I felt the guy did a good job making this short video where he is doing something completely random in game while very eloquently debating the no-healer status of GW:2
I'll try to hotlink the youtube video, but it failed last time I tried so you may have to take the link instead:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpJDNZwc8eg
I guess he recorded it several times, but always hated it so he finally wrote it all down (making it sound as natural as possible. . .)
Not that it would be necessary, but the TL;DR would be:
Hard Work = Pays Off
WoodenPotatoes, I tip my hat to you sir. . .
-|||Except some classes will still be providing healing to the party. Which will likely cause the party to have to heal themselves less, meaning they have to chug less potions and thus, the party saves money just by having something that even slightly heals with them.
And the whole "every class can play any role" is actually a bad thing rather than a good thing. Odds are that at least. We have that now, both Eles and Rits were potent Air Damage Spikers, except Eles were disgustingly better at it. The solution to buff the Rits turned into a game of tag, where one class was favoured over the other depending on which just received buffs/nerfs. This is what worries me the most. Since all classes will be providing damage/support/whatever, how are they planning to balance it all out? Having dedicated classes means you know which one's intended to do a certain role, obscuring the role means initially people might accept any class, but eventually, one class will turn out to be better than the rest, if only because for example Guardians deal Holy Damage and a dungeon is filled to the brim with Undead.
Looking at the current GW situation of what damage dealers there are, tanks, etc and what classes can fit the role, obvious answers immediately spring to mind, while other classes which could fill the same role are ignored because the numbers are too low in comparison. That's the only thing players care about. They want to kill creature X in as little time possible, what is the best way to do that?
No Dedicated Classes is indeed a "revolutionary" concept, but only because it's going to be insanely difficult to balance it in the way it is intended to be without giving all classes the exact same skills, Hit and Heal, and frankly, ANet does not have the best track record for balancing. Never mind the skills, we still have nothing on racial abilities throwing everything off.
Oh right, the benefits would be so small it wouldn't matter. That's just plain wrong. You get booted in DoA for missing that 1 extra LB level causing you to deal 5% less damage.|||A few comments:
1) Healers in GW2 are neither dedicated, not just healers.
2) A party without healers will have to be more careful not to take damage, but will have more damage to compensate.
3) I don't believe every class can play any role, but they will be more flexible. Healing will be best done by E, N, or G. Melee by W, G, R, or Th. Every prof so far has good ranged options, although thief can't really do long-range. And so on.
4) Again, some profs will be better at buffs, others at disables. Some at defense, others at offense. Sure, each will have great flexibility, but still some will be better for given roles. As no role is strictly required, that's ok.
5) About balance... it's possible to balance without having the same gameplay, and it's possible to have racials without having that annoying 5%. Whether ANet will achieve it... I have faith, but time will tell.|||WAit, they really added Commando on April Fool's Day? Lol
Sorry, I can't watch eight minutes of someone talking about the lack of a healer in a game. Especially not when he says it "HEELuh."
I think Alaris is right: No one class can play any role. The one place I may argue that is warrior, but that is only because we do not have that much information on armor at the moment: Guardians may make perfectly good tanks for all we know.
I liked Vanguard's approach to the Holy Trinity / lack of Healers: There was not just one class that healed. Granted, no one ever played that game except for me, so it never got a real in-market test... Anyway!
I think it is great that they seem to have finally found a way to remove the "LF [X Class] to go!" The reason we find it so hard to believe / want so badly to argue against it, is because we are conditioned to expect it. To-date, we have not played an MMO that did not have a healing class and, therefore, did not have content balanced against the lack of a healer. If we were to play any of our MMOs now without a healer, chances are pretty good we'd wipe, even in a normal group session. But GW2 is being designed, top-to-bottom, without a dedicated healer. So the content and encounters are completely different.
Basically, we cannot judge this game based on our experiences in other games.
A friend of mine once said, if he ever went insane and tried to make an MMO of his own, he would make it without buffs. I was like "That's nuts! How would you be prepared for any fights?" He said "The game would just be balanced differently." Same thing here.|||Actually RDarken, that guy was praising ANet's move to remove healers, and explaining why it was a good thing. He had good arguments to support.
I think that there are also no more tanks, or dedicated tanks... rather there are people who stand in the way (W, G), people who make foes ineffective (E, Me?), or just distract them (R, Th). Basically, if you make foes miss squishies by any method, you are "tanking".
No buffs... your friend has a good idea. Or rather, no long-term buffs. I'd only keep buffs that you'd want to activate during the fight.|||I know he was praising it, I just couldn't listen to it lol|||Oh man what. When I watched that video I realized how badly thought through this is and how little of the problems that are actually solved.
1. He says that a dependent class is either useless or necessary. That is correct. But then he goes on saying that "if the guy playing the healer quits halfway", it's game over because you can't go on without him. But what if a player, any player, leaves your team? Team size is 5 in GW2. That's losing 20% of your power.
Now, in the persistent world things will scale, fine. Then again in the persistent world things will be mostly soloable anyway. Not so in a dungeon. Things may be balanced for 5 people and if one leaves you might be stuck or at least have a much harder time, and that is regardless of what class that person played.
2. He says that if your group all want to play certain roles and not certain other roles, you're stuck and someone must play the unwanted role or you need to kick someone and get someone else. Then he goes on saying that ANet solved this by letting all classes be able to perform all roles. Which isn't true, but let's assume it is. Then you still need someone to play the unwanted role - that person won't need to change class, but he will still need to play a role he doesn't want to play.
And so on... Ugh this video made me lose hope a little. Still, thanks for posting it.
@Alaris: "Tanking" in GW1 (in any game) was always about preventing enemies from doing damage. It was just that the most obvious way was to have a heavy/invulnerable guy up front. There were other ways to do it if you wanted to.|||About loosing people halfway in a dungeon. I remember reading an article about how some of the ANet folks were playing a dungeon with only 3 people. They made it. They just played creatively, with careful kiting and control skills. In the open world where probably 75% of the game exists, who cares. If it's a dungeon, it might not be that big of a deal. Unless they decide to make dungeons go one for like 4 hours. I probably won't be playing them. I don't have the time to do anything more then an hour or two here. That's one of the reasons Factions was awesome. I'm not trapped, spending bucket loads of time doing something.|||Quote:
About loosing people halfway in a dungeon. I remember reading an article about how some of the ANet folks were playing a dungeon with only 3 people. They made it. They just played creatively, with careful kiting and control skills.
Yeah, this was going to be my response, too.
I don't know why they chose to make the persistent world scale and dungeons not, though...|||Quote:
That's losing 20% of your power.
If you lose your tank or healer in WoW in a team of 5, you lose more than 20%. If you lose a nuker, you lose less than 20%.
In GW2 at least it'll be more balanced.
Quote:
Then he goes on saying that ANet solved this by letting all classes be able to perform all roles. Which isn't true, but let's assume it is. Then you still need someone to play the unwanted role - that person won't need to change class, but he will still need to play a role he doesn't want to play.
Yeah, it's not true. It's more like each profession has built-in a range of functions. Ele changes role by switching element, but still plays like an ele. Guardian would be more support-oriented by using the virtues and popping more bubbles, but he's still frontliner (unless you play staff / scepter).
It'll take a while for people to truly appreciate this. You keep the playstyle, you change role.
Quote:
@Alaris: "Tanking" in GW1 (in any game) was always about preventing enemies from doing damage.
Yes yes, fully aware of it. Though I think most people use the term specifically for being prime meatshield. It would be useful if there was a widely-accepted term that would apply to all the different ways of doing it...
"Defensive role" might be good. You could be defensive by tanking, summoning, blinding / shutting down, or even protting.
Then you'd get "offensive role" and "support".
No comments:
Post a Comment