Fansite Friday/Center

Fansite:  Guild Wars Center

Date:  21 January 2005

Number:  29

url:  http://gw.gamer.hr/ff.php

Q&A
Question:  So, after nearly 5 years of working together, how do you (ArenaNet) work together? I mean, you seem to work like a team perfectly (delivering pretty much everything on schedule while not compromising anything, being in excellent contact with the public, etc.), which isn't too common for most companies that develop games. Alright, this isn't directly related to Guild Wars, but I bet a lot of people are interested in the guys and gals that work at ArenaNet.

Answer: Working together is truly a treat. It may be of interest to note how the company has grown to include the tremendous and diverse group of individuals who are all dedicated to the same exciting goal of creating the first chapter of Guild Wars. As you are probably aware, ArenaNet was formed in March of 2000, and started with just the three company founders, Patrick Wyatt, Jeff Strain, and Mike O'Brien. They all moved to the Seattle area a few months later, and by the end of the year had added two more employees to the team. By 2001, when I came on board as CRM, the company still had fewer than 10 team members. We stayed at pretty much that level for another year, focusing on core development.

Just prior to the announcement of Guild Wars, which took place in April of 2003, we started growing the team. We moved to our current offices in August of the same year. This move came just in time, because by this time the staff had doubled in size and we were practically sitting on one another's laps in our small office space! In the time that has elapsed since our move, we have about tripled in size yet again, bringing our total team to roughly 75 people.

Working together is great. A lot of sound hiring principles reverberate throughout the company, and the team that has been forged works together really well. When we hire, we don't just say, "This is a great person for the position." We also say, "This is a great person for the team."

Now, I imagine this is pretty much what you expected me to say -- "Yes, everybody loves everybody" ;) - but hand on heart, the fact is that despite long hours and the intensity that comes from the challenging task of developing a ground-breaking new game title, the team spirit in the office is very high and there is a lot of genuine friendliness amongst us.

Do we meet every deadline? No. In a project of this size, there are going to be the occasional pieces of art that don't get finished on the precise day they're hoped for or code that takes longer than anticipated to write. Compromise isn't the norm, though. We're not going to accept "good enough" when we can do better. This project is one into which everyone at ArenaNet and NCsoft is willing to invest the time and care needed to do it right. The significant question about deadlines, then, is most probably "Will we meet our release deadline? The answer to that is "Yes."

When we set one. :)

Question: It has been recently posted on one of the community forums that there's a way to gain lots of rare items in one of the post-Denravi missions, killing certain "key" enemies - solo. It has been said that you can get up to 15 rare items per hour using this method, which translates to up to 3000 gold per hour. Is this a "planned" feature, for rewarding "explorer"-type players or simply an oversight by the game level designers?

Answer: I saw that thread and I really can't make an accurate judgment as to whether that is an intended game mechanic or an exploit. I shared information about it with the design team, and I know they'll take a look and appraise if it needs to be amended. In a broader sense, it's difficult for those of us outside the design team - the people working on gameplay content and its balance - to assess whether something of this nature is acceptable or an area of concern. The designers may consider the number of items and the time taken to acquire them in this particular example an exploit or they may feel that such rewards are appropriate for higher-level characters. The question is, is it exploitation or is it smart gameplay? That is for the experts to decide.

And they are experts. The more I learn about game design, the more impressed I am with game designers. I honestly believe that the complexity of game balance involved in every single design decision is unapparent to most gamers. We may think that we understand it. Heck, some of us may think we're the next great game designer in waiting. But I wonder how many of us truly see the depth of the process and understand the permutations of even a seemingly simple design decision.

For every change you make when designing a game, everything else needs to be considered, and many other things may need to be changed, as well. Let me make up an example:"I think we should make the Ranger's Poison Arrow last two seconds longer." (Actually, I do think that, but that's another topic for another day. *grin*) Anyway, consider that you do decide to increase the duration of the skill by even such a seemingly-insignificant amount. You then have to consider how the improvement will affect every other Ranger skill, because we intend to design skills so that they are essentially of equal value and usefulness for the player. You have to go beyond the impact on the Ranger, alone, though, to examine how this "simple" change affects the other characters. Do you then need to increase the armor of another profession, or of all professions? Do you need to give certain or all characters additional Health points so that you don't have too high a death rate? Do you need to consider improving the attacks of different professions so that you don't create an imbalance and make one profession better than another?

Because it is our goal that Guild Wars won't have disposable skills that you stop using as soon as you can rotate them out, and because it won't have uber skills that you use to the exclusion of all else, all the layers of a design change need to be examined to make sure that we stick to our goal of balanced gameplay for each profession.

So getting back to the original question, the design team is eager to learn of possible areas of exploitation, and we read all the fan forums, particularly the Suggestions Threads, to learn about them. With the upcoming Beta Weekend Event, we hope to have your help in closing potential exploits and making the game even more solid.

Question: Will you give the option to create pre-made level 20 competition characters in release?

Answer: Yes, the ready-made characters for competition will be a feature of Guild Wars at release. People will be able to elect to "grow" a character from Level 1, or they may choose one of pre-made Level 20 characters to play. We like the idea of giving people options, and we want to respond to the desire of players who wish to experiment with different professions and to get a taste of certain skill choices. And of course creating a pre-made character will furnish a way for players to participate in PvP right away rather than spending time in missions leveling up a character. So the ready-made characters will address several player desires.

Thanks to our new Croatian fansite, Guild Wars Center, for the good questions and the great support of Guild Wars!