'Guild Wars 2' 2024 update direction 12 questions! Drawing experience from 'Mystery of Heaven', the new expansion pack is actively being prepared

Preface

On Christmas Eve last year, the Wccftech information website published a Q&A on "Guild Wars 2", which mainly focused on the change of expansion pack release mode by A company, the follow-up update of Mystery of Heaven, and some content of the next expansion pack. frame direction.

In recent rumors about the development of "Guild Wars 3", A company responded, "The team's current focus is the development of "Guild Wars 2", including the game's next expansion pack. We are very excited to have it soon." Talk about this issue." Therefore, we have compiled this Q&A again so that everyone can have a glimpse of some of Club A’s ideas.

Note: The introduction of some online content has been deleted.

##Q&A——Shifting to the annual expansion pack,

Mystery of Heaven experience learning, 2024 update

Since the 2022 celebration of " After the tenth anniversary of the MMORPG "Guild Wars 2", Company A launched the game on Steam and began to continue its development.

The Bellevue-based developer released its fourth expansion pack, Mysteries of the Sky, in August 2023, and under the new annual release model, both the free trial part and the paid expansion pack will be available. There will be more updates to come. Wccftech had the opportunity to learn about the studio's 2023 year-end blog post in advance, in which Company A also confirmed that "Mystery of the Sky" has been a commercial success.

At the same time, we also had the opportunity to chat with game director Josh Davis to discuss the huge change in the pace of game development, their transition from " The experience gained in "Mystery of Heaven" and the future prospects of "Guild Wars 2".

1. There is a time span of about four and a half years from 2017 "Fire Journey" to 2022 "Dragon's End". But now, you've set a faster expansion pace for the game. What prompted this change? Will you continue with this annual expansion update format for the foreseeable future?

There are two main drivers behind this change:

First, we hope to eliminate long "long periods of time" (during expansion production) by adopting a more consistent release cadence. content shortage", and add support for core gameplay (WvW, fractals, etc.) to provide players with a better gaming experience.

Second, we hope to adopt a new development cycle that allows team members to maintain a healthy work-life balance (i.e. WLB). Game development is a marathon, not a sprint. The structure of this updated model allows us to plan for the long term, helping our work arrangements and employees.

As far as the future is concerned, we are actively preparing for the 2024 expansion pack (DLC5) and planning for the 2025 expansion pack (DLC6). This is already a future we can reasonably expect.

2. You mentioned that "Mystery of Heaven" was a commercial success for Company A. Can you share how many developers are currently working on Guild Wars 2 (as opposed to potentially other projects)? In addition, how big are the players on the Steam platform compared to those who log in to the regular platform?

Our current team size is roughly equivalent to the size of the development of World Dynamics Season 4, and is approximately 15% larger than when Dragon Age is released in 2022. Our team has grown in recent years thanks to the support of our fans, but we are also very careful not to expand too quickly or beyond our capabilities. Maintaining employee stability is a top priority for me and the rest of the leadership team.

It’s important to note that Guild Wars 2’s development team is quite small compared to many of its direct competitors—in some cases, we’re less than half the size of other studios. But we are very hard-working and high-spirited! (Translator's Note: Really?) This isn't new to us - our player-friendly monetization philosophy and lack of subscription fees puts us under a lot of tight constraints that other studios don't necessarily have. Face these limitations. But it's a trade-off we're happy to make.

As for the Steam platform, it's still a very small percentage of our overall player base, but that's not surprising to us. "Guild Wars 2" has been launched on our own first-party platform for ten years before it was launched on the Steam platform. Most MMO players have probably heard of or experienced this game.

However, a very interesting thing is that the new player acquisition rate on our platform has greatly improved since the game was launched on Steam. The number of new player acquisitions is the strongest since 2016 and 2017. In fact, we'll get more first-time players in 2023 than at any time during the COVID-19 "gaming boom." This is a huge surprise!

3. You said that you can now take a longer-term planning approach and apply the lessons learned from Celestial World to DLC5 in a "very meaningful way." Can you talk specifically about what aspects will be affected?

We are learning how to develop and release content at this pace, which will definitely have a "downstream effect" on players' gaming experience. The overall development form (timeline, resource allocation, etc.) between DLC4 and DLC5 is very similar, even if the content and game features are different. This means we can focus more on perfecting the development process rather than reinventing it. The better we can identify problems in the development process, such as undocumented dependencies, bottlenecks, resource issues, etc., the more it means we can proactively solve these problems in future development cycles.

Just from the experience of "Mystery of the Sky", we have adjusted the development schedule, review process, development resource allocation, archiving documents and communication methods, etc., all of which All have improved the quality we present to a certain extent.

★ 4. In "Mystery of Heaven", you gave up adding "elite specialties" in each expansion pack and instead used new weapon mastery. Does this mean that new elite specialties will no longer be introduced in future expansion packs of "Guild Wars 2"?

We're not ready to close the door on the Elite perk just yet - it's always possible it could return in a future expansion. But for now, we like the flexibility that comes with focusing on weapons, and we've proven that it's possible to add new levels of gameplay interaction with the weapons themselves. We plan to focus heavily on weapons in the next expansion, but we also have a fun surprise lined up to keep things fresh and exciting.

5. How do you determine the specific weapon proficiency of each profession? Also, will the ranger be armed with a rifle or pistol?

There are many ways to design new weapons and abilities. For example, identify an interesting high-level theme and aesthetic, and then build gameplay around those concepts (e.g., a pistol-wielding necromancer). This is how many basic professions and elite specialties in Guild Wars 2 were created.

For Celestial Mystery, we chose a slightly different strategy, focusing on addressing the shortcomings of each class. During the design process of the new weapons, we first identified the play gaps for each class when playing against each other in PvE, PvP, and WvW modes. This included examining traditional support, healing, and damage for high-level characters, as well as more niche considerations such as WvW. A medium non-reflective area damage option (due to the large amount of repulsive hatred caused by reflection and blocking). The purpose of it all is to make more professions available in a wider range of settings.

We still have a lot of gaps to fill, but between the introduction of Weapon Masters, Weapon Mastery, and our ongoing skill and balance work, we're making good progress. As for whether the Ranger can hold a rifle or a pistol, we have no comment yet!

6. The goal of the Wizard's Treasury seems to be too PvP-oriented. Is it possible to add more PvE targets to the target pool?

Yes! We plan to continue refining and adding objectives for all game modes, both new and existing content.

7. In September 2023, you basically postponed the launch of the alliance system and instead began to implement the long-awaited reorganization of World War. Is there any latest news on the alliance system? Will it return at some point?

Although "world reorganization" and "alliance" are two words that are often used interchangeably in the community, they are actually completely different concepts. World Reorganization mainly describes the team-based WvW matchmaking system we have developed over the past few years, and Alliance is a sub-component of this system, which allows multiple small or medium-sized guilds to be grouped together for competitive matches.

As we started digging into the implementation of Alliances, it became increasingly clear to us that we were building a system that largely duplicated "Guilds" and their functionality. Players can already create alliance-like guilds that can host up to 500 players. Now, the main drawback to this feature is that not every player is willing to use a free guild slot to join a new "super guild." We are actively looking for solutions to avoid the large development investment required by the Alliance.

8. For new players, browsing the many currencies in "Guild Wars 2" can be very confusing. Are there plans to integrate some of these currencies?

Yes, we have a long list of improvements planned for the core game, and this is one of them. Fully updating the currency is a huge undertaking, so we'll do it in chunks and batches as time permits. For example, last year we took a step toward a unified currency by integrating all of Dungeon Currency into Dungeon Adventure Legends.

9. At this point in time, the dungeons in the base game seem a bit redundant, but they are really interesting in terms of story and atmosphere. Have you considered designing challenge modes for them to make them relevant to the ultimate gameplay of the game again?

No, we are not considering this issue at the moment.

10. As an extension of the topic of the ultimate gameplay of the game, can you share your future activity plans regarding game improvement and content expansion?

In the first half of 2024, we will launch the challenge mode of Pheb Temple (already online) and the new 5-player fractal and challenge mode. Beyond that, I think fans will be excited to hear about the ultimate PvE gameplay content we’re launching in the next expansion!

11. In MMORPG-type games, there is growing interest in other modes such as hard-core servers, nostalgic servers, etc. Do you have any plans to provide more challenging PvE servers?

This is an interesting idea, but not a high priority for us. Chasing trends is inherently risky and can alienate your existing fanbase if it doesn't go well. Based on what we have observed in the industry over the past few years, this approach is generally not very successful. Right now, we're focused on serving our existing community and making Guild Wars 2 the best it can be.

12. It sounds like this game will be supported for many years to come, so are you evaluating adding some modern rendering features such as TAA support (this will also Switching to providing support for upgraders such as NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR)?

As for TAA or DLSS support, it is not a priority for us right now, but it will definitely be considered in the future. We want to address a lot of unanswered questions first. We believe Guild Wars 2 will be around for years to come, so we've been increasing our focus on long-term technology investments, including "player-facing" improvements (visual fidelity, performance) and developer-facing improvements (tools and workflow).

Earlier we completed the upgrade from DX9 to DX11, and in addition to some minor improvements in performance, it also opened up some interesting possibilities for our developers for upcoming content - Like new shaders and lighting options.

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