Guild Wars 2

ArenaNet Design Team,

I have to say that I’m incredibly disappointed with this month’s content, the Queen’s Jubilee. After the astounding content we had in July with the Bazaar of the Four Winds I’m surprised to see the same company put out such drastically different content that seems to go against a lot of what the design team as a whole tries to reinforce in this great game.

A few high level points on what I really dislike:

- Incentive for nothing but mindless zerging in a small instanced area that wreaks havoc on both game performance and fun
- A reasonably well designed arena-like activity is plagued by a mix of UI/control/camera issues, unreasonable restricted access and demoralizing punishments
- Generally uninteresting world objectives that can sometimes frustrate or bore the player

The Pavilion
The group PVE content is perhaps the most egregious portion of the content unveiled so far – let’s first go back to last month’s group PVE content to compare. In the Bazaar of the Four Winds, we had the following:
- Instanced PVE content
- Scaling content based on the amount of people in the group
- Tiers of difficulty for all levels of skill

While there were some nitpicks to be had, I would call this content a success overall – it hit a lot of population demographics that Guild Wars 2 likes to cater to and proved to be fun to try in different ways.

In the Queen’s Jubilee, all of what we learned was effective in July has been thrown out the window. We have the following instead:

- Non-instanced content that impairs game performance based on population density
- Reward structure that creates the incentive for mindless zergs to loot farm

This loot focused content is uninteresting and seems to go against what Guild Wars 2 tries to promote – fun first, loot second. I have no idea how this even got through stress testing prior to release, because even on better machines the performance hit is more than noticeable. Past that, you essentially can go semi-afk with a zerg focused build that reminded me strongly of the awful Orr bot farms that plagued us at the game’s initial release.

I would have loved to see a total of 6 instanced mini-dungeons that actually put you through a short but intense gauntlet of enemies and faced you off with each section’s boss at the end, giving each fight interesting mechanics for a group to tackle. This does the following:

- Promotes meaningful group play
- Provides dungeon-centric players an outlet in the new content
- Potential for content recycling via fractals if the content was a popular success

They could follow the typical dungeon mechanics and would ultimately be a fast paced, fun way to group with friends and complete content.

The Gauntlet
Second on my list is the Gauntlet – an awesome idea that seems to be rushed out and not tested enough for polish. The gauntlet mainly suffers from the following issues:

- Incentive to experiment with builds/consumables, but no easy way to obtain consumables due to lack of black lion trader available in the instance
- Domed arena with textured floor grating creates issues in seeing AoE circles and camera faux pas near the edges that create a more frustrating than challenging experience for the more advanced fights
- The requirement for tickets means you need to acquire them through other means (which in this scenario becomes a mindless grindfest with the zerg below)
- Instancing this with the PVE content creates performance and latency issues that are difficult to alleviate given the format of the area
- The “double whammy” of a repair bill and a waypoint fee every time you lose seems unnecesary and is counter-intuitive to what the arena promotes: repeated tries for eventual success
- Difficulty gap of certain gambit achievements between professions

A lot of these (controls aside- I’m still not sure why our tab targeting and target clearing is so bulky and awful compared to other MMOs, but that’s for a separate discussion) I feel could have been polished or addressed if there was a bit more time in testing. I feel like the gauntlet is a great step in a new direction for more diverse and challenging game content, but the delivery and lack of foresight from the design team makes this more of a frustrating experience than a memorable one.

World Content
I’m particularly a fan of content that forces me to go out into the world and explore a bit. It’s fun mainly because it ends up creating its own adventures as you go to complete a more lengthy objective, and can lead to some fun and interesting times with friends.

The content provided to assist the balloon pilots seemed to be out of a book from a more traditional MMO – you’re tasked to do something simple and as a reward you get some leveled loot. Rinse and repeat.

Now, while I’m not necessarily opposed to tasks like this, I feel like the reward could have been more interesting – perhaps an actual balloon ride? A vista to collect? There are a lot of things that could have been put in place here, but instead we get a very tired and monotonous means of collecting your 30 boxes of treasure and achievement.

Second, some of the champions are poorly designed – they either offer absolutely no challenge or are so flagrant in their use of abilities that it’s absolutely frustrating. CC centric champions were the worst in this regard, as going against either of the 2 champions solo was more often than not a lesson in frustration, even with substantial on demand stability.

Again, the lack of testing and polish tends to rear its ugly head when you realize how easily these things should have been identified and remediated.

Conclusion
To close, I’m concerned about this month’s content mostly because ArenaNet has been very good with design iteration and about taking the game in the right direction. To me, this month’s content is a step in the wrong direction in almost every way.

The one thing I enjoyed was the reintroduction of Rox (a favorite of mine) and Braham (who seems to be written much better this time around), and after groaning at the ridiculousness of the first portion of the opening ceremony ended up appreciating where our favorite duo could be taking things further this month.

To top it off, the story around the content itself is very bland – I know this is more of a subjective point (which is why it’s not listed above) but I really don’t care for human nonsense at all. The monarchy surrounding the humans and all of the pomp and circumstance around their perseverance is very bland and feels overly hokey. Again, compare to Bazaar of the Four Winds – night and day with regards to the level of interest it inspires. I found myself intrigued in not only the story behind the Zephyrites but the landscape of the bazaar itself.

I really want to see this content succeed, but I believe at this point it might be too late to salvage a lot of it. I just hope that ArenaNet can understand why this content is a step in the wrong direction for the game and look to avoid such mistakes in the future.

After reading this I feel you have some good points but I completely disagree with your final assessment. You like everything they did except about how it was done and come to the conclusion it was terrible and in the wrong direction?

I loved the new content and although there is room to improve with each thing as you said I think it was a step in the right direction.

- World content:
Got me to explore more of the world I haven’t been to in a long time. Maybe the reward could have been different or how I went about doing it but the goal of it was good and in the right direction including the champion’s design even if some of it was rocky.

- Gauntlet:
Amazing. Good direction in boss deign and the goal of it (running different builds, reacting differently, etc) was perfect. The problem as you said was more about access to things such as armor, food, tickets, etc. (I have another post about it somewhere else) I know each profession can beat it and I have friends that have done so.

- Pavilion:
Good world content. Not made for groups or skilled group play. Just good old fashion beat on the boss. The bosses have some actually very devastating attacks this time however which is why I felt it was in the right direction. It’s not supposed to be that instance, elite dungeon for people. They’re free to expand on this area anytime they with though and once the event celebration is over I see no reason why it couldn’t also have an instanced dungeon-like mode attached to it that you want. Because it doesn’t play the way you want doesn’t make it bad content, just different, and it was a step in the right direction for that different content.

You had some very good points a lot of people can agree on but I still disagree with your final assessment.

The world content was really tedious. It was the same thing copied and pasted into each zone. Three very standard non dynamic quest events chained together and the conclusion of fighting the queens champion made zero sense in the context of the previous two quests. Why are we fighting this champion again? Where were they when the nobles were attacked? Why is this exact situation repeated over 30 zones?

Well at least I got a balloon.

Gauntlet is not my thing really, but the camera angles, oh Lordy!

The pavilion was a success because it gave people what they were looking for. They mirrored it off of players doing champ trains in the open world. I would have preferred it for the instanced zone to allow fewer players and to start with all 6 bosses spawned, each actually adding an effect or debuff to the whole zone. A smaller Zerg would need to organize better and correctly choose which bosses to kill and in what order to make the harder champions doable. Once all 6 are killed a centre champion spawns….epic kill time. You win, loot, zone out. Repeat.

That was actually how I envisioned this content playing out from the developers description of it. Zone wide debuffs, groups of 30 players working together, gradually making progress deeper into the zone….not 100 people trying to mindlessly dodge out of the telegraphs and endless waves of veterans spawning within seconds of each other, while the hive mind rushes the boss and then farms for cores.

Another problem: The achievements. I think that representing the different groups is cool and awesome. And the balloon one was kind of neat. But the majority of achievements for the Jubilee are kill 100 x while representing y. 8/13 under the living world category are that and now the latest two dailies are kill 50 x while representing y. What gives? The reason this is annoying: Killing 50 things isn’t that bad, but killing 50 veterans in an overcrowded area with poor computer performance is bad – and also really really boring. Also, one of the achievements is doing events in that area. Which are boring as they’re just zergs with poor computer performance and armor breaking. And the Gauntlet well…. it’s just frustrating for me so I’ve just relegated myself to the Jubilee achievement. It’s feeling like a grind to get this achievement.

With the Bazaar I got the meta achievement with hardly even noticing (I was just having fun with all the content) and the Belcher’s Bluff achievements with some tries and enjoyed it all. It was an amazing event. I also loved Aspect Arena. And, I liked that I got something for my home instance… to draw me into my home instance each day (the quartz). Along with the Belcher’s Bluff bosses to be in there. There needs to be more stuff in the home instance.

The Bazaar was the best living story yet and this one, IMO is the worst designed yet. It’s just… so bland. So far the only thing interesting about it is the awesomely cool building and Braham and Rox coming back in the story instance which you can only see once at the very beginning of the event.

Castaliea.3156:

After reading this I feel you have some good points but I completely disagree with your final assessment. You like everything they did except about how it was done and come to the conclusion it was terrible and in the wrong direction?

A bit off the mark, actually – I think the gauntlet was a good idea with poor execution, but the rest of the content was a bit of a disappointment. I’m not at all a fan of the Pavilion’s PVE and while I’m usually a fan of world content I thought this one was a bit bland.

I like to give designers the benefit of the doubt as I understand how stressful deadlines in software development can be, but I feel like this just missed the mark in a lot of ways. If they wanted to give the user base a grindy zerg based PVE experience, they hit the nail on the head and I can only disagree with the direction. Whether or not you’re a fan of the Gauntlet, everyone seems to agree that it lacks polish and could have used a solid re-test from top to bottom to iron out the kinks.

I feel like coming off the heels of the Bazaar, the content’s disappointing. There are those that like it and that’s great – for me, it falls short.

Castaliea.3156:

- Pavilion:
Good world content. Not made for groups or skilled group play. Just good old fashion beat on the boss. The bosses have some actually very devastating attacks this time however which is why I felt it was in the right direction. It’s not supposed to be that instance, elite dungeon for people. They’re free to expand on this area anytime they with though and once the event celebration is over I see no reason why it couldn’t also have an instanced dungeon-like mode attached to it that you want. Because it doesn’t play the way you want doesn’t make it bad content, just different, and it was a step in the right direction for that different content.

I disagree with this entirely. People only die to the bosses because they’re too inattentive or just think the zerg is going to carry them regardless of what they do – this is precisely the kind of play that’s bad for games like Guild Wars 2, where you’re supposed to be self sufficient and contribute in meaningful ways in both small and large scale environments.

Today I saw someone in map chat putting out misinformation on how to deal with things like AoE circles and tactics – “stacking” on the centaur boss when doing this is certain death due to his ability to quickly stack AoEs on the group? Telling people that Feedback protects from AoE abilities? This is bad, and because people aren’t learning it perpetuates poor play – this is never good for any kind of game.

I have a hard time seeing how this kind of environment is good – it perpetuates stale, safe gameplay that requires minimum attention for maximum rewards.

Koppartikus.2396:

I disagree with this entirely. People only die to the bosses because they’re too inattentive or just think the zerg is going to carry them regardless of what they do – this is precisely the kind of play that’s bad for games like Guild Wars 2, where you’re supposed to be self sufficient and contribute in meaningful ways in both small and large scale environments.

First, despite what you think about it it’s how they made the world content for the game.
If a bunch of people are gonna pile on boss cuz they think they’ll be safe from AoE and they all die…LEARN. Guess what, unlike other bosses that require zero attentiveness and have zero punishing features that you complain about these ones require some attention, which you even admitted to, which is a step in the right direction. THAT is why it was good and a step in the right direction.

Second, hate PvE zerg play all you want, I’m not fond of it either, but don’t call content terrible because it’s not the style you want. Also, who are you to determine because there’s a large zerg that Ranger up front didn’t throw down his water field to help his allies? How do you know that Warrior isn’t going to bother with a Warbanner? You don’t. You can’t see half of what is going on in large groups like that and telling them they need to work better and have the cooperation and communication of dungeon groups because you think they’re all just auto attacking like bots is ignorant and impractical. Making them pay attention to what’s going on around them is and punishing them for not is what you can do and that’s exactly what this does unlike other world content.

I can more than appreciate wanting some content that requires group teamwork and effort but that’s what instanced dungeons are for where you can manage a team and communicate. That sort of content wasn’t in this particular update but just because it wasn’t don’t make it bad.

Excellent posts. I agree with the OP completely.