ArenaNet has quite a bit in store for Guild Wars 2 fans in 2013. The team has already began discussing their plans for updates we’ll be seeing early on in the year, including custom arenas, leaderboards, and 1 team vs. 1 team PvP matches for tournaments. On the PvE front, we also received an update from Colin Johanson who talked about the January and February game updates as well as some future plans to make fighting mobs out in the world a little more interesting. Here’s the first bit of news:
Originally posted by ColinJohanson (Source)
There will be a blog post in around week or so that summarizes the high level plan for the first 6 months of 2013 for Gw2.Then each of the individual releases for January, February, etc. will have their own release pages on our website, as well as blog posts describing specific important new features where appropriate.
More info coming in about a week once it’s all edited and localized!
Keep reading to see the other dev tracker announcements.
Colin Johanson, Game Director, on boss and creature updates in 2013:
Originally posted by ColinJohanson (Source)
One of our goals for 2013 will be evaluating all of the bosses and creatures in the game, from open world to dungeons, to try and make them more exciting and fun to fight against.
In general if anything has a really high health pool, it needs to have unique abilities to make it exciting for the entire time, or actually change abilities/tactics as it goes down in health to ensure it stays fun and exciting to fight against.
We realize there are a number of bosses in the game, from the open world to instances that all can be more fun to fight than they are now. We’ll be tackling that this year in part of our goal to make our core game as strong as possible.
Finally, a lengthy update on PvP plans for the coming year:
Originally posted by JonathanSharp (Source)
There are so many things to talk about, so instead of quoting individual people, I’ll just make a post outlining things that people have mentioned.New features: As I said in the Guru state of the game, January won’t see any big updates. Everyone is getting back from vacation, so it’s a small patch. We’ll see bigger updates in later patches, etc.
I plan to write out a full blog for these features as they’re closer to being ready. But I can give a few details now:
- Custom Arenas. This is still our top priority for the time being, as it allows the playerbase to do so many things. You guys can set maps up in the ways that you want, and it you can set up your own servers to allow you to practice with your friends. It also allows custom tournaments, etc. It just gives you guys a lot of control over the game, so we’re pushing hard on it.
- Ratings/matchmaking/leaderboards. These are being worked on. I’ll give more details on this later, but quickly: We will be using our MM (matchmaking) system to match teams up against one another. Each player has their own rating, and these ratings are used when 2 teams are fighting one another. MM obviously won’t be used in public matches (because people are jumping in/out all the time), and instead will be used in tournament formats. We will be using the MM system in the background as you play, and then we will be showing player ranks via our official leaderboards. These leaderboards will show things like player ranks, wins, losses, qualyfing points, etc.
- New player experience/teaching the game better. We want players of all experience levels to enjoy the game, not just the hardcore. We’ll talk more about this stuff later, but we want to make sure all players enjoy the game. Custom Arenas will help here as well, because players can find arenas where they feel comfortable, and play the game with the same players every day while they learn the game, etc.
- 1 team vs. 1 team. Like with other things, I was going to do a more robust blog on this later, but we are doing this. We will be testing out Temple of the Silent Storm for tournament rotation play by doing a 1 team vs. 1 team setup (as opposed to the 8 team setup we use in tournaments). This will mean only two teams play, one wins, one loses. It will cost less to enter these 1on1 matchups than tournaments, but rewards will also be scaled down. You won’t have to go multiple rounds, and once a match is over, both teams can jump right back into the pool. So overall, compared to tournaments, it will have less rewards, but it’s quicker to play and easier to get into/out of. We’ll be testing this system in the near future to see how it works, and if feedback is positive, we may look at trying to incorporate the 1on1 format into PvP. We know that free tournaments are going almost all the time, but we recognize that paid tournaments are having some issues right now, so have been listening to you and have made plans to improve the experience. You guys have made some great suggestions, and a lot of your ideas are in alignment with the things propounded in our internal meetings. So thank you for all your passion and suggestions!
That’s all I can say for now on that stuff for now. I’ll try to jump back in this thread during the week as time allows.
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