Hi, I’m loving this game so much that I’d like to go a little further on this suggestions, by taking my reasoning to a more philosophical approach, rather then just immediate technical issues, even though I got some minor suggestions in that field that I would love to see them implemented.
After a few decades playing games, I can say that I’m not that hardcore player anymore. So the first thing I love about GW2’s phylosophy is that the game is really appealing for us, casual players (even though I’m getting so addicted here, I don’t think I can be called a casual anymore). I used to play Ragnarok Online a few years ago but all that grinding ended up driving me almost insane, so I sworn to myself I’d never commit myself to a MMO like that ever again. So, GW2 is indeed sweet news for people like me. Still, that particular game had it’s good points and I would like to name some of them and see what do you guys think about them.
One great thing about Ragnarok, was the competition feel you had around some aspects, specially PVP and the War of Emperium. In GW2, I see things more like a social facebook game, in which everyone always wins: you will win as much as you play and there’s little to no penalty over the choices you make or to choices towards the player overall playstyle. Of course things were much less complex then it is today, as GW2 has so much options of things to do, builds to choose from and all that stuff. A rusty guy like me can easily loose himself around all this. But I believe that what made competition so interesting back in those days, where the strong social driven culture the game had. I don’t know how it happened but it did. And the social aspect were to blame. If I could throw my two cents, I’d (poorly) sum things worked like this:
1. You know your friends and “enemies”;
2. You’ve got to work to be better then them. Overcome your “enemies”, be more respected then your friends. Help your friends to be as respected as you. And suprisingly, there was no focus on ladders for PVP or Emperium War. Those were restricted to poorly made mechanics the game had back then.
See, you have social issues driving your will to play. What I’m seeing here is that the social aspect isn’t a big concern, or if it is, somehow it isn’t working as it should. I feel that I’ll get to LV 80, then I will quit because there’s nothing left to do. Of course I will do all the quests, open the whole gorgeous map, but I still certainly will quit in a near future, because (I believe) the community is loose. Even though they are mostly kind players, there’s nothing that bind’s them.
I play the game with 3 friends only. I suggested them to buy the game, and since then we’ve had wonderful time doing quests. It’s fun when they come playing with me. But it’s like the 3 of us and that’s that. And then you got guilds, which in my opinion is the core of social playing right now. It’s nice and all, but I think that’s the only way you can meet new people in this game. Back in Ragnarok you had in game market, which is messy but you got to meet people physically, an excuse to direct interaction. You had some common places in every cities, which was filled with players just chilling, chatting, planing stuff etc. In GW2 I spend hours without seeing anyone and when I see, there’s no reason to talk to them, or they are too busy crafting, killing mobs, doing quests, etc. The GW2 world is filled with NPC’s, much more then actual players, you often mistake them with players (I used to when I started playing =p). I don’t understand the choice of modern games to limit the type of characters you can use on your hero’s name. The result is a world filled with blend and boring character names, easily mistaken with storyline in game NPC’s .
I know I’m still new to the game, but it feels like the game world are too big for its population, or just there isn’t so many players around (I’d love to know how many people are online, but I’m often kicked to that parallel server in queue due to overflow, so I’d guess that’s not the reason).
So, that’s basically it. I started this as a suggestion, but since I don’t have a concrete solution to this, it ended up being more of a oportunity to discuss a game aspect. I would love to hear what you people think.