We got the chance to sit down and have a chat with Isaiah Cartwright from ArenaNet about the new April feature in Guild Wars 2 that’s coming out and get some more details on the new changes that haven’t quite made their own webpage yet. This update focuses solely on mechanics and gameplay, with their lore and story driven content to come at another time.

Wardrobe System
Not much to report here as what was talked about you can already find out on their official website but essentially they have now created a vanity system where players can choose what their gear will look like. This allows players to collect different armor and clothing artwork in the game, by equipping them, destroying them, selling them, etc. and it will then unlock the artwork for the item and allow players to apply it to their character even though they are wearing other gear. Players can switch through the various items slots to choose their look and then apply the look/skin at once, which gives a single cost, instead of having to pay per item. These items are un locked for the players account and not simply for the character.

In the Account Vault players can have a look over all the different items that exist in the game that can be unlocked as well as seeing which items they have currently found, making a little collectors mini game. Characters will still be limited to only being able to wear skins of armour that they would normally be able to equip, so no necromancers running around looking like they are in full plate armour I’m afraid (thought they can preview it to see what the items look like when equipped). For anyone unfamiliar with the game this is something that will not affect PVP, where players may look like they are wearing one type of armour but are in fact wearing something more epic (and so could be confusing/seen as cheating), in the game all the stats of gear is balanced out in PvP anyway.

As an added note all ascended and legendary gear is now account bound and can be switched between characters, given that they take so long to acquire the devs figured it should be something that isn’t limited to one character.

Traits
They have now gotten rid of the annoying trait refunding, a frustrating gate for players who like to try different builds, and now players just need to simply press a few buttons in the new menu to respec their character from the UI without the need of going visiting an NPC. They have also changed the unlocking system for unlocking traits where players go out in the world and by completing quests to earn new traits or simply visiting a vendor and unlock it by spending some gold. The main purpose was streamlining the build making process to make it easier for players. On top of this the professions now have new Grand Master traits, where every single line has three Grand Master traits that gives new options and builds for players to check out.

PvP
Again with the intention of keeping things more streamlined the way people make builds, as with re-doing the traits respeccing, in PvP instead of going speaking to NPC’s and buying equipment everything is being pushed into a single UI menu and now changing around runes and amulets, etc. can be done from the same PvP menu, allowing you to quickly switch between your damage build and support build.

There is also a new game type, one that a lot of players have been asking for, which consists of a simple duel arena. The actual map is a relatively small mystical cave type area where players can fight one-on-one or team based duels, whatever people prefer, in a smaller tight knit area. There are no mechanics within the game is, e.g. capture flag type modes, and is simply a kill or be killed region. The map is made up of different level platforms, some little back passages to run around and has a more open plaza in the middle. Depending on how the community reacts we may see more of these types of arena in the future.

Mega Server
The sorting algorithm that normally lets players get into the game has been mixed up where there were normally different maps for each world and now they’ve been put into one single pool and players will be filtered into each map. Players’ preferences will still be maintained, their world, their friends, their Guilds but the intention is to try and fill the maps and make them more alive as the game in general plays better with more people around.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2014 at 3:03 pm and is filed under MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Puedes dejar una respuesta, o un trackback desde tu sitio web.