Ten Ton Hammer: Do you envisage players moving away from pure Berzerker builds thanks to things such as Defiance?
Jon: I think the hope is that the more we can do that - we don’t want to discourage it. There are places where we want you to do that, it’s more about diversity. Undoubtedly it will but when you fight the Wyvern, even if you bring maximum damage you don’t always use your maximum damage skills and will use crowd control instead. When the Wyvern takes off you really want him to get knocked down. Although this isn’t finalised, when you pull him out of the sky you deal triple damage to him until he gets up. It’s way more important in this fight that you deliver on spiking that crowd control when he takes off than consistently dealing damage. You start to create builds that are good at spiking damage - they can do a heavy amount over a few seconds but you then have to wait thirty seconds. Those builds are really good against the Wyvern because when he gets pulled down, they can unload more than anyone else can. When he gets back up it’s not as important to be doing as much damage because he’s really tough.
Ten Ton Hammer: Are there other states during combat against the Wyvern where you can break Defiance?
Jon: There are a few phases. One is him in the air where you’re trying to look where he is so you don’t get caught in a flyby. There’s one where you are on the ground and he’s controlling a bunch of the area that sees you’re trying to reposition yourself. There’s the Wyvern taking off and everyone fighting to use crowd control. Lastly, there’s another where he goes up in the air to flap his wings and knock people back. That’s a moment where you turn to support skills such as the Revenant’s Inspiring Enforcement to setup a Stability area so, that the Wyvern isn’t going to knock back me or my allies. You have these different phases and each phase calls for different types of playstyles.
Ten Ton Hammer: Where would you place the Wyvern, in terms of difficulty compared to other world bosses already in the game?
Jon: That we don’t really known yet.
Kevin: He’s in a few different places in the expansion and what’s cool about that guy is that he gets exponentially harder the smaller the area he is in, because he cuts so much of the ground. There’s a few different difficulties with the same creature in different areas. We have him on some smaller platforms that are much more difficult to fight him on.Jon: What makes him significantly different to other world bosses generally is that he’s very active. Tequatl or the Wurm, or Shatterer and Claw of Jormag are more set pieces. They’re visually impressive and they have some interesting elements to their fights. This guy is like an action boss and you have to fight him like you would fight a boss in a console action game.
Kevin: Everybody has to be paying attention to their positions or you won’t succeed.
Ten Ton Hammer: Will we see material replacement begin to be rolled out on other creatures in Tyria or is it something that’s linked only to creatures in Heart Of Thorns?
Kevin: That’s a case by case thing. We look at each ability and what it needs to be telegraphed properly and implement accordingly.
Jon: One thing I will say is that because the Defiance bar is going to be in the core game, we’re not going to keep the old Defiance system on the old bosses. They’re going to use at least the most basic version of - they have a bar that you have to work together to break to stun this creature. That is the most basic version and that is the version that will exist which we retrofit that we don’t have time to do more on. That’s in every part of the game, not just Heart Of Thorns.
Ten Ton Hammer: Have either of you anything else you would like to add on Defiance or the Wyvern?
Jon: Just that people will be able to see it and play it on the demo and that what they see in the demo is not final. This is a system that’s never final in the sense that Heart Of Thorns is looking at everything in Guild Wars 2 and reworking it, Defiance bar is laying the foundation for how we want these types of encounters to work moving forward in the game. As we think of new ways to use it as we think of ways to improve it, this is going to be the system we work off.
Kevin: It’s so flexible that there’s a lot of different things we can do to make cool implementations.
Jon: We probably won’t see all of those in Heart Of Thorns, you’ll see more of them as we continue to improve the game, moving forward after the expansion. That’s a lot of what this expansion is about: stabilizing fundamental systems so that we can continue to improve in the future.
"Ten Ton Hammer would like to thank both Jon and Kevin for taking the time out of their very busy schedules to answer our questions."
Jon: What makes him significantly different to other world bosses generally is that he’s very active. Tequatl or the Wurm, or Shatterer and Claw of Jormag are more set pieces. They’re visually impressive and they have some interesting elements to their fights. This guy is like an action boss and you have to fight him like you would fight a boss in a console action game.
Kevin: Everybody has to be paying attention to their positions or you won’t succeed.
Ten Ton Hammer: Will we see material replacement begin to be rolled out on other creatures in Tyria or is it something that’s linked only to creatures in Heart Of Thorns?
Kevin: That’s a case by case thing. We look at each ability and what it needs to be telegraphed properly and implement accordingly.
Jon: One thing I will say is that because the Defiance bar is going to be in the core game, we’re not going to keep the old Defiance system on the old bosses. They’re going to use at least the most basic version of - they have a bar that you have to work together to break to stun this creature. That is the most basic version and that is the version that will exist which we retrofit that we don’t have time to do more on. That’s in every part of the game, not just Heart Of Thorns.
Ten Ton Hammer: Have either of you anything else you would like to add on Defiance or the Wyvern?
Jon: Just that people will be able to see it and play it on the demo and that what they see in the demo is not final. This is a system that’s never final in the sense that Heart Of Thorns is looking at everything in Guild Wars 2 and reworking it, Defiance bar is laying the foundation for how we want these types of encounters to work moving forward in the game. As we think of new ways to use it as we think of ways to improve it, this is going to be the system we work off.
Kevin: It’s so flexible that there’s a lot of different things we can do to make cool implementations.
Jon: We probably won’t see all of those in Heart Of Thorns, you’ll see more of them as we continue to improve the game, moving forward after the expansion. That’s a lot of what this expansion is about: stabilizing fundamental systems so that we can continue to improve in the future.
"Ten Ton Hammer would like to thank both Jon and Kevin for taking the time out of their very busy schedules to answer our questions."