GW2 Livestream Coverage Part 1

The GW2 dev's just finished part 1 of their live stream on twitch.tv. They will be back at 2pm PST for a second session. You can ask your questions for them to answer in this second session on the forums. I just wanted to quickly go over some of the things discussed in the stream.

The devs discussed a lot of things that I have talked about previously on my blog here, here, here, here, here and here which were mostly things that have been mentioned on the forums in the past. A large chunk of this stream was dedicated to reviewing some of the information that was released over that last couple of days. I think it is good that Anet is getting this information out a number of media formats, but in this article I will only be mentioning the things I heard that were unique to this stream.

*Edit to add* Here is a link to the achieved video of Part 1 of this Q&A session. Also summary up on reddit and dulfy.

Rez-rushing

Firstly, with respect to re-balancing dungeons the first thing we can expect to see is the removal of "rez-rushing". Rez-rushing happens during encounters when party members that have died rez and rush back to the encounter while a single person keeps mobs from resetting. The best example I can think of is Citadel of Flame part 2 when you have to protect Magg as he sets up a bomb. Usually groups take turns kitting the mobs away from Magg and as they die a new party member replaces them while the one that died way points and runs back to the fight. The Alpha in Crusible of Eternity also tends to be a bit of a rez and rush fight.

Rez-rushing will be removed in two waves. The first wave will involve making it so that party members can not way point and rez while the party is in combat. At the same time the encounter difficulties will be reduced. Arena Net will then do a second pass on the encounters where they will be redesigned and properly balanced to a suitable difficultly. I imagine this will work similarly to the way that fractals currently works. If someone dies then you have to rez them in combat, finish the encounter and rez them, or wipe and reset at the last checkpoint. I have some mixed feelings about this, and hope that we get more details in part 2.

1 v 1 PvP Tournaments

Secondly, with respect to 1 v 1 tournaments in PvP. In previous places Arena Net has mentioned that they will be adding 1 v 1 tournaments to PvP but they have not released much else. For those that do not know the only tournament option available at the moment is an 8 team ladder tournament with 3 single elimination rounds. The plan is to add two team tournaments with a single round. The hope is that this will reduce the barrier to entry on these tournaments and prevent situations where not enough players can be found to make an 8 team tournament.

In the steam the developers mention that the cost to enter these tournaments will be less than the larger 8 man tournaments. They mentioned that they will be available as paid or free tournaments, but later said they will always require tickets which implies they are paid tournaments. Perhaps, I miss heard or misunderstood, I will try to clarify this after part 2. They also mentioned that, to start, 1 v 1 tournaments will only be available on the new PvP map Temple of the Silent Storm.

Balance

Next, with respect to balance they discussed some of their design philosophies and approaches to balance. They mentioned that their goals are to give each class multiple tools to use in any given situation, but to still maintain that each class has its own mechanics that make it unique. For example, stealth on thieves represents their way of mitigating damage, where as on a heavy class it would be their armor and buffs. They want to bring each class up to par by ensuring that each has a number of unique viable builds available to it. 

Also on balance, they talked about balancing AoE damage. They feel that AoE damage is being leveraged too much in WvW and PvE. Single target damage classes are not getting the respect they deserve and groups are clearing dungeons too quickly by stacking AoE. I can't say I disagree, but in AoE's defence, aren't thieves single target burst a big stand out? and doesn't it take skill to get mobs stacked up for AoE? We will see how Arena Net proceeds, but it sounds like nerfs are coming to AoE across the board.

Details

Finally, they discussed why they are reluctant to give more details, especially with respect to time frames. They summed it up by saying, first of all, that it is fully intentional. They do this because sometimes things come up. In a system as complicated as Guild Wars 2 sometimes strange interactions occur and it takes longer to ship changes then is intended. They do not want to disappoint their fans. Essentially they are trying to perform a balancing act between managing expectations and providing transparency. They also do not want to be pressured into delivering a buggy product early and instead they would like to take the time to get it right.

Conclusions

Well I hope that provided you some details on what happened in this stream if you were unable to view it live. Hopefully an archived version of it will be posted somewhere. In the mean time I look forward to part 2 and I will report on the contents of this stream as well. Also, sorry for the text wall. I tried to break it into sections to make it easier to read, but I wanted to get this out to you guys as quickly as I could. I skipped a couple steps with respect to my normal editing process, so I hope this article is not too sloppy.

If you have any questions, as always, feel free to leave them in the comments below.