Thief profession in Guild Wars 2 will take a "higher degree of skill to play," says designer

Guild Wars 2 lead designer Eric Flannum has said that the thief profession in the game will require "a somewhat higher degree of skill to play," than some of the others in the game.

Speaking with Games on Net, Flannum said just because it required a bit more skill though, did not mean the rest of the professions were created for dullards - just less skilled players.

"We did design certain professions to be easier to play than others although we never want this gap to be too significant," he said. "In particular the warrior, ranger and elementalist tend to be more straightforward to play than the other professions although even the 'simple' professions have a lot of depth and nuance to them."

Flannum also chatted about how the attribute system has changed this time around, and instead of having profession-specific attributes there will be a pool "shared by all professions."

"The attributes are power, precision, vitality and toughness," he said. "We went to this system so that we would have a set of attributes that are valued by every profession and to lessen the ability of a player to make a bad character by putting points into the 'wrong' attributes. A shared set of attributes also helps increase the ratio of useable equipment for a player.

"It was often the case in Guild Wars 1 for example, that you would find a staff which would be useful only to a specific build of elementalist and if you were a mesmer, necromancer, ritualist, etc… that staff was useless to you. In Guild Wars 2 this is no longer a problem and it is much more likely that any given piece of equipment that drops is something that the player will find useful."

Sounds better and better all the time, doesn't it?

The latest screens and trailer for the game can be found here.

ArenaNet expects a beta to launch for the game sometime this year.