Guild Wars 2 developer lays out 2013 plans

Guild Wars 2 developer ArenaNet has outlined its plans for the upcoming year.

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Guild Wars 2 got off to a healthy start last year, but as we begin 2013 the team is looking ahead. ArenaNet has detailed some plans for the upcoming year, including ambitious additions to Guilds, PvP, and rewards.

A lengthy blog post details the game's upcoming plans. ArenaNet says it's learned how to create better storylines from recent events, and wants to put those plans into action. Namely, it says it will offer players better incentive to explore new areas, which will foster socialization. These incentives will include daily achievements to earn tokens for rewards, more reward types similar to the recent Ascended and Infusion types, titles, medals, and unique skins.

Other plans include new guild quests with rewards, an overhaul to the PvP and its rewards system, redesigned boss encounters, new types of achievements, new security measures, a better introductory experience, and various other fixes.

One thing you won't see is another tier between Ascended and Legendary, after the team faced complaints from the last shake-up. If another tier comes, it won't be this year. "Our goal will be to use our existing reward systems and build new ones that are fun and exciting that step away from the stale gear grind reward systems you see elsewhere."

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    January 15, 2013 11:45 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Guild Wars 2 developer lays out 2013 plans.

    Guild Wars 2 developer ArenaNet has outlined its plans for the upcoming year.

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      January 15, 2013 12:06 PM

      Fix the skill system, and I'll buy whatever DLC stuff you come out with.

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        January 15, 2013 2:37 PM

        What do you not like about the skill system?

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          January 15, 2013 3:31 PM

          Having 5 skills attached to a weapon is dumb. You can see the full breadth of the combat system inside of an hour or two. I would have loved a full tree dedicated to each weapon type, something I can work towards that unlocks new abilities.

          Essentially my perfect MMO would be GW2 with TERA's combat system.

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            January 15, 2013 4:18 PM

            this was kinda my issue. Level 9 and I have all the skills for my weapon of choice already? /bummer

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          January 15, 2013 6:23 PM

          [deleted]

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      January 15, 2013 2:21 PM

      I just read the PvP section from their blog post. What a letdown. Talk about being completely out of touch with the people that play your game.

      Pretty much in a nutshell they are going to overhaul the reward system, and add in some competitive features like a ladder and observer mode. Nowhere do they even hint at recognizing, "hey, yeah, our PvP is boring as shit and we're going to try to make it fun."

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      January 15, 2013 2:24 PM

      The whole competitive PvP thing seems like a gigantic niche to me, I'd prefer them spending more time and resources to something like overhauling WvW (to be fair, seems like they are working on that as well).

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        January 15, 2013 2:33 PM

        I wouldn't worry about it taking away from WvW development; Anet has pretty clearly dedicated virtually 0 resources to their PvP game. If they put more work into making it actually fun people would start to play it more, and then it wouldn't seem like such a niche. It certainly wasn't a niche in GW1.

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      January 15, 2013 2:47 PM

      Reading about various games makes me want what I want even more: No more pretenders to the throne.

      I want Everquest Next and I want it soon, motherfucking Smed, do you hear me?!

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        January 15, 2013 4:23 PM

        [deleted]

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          January 15, 2013 6:06 PM

          Never! And seriously, reading the interviews with Semd on this, he really really seems to have a good idea of what mmo's need to have long legs, specifically, good sandbox environments that let people create their own content when the created stuff is finished in a month or two.

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            January 15, 2013 6:17 PM

            Yeah EQ Next is the only future MMO I have any remote interest in, nothing else seems that interesting. Just a matter of if they pull it off, capture the oldschool and sandbox play while adding some of the more modern conveniences as well. A lot of the longevity of those 1st, 2nd gen MMO's was the massive grind to get to level cap, what used to take 5-6 months now takes 5-6 weeks. I don't want to go back to that 5-6 month grind again, of course if they make the whole experience fun with plenty of diversions along the way it might not feel like a grind.

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      January 16, 2013 3:14 AM

      hasnt really grabbed me :[

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      January 16, 2013 3:19 AM

      zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......

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      January 16, 2013 4:57 AM

      I practically quit playing about 2 months ago because I was exclusively a WvW player, and the performance was just so bad considering I had a good rig. Have there been updates that have dealt with performance issues and/or drawing issues since then, or are big fights still a comic book involving mainly shooting at invisible enemies?

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        January 16, 2013 5:23 AM

        Yup, they plan on removing culling completely. Quite a few optimizations planned.

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      January 16, 2013 11:59 AM

      I wonder if they'll add classes.

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