Profession and Traits Interview with Jon Peters

[Balandar]

Over at GuildWars2Hub.com, Lewis B. interviewed ArenaNet developer Jon Peters on profession and traits. The interview is in two parts, I've posted snipets below and links to the full articles as well.

Part 1 Snipet:

Lewis B: The original reaction to the tiered trait system wasn’t particularly positive. Having had an opportunity to comb through GW2 forum feedback since the second beta event, how has the reaction changed? Do you think people now realize what your intentions behind it were?

Jon Peters: Not every change is going to make everyone happy, and every change comes with benefits and drawbacks. We believe this change drastically improves a number of aspects of the game with a fairly limited set of drawbacks. Anytime we can make that kind of change we tend to do so. I think that having experienced it, players are at least now able to form their own opinions on the subject, rather than theory crafting how it might impact them. Remember as well that this game is not finished yet and changes are still coming to specific traits and trait lines that will continue to improve this system.

Lewis B: Why do you think there is resistance to your changes to traits and the tiering of them?

Jon: Anytime you change something that you have already shown, there will be people who liked what they had and resist that change. This is just a universal truth. There is also currently a misconception that Guild Wars 2 lacks character customization compared to the original Guild Wars. This is expected as we intentionally reduced the number of options for each choice in order to make each system easier to understand; however, we countered this by creating more choices and more interaction between those choices.

This creates more depth, but less complexity. As players dig deeper, they will find a system with more choice—one that still takes time to master, but one that will actually help more people reach that level of mastery. Of course it may frustrate people who are coming from a game they already have mastered, namely the original Guild Wars, but this is a new game after all.

Read the full article of part 1 here.

Part 2 Snipet:

Lewis B: It’s been interesting watching the metagame develop over the last few phases. At one point everyone I came across was running huge damage builds, but I’ve now noticed many leaning toward defense, ensuring they’ve got the skills and attributes to survive for much longer periods of time. (I think I lean toward the defensive camp.) Have you noticed any surprising trends in how people have built their professions over the last few phases?

Jon Peters: I try not to worry too much about BWE metagame. People are just learning the basics of the game compared to what we see in our internal tests. I can tell you that the builds people think are strong are really not the ones to be the most worried about, as there are some absolute monster builds in the current internal meta that thankfully have not seen the light of day in our weekend events.

Lewis B: How do you feel the balance of the PvP is shaping up, now that significant pools of players have played the game? From my perspective, I’ve found that the guardian at times feels too important to be without in structured PvP and WvW. Its skill set, being so supportive, is just too valuable to not have one by your side. Is that something you’re trying to address and/or avoid?

Jon: The balance of the game right now is basically at what I call the 80% rule. Things are basically okay, but there are a ton of things that just don’t feel right the more you play. We have done the groundwork of establishing what we feel is a good baseline for balance, but now we begin the “second 80%” of actually making sure things adhere to that baseline. Some of that work has begun for the next beta weekend, but not all of it will be completed.

Lewis B: Still with the guardian, many people I’ve played alongside believe they are “overpowered”—how do you even begin to approach and combat such statements? A guardian can certainly survive for very long periods of time…

Jon: There are a few aspects of every profession that are currently wildly overpowered. If you look around on YouTube, you can see examples of mesmer, engineer, ranger, warrior, elementalist, thief, necromancer, and yes, guardian, being overpowered. It is now our job to bring those things into balance with the rest of the game.

Read the full article of part 2 here.