Guild Wars 2 Year End Development Update

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Hey, there! It’s time for another update on some of the new things we’ve been working on. Jon and I have a lot to talk about this time, so I’ll get started with our achievement system before I hand things over to Mr. Peters, who’ll talk about some more subtle combat refinements as well as recent changes to the thief.
Be an Achiever

We’ve spoken about and even shown achievements briefly in the past; however, we’ve never really spoken in much depth about the system.
The first thing you’ll need to know is that there are now three different types of achievements located in your achievement panel. First, there is what we refer to as just “achievements.” You’re probably familiar with these: they tend to be similar to the achievements in the original Guild Wars and many other games, which means they tend toward things that are difficult or time consuming to achieve. These types of achievements are designed to reward long-term progress and are all account based. They include things like the Centaur Slayer achievement, which tracks how many centaurs you’ve killed, as well as achievements specific to each of the different story arcs. Achievements encompass all aspects of the game from WvW to PvE to PvP, and even noncombat activities, such as trading and leisure games. Each achievement is divided into tiers, and every tier you complete awards you with achievement points. As your achievement points accumulate, they are reflected in your account’s achievement score. This score is easily viewable in both the friends and guild panels and is an easy way for you to compare your overall level of achievement progress with your friends and guild mates.
Comparing scores with your friends and guild mates can be good fun, but we also wanted to provide rewards other than just a higher achievement score. This is where titles come into play. A title can be earned by completing certain achievement tracks and is displayed beneath your name for everyone to see. For example, a player could choose to display the Dungeon Master title if they’ve completed the explorable mode for every dungeon at least once. Those who are really into earning achievement points can also unlock repeatable versions of some achievements after completing the base set. For example, anyone earning the Dungeon Master title will also earn access to a repeatable achievement that gives them points every time they finish a dungeon in explorable mode.
We also track what we call daily and monthly achievements in the achievement panel. Daily achievements are what we used to call daily feats and have been in the game for quite some time. We were looking for an easy way for players to track their progress on their daily feats, and rolling them into the achievement system made a lot of sense. Daily achievements are a list of achievements that reset every 24 hours. They are very easy to accomplish, and players are expected to complete them in a short period of time. For example, one of the daily achievements tracks the number of monsters of any type killed by the player. Once an achievement has been completed, the player is rewarded with some achievement points as well as a chest containing gold and experience orbs. The player can now progress toward completion of the next tier of the achievement. There are a finite number of tiers for each daily achievement, and the numbers are skewed such that more casual players should finish a high percentage of them in an average play session. If a player is able to complete enough daily achievements, they will also unlock a special bonus chest. This system makes the first couple of hours of play each day extremely productive and helps equalize experience and gold gain between casual and hardcore players.
Monthly achievements are a new addition to the game and serve the purpose of bridging the gap between the short-term goals offered by daily achievements and the long-term goals offered by regular achievements. Monthly achievements are intended to be more difficult to complete than daily achievements and usually encompass a variety of different types of content, from completing dungeons to social activities to participating in competitive PvP. As a player completes tiers in their monthly achievements, they will receive achievement points as well as a chest containing gold and experience orbs. Much like daily achievements, any achievement points earned also contribute toward a special bonus chest. Monthly achievements reset every month, but unlike daily achievements, they change to a completely new set of achievements.
So to sum up:

• Achievements are long-term goals with purely cosmetic rewards.
• Daily achievements are short-term, easy-to-complete goals that reward you with gold and experience.
• Monthly achievements are medium-term goals that encourage a variety of play and reward you with gold and experience.
• Titles can be earned by completing certain achievement tracks.

That just about covers achievements! Now, let me turn things over to Jon to talk about improvements we’ve made to the thief and combat.
Turning the Thief Upside Down

Hey, Jon Peters here with an update on one of my favorite professions, the elusive thief. OK, we didn’t really turn the thief upside down – it just made for a good title and image – but we have made refinements to the profession recently, such as improving Steal and Backstab.
http://www.arena.net/blog/wp-content...ef-419x600.jpgThe ability to steal from opponents and use the stolen items as weaponry is a core part of thief gameplay, but we knew we could refine and improve on what we originally had created. Our initial design for stealing was that the function of the F1 key would turn into the item you stole so you could use it later. In that version, hitting the key would put the item into your hands and give you a variety of skills. We were worried that this would be hard to understand, so we went with the version that we have recently shown, where the stolen item automatically became a weapon in your hands. Initially, we did have each stolen weapon provide more than one skill, but as we played with it, we realized that throwing multiple new skills at a player in the middle of a combat situation was overwhelming, so we eventually reduced the number of skills for each stolen item to a single powerful one.
We still really loved the idea of the Steal skill replacing the F1 skill (we called it “pocket stealing”), and with every stolen item now giving only one skill, it seemed like something we wanted to try again. At first, we decided to hack a version of it in as a potential trait. But as it turned out, everyone wanted the trait, and it was clear to us that the way Steal works needed to change yet again. So now, stealing always pockets the item, allowing you to use your regular skills until you decide to press F1 to pull the stolen item out, use it, and return to your regular skills. Steal does not start its recharge timer until you use the stolen item. All of this makes stealing a more natural part of moment-to-moment combat for the thief. So a thief may now steal a handful of feathers from a moa, store it for later use, continue using their regular skills, and at just the right time, use the feathers to blind the moa—or a new target—and stealth the thief.
As some may have noticed in the G-Star demo, Backstab is no longer on the normal dagger skill bar. It now falls into a new category, which we like to call “stealth skills.” The first skill for every weapon now has a skill that replaces it while the thief is in stealth. For example, the first dagger skill becomes Backstab, which does increased damage when used from behind the target. The first pistol skill becomes Sneak Attack, which is a rapid-fire attack that causes bleeding. Because the first weapon skills are free to use, this creates a clearer moment of opportunity without limiting their use due to a lack of initiative. It also helps to differentiate the effectiveness of stealth on thief versus stealth on other professions.
Combat Timing and Fine Tuning

One of the elements that makes Guild Wars 2 combat feel different from other games is that many skills have their own unique animations, and the skill functionality is often based on the animations themselves. With a robust animation-blending system, we are able to easily transition between skills. In our previous demos, this was shown through chain skills, such as the warrior sword combo in the first skill slot: Sever Artery leads to Gash, which flows into Final Thrust. We realized that this system did not need to be reserved just for chain skills but could apply to the entire game. There were skills such as Savage Leap, which moved the player into range of their target, and big control attacks like Shield Bash, that you wanted to be able to quickly follow with another skill. The problem was that the animations for these skills had follow-through that was preventing players from using another skill until the animations were finished. You could stun or chase someone, but it was hard to capitalize on it.
Our programmers added technology to our skill data to allow us to specify a point in an animation at which the player could start moving again. This made skills like Savage Leap not only more functional but tremendously fun to use. This technology came in right before gamescom, so we were able to showcase it with *a few important skills in that demo. Now that the technology has evolved, not only does it allow players to specify when they can start movement but it also allows us to transition into queued skills so that we can improve responsiveness. We went through every skill in the game and set up these animation breakout timings and the results were fantastic, but we didn’t stop there. I know many people have also noticed the more polished nature of the animations in the G-Star demo. Since we were able to go back and polish it, we also took a look at the impact of the new blending changes and made some timing changes to existing skills in order to give them more-appropriate anticipation, swing time, and follow-through to match the smoother feel that we were achieving with the blending. This really shines with things like big hammer swings, which now have slow buildups, quick attacks, and somewhat lengthy follow-through, depending on the skill. Ultimately, it creates a much more visceral and immediate system, which helps us straddle the line between action game and RPG.

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Making these improvements has been really interesting and fun because it has shown us how our game can feel appropriately action oriented without taking away the familiarity of the MMO genre. We talk a lot about bringing dynamic combat to MMOs, and we have learned that the best way to do that is to retain a very traditional control scheme while letting the skills and their interactions define the combat. We wanted a player’s first impression to be, “I know how this works: I use ‘WASD’ to move, target with tab, and hit skill buttons.” But the more you play, the more you can see how the physics of the world and the nature of the skills create a totally different experience.

I like to say that GW2 controls like an MMO and has abilities like a MOBA (tools that you can use in diverse ways to adapt to changing situations), but its physical interactions are like an FPS (dodging projectiles, attacking from out of range, etc.). We are really happy with the way we were able to blend these three styles of play—and hopefully you will be too.

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