned a lot from watching other eSports (walk through the design room on any given day and you will see eSport streams running), and having combined that with the lessons we learned from the original Guild Wars, we tried to balance spectator, announcer, and player needs.
“We wanted it to be easy to get into, but we also wanted a skill gap that would allow pro players to show their mastery. In addition to this, we wanted to make sure the game was exciting from a spectator’s standpoint, while ensuring that announcers easily understand the action well enough to communicate to the spectators.
“The global PC gaming community decides which games are played at the highest levels,” Sharp and Corpening added, “be it FPS, RTS, fighter, or MOBA. Guild Wars 2 combines aspects of those games, so we hope that players enjoy it, both as players and as spectators. “
There will be tournaments in Guild Wars 2, but they’ll region-restricted for “technical reasons”. Any global tournaments will be dealt with “in a manner outside of the online tournament system” (is this the real life?).
Guild Wars 2 is coming at the end of the month and oh boy we’re excited.
Published: Aug 2, 2012 09:03 am