Guild Wars 2 - endgame and balancing discussed in latest blog posts
Endgame in Guild Wars 2 wasn't something AreaNet wanted players to experience only "after a hundred hours of gameplay," or some other "arbitrary number," the firm has said. Instead, the team wanted players to take their time and experience everything the MMO has to offer.
Speaking in a blog post over on the Guild Wars 2 site, quality assurance manager Mike Zadorojny said during development, ArenaNet introduced game elements normally associated with "endgame at every level and every possible opportunity.”
"We want the experiences that players will have while progressing through the game to be a journey that they take with their character, something that they will remember and cherish," wrote Zadorojny. “Once your character reaches max level, we’ve created new and interesting ways to challenge you as a player, but we didn’t want to force you to master an entirely new subset of the game.
"As players reach the max level of 80, the dynamic events become larger, the battles more spectacular, the circumstances more dire. Each of the high-level maps in the corrupted land of Orr contain battles on a grand scale against Zhaitan’s forces, an epic war with shifting fortunes and frontlines.”
When starting Guild Wars 2, players dig almost immediately into a boss encounter and then once vanquished, players can just stroll around the place at want doing crafting quests, fighting more bosses, exploring dungeons - whatever their heart desires. Thus, endgame-type content is all over the place.
”The launch of Guild Wars 2 is just the start," Zadorojny concluded. "With the game now out in the hands of the players, we can focus our efforts to adding new types of events, new dungeons, new bosses, new rewards, and new places for players to explore."
Speaking of "new" things, another post regarding balancing was also recently posted, in which balancing was discussed, and how ArenNet's taking a"wait and see" approach to things.
"In the past we made balance updates fairly frequently. While we will continue to be responsive to serious issues, we also want to make sure that we let the basic meta-game stabilize before making too many changes," wrote designer Jon Peters.
"If you see something that is really strong please try and find counters to it before assuming it is overpowered. We have put a lot of hours into the game already and there are still many things we are learning about the depth of the combat and the balance. There are also finally enough players consistently playing that we can actually gather metrics on skills and make some more informed decisions about what is too weak/strong."
You can get the latest list of minor game updates through here.