Jordan Stone.6395

Hello all, My question to you all is, if GW2 could alter their skill deck system to make it better per say, what would you purpose that they do? Myself, I have found over time I do get quite tired of the same skills on a profession or elite spec. Even though they are well made, and in a way I’m happy this happens cause it does really push someone into playing all the other professions and specs. However, I do find between the amount of weapon choice once you pick your poison of choice (Power, Condi, Healing, Support, or a celestial stance) begin to wither obviously. I don’t really mind, as I get bored of playing one character I usually switch to another.. (except for fractals, looking at you agony) However, this did lead to me trying to think of ways that I think ArenaNet could really help mix up the scene besides the elite specialization release. I do think if GW2 is going to be around for awhile, they might start to struggle putting out new elite specs with each expansion unless their is update to the current system might help push things forward to make room for new revolutionary elite specs. This is what I came up with, not are my favorites or what I would do but after thinking about it on and off for quite awhile these seems like 3 reasonable solutions. 1) Elite Specializations start to take on their own identity; weapons & utilities are reworked to their own instead of sharing with profession core. This would allow core professions to really have their own specific taste as well, the core could be reworked towards the end to really reflect a jack-of all trades. 2) Mix-and-Choose style, more of a Guild Wars 1 combat design. I do think that while this would be really great in some ways this would be much harder to balance for the developers leading to a much more defined meta then what is already prevalent. 3) Elite specialization and trait that are chosen affect your outcomes with weapons and utilities. I don’t know exactly how I would implement this but I do think that if they were able to push things into traits that would allow you to really push what you want out of your skills or utilities dependant upon the elite spec and specialization lines that you pick yourself. The way I was looking at this was, if you’re a Power DPS through trait lines you could pick a weapon that is more of a Condi or healing for a weapon and it would activate new skills on that weapon that were a lot more power based. There could also be trait lines that could give more utilities of certain types in sacrifice of others, or the changing of certain utilities to be more useful for your build. Also, with elite specs coming out I’ve noticed a habit that the weapons that are tied to that elite spec have become almost too much part of the build itself. This system could allow to further specialize into weapons and create alternatives to the core weapons if chosen through traits. This would be hard to pull off, be easier then the mix and max because obviously it’s still an outcome they would expect seeing it’s put within the building blocks. I’ll give a couple examples: Guardian: You decide you go Power DPS, and you pick a trait that converts mace from a healing weapon to a CC and damaging weapon. Or perhaps changing more of the weapons to Condi if your spec'd towards it. Untamed: You pick a trait line within the untamed elite specialization as well marksmenship that converts longbow to a very similar setup to the untamed hammer changing all five attacks depending on whether you or your pet are unleashed. Obviously, there would be sacrifices to each one & this would take considerable time probably best done after the next expansion. I’m sure with time they would have to implement further restrictions, but I did notice the restrictions becoming quite noticeable with some of the professions not all. This is my thoughts but I would love to hear everyone elses on the matter. Even if your thoughts are this is as close as we've been to a balanced game why ruin that by putting in a system like this? Well chances your probably right and I share that sentiment, but inovation is a beautiful thing and could lead a far more enjoyable and balanced game in the long run. Happy new years all, look forward to reading some of your ideas. Cheers!

They give you a options to port your game into new versions of UE upon new release. There is actually alot of companies getting away from their proprietary engines though, I'm going to leave a link (at the bottom) of one set of developers talking about converting their game into Unreal Engine 5 from their proprietary engine and they talk about the advantages and disadvantages of it, it really makes it clear on the advantages and why they ended up doing it after considering it multiple times in the past and deciding not to do it. The way ArenaNET are hiring people right now is mainly within a Senior position which is the same thing the other studio did before switching over their engine so they had employees that could help the rest of the team learn at a faster pace. One specific reason the studio gave for switching was this, you have to consider the advantages Unreal Engine gives their team it's already far more advanced then their Engine in a majority of ways but not all of it was better overall, and the fact that you spend more money paying your engineers to contineously update the proprietary engine when instead you can use UE5 and now your engineers have more time to focus on the game infrastructure and being able to push out more content faster in a game then previously before, or focusing on improving the infrastructure within UE5 for where it falls short. But then again %5 of your profits go to EPIC so it depends on how much money they are spending on upgrading their engine and how much more important being able to push content out and be competitive with others within the genre already existing or releasing in the future. The other two major reasons they gave was one that listed in my last post which was the multi-user work flow allowing faster production for a whole team working on it, and the fact that most junior programmers are trained in school on UE5 and being able to hire more people that are already familiar with UE5 instead of trying to training the juniors on a proprietary engine. The other thing that I honestly thought was insane was whats called the "validation system." The Unreal Engine (UE) Editor features a Data Validation plugin for developers to validate assets with custom-scripted rulesets. Common validation use cases include: Checking that assets meet name conventions Enforcing space and performance budgets Catching non-cyclic dependencies If the developer screws up on something it's gonna bring it up to them so that they can fix it as they work along this would seriously cut down on issues within the game. As for a game like GW1, I don't see it happening but thats my opinion. I loved GW1, and miss alot of things about it. But overall Guild Wars 2 is a better game overall and just needs to take some more ideas from GW1, like for instance I think a good idea would be to gut DRM's and make a instance content that resembles GW1 with being able to have heroes help you out on missions and have an entire system eventually that could even allow you to customize your companions or something. If they do plan on switching up the combat system we could end up with something better then both games depending on what they do. Except I can't really see them doing dual classes in this game at all, it worked well in Guild Wars 1 but it would break GW2 unless they push it into the system. I think they just plan on expanding and giving us more freedom within the weapon choices we have, I really do feel like as time has gone on the default weapon deck skills are holding back alot of specs/professions from really being able to choose certain roles. The more I research into other companies pushing away from their engines and going for UE5 the more I'm confident that this might actually be happening, and ArenaNET said they had big announcements on the direction they are taking with the game the new year and I'm honestly wondering if this is it. The only thing that throws me off is finishing the updates to the GW2 engine but if it'll take 6 months to get a grapple on the UE engine at minimum and say another year to switch it over efficently then I could see why they are wrapping up some projects. It will take time, but building a new MMORPG will definately take far longer (closer to 5+ years) then converting it over. After watching several videos about this subject there are a lot more pros then cons in support of switching to UE5 then continuing your current engine but it's really honestly up to the developer. I'm no expert on the matter but just following the trail of bread crums here and so far it looks like it could be a very plausible option, more so then I had orginally thought. Anyways, cheers thanks for the input. 🙂 https://exputer.com/exputer/unreal-engine-5-obsolete-others/

Its speculation time! Here’s the link to the page: https://www.arena.net/en/careers I choose all of the above, I think everything they do with Guild Wars 2 impacts whatever this unannounced project is in UE. There is 20+ job postings at ArenaNet right now, and they vary with important details. I’ve noticed atleast half if not more are for working with Unreal Engine 4+. Originally, when someone had mentioned them looking for employees that could work with Unreal Engine 4+ I thought it might have something to do with boosting the cinematics or something along those lines as they were not hiring more people. Then when I had seen they were looking for more UE trained individuals I thought, I could see them feeling the need to diversify the games they are putting out, it’s a smart choice why have your eggs all in one basket? However, you usually don’t do that by releasing another game of the same type of genre, (MMORPG) even if it’s set in a different fantasy. I delved into these postings a bit more and noticed something else that caught my eye, “Mentoring and teaching are activities that you take pleasure in as part of your day-to-day endeavors. You enjoy evangelizing best practices based on your experience with Unreal and respectfully guiding and mentoring teammates to fish at your level with the engine.” “As an experienced Unreal developer, you will share your knowledge with both veteran and junior teammates to guide them in learning best practices, gotchas, tips and tricks with the Unreal Engine. You will be a resource to them for questions, architectural advice, and general help where needed.” Ok, sounds like they are hiring people on that work exclusively with Unreal Engine mentor and teach the rest of the staff that works with the current game engine. But they could be pulling people from one project to another right? Then I found these. "Leave your mark on big ideas for an established online fantasy IP by joining a well-funded project in pre-production." "Online role-playing games are due for a major evolution. Here at ArenaNet, we are marching into the future toward the best and most exciting possibilities. Our mission is unchanged. Innovate. Work smarter. Defy industry standards. Enrich the lives of our players." "Our studio is built on foundations of excellence with a focus on community. We constantly innovate, unlocking the true potential of online role-playing with game-changing titles like Guild Wars 2 and beyond. The status quo isn't good enough for our dedicated worldwide community of players which is why we question the de facto industry conventions and demand more from ourselves as developers." I also have one more quote posted towards the bottom. I watched a video not long ago where they said, “there are two MMORPG games that have managed to escape the downwards trajectory which are OSRS & FFXIV. They also brought up that even though Guild Wars 2 use to be on a downwards trajectory it’s now been on a steady incline since before EOD, and now we have another announcement from the ArenaNet team how much player population has been increasing in the last year alone. I don’t really see them pushing another MMORPG out that doesn’t have to do with the Guild Wars Franchise especially when Guild Wars 2 is at its greatest height besides close to launch. Well, then what the hell are they making in Unreal Engine that has to do with MMORPGS and why? With that being said there is are alot of major planned released MMORPG’s coming out in the next several years such as: Ashes of Creation and the League of Legends MMORPG, as well as plenty of others. The competition is thickening, and even though GW2 tends to be a MMORPG that does kind of fall in it's own category. (Horizontal Progression) Players will be drawn off by other new release enticing games which is fine. It's good to try other games out, but if GW2 lags to far behind some of it's competitors on certain aspects it doesn't really give people much of a reason to always come back.. and it's not just GW2. Many of the games are at a disadvantage right now compared to some of the games coming out, feature rich as they might be. So if I were the boss, and recent earnings allowed me to make a move on increasing the tech to the highest possible level available right now, that would be my #1 long-term goal. It would be an undertaking would take years so in the meantime while they gathered a full team and started laying out the foundation on that "announced project" and the new team started helping team members spruce up on some C++ and Unreal Engine techniques, I would be looking at putting as much in the game to attract as many people to it and really getting as much communication out of the player base as I could while trying to either refine, or expand on, or create systems so that when the unannounced project comes out it would have an already well thought out systems that have been tested. I can only really think of two ideas that these job postings a couple paragraphs are alluding to: (Also, sorry for the fact I didn't really just get to the point) One, Guild Wars 3 is in preproduction. Secondly, I could see ArenaNet taking a card from WOWs Classic launch and putting a bit of a spin on it, and launching a Guild Wars 2 remastered version with Unreal Engine 5. The majority of people are going to look at this option and think why waste the time? However, if they had the chance to bring all aspects in the game to a modern level, and rebuild the majority of the game around the things that worked well for the game and implement new systems that could give us the experience we've always been hoping it could turn into? Using UE could allow them to lay down an even stonger foundation for the game in several different ways that would allow the game to set it self up for a future that most of us thought wouldn't even be possible. And although the areas might be similar and the plot line would be still be a familiar one it would still feel like a new experience, with the level their storytelling has gotten to you could expect a much more flushed out narrative, and a much more flushed out world across Tyria and the expansions. That would be the nice part of doing a remastered version is the majority of the game theory crafting is all there, the story plot is roughly laid out you and due to the fact the Elder Dragon saga is finished you have a beginning and an end now and you can choose to now focus on the narrative in between and really focus on refining it, and that honestly goes for all the features within the game. They have the knowlege of what to avoid now, and what some things they should be considering when putting the entire world together. It would still take some time, and I think it would be released like WOW classic where it's always several expansions behind, or they could put more focus into the remastered version and it'll take over and honestly with the API systems you could probably take your account worth and apply it over to the new version giving you a head start or hell just go fresh servers it'll probably draw even more people in towards the game. Final thoughts on either options is basically this; UE5 allows for far faster development time due first-class USD support it allows UE to read a USD file from anywhere on disk without a time-consuming full import, and write back changes to it as it overrides; reloading the USD payload instantly updates changes made by other users upstream. Which increases production, allows ArenaNet to pull from a bigger pool of talent by hiring remotely for certain jobs while keep the costs down for that talent. It'll brace either a new GW MMORPG or a remake for the foreseeable future (technology wise), and really allow them to push the game to new heights in all aspects as I feel as if this game is already pushing the engine pretty hard. I'll be sad if they can't make their megastructure servers work with the Unreal Engine 5 but it's honestly not a big enough reason to delay a massive update like this. But who knows maybe I'm wrong maybe they are not slowly starting production towards a new GW MMORPG or a remake. But regardless, there is a couple things within these posts that really have me wanting to speculate on, and who better to discuss it with some true fans in the forums. I'm gonna try to post this next topic soon and put my thoughts out on the subject and just get some conversation going about how the fans would really like to see this subject handled overall, who knows maybe ArenaNet will take some of our conversations and add em' in. But before I go here is the subject I'll be speculating on with whoever wants to put their two cents in. 🙂 Combat Designer (Unannounced Project) Bellevue, WA or Remote Who We Are at ArenaNet Online role-playing games are due for a major evolution. Here at ArenaNet, we are marching into the future toward the best and most exciting possibilities. Our mission is unchanged. Innovate. Work smarter. Defy industry standards. Enrich the lives of our players. What You’ll Do as a Combat Designer We have a bold vision for a next-generation MMORPG combat system. We love our studio’s tradition of blending of action and strategic RPG elements into “Skill-Deck” style combat systems. Now we’re making it even better. The Combat Designer designer’s role is to build on the innovations we’ve made so far—and then take it further. Mainly, you’ll expand our library of player weapons and combat abilities. We are looking for a candidate who would confidently: Collaborate very closely with the Lead Combat designer and contributors from other disciplines. Expand and utilize their knowledge of Action-RPG battle engines from all around the industry. Design weapons and skills that reward players for strategic play, cooperation, and investing time into their character. Work directly in the Unreal engine, getting their hands dirty in animation timelines, camera systems, visual effects, and more. Rapidly iterate through regular playtests while closely monitoring feedback from internal and external playtesters. Make multi-platform design considerations with respect to the advantages and challenges of each one.

Sorry to hear about your recent events, I hope things get better for you! Warning to those with sensitivity to blood and injuries I probably wouldn't read past this sentence. I have the same feeling with GW2, couple years back I was in a worksite accident and almost lost my three fingers on my left hand. They had to completely restructure my 3 fingers, and I spent 2 weeks in the hospital believe it or not getting leeches attached to my fingers to help promote the arteries that had to be repaired and due to the fact that my veins hadn't reconstructed themselves yet it gave the blood somewhere to go. (Believe me when they brought out leeches out I really thought this is the most medival treatment ever) I've had another 2 surgeries on that same hand since, and the rehabilitation is unlike anything else I've experienced before. I had to retrain my hand completely being unable to even move any of those fingers at the beginning. Things kept going downhill at that point, my work turned their back on me simply for following the orders of the doctor and the injuried workers board were paying me 50% of my wage from before due to a bunch of loop holes. I could go on for awhile, and things have been resolved after going through years of legal action with them but the bottom line is I couldn't really do much at first with my hand and I didn't know how much function I was going to get back. As my hand got better in the beginning I heard about EOD announcement, and having played GW2 on and off throughout the years I decided to play again. Playing the game let me retreat from all the horrible things going on at the time and just let me get immersed into a world where none of things going on mattered, and it actually sped up my recovery & gave me a far better outcome on my hand due to the fact that for hours I was doing range of motion exercises by simply playing the game. Also gave me a sense of a caring community when I felt like a good majority of the world was pretty negative at the time. I hope things get better for you all, cheers!