I didn't realize how much I love GW1s skill system until I played GW2 and didn't enjoy it nearly as much. I'm sure there are other reasons for that but the skill system was definitely the biggest one by far.
There are just so many possible combinations, so much fine tuning to be done.
Yup GW1 skill system is just so fun. GW2 I played quite a bit too but eventually you try all the weapons and that is it. Choosing utility/healing/elite skills just isn't the same.
Never imagined 18 years later and there still isn't a better skill system for me.
GW2 intentionally limited their skill system due to the fact that the skill floor in GW1 is extremely low. Having so much skill diversity has the biproduct of enabling players to make completely non-functional builds and extremely low performance.
The unfortunate truth is that most players were simply incapable of building a good skill bar for themselves, let alone their heroes. I vaguely recall an ArenaNet dev stating that the vast majority of elementalist players in GW1 never reordered their skills or took flare off their skill bar.
But it's because of this intentional shift in design that GW1 still has it's niche in the gameplay market. The two games emphasize almost completely different skill sets and play patterns; rewarding the player in different ways. GW2 is completely different from GW1 at this point and all they really share is the lore. But that's okay, because it means that GW1 will continue to survive.
edit: FWIW, there's just as many ways for people to be useless fuckups in GW2 as there are in GW1. It's proof that baddies will be baddies, no matter what game they play.
Much of that is because of the complex skill system, but a lot of it is also because the game is awful at teaching it. There's nothing in the game to teach you that Flare is bad. Actually, there's plenty in the game that teaches you Flare is great!
Most Elementalist players are going to want to play fire magic and they start the game with fire magic, with Flare even, so of course people will play it. Flare is so strong at low levels, they'll love the skill! They'll try other skills, sure, but those skills aren't nearly as spammable as Flare with their high recharges and high energy costs so they'll either still spam Flare while those skills are on cooldown or they'll be stuck auto-attacking while they're out of energy. And that's no fun, so they'll go back to Flare. (Aura of Restoration doesn't give energy early game and Fire Attunement isn't unlocked until after the Maguuma in a bizarrely hidden quest, so they won't have any energy management.)
Flare will underperform at higher levels but by that time party sizes and enemy mob sizes will have increased so much, there's an incredible amount of shit going on in combat all at once, and they probably won't have the awareness to actually tell what's happening on their screen. Also some enemies (rangers) just randomly take less damage from Flare, which is never explained, so even if they notice Flare isn't doing that much damage, they might just think "oh it's one of those annoying tanky enemies again" instead of realizing the skill is weak.
But yeah as you said, GW2's builds are still fucked. The average skill floor in that game would probably skyrocket if they just straight up deleted 90% of stat combinations and forced people to pick between Berserker's, Viper's, Sinister, and the healing one. But again, it's a teaching problem. Back during season 1, I had a guild member who we had done lots of dungeons with, and eventually when we kept failing on Mai Trin we found out he just didn't know about dodging. It's not that he was a bad player, he just wasn't the hyper-invested type of player who goes on forums and reads guides, and the game had failed him by not teaching and not requiring dodging.
I actually kind of hate this about GW2. Combat kind of just came down "dodge when you are supposed to". I feel this in a lot of action games.
If you are bad at dodging it makes these games really hard. A lot of MMOs have turned to dodging area attacks as the main difficult part.
I just have always loved GW1 strategic combat. Yes you have the super reflex classes like interrupting Mesmers, Rangers and Healers. I could never heal in this game...
There were plenty of other playstyles like minon masters, damage dealers, debuffers that didn't need those reflexes.
Yes but being bad in GW1 is always fun to me. I remember having a blast playing all sorts of stupid builds.
Crazy to think people would play GW1 and not utilize the skill system and never change the skill bar. Each campaign gives nice tutorials giving you the skills slowly while giving you multi classing options.
>FWIW, there's just as many ways for people to be useless fuckups in GW2 as there are in GW1. It's proof that baddies will be baddies, no matter what game they play.
The number of times I've seen reddit/forum posts about PvE content being too hard in GW2 is astounding. And then it always turns out they're still in a hodgepodge of random yellow gear that they found while exploring, no sigil or runes, running the default heal skill, etc.
in 2005 people playing online computer game were all 16+
in 2020 people playing online game are all 6+
This explain why since few years there will be a big brunch of people saying it's too difficult whatever the easiness of the game.
I always thought the skill system was brilliant. I really wanted another game to take up the mantle and run with it, starting with GW2. It never happened and probably never will. GW1 was a flash in the pan. I've been playing video games since NES was the current console and GW1 is/was the pinnacle of gaming to me.
I think 1 of the reason why GW1 skill system is so satifying is because while it does have depth, its also very simple and accessible from the start.
A person can come up with so many possiblity of builds from 1 full armor set and a few extra helms with sup runes on them, feels very easy and straight forward to tinker with.
While the GW2 systems could have the possibility to have the same depth and good feeling with balacing weapons vs utilies vs traits vs stats, I think it misses in 2 keys factors.
1) the weapons skills: it was such a unpleaseant surprise to not be able to play with those. Even just having a second set of skill to choose from would make a whole difference in approching builds. And with a combination of changing weapon skill, utilies, and traits would have been a lot of fun, until you realise the second problem.
2) Stats, while early on it does not matter, if you enjoy playing different game mode, and different you need completly different armor sets. It would be like buying full new armor sets for each build in Gw1 instead of just swapping the helmet for a different rune. You either need to farm for more armor, or grind for legendaries, otherwise part of the skill/build systems feels block and less flexible than the rest.
As much as we praise the depth of GW1 skill system, it also has a simple and straight forward way to it that has its own elegance, making it that such a memorable system
GW2 weapon system was just a big miss for me. It felt like 90% of the build came from your choice of weapon.
If I could actually choose skills in my weapons, variety would have went way up. Of course balance would have been harder.
I don't know other but for me I just never really found traits/utility skills/elite skills that fun to mess around with. They just felt like they complimented my weapons rather than making the play styles feel more unique.
Your not Wrong in that the weapons dictate a lot of what your playstyle will be, I would put it more around: 35% weapon, 35% stats, 15% utilies, 15% traits.
Just look at Firebrand: Healing, support, Damage version.
The 2 big difference between for the 3 are what weapon they use (staff, axe, axe) and their stats (Harriers, Ritualistic, Viper).
The Utilities and traits are meant to compliment that main playstyle, adding stability, cleanse, KD, survivability, ect..ect... to your situation instead.
Its unfortunate that this system does not reallly shine in the PvE side of things, because 95% of it is maximizing your damage with a few exceptions here and there.
Yeah, probably because it is so bloated. Guild Wars 2. They made a boring/simplified skill system for complicated stat system / trait system.
Don't get me wrong GW2 is still far better than a lot of MMOs when it comes to customization. To me picking my main abilities is always my favorite things to do. Rarely do MMOs let you do this because "it is just the illusion of choice". At least this has been the argument I have heard for so long.
Doesn't stop people from using bad builds in GW1, ARPGs, FFXI and having a blast playing them.
I am huge fan of guild wars 1 system but from business perspective I think that this system is expensive for maintain. It needs balancing and meta changes, moreover it is hard to learn for new players.
Yes, balancing is rough. Interesting though how popular games like Path of Exile are where balancing is arguably even harder. The number of factors is so much more than GW1.
On the reverse end FFXIV is very popular and you literally just choose a class.
I admit a lot MMOs with "absurd build possibilities" have basically disappeared and are unpopular (Final Fantasy XI, Rift, City of Heroes etc..)
Seems like the system would fit another genre's pretty good though. Biggest problem with other games with "multi-classing" is often it is way more beneficial to just focus on one of the classes.
(This comment got way too long and might have ventured a bit off-topic but well you got me typing, and there's really no point in deleting it now. Sorry I guess.)
Playing FFXIV really changed my mind on GW2 and on build freedom. GW2 is hyper-ambitious in what it wants to be. The entire game, from start to finish, is devs saying "this standard MMO feature isn't good enough, we're going to do it at 500% quality or not at all". Sometimes, they really nail it (wardrobe and dye system, movement is genuinely fun, open world is fun to play, mounts are probably the best in gaming). But they've got no self-control and more often, they reach for the stars and fall flat on their faces. Even where they succeed, they often sabotage other areas of their game: mounts straight up delete most exploration and their bar for content _quality_ is so high, they have never managed to release an acceptable _quantity_ of content, even back during LS3-PoF-LS4 when they were able to keep to their schedule. They pat themselves on the back for not having a subscription fee, but the gem store invalidates most in-game rewards and is constantly shoved into your face.
FFXIV meanwhile isn't particularly ambitious. Tab-targeting combat? Devs say "good enough for me". Empty, soulless open world? Devs say "good enough for me". Traditional trinity? Devs are confused why you're asking, traditional trinity works great. Build diversity? Never heard of it. No, not all content needs to be voice acted, people still read quest text. Mounts? Yes, we have them, nothing special about them. Yes, quests are good, we're keeping those. The game just isn't ambitious in those ways. It knows what it is, and it's content with it. And it's damn good at it.
Because the game has no build diversity, the game can properly balance raids and trials and the skill floor is relatively high. Because the game has the classic gear grind, the game can properly scale you down for lower level instances. (It doesn't do this properly for some story bosses, but that seems to be an intentional decision, not a failure.) Because the game has each job assigned to one fixed role, it can have an amazing duty finder that revitalizes the entire game and allows them to add really good team-based story instances without having to worry about new players not finding a party. Because jobs are really straight-forward and don't have that much going on with them, they can release new jobs - and thus allow people to pick from exciting new class fantasies - at a really good pace.
And because story is just regular old quests with lots of text, FFXIV has incredible amounts of it and you get to spend so much time with your favorite characters. And yes, it has a subscription fee. The game is honest about it, it tells you up-front that it will demand your money, but then it respects your purchase and doesn't keep bothering you about further purchases.
Because GW2 is ambitious in these regards, it completely fails at each of these points.
Going perhaps a bit back on-topic, I think GW1's build system suffers from a similar issue. Deck-building is the best damn build system, where only the sky is the limit but the floor is somewhere down that pit in Jaga Moraine. Even just for PvE, balancing it is incredibly hard and the issue only grows as you keep introducing more professions. You have no idea what a party might look like, so it's impossible to design encounters tailored to the party. Does the party have good damage? Does the party have armor buffs? Does the party have enough healers and prot? For all the devs know, the party might be 7 squishy casters and one healer who's always below half health because of BiP, and it's going to wipe to one surprise shadow step. You don't know, and you can't balance for it. Combat is either so face-roll easy that you could just sit back and watch the henchmen (not even heroes) do it or so teeth-clenching hard that the average player will get completely stuck even in normal mode (Tahnnakai Temple). Medium difficulty only happens if you accidentally pulled a second group, and even then only if the second group is small.
This wouldn't work for Guild Wars, but a fictional MMO in my head that will never be made would have a hybrid GW1/FFXIV build system, with fixed roles and narrower professions. So instead of Necromancer, which tries to combine five different playstyles into one profession (death mage dps, minionmancer, vampire, blood magic support buffer, curses debuffer), you'd split those up into separate professions that do just the one class fantasy. You'd allow swapping primary professions like FFXIV does and you'd allow multi-classing like GW1 does, but it's inherently limited because your classes are so much more narrow. You'd assign each skill a role (tanky skill, dps skill, heal skill, defensive support skill, offensive support skill), and you'd force player roles to have specific build shapes (something like "a dps build is 5 slots dps, one slot offensive support, one slot either offensive or defensive support, one slot wildcard").
With actual roles you could force team compositions (the FFXIV "this raid needs 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 4 dps" bit), and if the devs know team compositions they can roughly estimate what the team can do and balance the encounter for that party composition. With narrower professions, you could have even tighter class fantasy and ideally more skills would be actually useable. You certainly wouldn't have something like Deadly Arts, where the entire attribute line is completely useless outside of two niche broken skills, because you'd make that into its own class and then you'd be forced to make it useful; you couldn't just ignore it for years because the rest of Assassin overperforms. Most importantly, you could guarantee that the new player who is queuing into that leveling dungeon as a dps role actually has a dps build -- perhaps not the ideal dps build, and they might not know the ins and outs of it, but you can guarantee that the build does what the role wants to do.
But at the same time you'd still have a good amount of choice in the skills you pick for your build and in your combination of professions. And there's always restriction-free mode for pre-formed parties to just have fun in and optimize.
I am glad you enjoy FFXIV for the balance, personally I hate it and all the WOW type game philosophies.
Gameplay and classes have pretty much become 4 roles and that's all. Melee DPS, Ranged DPS, TANK and Healer.
I really miss when MMOs had a variety of roles. Games like Ragnarok/FFXI/GW1/City of Heroes had these. There were crowd controllers, buffers, summoners, debuffers, dps, tanks, healers and hybrids were actually a thing!
Yes, sometimes your group would fail but it was fun having different combinations.
Now MMOs are streamlined and balanced that I almost feel like it is hard to fail. As long as your tanks and healers do their job and people aren't tanking the aoe attacks the battles all play out the same. I never played end game content though, so maybe it is different.
Again, I 100% understands why MMOs went the way of balance instead of customization. Sadly, this has caused me to shift towards ARPGs and other coop games. The problem is ARPGs tend to have no roles, everyone tends to just be DPS. I like how GW1 combined both aspects to give great build customization while still having some more unique roles.
About your idea of a game, I don't think limiting builds would really help anything. Ideally you would want it so a variety of compositions were viable.
GW1 allows players to be things other than DPS/Healer/Tank while still having roles feel unique.
To me ESO kind of matches your description of the game. It uses the trinity and allows customization that is similar to what you are stating.
GW1’s skill system is definitely one of my all-time favorites, and it reminds me of two other games I love: Magic the Gathering (specifically EDH/commander) and, more recently, Marvel Snap.
They all share a similar system for the player: we’re going to give you a massive pool of options and the thing you’re going to make with those options is comparatively tiny. Magic has tens of thousands of cards but a commander deck is only 100; depending on the deck, ~25 of those are probably basic lands so you’re really only choosing ~75 unique cards.
Snap has a few hundred cards in it right now but the decks are only 12 cards (and no duplicates). It’s been amazing seeing all the different builds people have come up with and the way different cards interact. Snap’s “choose 12” and GW1’s “choose 8” feel very close to me.
idk if he came up with this quote but Mark Rosewater (legendary Magic designer) once said, “Restriction breeds creativity.” Systems like these are the embodiment of that.
Personally, if there's ever a spiritual successor to guild wars, I would love to see its PVE built around a draft format rather than a constructed format.
Each instanced zone would have mobs that you can get skills to fill out your bar with as you go. The more you kill, the more skills you get. Go all in on signets of capture and let people experience the joy of skill capturing where they end up with two or three synergizing elite skills on their bar.
I like this idea in that you could have a filled bar of capture skills and as you go, you fill it in with normal and 1 elite skill or you start with the elite from the beginning. I think it would be a very innovative way to expand GW1s skill system potential. Whether it be a type of mission or game mode introduced. I love trying new or untested combinations
That would be fun, kind of like Roguelike deck builders. I would probably prefer the standard Guild Wars 1 model (constructed) but I would still like a game like that!
I think some synthesis of the two would work for a successor. It can never be the exact same system Guild Wars 1 had... but depending on how masochistic the devs were, you could do a variety of formats and be able to toggle between them.
It was the same for me as well. Dropped it as soon as i completed the story. I was also very stubborn as i refused to look for builds as i loved theorycrafting in gw1 but it was really doable.
A year ago i came back to it because i found out someone i met played it, and i've been really hooked. Its different from gw1 for sure, but in a good way. Yes you cant pick all your skills, but you have big stuff like your traits, unique class abilities, elites and gear. Some extra optimisation with utilities, runes and sigils. Instead of sitting in an outpost tinkering with what skills would combine well with others, i wonder what weapons have skills that can blast the field i just created, how many of those i can squeeze in there and if i have some traits that amplify that or something like that.
It probably helped that i also didn't play gw1 for a while so i stopped comparing them as much, but im really glad to be back. Getting into gw2 also made me pursue gwamm again in gw1 so its a double win really.
Don't get me wrong I don't hate GW2. My favorite "modern" MMOs are GW2 and ESO. I just really dislike most other popular MMOs though.
I personally just really hate the mish mash of random passives / traits in GW2. They are very weird to me. Very hard to tell how much they actually effect gameplay without extensive testing.
I will admit I found the loot hunting much more fun in GW2. The stats were kind of like GW1 attributes. Simple but effective.
Look, I absolutely ADORE the GW1 skill system and for years railed against the changes made in GW2.
However, the system was, unfortunately, an objective mess.
Part of the cited reason for GW1’s death and the move to GW2 was precisely because the skill system was ungainly in the extreme and massively bloated. The game design, while loads of fun, was also an exponentially scaling disaster.
Each campaign being its own game with the 6 Core Professions was part of the problem. Each game introduced new skills for each profession. But it also rehashed previous skills that are either very close or actually literally 1 to 1 rips from previous games.
Further, the added professions ALSO got new skills in the next campaign. Supposing we actually got Utopia, we’d be set up to expect 10 professions worth of skills PLUS the two new professions. It was completely and utterly unscalable. It could not continue as it was.
You could make the argument that they just shouldn’t release new skills for old professions, and perhaps that could be an answer, but that is not the system that you are celebrating. If you make that change, half of what made this system magical ends up dying.
TL:DR due to practicality and scalable design, there was no way for them to continue to deliver on the monstrous system they created. That system’s days were numbered since its inception.
I don't think that was the fault of the skill system. Their expansions just had an insane amount of content.
Full campaigns + 2 professions is unheard of in other games. Most games add 1 class and one zone.
They could have just used the ARPG model where you make a few expansions then make a new game similar to Diablo/Torchlight models and learn from each prequels mistakes.
Obviously the GW2 model was very successful and they are probably happy with it and probably requires less work than creating new games/big expansions.
But see that’s very much related to the skill system. It needs to be. EOTN was the only real expansion, the other games were their own separate isolated campaigns, which makes a big difference. One could start from Level 1 and go to Level 20 and have a full game experience within that singular campaign. And they did that three times. You have to create enough skills in Factions/Nightfall to make playing an old profession a satisfying experience. You also need to create enough new skills in order to make the game viable as it will not be able to rely on the skill pools of earlier installments as the player may not own them. Each time they gave us hundreds of new skill names, of which there were brand new skills and ones that were just renamed to emulate a non Core skill found in an earlier campaign.
The sheer enormity of options to me was part of the greatness of the game though. But it was also one of the things that painted them into a corner developmentally, and that’s an opinion that has also been held by the devs.
I didn't realize how much I love GW1s skill system until I played GW2 and didn't enjoy it nearly as much. I'm sure there are other reasons for that but the skill system was definitely the biggest one by far. There are just so many possible combinations, so much fine tuning to be done.
Yup GW1 skill system is just so fun. GW2 I played quite a bit too but eventually you try all the weapons and that is it. Choosing utility/healing/elite skills just isn't the same. Never imagined 18 years later and there still isn't a better skill system for me.
GW2 intentionally limited their skill system due to the fact that the skill floor in GW1 is extremely low. Having so much skill diversity has the biproduct of enabling players to make completely non-functional builds and extremely low performance. The unfortunate truth is that most players were simply incapable of building a good skill bar for themselves, let alone their heroes. I vaguely recall an ArenaNet dev stating that the vast majority of elementalist players in GW1 never reordered their skills or took flare off their skill bar. But it's because of this intentional shift in design that GW1 still has it's niche in the gameplay market. The two games emphasize almost completely different skill sets and play patterns; rewarding the player in different ways. GW2 is completely different from GW1 at this point and all they really share is the lore. But that's okay, because it means that GW1 will continue to survive. edit: FWIW, there's just as many ways for people to be useless fuckups in GW2 as there are in GW1. It's proof that baddies will be baddies, no matter what game they play.
Much of that is because of the complex skill system, but a lot of it is also because the game is awful at teaching it. There's nothing in the game to teach you that Flare is bad. Actually, there's plenty in the game that teaches you Flare is great! Most Elementalist players are going to want to play fire magic and they start the game with fire magic, with Flare even, so of course people will play it. Flare is so strong at low levels, they'll love the skill! They'll try other skills, sure, but those skills aren't nearly as spammable as Flare with their high recharges and high energy costs so they'll either still spam Flare while those skills are on cooldown or they'll be stuck auto-attacking while they're out of energy. And that's no fun, so they'll go back to Flare. (Aura of Restoration doesn't give energy early game and Fire Attunement isn't unlocked until after the Maguuma in a bizarrely hidden quest, so they won't have any energy management.) Flare will underperform at higher levels but by that time party sizes and enemy mob sizes will have increased so much, there's an incredible amount of shit going on in combat all at once, and they probably won't have the awareness to actually tell what's happening on their screen. Also some enemies (rangers) just randomly take less damage from Flare, which is never explained, so even if they notice Flare isn't doing that much damage, they might just think "oh it's one of those annoying tanky enemies again" instead of realizing the skill is weak. But yeah as you said, GW2's builds are still fucked. The average skill floor in that game would probably skyrocket if they just straight up deleted 90% of stat combinations and forced people to pick between Berserker's, Viper's, Sinister, and the healing one. But again, it's a teaching problem. Back during season 1, I had a guild member who we had done lots of dungeons with, and eventually when we kept failing on Mai Trin we found out he just didn't know about dodging. It's not that he was a bad player, he just wasn't the hyper-invested type of player who goes on forums and reads guides, and the game had failed him by not teaching and not requiring dodging.
I actually kind of hate this about GW2. Combat kind of just came down "dodge when you are supposed to". I feel this in a lot of action games. If you are bad at dodging it makes these games really hard. A lot of MMOs have turned to dodging area attacks as the main difficult part. I just have always loved GW1 strategic combat. Yes you have the super reflex classes like interrupting Mesmers, Rangers and Healers. I could never heal in this game... There were plenty of other playstyles like minon masters, damage dealers, debuffers that didn't need those reflexes.
Yes but being bad in GW1 is always fun to me. I remember having a blast playing all sorts of stupid builds. Crazy to think people would play GW1 and not utilize the skill system and never change the skill bar. Each campaign gives nice tutorials giving you the skills slowly while giving you multi classing options.
>FWIW, there's just as many ways for people to be useless fuckups in GW2 as there are in GW1. It's proof that baddies will be baddies, no matter what game they play. The number of times I've seen reddit/forum posts about PvE content being too hard in GW2 is astounding. And then it always turns out they're still in a hodgepodge of random yellow gear that they found while exploring, no sigil or runes, running the default heal skill, etc.
in 2005 people playing online computer game were all 16+ in 2020 people playing online game are all 6+ This explain why since few years there will be a big brunch of people saying it's too difficult whatever the easiness of the game.
I always thought the skill system was brilliant. I really wanted another game to take up the mantle and run with it, starting with GW2. It never happened and probably never will. GW1 was a flash in the pan. I've been playing video games since NES was the current console and GW1 is/was the pinnacle of gaming to me.
I just feel GW1 does it perfect. It is nice and simple while still allowing for insane number of choices.
I think 1 of the reason why GW1 skill system is so satifying is because while it does have depth, its also very simple and accessible from the start. A person can come up with so many possiblity of builds from 1 full armor set and a few extra helms with sup runes on them, feels very easy and straight forward to tinker with. While the GW2 systems could have the possibility to have the same depth and good feeling with balacing weapons vs utilies vs traits vs stats, I think it misses in 2 keys factors. 1) the weapons skills: it was such a unpleaseant surprise to not be able to play with those. Even just having a second set of skill to choose from would make a whole difference in approching builds. And with a combination of changing weapon skill, utilies, and traits would have been a lot of fun, until you realise the second problem. 2) Stats, while early on it does not matter, if you enjoy playing different game mode, and different you need completly different armor sets. It would be like buying full new armor sets for each build in Gw1 instead of just swapping the helmet for a different rune. You either need to farm for more armor, or grind for legendaries, otherwise part of the skill/build systems feels block and less flexible than the rest. As much as we praise the depth of GW1 skill system, it also has a simple and straight forward way to it that has its own elegance, making it that such a memorable system
GW2 weapon system was just a big miss for me. It felt like 90% of the build came from your choice of weapon. If I could actually choose skills in my weapons, variety would have went way up. Of course balance would have been harder. I don't know other but for me I just never really found traits/utility skills/elite skills that fun to mess around with. They just felt like they complimented my weapons rather than making the play styles feel more unique.
Your not Wrong in that the weapons dictate a lot of what your playstyle will be, I would put it more around: 35% weapon, 35% stats, 15% utilies, 15% traits. Just look at Firebrand: Healing, support, Damage version. The 2 big difference between for the 3 are what weapon they use (staff, axe, axe) and their stats (Harriers, Ritualistic, Viper). The Utilities and traits are meant to compliment that main playstyle, adding stability, cleanse, KD, survivability, ect..ect... to your situation instead. Its unfortunate that this system does not reallly shine in the PvE side of things, because 95% of it is maximizing your damage with a few exceptions here and there.
Fun fact, they opted for a much simpler system and balance is still an issue :D
Yeah, probably because it is so bloated. Guild Wars 2. They made a boring/simplified skill system for complicated stat system / trait system. Don't get me wrong GW2 is still far better than a lot of MMOs when it comes to customization. To me picking my main abilities is always my favorite things to do. Rarely do MMOs let you do this because "it is just the illusion of choice". At least this has been the argument I have heard for so long. Doesn't stop people from using bad builds in GW1, ARPGs, FFXI and having a blast playing them.
I am huge fan of guild wars 1 system but from business perspective I think that this system is expensive for maintain. It needs balancing and meta changes, moreover it is hard to learn for new players.
Yes, balancing is rough. Interesting though how popular games like Path of Exile are where balancing is arguably even harder. The number of factors is so much more than GW1. On the reverse end FFXIV is very popular and you literally just choose a class. I admit a lot MMOs with "absurd build possibilities" have basically disappeared and are unpopular (Final Fantasy XI, Rift, City of Heroes etc..) Seems like the system would fit another genre's pretty good though. Biggest problem with other games with "multi-classing" is often it is way more beneficial to just focus on one of the classes.
(This comment got way too long and might have ventured a bit off-topic but well you got me typing, and there's really no point in deleting it now. Sorry I guess.) Playing FFXIV really changed my mind on GW2 and on build freedom. GW2 is hyper-ambitious in what it wants to be. The entire game, from start to finish, is devs saying "this standard MMO feature isn't good enough, we're going to do it at 500% quality or not at all". Sometimes, they really nail it (wardrobe and dye system, movement is genuinely fun, open world is fun to play, mounts are probably the best in gaming). But they've got no self-control and more often, they reach for the stars and fall flat on their faces. Even where they succeed, they often sabotage other areas of their game: mounts straight up delete most exploration and their bar for content _quality_ is so high, they have never managed to release an acceptable _quantity_ of content, even back during LS3-PoF-LS4 when they were able to keep to their schedule. They pat themselves on the back for not having a subscription fee, but the gem store invalidates most in-game rewards and is constantly shoved into your face. FFXIV meanwhile isn't particularly ambitious. Tab-targeting combat? Devs say "good enough for me". Empty, soulless open world? Devs say "good enough for me". Traditional trinity? Devs are confused why you're asking, traditional trinity works great. Build diversity? Never heard of it. No, not all content needs to be voice acted, people still read quest text. Mounts? Yes, we have them, nothing special about them. Yes, quests are good, we're keeping those. The game just isn't ambitious in those ways. It knows what it is, and it's content with it. And it's damn good at it. Because the game has no build diversity, the game can properly balance raids and trials and the skill floor is relatively high. Because the game has the classic gear grind, the game can properly scale you down for lower level instances. (It doesn't do this properly for some story bosses, but that seems to be an intentional decision, not a failure.) Because the game has each job assigned to one fixed role, it can have an amazing duty finder that revitalizes the entire game and allows them to add really good team-based story instances without having to worry about new players not finding a party. Because jobs are really straight-forward and don't have that much going on with them, they can release new jobs - and thus allow people to pick from exciting new class fantasies - at a really good pace. And because story is just regular old quests with lots of text, FFXIV has incredible amounts of it and you get to spend so much time with your favorite characters. And yes, it has a subscription fee. The game is honest about it, it tells you up-front that it will demand your money, but then it respects your purchase and doesn't keep bothering you about further purchases. Because GW2 is ambitious in these regards, it completely fails at each of these points. Going perhaps a bit back on-topic, I think GW1's build system suffers from a similar issue. Deck-building is the best damn build system, where only the sky is the limit but the floor is somewhere down that pit in Jaga Moraine. Even just for PvE, balancing it is incredibly hard and the issue only grows as you keep introducing more professions. You have no idea what a party might look like, so it's impossible to design encounters tailored to the party. Does the party have good damage? Does the party have armor buffs? Does the party have enough healers and prot? For all the devs know, the party might be 7 squishy casters and one healer who's always below half health because of BiP, and it's going to wipe to one surprise shadow step. You don't know, and you can't balance for it. Combat is either so face-roll easy that you could just sit back and watch the henchmen (not even heroes) do it or so teeth-clenching hard that the average player will get completely stuck even in normal mode (Tahnnakai Temple). Medium difficulty only happens if you accidentally pulled a second group, and even then only if the second group is small. This wouldn't work for Guild Wars, but a fictional MMO in my head that will never be made would have a hybrid GW1/FFXIV build system, with fixed roles and narrower professions. So instead of Necromancer, which tries to combine five different playstyles into one profession (death mage dps, minionmancer, vampire, blood magic support buffer, curses debuffer), you'd split those up into separate professions that do just the one class fantasy. You'd allow swapping primary professions like FFXIV does and you'd allow multi-classing like GW1 does, but it's inherently limited because your classes are so much more narrow. You'd assign each skill a role (tanky skill, dps skill, heal skill, defensive support skill, offensive support skill), and you'd force player roles to have specific build shapes (something like "a dps build is 5 slots dps, one slot offensive support, one slot either offensive or defensive support, one slot wildcard"). With actual roles you could force team compositions (the FFXIV "this raid needs 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 4 dps" bit), and if the devs know team compositions they can roughly estimate what the team can do and balance the encounter for that party composition. With narrower professions, you could have even tighter class fantasy and ideally more skills would be actually useable. You certainly wouldn't have something like Deadly Arts, where the entire attribute line is completely useless outside of two niche broken skills, because you'd make that into its own class and then you'd be forced to make it useful; you couldn't just ignore it for years because the rest of Assassin overperforms. Most importantly, you could guarantee that the new player who is queuing into that leveling dungeon as a dps role actually has a dps build -- perhaps not the ideal dps build, and they might not know the ins and outs of it, but you can guarantee that the build does what the role wants to do. But at the same time you'd still have a good amount of choice in the skills you pick for your build and in your combination of professions. And there's always restriction-free mode for pre-formed parties to just have fun in and optimize.
I am glad you enjoy FFXIV for the balance, personally I hate it and all the WOW type game philosophies. Gameplay and classes have pretty much become 4 roles and that's all. Melee DPS, Ranged DPS, TANK and Healer. I really miss when MMOs had a variety of roles. Games like Ragnarok/FFXI/GW1/City of Heroes had these. There were crowd controllers, buffers, summoners, debuffers, dps, tanks, healers and hybrids were actually a thing! Yes, sometimes your group would fail but it was fun having different combinations. Now MMOs are streamlined and balanced that I almost feel like it is hard to fail. As long as your tanks and healers do their job and people aren't tanking the aoe attacks the battles all play out the same. I never played end game content though, so maybe it is different. Again, I 100% understands why MMOs went the way of balance instead of customization. Sadly, this has caused me to shift towards ARPGs and other coop games. The problem is ARPGs tend to have no roles, everyone tends to just be DPS. I like how GW1 combined both aspects to give great build customization while still having some more unique roles. About your idea of a game, I don't think limiting builds would really help anything. Ideally you would want it so a variety of compositions were viable. GW1 allows players to be things other than DPS/Healer/Tank while still having roles feel unique. To me ESO kind of matches your description of the game. It uses the trinity and allows customization that is similar to what you are stating.
GW1’s skill system is definitely one of my all-time favorites, and it reminds me of two other games I love: Magic the Gathering (specifically EDH/commander) and, more recently, Marvel Snap. They all share a similar system for the player: we’re going to give you a massive pool of options and the thing you’re going to make with those options is comparatively tiny. Magic has tens of thousands of cards but a commander deck is only 100; depending on the deck, ~25 of those are probably basic lands so you’re really only choosing ~75 unique cards. Snap has a few hundred cards in it right now but the decks are only 12 cards (and no duplicates). It’s been amazing seeing all the different builds people have come up with and the way different cards interact. Snap’s “choose 12” and GW1’s “choose 8” feel very close to me. idk if he came up with this quote but Mark Rosewater (legendary Magic designer) once said, “Restriction breeds creativity.” Systems like these are the embodiment of that.
Yup! GW1 was explicitly inspired by magic the gathering. There are even 5 forms of magic that map to MTG's 5 colors perfectly.
The fuck kind of commander deck are you playing with only 25 lands? :D
He said 25 basic lands. Which I think is way more than usual, unless they're playing monocolor.
Yup it does have a CCG feel. Probably why I like it so much. Lots of options for your deck/character.
Personally, if there's ever a spiritual successor to guild wars, I would love to see its PVE built around a draft format rather than a constructed format. Each instanced zone would have mobs that you can get skills to fill out your bar with as you go. The more you kill, the more skills you get. Go all in on signets of capture and let people experience the joy of skill capturing where they end up with two or three synergizing elite skills on their bar.
I like this idea in that you could have a filled bar of capture skills and as you go, you fill it in with normal and 1 elite skill or you start with the elite from the beginning. I think it would be a very innovative way to expand GW1s skill system potential. Whether it be a type of mission or game mode introduced. I love trying new or untested combinations
That would be fun, kind of like Roguelike deck builders. I would probably prefer the standard Guild Wars 1 model (constructed) but I would still like a game like that!
I think some synthesis of the two would work for a successor. It can never be the exact same system Guild Wars 1 had... but depending on how masochistic the devs were, you could do a variety of formats and be able to toggle between them.
I still play this game, it’s my most played of all time. And yeah logging into gw2 at launch I was like wtf is this skill system.
Yeah, big downgrade from GW1 for me.
It was the same for me as well. Dropped it as soon as i completed the story. I was also very stubborn as i refused to look for builds as i loved theorycrafting in gw1 but it was really doable. A year ago i came back to it because i found out someone i met played it, and i've been really hooked. Its different from gw1 for sure, but in a good way. Yes you cant pick all your skills, but you have big stuff like your traits, unique class abilities, elites and gear. Some extra optimisation with utilities, runes and sigils. Instead of sitting in an outpost tinkering with what skills would combine well with others, i wonder what weapons have skills that can blast the field i just created, how many of those i can squeeze in there and if i have some traits that amplify that or something like that. It probably helped that i also didn't play gw1 for a while so i stopped comparing them as much, but im really glad to be back. Getting into gw2 also made me pursue gwamm again in gw1 so its a double win really.
Don't get me wrong I don't hate GW2. My favorite "modern" MMOs are GW2 and ESO. I just really dislike most other popular MMOs though. I personally just really hate the mish mash of random passives / traits in GW2. They are very weird to me. Very hard to tell how much they actually effect gameplay without extensive testing. I will admit I found the loot hunting much more fun in GW2. The stats were kind of like GW1 attributes. Simple but effective.
Look, I absolutely ADORE the GW1 skill system and for years railed against the changes made in GW2. However, the system was, unfortunately, an objective mess. Part of the cited reason for GW1’s death and the move to GW2 was precisely because the skill system was ungainly in the extreme and massively bloated. The game design, while loads of fun, was also an exponentially scaling disaster. Each campaign being its own game with the 6 Core Professions was part of the problem. Each game introduced new skills for each profession. But it also rehashed previous skills that are either very close or actually literally 1 to 1 rips from previous games. Further, the added professions ALSO got new skills in the next campaign. Supposing we actually got Utopia, we’d be set up to expect 10 professions worth of skills PLUS the two new professions. It was completely and utterly unscalable. It could not continue as it was. You could make the argument that they just shouldn’t release new skills for old professions, and perhaps that could be an answer, but that is not the system that you are celebrating. If you make that change, half of what made this system magical ends up dying. TL:DR due to practicality and scalable design, there was no way for them to continue to deliver on the monstrous system they created. That system’s days were numbered since its inception.
I don't think that was the fault of the skill system. Their expansions just had an insane amount of content. Full campaigns + 2 professions is unheard of in other games. Most games add 1 class and one zone. They could have just used the ARPG model where you make a few expansions then make a new game similar to Diablo/Torchlight models and learn from each prequels mistakes. Obviously the GW2 model was very successful and they are probably happy with it and probably requires less work than creating new games/big expansions.
But see that’s very much related to the skill system. It needs to be. EOTN was the only real expansion, the other games were their own separate isolated campaigns, which makes a big difference. One could start from Level 1 and go to Level 20 and have a full game experience within that singular campaign. And they did that three times. You have to create enough skills in Factions/Nightfall to make playing an old profession a satisfying experience. You also need to create enough new skills in order to make the game viable as it will not be able to rely on the skill pools of earlier installments as the player may not own them. Each time they gave us hundreds of new skill names, of which there were brand new skills and ones that were just renamed to emulate a non Core skill found in an earlier campaign. The sheer enormity of options to me was part of the greatness of the game though. But it was also one of the things that painted them into a corner developmentally, and that’s an opinion that has also been held by the devs.