General PvE Fixes / Recommendations
Another thing I love about this game but it does need some tweaking is the events. These events were massive and they were fun. But the biggest problem I had with them was the difficulty scale based on how many players showed. The 2nd biggest problem was that there was no consequence for failing. The 3rd biggest problem was that the loot or rewards didn’t seem to be exclusive to the battle you participated in. These to me, for GW2 to survive in PvE as an open world adventure would need to be addressed. The game was just way too easy for my tastes and I thought this game was about skill. Skill to me, means the game as a whole, not just in PvP. The threats in the world needed to be real. They need consequence and they need to be challenging. Without these, the game is not a game but just a prewritten story you participate in some. Consequence needs to drive us to win. It needs to alter parts of the plot, it needs to deepen in objective. But I don’t think it needs to be like Rift. If you don’t kill off a Rift invasion, it takes over the towns. But instead it needs to change the story in areas if other areas aren’t completed or won. Like, it would be cool to do smaller events to open up the bigger ones, not it just be on a timer. It looks like this was almost achieved in many zones reading the story but it never happened. Every event was simply just a timer and a timer that was easily farmed because people figured it out. Does anyone remember World of Warcraft Vanilla? Remember in Duskwood when you did the quests and when you were complete it released a big boss that would walk down the road and attack the town??? Well, when the game first released, there were no level 60s running by to one shot kill the boss. It would wreak havoc and people had to band together to kill it. That was a rememberable moment in that game that it instilled in my mind. And you never knew when someone would release the boss cause during that time, only few realized a quest line was the culprit. On Rewards, it doesn’t matter if I kill 20 giants in a small village or kill off a gargantuan undead dragon, the rewards seemed to be the same. The loot (whether drops, chests, or karma) was pretty much equal on all events. Some of bigger magnitude dropped more and lesser, well, you get less but were easy and more readily avail. I could just sell that stuff and buy the stuff someone else got fighting the bigger events. So essentially it was the same. I wish the last exotic sets or better (or even all sets) were non-tradeable and pieces were exclusive to certain magnitude events. There so many sets of gear in this game, it’s a shame that it’s mostly fodder. If things were done in this manner, the gear would have meant a little more. I know GW doesn’t like loot progression (and many fans don’t like it) but it didn’t need to be also just given away. The gear was there, it just needed some serious planning on the distribution and that simply would have given it value. I don’t even care if there was only 1 set of gear and it was all cookie cutter to every level and class, I just wish I had something to work for in this manner. I didn’t want it handed to me, I wanted to earn it.
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Some of the things I definitely don’t like about GW2 that I wish were around.
Let’s do the obvious. A bulletin board or dungeon finder. Well, I know I’m at war with other servers but this shouldn’t stop me from being able to hit up a dungeon with them. The technology proves itself in many modern games. No one likes sitting in front of a door (to a dungeon) and spamming “LFG SM 40 Warrior” or whatever.
I think having a dungeon finder actually builds community because it’s not simply left to communicative guilds. I was in three guilds and not a single one communicated. Yes, they were poorly ran but that’s what seemed to be commonplace here. I found guilds to join by doing runs with skilled players in other MMOs. But the initial runs were found with LFG channels or dungeon finders. If you don’t want to automate it, then just look at Aion Online. It’s totally free right now, please devs, get an account (this is your publisher NCSoft’s other game). Just look at the way they did their LFG tool. Get in game and hit Shift-V. It’s super robust. All this tool does is give you a few preset options (that you can change) based on your current level. Then all it has is a Comment box. So then when you hit enter to post, it lists you on a bulletin board. This would allow me to continue gaming and not have to sit in front of a dungeon entrance. If I want to find someone say in my area that wants to do BAM kills (sorry, using Tera terminology for large event bosses), all I would have to do is search BAM and would find all comments with the acronym ‘bam’ in it. It would give a list and I could simply right click on name of person or group and apply. What’s amazing is that the Aion devs were probably some of the best when it came to giving the end-user a vast amount of options and total control. Just look at their character creation screen and their LFG Tool and you’ll see this is what makes MMOs an MMO…
The other biggest problem I have with GW2 is no world chat. Sorry, I don’t know how this can be detrimental having. I play MMOs specifically to be in a community of games that love to play a similar game together. How in the heck is world chat a bad thing? Even with 20 players logging on in 20 different zones, I’d have someone to chat with or just ask a question. Not much else to say about this one.
I keep hearing the word “Skill” when it comes to PvP or even PvE. But when all you have is 5 moves F1, 1, 2, 3, 4 (and possibly 4 other buffs, etc), how is skill played out here? Not enough moves for my taste to have consequences. The “skill” in these arguments I guess is where to stand and when to dodge cause the moves are too simplistic in nature to not have alternative patterns of usage and definitely little consequence. I play games that I have 3 or 4 (12 button) bars with remappable keys and macros and combos and never have enough keys on my keyboard to use them all. This is my kind of system. Why? because I want consequence, I want someone to use the wrong spell at the wrong time and it not just be a simple spam of the same pattern of keys 3421, 3421, 3421, “Ooh, must heal self!”, 6, 3421, 3421, “Switch weapon set”, 4231, 4231, 4231….. < This is boring! Among the other problems with not enough skills to use, there is the lack of debate. The sometimes heated debates of people thinking they know the best skill set to use and when. Anyone ever PvP’d on other games like Aion and got owned and wondered how they did it? Cause that person learned something different about the skill sets of their char? That’s a huge plus for that game. To have so much to offer, people have debate and challenge in learning what works best for their play style and class.
I love where this game was seeming going and there is a lot of hope for it. Least I would think so. I’m a huge MMO gamer. I’m currently playing several, I still have active account in Tera & Aion as well and people may knock these two games but if you log in either of them, you see people everywhere still on them even in the lower zones. They always say, a game that is plagued by gold sellers is a game that is still in high demand and I see gold for these being advertised still all the time. Plus, there are tons of people in front of the level 20 dungeons LFGing and their LFG Tools only take about 15 minutes to get a group which is not bad at all. Not seeing that anywhere much here at all. I know that GW2 was designed for the casual, but I left casual games cause I felt there were just already too many WoW clones. If I wanted a WoW like game, I’d just as well stay with WoW. I personally feel, if you truly want to beat WoW at their game, you need to get hardcore players attention first. Make a game they will love and the rest will follow and it doesn’t even take as much content as GW2 has currently. It would take fewer more planned out challenging events and dungeons to appease them. I was so ready hoping GW2 could take my time away from these other games but it didn’t. I am still hoping for that hence the reason I still log in from time to time and play some things. I’m not a skilled programmer but I wouldn’t even think it would take too much time to set some of these above ideas in motion. These are the things I love about MMOs and I know many feel the same way.
Some things I do know… You don’t make a game hardcore or more community based by removing Global Chat or Dungeon Finders. This is more or less a communcative issue with some players such as myself. Sometimes I have time to sit and find a group old school way but some days I’d rather just click “Find Me A Group” button and have the game do it for me. Doesn’t mean I’m less hardcore, I’m just lazy or short on time, or I just wanna do something other than waste my time spamming chat for an hour to have a little fun. You don’t keep players by making content easier and simply innovative. It’s the challenges that keep people coming. The complexity of story and consequences. I don’t mean adding a death consequence but one from choice or failing certain events or tasks. You don’t make a game more community based simply because the game allows people to join and get the same rewards and not have to fight over a boss. The game base has changed because WoW brought us a lot of new gamers to the scene. You will always have whiners either way you make this game, but at least making some of it harder (and not just harder by making bosses 1 shot you), you will keep the people that want a game for it’s challenges that can’t be beaten overnight. There’s already so much for the Checkers players in a Checkers based MMO market, let’s get something for the Chess players.
I have tons more ideas/plans, but I forgot them over the course of writing all this.
… I’ll be back!
Also wanted to add.
The way I would fix gear progression is to make gear with way more stat variations or with random stat numbers. Say a Tier 1 armor will have 15 points randomly distributed amongst 10 different stats. Tier 2 may have 20 points. I’d also make stats that combine 2 stats. Say one point in ferocity which may give you .5 points in strength and .5 points in dexterity. (I honestly forgot what stats were in GW2 during my hiatus, this goes to show how rememorable the stats were. None.) I honestly love lots of stats and gear choices. And having more than one desirable stat for each class to avoid cookie cutter stats/builds. This to me sort of seems to be one of the easiest modifications cause it’s lots of times just a few changes in the formulas. Wow has changed their formulas a lot since launch and added stats also like resilience which was not there. People love theorizing and formulating how stats play with and the style they play. You really shouldn’t worry about balance but variety. More variety actually can create balance. Too much time stressed over balance and most the time it’s fixed by adding variety to allow people to break a cookie cutter mold that creates the limited underpowered feeling.
WoW did this in the beginning as well, they offered lots of stats. Remember names like “of the wolf” and “of the bear” many stats and combos were undesireable but that’s where the formulas and skills come in. You have to make them robust as well and actually count. Just get rid of magic find as well. It’s a terrible idea. You find everything already easily without needing some stat to modify it. Your endeavors in game should reward you properly without having some fully armored player in the bunch that didn’t do crap to the boss get everything better or same. No healers in game, why not have damage meters running behind scenes. if you stop to rez, you get a bonus amount added to yours for the time you stopped. Maybe the dps of the dead player up till time died or something, you can think of something I’m sure for those people that do nothing but run around rezzing others. There’s usually little chance to fail though in some events so I’ve died before and no one cared to rez me. So I feel there should be a greater reward for those that take time out to do so. Maybe additional dps added for those with group buffs on. Highest at end of boss encounter gets 1% of a chance to get best. dunno…
Sorry about the change in train of though mid-way down in last paragraph. I had a thought in event loot management and it just came out when I was talking about stats at first.
An exerpt from an article over at IGN in what Johanson thinks would help MMOs (GW2 specifically) survive these days. :
“According to Johanson, the answer is simple; innovation. “What we need to be able to do is look at the game and say, “What is the next big innovative feature that people expect out of an MMO?” and one of two things will happen. Either a competitors going to make it in their game and release a new game that brings you in, or we’re going to put that into Guild Wars 2 and grow our game into the next type of MMO within that game.”
I sort of think this is it. But first, look at what has kept Eve online around so long. The depth and variety of game play. The game was innovative for it’s time. EQ2 was innovative. WoW was innovative. But then WoW stopped being innovative and simplified their game so they would attrack 4yr olds up to 80 yr olds and casual to medium core players. What you get when you make a WoW clone? Competition for players already in WoW. There is a plethora of gamers that don’t have a home cause we don’t want a WoW clone. There is Rift and many others that have copied the formula and they split the fans. But hard core players don’t have much of a home at all. New players are also good grabs. Ex-Wow gamers also looking for something unlike WoW are needing homes.
To me, we need to bring back games before the huge nerfs. The times where games had so many options, there was room for error and few cookie cutter builds or layouts and linearity was semi non-existent. Variety ALONG WITH innovation will you keep and bring new players. Innovation alone ends up where GW2 is now. There has to be challenge and players need involvement. I still hear people talk about Star Wars Galaxies crafting today. No one has matched it. Even Sony nerfed the original. Innovation may raise and eyebrow and pick up a few extra sales but it doesn’t hold players and if players don’t stay you get “GW2 is dead” all over the net and you lose new potential customers from the best advertisement in the world, …word of mouth.