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Of

the more recent gameplay

details revealed for upcoming href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/gw2">Guild

Wars 2,

the article on href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/86589">Healing

and Death at the official site

for the game

contains perhaps the most interesting announcements to date. Between

the vastly different approach to how death will work and the lack of a

dedicated healing class, these mechanics certainly help illustrate a

very divergent path from traditional MMOG templates the team at

ArenaNet is taking with their newest title.

When we first read about the

removal of a dedicated healing class and

the additional downed state, rallying and revive mechanics, we here at

the Ten Ton Hammer Guild Wars

2 community site were curious

to learn

more. Jon Peters, Game Developer for Guild

Wars 2 at

ArenaNet was

awesome enough to provide us some fresh insights on each of these

areas, as well as some expanded info on whether or not we can expect

things to function differently in PvP.

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Ten

Ton Hammer: While the ability to

revive fallen allies or help them

rally back into battle should make for some excellent group play,

what's to prevent the "downed state" from simply prolonging the

inevitable dirt nap when playing solo?

Jon

Peters: The short answer is

rallying. You can use the fact that you

rally back to life from downed when you get a kill to setup tactical

situations where you keep yourself alive in more difficult battles. If

you should fail to rally, you can wait for someone to revive you.

Because everyone in Guild

Wars 2 can revive anyone else,

and because we

do some things to encourage reviving other players, our experience is

that if you just give it a little while someone will come revive you.

Of course, failing that, you can always revive yourself by travelling

to a waypoint and then get back into the action quickly.

Ten

Ton Hammer: While not nearly as

fun as the systems announced for

Guild Wars 2,

the death penalty in the original Guild

Wars does help to

turn the tide of battle in PvP once you manage to defeat key members of

the opposing team. Will the downed state and associated abilities, and

the rally mechanic function differently in PvP than it does in PvE

situations to help prevent stalemates in the same way?

Jon

Peters: Predominantly, death,

rallying, and revival works the same

way in PvP as it does in PvE. The one distinction is that in the same

way that a player interacts with an ally to revive them, a player can

interact with an enemy in PvP to do a strong finishing move that sends

them straight to defeated.

Of course this does help break

stalemates,

however, Guild Wars 2

PvP is just a different beast and the concept of

the Guild Wars

1 Mexican flag standoff, where everyone is just

posturing until there is a tiny opening that has a small chance of

accomplishing anything is something we are trying to avoid. Guild

Wars

2 is a game about killing, not

a game about not dying. It is more about

taking risks and heroic actions and that is one of the reasons that the

death penalty system has been removed.

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Ten

Ton Hammer: Our readers seem

very intrigued with the idea of groups

centered around the roles of damage, control and support. With no

dedicated healing class for the game, will players who still enjoy

offering that style of support be able to create builds within certain

professions to essentially function in a dedicated healing role, or

will "healing" as we know it take on a broader meaning to encompass the

interactions between various professions within a group?

Jon

Peters: There is no way for a

character to make a completely

dedicated healing or support roles. That being said, there are builds

that can be made that do have a significant amount of support, and we

find that our active and dynamic combat creates support situations that

don’t rely on skills that would normally be considered

support skills.

For instance, if an ally is low

on health any other

player could simply step between them and their enemies and force

ranged attackers to hit them instead. Similarly, if an enemy is

unleashing a powerful attack on an ally that might send them to downed

or defeated, any player that has built there character with some

control might stop the attack from happening which is a very active

sort of defense. To paraphrase a common catch phrase: The best defense

is a good offense.

Ten

Ton Hammer: The concept of

skills between professions interacting

in interesting ways has come up once again in the most recent reveal.

Will there be any way of knowing which skills can be used in

conjunction with one another during combat (like shooting arrows

through an elementalist's fire wall) such as on-screen alerts or

highlighted skills on your bar, or will that come down to a matter of

trial and error for teams to find the most effective skill combos?

Jon

Peters: For the most part,

cross-profession combos come down to

trial and error. These things are fairly natural combinations in the

world and we want players to discover this emergent gameplay though

experimentation.

Ten Ton Hammer would like to

thank Jon Peters and the rest of the Guild

Wars 2 team at ArenaNet for

providing us with some additional

information on how the downed state, rallying and healing will work in

their upcoming title. For further reading, be sure to check out

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/gw2/features/editorials/death">The

Evolution of Death in Tyria

and href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/gw2/features/editorials/no-more-healers">No

More Healers?,

and then be sure to head on over to our Guild

Wars 2 forums to add your

thoughts to the discussion!

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