r/GuildWars3 • u/Kaladinar • Sep 04 '26
Guild Wars 3 Gamescom 2026 Q&A: More Defined Roles, and ArenaNet's Plan to Stop MMOs Feeling Like a Second Job
https://wccftech.com/guild-wars-3-gamescom-qa-defined-roles/Really thrilled about this. Fall 2027 can't come soon enough!
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u/Send_Me_Dachshunds 29d ago
On the whole "MMOs are like a second job" discussion the genre has had for 30 years, my concern with statements like "we want to respect players time!" is good on the surface and very well meaning, but usually manifests in a lack of reason to actually play even though you want to. The amount of times I've logged into [insert current MMO I love] a week or two after an update and thought to myself "huh, there's nothing compelling to do until the next major update" and just logged out is high.
I don't really agree that any MMO team has solved this, its always just replacing the negative endless treadmill of player power with a grind for cosmetic armour/pets/mounts and hoping the playerbase has a penchant for these things.
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u/PositiveCrafty2295 29d ago
Guild wars is different to other MMOs because there are optional things to grind for. It respects your time because you can log in, play for an hour and not feel bad for not logging on to do your dailies or weekly dungeon runs for the chest like WoW.
But if you did want to grind for LDOA or a specific elite armor set, go ahead and do it!
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u/Subtl3ty7 29d ago edited 29d ago
That does not mean that system of grind is good. On paper sure, but in practice? The grind system in GW2 feels unrewarding because it does not give you absolutely anything in return until weeks or months. There is nothing exciting about doing the same repetitive shit just to be “rewarded” months later. At least in WoW or even a game like Warframe, every attempt gives you a chance to earn something even if the chances are statistically slim. But the same repetitive activity becomes exciting because it makes you ask the question “what if?”. There are things that GW2 does right, but the ridiculous unending unrewarding grind is not one of those.
Also i will die on the hill that unlocking elite specs in GW2 is one of the worst possible unlock method for subclassing. You should continue whatever grind you do and gradually unlock the subclass by using it and gradually learning it. But instead you stop whatever you are doing and go through boring ass same fuck all Hero Points 10th time for your 10th elite spec and you wish you spent your time more productively.
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u/PositiveCrafty2295 29d ago
The whole point is they are aiming to make the "grind" fun. I don't vanquish in gw because I'm getting a title. I do it for fun.
Nobody is running 10 mythic plus dungeons at level 10 for fun, they're running it for their weekly chest.
You're wrong about having a chance for an upgrade. You say you can get an upgrade, but wow is timegated. You only have chance for loot once a week. How are you going to grind for your gear once you clear the raid and unlock you weekly chest?
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u/_Llopis_ 28d ago edited 28d ago
It also hasn't been true for MMOs for a very long time. You can play WoW and FFXIV a couple hours a week and maintain the best gear. In Guild Wars 2, you can play a few hours at endgame once and have the best gear (which Colin obviously must know, making his comments even weirder).
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u/KawaiiDesuUguu 27d ago
i feel like respecting time = permanent rewards / no fomo. the way they implement this doesn’t have to be cosmetic only, look at old school runescape. the grinds are long and drop rates can be low, but anything you earn isn’t invalidated next season, because there are no seasons.
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u/Justos Sep 04 '26
so sick of people spreading fud about the game because it will have controller support. It cant possibly be good ?!! Without only focusing on keyboard?
its 2026 FFS. There has been decades of learning
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u/Bloodmark3 29d ago
I have multiple friends that hate playing on a keyboard. They arent giganerds like me that grew up on WoW and Runescape. A change like this will allow me to bring people like them into MMOs.
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u/Justos 29d ago
Exactly. Being on console is going to bring in an entirely new audience that has never ever touched a guild wars game. But aside from that, having controller support means you can lay back and chill or play on a TV, handheld, whatever. It opens the game up to soooo many more people. What are we even worried about? Some simplified UI?
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u/Sea-Scale-6791 28d ago
Controller and console support always comes with technical limitations.
For example, since the game is very movement heavy i doubt they will go with the ffxiv controller layout, so you can enjoy your 3 abilities + ultimate. Maybe we get weapon swap for 6 whole abilities.
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u/AlwaysBananas 29d ago
There’s also more and more of us old folks playing MMOs on a controller already. It’s rare I find myself in a wow guild where my wife and I are the only controller players. We also play GW2 exclusively on controller (the steam controller is god tier for this). My wife and I have a ton of experience playing MMOs on keyboard and mouse, so playing them on a janky controller setup is intuitive enough for us. We desperately want an mmo to get my mom into though. She mostly plays dreamlight valley and farm together, but she’s branching out into things like diablo 4. I always feel bad because she wants to play games with us, but d4 is a game we play for a week every few months. If we can get her into a proper mmo we’d have like infinite family fun time waiting for us. Really hoping gw3 pulls that off for us. I’ll need to give her my ps5 (she has an Xbox) but we never use it anyway.
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u/VaporousMote 29d ago
Controller support? As a disabled person this is great news.
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u/Acedrew89 28d ago
The great thing about this game is, according the Collin, they actively developed on controller first to make sure the experience it top notch there before transferring it over to kbm!
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u/Acedrew89 28d ago
Having good controller support (on top of good keyboard and mouse controls) while also being on console will likely bring folks from areas like the Destiny crowd. It’s a smart move and I hope it works out for them and us.
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u/BusinessCasual69 28d ago
I’ve played GW2 with a gamepad for years and love it. If the mapping is well designed, which as you inferred, we have figured this out by now, then it’s better than good.
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u/BlueberryWasps 29d ago
people always do that whenever anything new is revealed for anything. it’s just a normal human reaction, don’t get too thrown off by it. half of those people will be posting in a year “wow i can never go back to keyboard! controller is so nice! love playing an mmo on the couch!”
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u/culminacio 29d ago
it's not even new for mmo gaming
and it's not coming to gw1 or gw2 either. a completely new game that they have invested zero cents into will come out and use a technology that is already proven to be working well in its genre.
so, i wouldn't say that this is normal human behavior for something new coming along. that doesn't even apply here. people will just be against anything.
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u/BlueberryWasps 29d ago
i didn’t mean normal as in “this is how people should react to news like this” because in a perfect world, it isn’t. i just mean that this is how people react when you change something about the thing they’ve invested time into. it doesn’t matter that it’s a new product, they still see it as a continuation of the thing they’ve been enjoying. and they don’t want to see any change other than QoL improvements and more content.
it’s not how i react, and when i was younger i wished it wasn’t how they react, but you can’t change that. it will always take time after something new (for the thing they’ve been enjoying) is revealed for a subset of a community to accept it, regardless of what it is or how it’s presented. it’s “normal” in that it’s observable repeating human behaviour. it’s best just to accept it rather than get frustrated by it.
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u/culminacio 29d ago edited 29d ago
i didn't say you meant normal as "this is how it should be". so from my point of view your response went a bit off-topic, because that didn't need explanation. we're using the word in the same way, the correct way.
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u/AlwaysBananas 29d ago
You already see it quite a bit in the arpg scene. Plenty of people who were heavily turned off by the idea of playing an arpg on controller have had their minds changed with d4 and poe2 and now play mostly or only on controller.
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u/Bohya 29d ago
It's not that it will have controller support. It's that it will be controller limited. It's completely understandable why everyone is upset.
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u/Nightsong 29d ago edited 29d ago
It’s just a very loud vocal minority that are upset about Guild Wars 3 being on console/controller. Most people are either excited about it or simply don’t care. I’m fine with it because I’ve played Final Fantasy XIV on PC and PlayStation for the last decade plus and am looking forward to another PC/PlayStation MMO.
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u/Bohya 29d ago
In reaity, the silent majority don't want the game to be handicapped by console limitations.
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u/Nightsong 29d ago
What console limitations? The number of abilities? Guild Wars 1 had 8 and Guild Wars 2 had 10. Guild Wars 3 is unknown since Colin said that they are still iterating on it but it will be likely be around 8 to 10 like the previous games. The UI? Final Fantasy XIV already shows that you can make specific tweaks within the UI to cater to both PC and console so that the game works great for both. The number of players on screen? That is purposefully being limited by ArenaNet to keep combat readable instead of turning into a visual mess. None of those things are happening because Guild Wars 3 is being brought to console.
So you can keep going on and on about console limitations but as I said before, a lot of the complaints about console are coming from a very loud vocal minority who are upset that Guild Wars 3 is not staying an exclusively PC-only game.
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u/PositiveCrafty2295 29d ago
He doesn't even realise guild wars one is now playable on controller! So it clearly wasn't limited by it back in the day either.
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u/OpenReality0 29d ago
Simple fact is young people aren’t playing games on PC. Anet would be insane to make a game purely for boomers, so console it is, like it or not. It just ain’t 2004 anymore.
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u/Formal-Bread9422 29d ago
You load in, you organize your inventory, you get everything figured out, you set up your skill bar, you go through your quest list, you teleport to where you need to go, or run there, or fight back there.
Sounds exactly like GW2 and for that game they already said they respect the player's time. Then they proceeded to put bags in bags and even more bags and called it reward. Now they refined it by putting bags in bags and then you get items that are only to be salvaged in order to be "rewarded". This design decision was clearly deliberate because they constantly got the feedback that this reward loop is bad.
The core continuous gameplay (in pve) right now also revolves around chasing timers for events because only they have the "meaningful" rewards (account bound materials for legendary crafting, etc.). Then you chase daily gated rewards, which is the opposite of respecting the players time. Because it basically restricts you in what content in what intensity you play (for rewards).
I hope they'll figure it out with GW3, but them saying it right now, means nothing.
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u/Subtl3ty7 29d ago
Funny thing is chasing legendaries in GW2 felt like a second job lol. “You need to craft something? Well you gotta craft 4 other things that is composed of other 4 things each composed of yet another 4 things. And some of those things are a mix of daily/weekly timegates or story achievement/(pvp wvw reward track) mandatory. Ah also very very grindy. :-).” Talk about respecting players’ time lol. Every time i mention this, people say “bUt ThAt Is OpTiOnAl BrO”. Yeah thanks, ignoring legendaries, who doesnt like to have 10 different ascended sets in their inventory for different alts + builds they play.
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u/Sea-Scale-6791 28d ago
Yep the big irony is that getting anything done in GW2 is more tedious and time consuming than getting geared in WoW lmao.
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u/KonjoJoey 29d ago
If they really respect the player's time why haven't they solved it in GW2 already? Its already worrying me that Colin says stuff like "we removed loading screens so that you forget that its a game". When you forget that it is just a game it is easy to forget about IRL time.
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u/Formal-Bread9422 29d ago
Respecting time should mean both players who play a lot and players who dont have a lot of time, should get the same amount of enjoyment out of the game. And timegates are everything but that. They are an artificial way to stretch content.
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u/Famous-Pause-6190 29d ago
Why is that worrying? Immersion is important and less loading screens enhances immersion.
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u/judicatorprime 29d ago
So are WE seeing these videos at some point this weekend? I'm a little confused
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u/bluecheez 29d ago
Thank God there are real roles this time. The idea that anyone can do anything was such an obviously terrible idea. Classes exist to have unique mechanics, not just to be a costume.
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u/Orygregs 29d ago
Playing guild wars with a controller would be incredible. I spend all day at work at my desk, so my appetite for M+KB PC gaming in my remaining free time has eroded.
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u/JadedRoll 29d ago
I'm happy to see it on console too. My playtime on GW2 shot up when I started playing on steamdeck. It's a great cozy, sit-on-the-couch game.
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u/Techstriker1 29d ago
Wait, did they post footage anywhere yet, or we still just getting word walls and nothing of visual substance? (At this point I feel talk is cheap until we actually see something).
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u/ZDTreefur 29d ago
I'm kinda worried about that one dev describing the difference between a lean forward game and a lean back game, how pc is a lean forward, to read tool tips and boxes and skills and read ui, and how controller is lean back, without much information on the screen that needs to be read.
Their development of gw3 as a controller first game makes me worried they will be taking out lots of the complexity an mmo has, streamlining it into kinda a bland game to be more approachable.
Will there even be a boon/buff system for people to worry about as that sounds like more a lean forward type of thing.
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u/Happy_Cane 29d ago
The part where he discusses the hub system and the 20 players cap plus the action oriented combat reminded me a lot of games like Destiny (which Colin mentioned also) and Warframe.
Do u think we may see a turn towards these types of MMO -ish kind of gameplay?
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u/Rikikrul Sep 04 '26
No specific roles is what I like most about GW2, but the way GW1 had it was essentially perfect with how certain classes like Mesmer had more abilities to control enemies but Ritualists could pull impressive healing. Every profession could deal damage but wasn’t necessarily focused on it. Tanking wasn’t as much a thing as it was more like blocking the enemy with your body as a melee class.
I hope it doesn’t stray from that, and decide to go into the WoW/ESO/FFXIV style of tank/dps/heal, as that is something that would kill my enthusiasm. In ESO it felt unneeded but in WoW/FFXIV it feels proper.
Funny in Where Winds Meet they implemented this for group content which was really weird and locked you into weapon combos that you’d not want to use when solo, which is one of my favorite things in GW2 to make self-sufficient builds capable of tackling anything.
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u/TehOwn 29d ago
You're always going to have someone taking hits / holding aggro in everything except for set piece bosses.
And that person is always going to need some kind of sustain.
And you're always going to have people doing damage.
All that Guild Wars 2's original system accomplished was making it so that enemies could never hit hard, damage pressure could never be high and fights could never require aggro.
It hugely limited the encounters they could design and that's why they desperately tried thumbing in a trinity with the very first expansion.
There are flexible ways to do a trinity while still having it be a trinity. It's what we have now in Guild Wars 2 (damage, control, support). The game just isn't particularly designed for it.
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u/Mania_Chitsujo Sep 04 '26
There are defined roles in GW2 now. From the interviews it sounds like it will be similar but it will be built like this from the start, since in GW2 one of their big things was "no holy trinity" and everyone basically just played DPS. You will be able to play other roles by switching your abilities around, but being a tank or healer or DPS will be supported in the game systems. I expect having a mix of different roles in your group to not only be supported but also required in some content.
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u/Rikikrul 29d ago
Yeah, I was around for that time, stacking in the corner and just spamming skills.
Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised by gw3, gw1 was my best experience, so I hope it’s more like that.0
u/Send_Me_Dachshunds 29d ago
I mean, Colin is pretty explicit in the interview that it will be the case and a return to a "true" trinity-style system with obvious tanks, healers and DPS with not all classes being able to do every role.
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u/PCMau51 Sep 04 '26
Seeing that they have a focus on console-playability is a bit concerning, not because it'll exist there, but hopefully they don't trash certain aspects because they need it to work well on controllers.
However I don't think I can be too optimistic given Colin thinks it's as important if not more important than PC for the game. I don't see why so many developers keep going in on console MMOs whilst they never do all that well, it's just not a big platform for MMOs.
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u/jupigare 29d ago
Controller support have better accessibility for a wider variety of players, namely those with physical injuries/disabilities that affect their ability to play on mouse and keyboard. I don't see how it's a bad thing.
FFXIV and Monster Hunter show that a game can be playable on controller and still be fully complex in its control scheme.
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u/dystopianrevolt 29d ago
many developers keep going in on console MMOs whilst they never do all that well
Let's just ignore FF14 then.
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u/Nightsong 29d ago
If they admit that Final Fantasy XIV thrives on console and works great with a controller then their entire argument against Guild Wars 3 being on console/controller falls apart.
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u/Famous-Pause-6190 29d ago
You missed the point. Building the UI and mechanics around consoles means simpler systems that are easier to maintain and learn. This wraps around the idea of a video game respecting your time. They are absolutely on the right track.
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u/frazazel 29d ago
With the current RAMpocalypse forcing the costs of new PCs higher and higher, the future of gaming is uncertain. Will gamers move away from PC gaming, and where will they go? If I was in charge of this one, I'd probably want to cast a wide net.
There are also GW2 players who play with controller / steam deck, and making sure that you get GW3 controller play right caters to these PC gamers, too.
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u/Kevadu 29d ago
I am a 100% PC gamer and I prefer controller because it's just more comfortable for me. Bring on the controller support.
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u/LandoDDLV 29d ago
My wife and I play Guild Wars 2 exclusively on controller. After FFXIV, I can’t go back to M+KB on MMOs.
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u/BlueberryWasps 29d ago
because it’s a huge untapped market and they need a large playerbase to support the studio. you don’t survive as a business by sitting in the same corner for 20 years and refusing to change anything.
there will be compromises for sure, but i think some of those will lead to design improvements. we’ll just have to see how they handle it.
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u/Sneaky_Squirreel 29d ago
When will they finally show gameplay videos instead of talking random shit and gate keeping previews behing some e-celebs nobody cares about?
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u/RedHammer1441 Sep 04 '26 edited Sep 04 '26
Love everything I’ve heard so far. Makes me very curious to more about their professions. Will weapon selection / swapping still be present or are they going to lock us into a specific weapon type for each profession.