Trait Revamp! and Possible skill changes?

The ArenaNet dev team held a great panel at Pax 2011. And among the many topics of discourse was a brief mention of changes to the Guild Wars 2 Trait system.

More specifically game designer Jon Peters said

“The Trait system, we just scrapped it, so were rebuilding it all. It’s still gonna to do the same thing but just the way it works is gonna be a lil’ different. So there is stuff, that’s kinda gonna be where your progression takes over both um, once you’ve kinda unlocked your weapon skills you’re gonna have traits plus everything that’s on the right hand of your skill bar so unlocking the healing skills, unlocking the utility skills and unlock the elite skills as well."

Which sounds like a total overhaul of the system.

But then Eric Flannum further explained on Guild Wars 2 Guru saying

“Hey guys, just thought I’d jump in and clarify some things. First, the term “scrapped” was an unfortunate choice of words on Jon’s part. He tends to use very strong language to describe things even when it isn’t warranted (all part of his charm). I think when most people think of something being “scrapped” they think of things being completely tossed out and restarted from square one which isn’t at all what’s happened with the trait system.

The changes that you will see made to traits, and the acquisition of skills all make use of and leverage things that were for the most part already in the game. To say we “scrapped” the trait system is an overstatement.

As to why we made these changes, when we explain the changes we’ll explain why exactly we thought that we needed to make them. I think the changes are a huge positive improvement for the game but I’ll leave that up to your judgement once we’re able to explain things more fully.

The last point I wanted to make is that these changes have not delayed the game in any way. We are in Alpha and we are still on track for a Closed Beta sometime this year. From there we’ll determine when open beta will take place which in turn will determine when we ship. That’s the same plan we’ve been describing for most of the year.

In the meantime, thanks for all the patience and understanding you’ve shown, we’ll try our best to live up to your expectations.”

What so what does all this mean?

Well if we contrast the key points in Jon Peters brief description of the changes with the information that was initially given, in the traits overview...

Some of the speculative possibilities we can infer are:

1. Trait slots for “Schools” (e.g. Thieves having Agility and Shadow Arts to slot with traits in addition to slotting each weapon.) Have been removed and consequently traits now only apply to the left hand (weapon skill) side of the bar.
2. Traits are no longer acquired via the profession specific quest/feat system.
3. Trait acquisition has been rolled into the weapon skill acquisition system as an additional layer of progression/customization after all skills for that weapon have been unlocked.
4. All traits are now unlocked via weapon usage and character leveling.
5. Possible branching trait trees or locked trait choices that require a respec to unslot.
6. The “Go to your trainer” skill learning system has been scrapped and some, most, or even all skills on the right hand side of your bar (healing, utility, and elite) are now acquired via the profession specific quest/feat system.

THE ABOVE LIST IS PURE SPECULATION.

But if these assumptions prove to be correct it could make for a very interesting build system. I would like to keep the trait slots for each “school” of skills because I love deep customization and strategy.

And I am also hoping that they do not lock your trait choices and you can “respec” on the fly so long as you are out of combat. But changing traits should not be macro-able or otherwise controllable through addons. (For PvP balancing reasons.) Players with the ability to completely change specs mid PvP match, even outside of combat would be more than a bit broken.

But that aside I love the prospects presented by this information. I would really like to have the idea of going to a trainer to pay gold and instantly learn a new ability to go out the window. And the class specific quest/feat system they initially setup for traits would make a fantastic replacement!

All in all I’m excited about this.

And it’s one the many reason I’m really looking forward to Guild Wars 2!

Balancing PvP for multiple group sizes in MMORPGs

“You can’t balance 1v1 and 5v5 simultaneously”… the very idea, honestly. 
So short sighted, biased and disappointing.

It took me naught 2 seconds to recall from memory, a system that effortlessly solves the problem of group buff and AoE damage imbalance for multiple group sizes.

A scaling curve based on the number of allies and/or hostiles effected.

Allow me to pose a rough example.

When one target stands in an AoE DoT, within one or two ticks it deals damage comparable to a single target nuke. However these damage ticks are reduced by 15% for each additional target hit up to five, where the curve plateaus scaling evenly for all additional targets.

Buffs and debuffs would scale in exactly the same manor, all that ever need be adjusted (for balancing purposes) are the values that shape the curves of each individual skill. This allows for balancing multiple group sizes via variation of the skills numbers, without altering the way players use them.

And since each skill has it’s own scaling curve you can ensure no one skill scales better than another due to a difference in base numbers or skill mechanics.

This makes for an effective method of dynamically scaling the power of group or 1v1 focused abilities on a per skill basis. Which entirely prevents imbalance of said skills when used outside the context they were originally designed for, wither 1v1, anti-zerg, or anything in-between.