Questions and Answers from todays Guild Wars 2 Guru IRC Dev Chat!

Can the teleport portal skill of the Mesmer be used
for cross profession combos (like shooting through them to hit enemies
in different locations)?
<[ANet]JonathanSharp> No. Only allied team-mates can move through.

<+Vorsakan> Q. Can you be knocked through an allied portal by a foe?
<[ANet]JonathanSharp> yes you can be knocked into a portal by an enemy!


Q. Can they give us some examples of cross-profession combo's to expect with the Mesmer?
<[ANet]JonathanSharp> - You can put up Chaos storm which adds
random conditions to projectiles moving through.On the other end, you
can use your Leap skill on mainhand sword to benefit from allied combo
fields.


How did you arrive at the current profession mechanic for
the mesmer? What iterations did you scrap and how did it evolve into
what it is now?
<[ANet]IzzyCartright> We started off with just an illusion
limiter and all the shatters where on weapon skills but found this too
limiting. Also all of our illusions where different creatures but this
was too confusions and hard to create so we ended up with two types
clones and phantasms.


With all these cool, exotic races that can
turn into animals and make golem battlesuits and such, what's going to
makke playing as a human a compelling experience? Will humans be getting
any fun and flashy racial abilities?
<@[ANet]JonathanSharp> Avatar of Melandru turns you into an
awesome creature. Summoning dual Hounds of Balthazar. Is. So. Freaking.
Cool.


Will certain types of opponents of the same group
have different AI (such as a "brute" acting differently than a "mage"),
or will each race have their own AI tendencies (such as skritt acting
differently than ogres), or both?
<[ANet]EricFlannum> We break creatures into groups we call
"families" and try to give each family a distinct feel. For example the
dredge tend to be pretty stationary and use a lot of sonic themed
abilities. Within the dredge family there are things like the dredge
mining suit which tends to be bigger and more "brutish".

<+Rubi> Secondary question: Will there be human skills reflecting all six gods?
[19: 52] <@[ANet]JonathanSharp> Yep, there are 6 human skills, based on the gods.


I was wondering if you guys had any new
information about the changes to traits that you previously mentioned,
but have not yet revealed?
<@[ANet]IzzyCartright> We not ready to talk about the new trait
system yet, but here are some of the things you can do with traits. We
have a trait that allows you to give you venoms to all nearby allies
allowing a thief to run around and make his allies apply poison and
other conditions. We also have a trait on the ranger that allows spirits
to follow you around. Well talk more about traits sometime near the
begining of the year.


Are there any plans to release PvP footage of the
Mesmer (or at least a full skill compendium), prior to Demos in 2012?
<[ANet]EricFlannum> We do plan to release some more footage but we
haven't determined exactly what it'll be and when we'll release it so
I'll pass on the request for some Mesmer PvP footage.


<[TL]Bridger> Will the mesmer have any control over his
illusions? For example: could he create a bunch of illusions and tell
them all to retreat so the enemy would not know which one was the real
one running away?
<[ANet]JonathanSharp> No, you cannot do this. They are simply
summoned onto a target, and attack that target until the illusion dies,
or that target dies.

<+[TL]Bridger> Followup: Would a Mesmer need to act like the AI illusions to truly fool an expert player then?
<[ANet]JonathanSharp> Followup on Mesmer: Yes, that's definitely a
viable strategy! Sometimes doing NOTHING and standing still is an
amazing way to fool your opponents as a Mesmer. And just when they think
you're an illusion and not the real Mesmer... You make them QQ.


Do you feel that allowing people to change servers so
often that servers will not have a sense of community to them for
WvWvW?
<[ANet]EricFlannum> This is absolutely a concern for us and we
will work very hard to come up with some restrictions that are fair
enough such that players can play with their friends and yet will
discourage people jumping to the current winning server in WvW. We'll
anounce something when we know exactly what those restriction.


On reddit you mentioned to have 12 professions in mind
at the start. Any chance of letting us know the 4 that didn't make it?
Do you think any of them will be added later on?
<[ANet]IzzyCartright> As always with design we start with a large
lists of ideas and then boil it down into the primordial goodness. So
our large list of ideas has had lots of random things most of which
we've taken the parts we like and put them into our current professions
but some of those ideas where: warden, marksmen, juggernaught,
artificer, dualist, knight, berserker and many others I'm sure I can't
remeber right now.


Can you give a few examples of Mesmer Elite Skills?
<[ANet]JonathanSharp> -One elite allows you to transform a foe
into a moa bird for a short time. They have moa bird skills while in
this form, just to add insult to injury. : )

You mentioned that humans will get 6 skills based on
the gods, but it was previously mentioned that each race has around 12
racials. Has the number decreased, or will humans get other skills that
aren't god-related? Also, will also races get at least 4 elite racial
skills since norn get 4 elites?
<[ANet]IzzyCartright> We currently have 6 race skills these are
often a mixture of elites, utility skills, and heal skills for humans
there is a prayer for each god and for norn there is 4 transforms and 2
utility skils.


<+Rubi> Can you elaborate on the moa skills?
<[ANet]JonathanSharp>Peck, kick, screech. You get the picture!


What exactly does the Engineer's Supply Drop contain? And has it changed any?
<[ANet]JonathanSharp> It drops a smorgasborg (from Jon Peters) of different bundles! Some of them heal, some of them can be picked up by allies!


Will we be able to see technical information like weapon
range, attack speed, and things of the like through the ingame UI or
will that be something that players have to experiment to figure out?
<[ANet]EricFlannum> For the most part players will need to
experiment with the things that you mention although we do plan to have
tools for helping players experiment. Things like the dps target dummies
in the first game.


Do NPCs act differently when confused, or do they activate abilities as normal and simply take the damage?
<[ANet]IzzyCartright> no they just attack and get beat up like a
good monster, some monsters do have condition removal however.


One of the greatest changes Guild Wars 2 promises to
bring to MMOs is to break the holy trinity of group roles. Would you
dare say that this is true for any class/spec combination, or does it
contain some modifications? An example would be; could 5 skilled
Guardians using the same weapon and traits do a dungeon?
<[ANet]JonathanSharp> -Absolutely, they could do it with the same
weapons and traits. If you changed out your weapons and traits, you'd
have more diversity, and would make it easier on yourself.


will the mists have dynamic events or will it be strictly pvp and siege captures and stuff?
<[ANet]IzzyCartright> yes WvW will have events.


following on from the server swapping restrictions
question. Is Euro/US/Other split a thing you're considering like all
other MMOs? Or do you want a truly international melting pot and make
everyone happy?
<[ANet]EricFlannum> We always try to make it possible for people
to play together but we don't have any final answers on this just yet,
sorry.


How will a casual player get to see big events like the Shatterer and Tequatl with a limited play schedule?
<[ANet]JonathanSharp> Because those large events can happen
multiple times throughout the day, you can team up with anyone around
you at that time and take on those larger challenges, even if you're
only a casual player!


Will Mesmers have a skill that allows them to mimic players or creatures?
<[ANet]JonathanSharp> Probably not.


Will Arenanet allow and encourage development of add-ons
since they have become so popular and integral in MMO's now?
<@[ANet]EricFlannum> We won't be allowing people to mod the game
itself directly no. We feel that this encourages people to play the game
in such a way that gives them an unfair advatage over those who don't
use mods. However we understand that many people enjoy modding games and
are looking into ways for people to build things for the game in other
ways. We'll have more information on this sometime next year.


With regards to WvWvW and with the recent Reddit
information on them. How are you guys counteracting lag issues,
especially when there's the possibility of having 2,000 players in one
map?
<@[ANet]IzzyCartright> In WvW there are 4 different maps each with
a cap we put a cap on map beacuse we know this is what the server can
handle, the reason we have a cap is to keep lag under control. Our cap
will be somewhere around 500 per map but it all depends on server
preformance and that might change as we are always testing it.



Will there be other purchasable guild wars 2 items, like different plushies other than the charr one?
<[ANet]Community> We know you folks want merchandise, so we are
looking into it. I can't give details on what that might be or any
timeframe though. ~MK


Will weather be dynamic in GW 2 (i.e with clouds forming
rain or snow randomly happening), and will sky be dynamic (clouds
passing by etc not just a backgound picture)?
<@[ANet]EricFlannum> Weather can sometimes be random and sometimes
is affected by specific events. For example, there is a huge snowstorm
that occurs on one of the maps when a specific event is failed. This
snowstorm then kicks off a new chain of events as players deal with the
effects of.


<@Rubi> Now that all professions are out of the way, what is the team's big focus?
<@[ANet]JonathanSharp> -Right now we're working a lot on guild
features, balance, finishing content, and, most importantly, figuring
out what to eat for lunch.
<@[ANet]Community> The lunch part is super important! ~MK


For Guilds, are there going to be perks/levels
setup for the guilds or will it be something that has access to
everything from the get-go with the right amount of karma/gold?
<@[ANet]IzzyCartright> There are many things that guilds can earn
what and how we'll talk about as we release more about guilds.


a new Q, followup on modding, can we mod sound
files, and add our own sound mods to make our character sound more evil?

<@[ANet]EricFlannum> I don't think its possible to do this but I'll pass along the request to our sound team.


Considering in structured PvP there are destructable
environments can we expect to have the same feature in WvWvW too? And
along those lines will there also be environmental weapons like
structured PvP?
<@[ANet]IzzyCartright> In WvW there are many seige weapons you
can use to blow things up with as well as many things you can pick up
and use.


What kind of interactions/interfaces outside of the
actual game do you guys have planned with launch (eg web profiles,
stats, rankings, ladders, guild management, etc)? On a similar note,
will you guys also provide web services/data feeds/api for data
compiling/mining/etc to the community or fansites to play around with?
<[ANet]Community> All of these are very good suggestions, and we
will have at least some of them. Unfortunatannot go into details at this
point. : ) ~MK


The term "familiar" has oh-so-teasingly been spoken
in relation to the elementalist - can you tell us anything more about
this skill type?
<[ANet]JonathanSharp> -Nothing at the moment.


Q. Was there ever a point, after hexes and energy were dropped, that you didn't expect the mesmer to return?
<[ANet]IzzyCartright> No we hold the mesmer pretty closer to our heart so we knew we would make it work.