"Emergent Complexity" skill system..how will this change the gameplay

I've concluded after reading all of this that very few people here have a clue... How can you judge anything from a few bit's of information about a prospective design?

"That's going to suck! I don't like this already!" What's going to suck? What don't you like? What the hell are you even talking about?

The simple fact is I feel confident in saying that I doubt even the designers fully know what they want to do yet, never mind have and kind of design goal lset in stone.
Almost 2 friggin' years before an open beta even begins. 2 years... Can any of you even fathom how long a period that is in terms of game development? If you can then you'll realise how completely pointless all this conjecture is concerning 'potential' design ideas...

who knows maybe it will be like:

GW1+ God of War = GW2

So..One skill that has one description and performs one act,is complicated moreso than one skill that has 3 different actions depending on your characters ingame stance (Running/Standing Still/Jumping)?

...Yeah.

Maybe I didn't see what you meant. I don't think you saw what I meant, either, though.

Let's drop the SC illustration and say it straight;

Some people play GW because they love the PvP, or co-op PvE action.

After GW2 comes out, there will not be nearly as many people playing GW1. (Unless GW2 really bombs. ^_^) Tell me that will make GW1 multiplayer better.

Some people play GW because they love exploring the beautiful world, and finding new fantastic places and the new creatures that live there.

After GW2 comes out, there will not be any more expansions for GW1. I wouldn't hold my breath for endless free Sorrow's Furnace-like updates, either.

So what I'm saying is that unlike Soul Calibur, regardless of our lighthearted example, your reasons for enjoying GW can be completely destroyed by sequels, whether you buy them or not, even though you were very happy with the game that you did purchase.

The new game either has to be good enough that you gladly move on, or you're forced to stop playing a game you were perfectly happy with.

Actually, I'd go out on a limb here and say that, regardless of labels, games like WoW and City of Heroes are a completely different genre than Guild Wars. Dwarves don't make a genre, gameplay mechanics do.

There are too many "vague quotes" floating around at the moment, to be sure. I seriously think Anet needs to step back, look at how the fanbase is reacting, and rethink their approach to the release of information.

I am glad you have faith, though. Blind faith does make life easier.

I, for one, can, since I've worked on more top-name games than you have fingers. ^_^

You're right, it's a very long time.

I've said it once, and I'll say it again; If you have an opinion on a game, voice it now, while the game is still in people's heads, not finished and on the shelves.

Nobody will listen to you then.

Oh so you have industry experience? Good. So you undoubtedly know what designers are like in terms of pragmatic thinking (and also their schizophrenic tendencies in the early stages). I don't think there's much to worry about.

The game that has so far been described is a 'different' beast to Guild Wars. While the conceptual whispers may appal the community, nobody can deny that their context is still Guild Wars. The beast that will be Guild Wars 2 is an unknown quantity.

Concerning voicing of opinions: Well... How many people are discerning enough in their vision to know what they will like or dislike? Especially in an environment that is currently vacuous. Sounds like an easy question but it's not and I'd wager not that many. Then there's the designers again. As you say, you've worked in the industry so I'd imagine you know what they're like. I'll leave it at that...

So use the perfect example of Everquest and it's sequel. There is still people playing Everquest, despite 2 being out, and they're happily paying a monthly fee even. That pretty much proves that there will still be people playing GW1 no matter how good or how bad GW2 is. Whether you or I enjoy either that much really doesn't matter - point is, GW1 will not die, and you can enjoy it anytime.


OK... I was talking about mechanic. IE, fighting game vs racing game, the big difference? Mechanics, how it plays. Hate to tell ya, but Guild Wars plays like an MMO. CoH is as different from WoW as it is from GW and all vise-versa, but they are all in the same genre, ORPG, or Online Role-Playing Game. Sure, the details are different, the souls of the games are different, but they are in the same genre compared to say, fighting games, strategy games, racing games, sports games, etc. Dwarves have nothing to do with it.

I have faith in them because they have a legacy to uphold. They have fortunes on the line, now. I trust that they are not baffoon enough to ruin all of that. I also have all of their back work to prove that they know what they're doing. That's not exactly blind faith.

Besides, is it better to shuffle through life worrying about everything, whether it has truth to it or not? But meh, to each their own.

When I read that news, that's the sort of thing I understood he meant. The skill, itself, is simple in description so anyone will be able to pick it up and use it, and everyone will figure out their own favorite usage for the skill.

To give a warrior example:
"Axe Rage"
<insert whatever energy/recharge/activation/whatever GW2 has here>
A furious Axe assault.

Now, anyone can go out and try using that, and as they play, they discover:
Using it while attacking an enemy: Several fast, consecutive axe attacks for +X damage
Using it while running: Think cyclone axe as it used to be
Using it while jumping, and close enough to your enemy: A swift falling chop that can cripple/knockdown your target and does +X damage

If you think similarly with a hammer type weapon, the jump attack may be an AoE knockdown shockwave of some sort.

With a sword, the run attack could be a thrust that trips and cripples your target.

Basically, this system would retain variety and complexity, while not being overly complicated to just go out and use the skills. And if I recall, it was said somewhere that they know people want to be playing an RPG, so it's not going to be an action game in any way - how would pushing that skill while jumping turn GW into an action game any more than needing quick reflexes for interrupts, and manually dodging arrows?

Of course, it's all speculation at this point, but that's the sort of thing I gathered from what he said.

Now this is QFT, besides I did not even start this thread to be a 'GW2 is DOOMED' discussion... but rather just to discuss the direction of the playstyle of the game, which I think GW players would like to speculate/discuss/ or even complain if they want to... no harm in that... It makes the time at work go by fast. we do have a long way from beta and I will buy the game no matter what anet decides anyway.

a 'jade empire' Gw actually sounds pretty sweet. We'll see if its worth the wait.

Yes its good we all are speculating and voicing opinions on what the direction of GW could be.

We have a long way to go towards GW2 and a rich and deep well of constructive (and sometimes just silly) ideas that we as a community must continue to tap. :3

But i still would like people to hold their reservations about it "going to suck" or "going to rock", since those kind of blanket statements tend to be baseless and non-productive.

That would be almost as cool as the Unreal Tournament sound mod.

Gears of War + GW = GW2 maybe?

The whole "contextual function" all purpose button in Gears of War (the same button is used for ducking, running, climbing, opening doors, depending on whats going on, the button's function changes) could possibly implemented, as the others have stated, into the skill system of GW.

One of the things that struck me when I moved from COH to GW was how much more interesting the interaction was. COH had become a grind as much as anything because the goals, pace and interactions were so narrow and constant. In contrast, even Pre-searing GW had surprising changes of pace and context: sometimes it felt frantic, often it provided periods of almost bucolic wandering. All of which made the experience more interesting and compelling. I sensed that the developers had a much better sense of what made a continually interesting MMORP environment. It was so much more imaginatively engaging. And, from a historical point of view, it made sense: the GW game designers had much more experience than the COH designers at that time.

The current GW has some significant issues, skill balance among them. Nevertheless, I don't think that "institutional" knowledge that has made GW1 successful has been lost. While I found the Wired article of interest, my sense is that there is too little there to make any kind of inference as to what we'll see. However, the article did good service if only in motivating this thread which I suspect may prove useful to the dev.s

My abstraction from the section about "emergent complexity" is that they want players to gain depth and breadth from play, not just from careful study and deductive reasoning. That doesn't necessarily preclude the latter. It could mean that they will be working to make skill effects much more comprehensible, which is not necessarily a bad thing. In GW1, build construction is often the most interesting part of an endeavor. I wouldn't mind at all if actual play proved equally challenging.

Failure is always a possibility. But so are moments when paradigms shift and extraordinary acheivement is possible.

If GW2 turns out to be the latter I will probably forgive them for deciding to make the Asura mini-pet the first thing we saw of GW2.

Ditto.

I think that any game that does not have set rules, is a game thats going to die very fast.

If he thinks skill descriptions are too complicated, he hasn't played Magic. In fact, I often found that skills descriptions in GW omit details for the sake of simplicity, resulting in vagueness when you try to understand how the skill works in detail.

Take aftercast, for example. Ok, I can accept not mentioning the regular 0.75s aftercast, but ffs, write it out on spells that have an irregular aftercast! How am I supposed to know that Flame Burst, Frozen Burst and 2 out of the 3 wards have an increased aftercast? Where does it say that Shadow Prison has 0 aftercast?

The armor ignoring damage and damage types are pretty inconsistent as well. Many skills don't specify the type of damage they deal. Obsidian Flame, anyone? (No, it's not earth damage. It behaves like shadow damage).

The subtle differences between "takes X damage" and "Y deals X damage" (First template always implies armor ignoring damage, whereas the second one does so occasionally)

Lastly, random idiosyncracises like "You ride the lightning to target foe". Now, is "riding the lightning" a teleport or a shadow step? What difference does it make? You drop items when you shadow step, but not when you teleport. Also, you can teleport to inaccessible areas while you can't shadow step there. (I still don't know which one RtL is because the skill sucks so much I never bothered to test it)

So... um... yeah. GW2 should be more precise, not less.

It sounds to me from that comment, whether it will be in the game at the end, that Anet seeks to Dumb Down GW. This does not bode well for the community that they will attract or for many players that can read and have decent reading comprehension.

That is from just one comment the guy made. It is almost obvious to me that they are just blowing smoke up peoples asses right now to garner interest.

Thinking about it, thsi new combat system sounds like it will actually take "skill" to play it, and not actual skills on your bar.

Again, it's too early too say, but it sounds fun.

If this means all of the skills will have to be "discovered" through gameplay and we'll have no descriptions - then this sounds like a lot of work (memory-wise especially).

However, if anyone has played ONI before... I thought it was kind of cool how you could learn how to do a round-house kick... and then learn to do a flying kick... and then learn to do a double or triple kick. If it's something like that... then I'm all for it.

I wonder if it will remove auto-attacking.... I certainly hope not...not on a keyboard anyway...

Amen...shuddering to remember all the combinations in MK2 to get a fatality...if I have to time jump, forward arrow, f1...I will be very dissappointed...

I think it'll be more like Oblivion, if anything:

Move Right + Attack = Disarm
Move Forward + Attack = Charge Attack

Maybe things along those lines. It would be pretty silly to have to press "1-1-2-click" to do a move.

From what I've seen thus far about GW2, they're going to do their best to appease PvP players in the form of UAS and PvE players in the form of wii like grind elements.

Wii as in the Wii, but also like weeeeeee.

When I start a game, I don't want to jump around and act silly. I want to see just how deep the storyline is. I want to feel like I'm actually in the world. Yes, realism can take a hike when it's an element like traveling from city to city, but when it's something like a quest.. I want to enjoy reading about what I'm doing, why, who I'm doing it for, etc. GW1 is too easy to just accept and go, figure it out based on the quest log (a summarized version of just what you have to do to continue).

I don't want to be a goof ball unless that's just my mood. I want some strategy to be in the game, or I won't be..

this sounds like crap....i like reading lots of text and having a complex rule system to keep track of.

But how could this possibly work with, say, a mesmer casting spells?

(Think Ineptitude... doesn't do anything unless the target actually attacks)

I think the limited number of skills idea has seen its days. However with the way this emergent complexity system sounds I'll be missing the days of the metagame and buildwars. Hopefully emergent complexity will hold onto the complexity and maintain an intuitive "emergent." The conditionals that come with complex skills allow for numerous and ingenious synergies. While this may deter some people from playing GW2 if it isn't properly managed, the accessibility of GWs finer moments to the non-strategist masses thus far leaves me feeling good about their implementation of any future complex skill systems.

I've always been pleased that GW had such a good and varied skill system (balancing aside) and yet forced the player to think, to pick 8 skills that work well (or be boring and use 8 that someone else picked), with well-thought-out names that actually in many cases taught some english vocabulary even to those who speak it natively, and had precise effects that you could therefore know would combine well.

Why do we play GW? There are so many reasons for so many different people that it's a very hard question to answer. For me, I work, have a life, and can't spend hours every day grinding any aspect of any game, be it levels, titles, or in this possible case, skills. I play PvP and PvE, and all I really want is a game where I can come home, socialise in the GW world for a bit, do something interesting like a mission with friends, and then reluctantly get back to the real world. Do I get value for money? Absolutely.

As many have pointed out it's all years away from even beta so who really knows. Two possibilities come to mind in ways it could go that would be bad in my opinion: either like Morrowind or Oblivion, or like Black and White (there are probably better examples than this but I haven't played them).

Lets assume for a moment that it's like Morrowind, where you learn skills by doing stuff, and improve them as you do them more. I know how much I play GW and how much I play Morrowind, and the reason is quite simple. I don't need a real life simulator; if I want to run around and jump (and possibly swing axes - don't try this at home kids) I can do that in real life. If I want to spend days practicing a skill so that I become good at it, I can do that in real life. It's called exercise. If Morrowind was hooked up to the Wii, then I could see the point as I'd actually be gaining some benefit from it.

The alternative is that it's closer to Black and White, an environment where you could do an awful lot but had no idea what it would do until you tried it. Just casting a fireball, well, casts a fireball, but cast it whilst jumping and it does something different? It's an interesting concept but one that is likely to frustrate more than be fun if not carefully done. It implies combos of moves, precise timing, and other things along those lines. I agree with others that we don't need a button masher; I was always very happy with GW that I could often be quite relaxed with some professions and just tap away at keys as the need arose.

The above sounds very negative, so I want to finish on a positive note and say that I do remember that this is the development team that gave us GW in the first place, and that we should withhold judgement until more than a few phrases of concept are thrown about

Please don't dumb down the game so more inept 12 year olds can ruin my gameplay experience with their stupidity and ignorance.

and since when are skill descriptions complicated or annoying? That's like saying traffic signs are big and scary and complicated. You read em, get the info, and apply it... it's not rocket science, my head never asploded trying to read a skill description...

Auspicious incantation was a bit much the first time I read it lol. But other than that I agree skill descriptions arent complicated at all. I like it exactly how it is.

See that's what I was thinking about.

Ok, this all sounds *great* for melee combat, whipping up a bunch of moves and what not.

But what about everyone else? How are they going to make shooting a bow, or casting spells fun and interactive?

My only guess right now for that would be button mashing. Not too innovative in my opinion, especially compared to how it sounds melee combat will be.

They might just have spell combat be simply the pushing of the spell's icon. Red also thought of the idea of spell combonations. Or they might do nothing, and the only fun and satisfaction you're supposed to get out of it is the power of the spell - Let's hope that's not the case.

I actually wish they didn't mention that in the interview. We have enough small details on GW2 already. Why highten the suspense?

But, how are you going to be able to detect people who use scripts with perfect motions to cast spells?

Didn't ANet already said in one of the interviews they want gw to stay an rpg and not transform it into fps or something like that? So I guess you can forget about '1, 1 + click' to use a skill.

As for jumping and casting for Caster class. Imagine clicking on jump and a Fire Magic skill. The result could be Firestorm or a Meteor shower. Jump when combined with an attack skill does not necessarily mean you will actually be jumping.

k i dont know if this has been said yet or not

but... dont fix something that is not broken
who here thinks that the skill system is bad/broken? i would hope not many
that is what i have noticed alot of these changes they are thinking of implementing are not making a guildwars two yet a totally different game then what so many people already love

We'll have a special key for spell casting (say...TAB). Everytime you want to cast a spell, you hit tab and enter a sequence of keys...and you have your spell cast. The target of your spell will be highlighted by your mouse with a crosshair or something...

Caster "emerging complexity" can be something that was done in old Dungeon Master - you get light spell which consists of two runes, you add third rune meaning distance and you got flare.

You add another rune for area and its fireball, choose to invest 25 mana isntead of 15 and you casted rogdorts invocation.

of use different rune for area and its firestorm.

then choose to invest 25 mana and exchaustonn instead of standart cost and you got meteor shower.

You cold get a lot of scaling from spell by simple cahncing their behaviour under differenct costs - 5 energz DOT aoe would behave differently than 5 energy where you add exchaustion, even if it would be same skill.

Nothing's broken. They're just trying something new.

Well that about kicks "Fast Casting" right in the nuts now, doesn't it!

What a hideous concept... let us pray to the gods they don't invoke such madness.

There's one example of, if not emergence, at least evolution that's been in the game since launch. Pets evolve into 1 of basically 3 end states depending on how you play. If you take a lot of damage while the pet evolves, it tends to go toward Dire. If the pet takes most of the damage, it tends toward Hearty, etc. Studious people took the time to test and document pet evolution (on this site in particular) so that they could direct the evolution of their pet toward a desired result, but I imagine the designers conceived it as something approaching an element in an emergent system. The important thing is, the final state of your evolved pet should complement your play style, not dictate it. Warriors who fight with a pet would likely see their pet evolve toward Dire, while Rangers or Monks most likely end up with Hearty pets more often than not.

If the underlying mechanics of the skill (and presumably also attribute, possibly class) system behaved this way from the beginning, it would definitely lead to more 'discovery' and less dependence on reading. I could see them hoping to develop a game system that tailors itself to your individual play style. By introducing a few fundamental skills early in the game that everyone has access to, and then allowing those skills to essentially 'evolve' into higher forms with not only more power but more varied functionality depending on how you used them over time, they might create a much more open-ended game.

The problem with language precision and arcane skill descriptions goes beyond being a barrier to new players (which it probably is). The skill language reflects the problem they've run into after designing 10 classes. It's not the cause of that part of the problem, just a reflection of it. They've created a closed system. It's still very interesting in itself, but it's hard to grow beyond its current state. The interconnections are just getting too complex to maintain a balanced structure. So it sounds like they want to take a shot at creating an open-ended one.

In that kind of game, the 'emergent complexity' won't manifest itself in things like Touchers, but in the skills themselves. Potentially, you could develop skills (which is to say, effects) that nobody else in the game has, or will ever develop. Obivously not sure if they intend to go that far with it.

Yes, I have industry experience, and I do know what designers are like...

And I'M the one telling you to voice concerns now, not later.

What should you infer from that? Think hard. ^_^

Don't mess with red, boi!

I still wish ANet didn't announce this, though. Look how worried we all are. More tidbit information = lose.

Oh... In that case:

Everyone at Anet - Please do what you feel is best for your business and the players. That is all.