Guild Wars 2

Ahhh, the Achilles heel of the non-subscription game model – how do you keep players interested AND spending money on/in your game in the short and long term.

I’ve been gaming for decades and GW2 is the very first ‘MMO’ title that I’ve installed. Frankly, never before have I had or came across any expectation of long term playability. Players that finished all the content or were bored (or both) simply moved onto another title. While most modern games that have ‘RPG elements’ offer different races/classes/professions that might offer some ‘replay ability’ however I’ve yet come across a title that was interesting enough to roll another ‘toon’ and play through again.

I don’t ‘speed rush’ through games, most titles take a few weeks to a little over a month to complete. “Skyrim” being the exception – I logged over 400hrs of play time on that title before getting bored and moving on. While there are surely some fans of the title still playing it and they are continuously releasing DLC for it I’d be very surprised if it survived the next purge/cleaning of my SSD.

Most games are created with purely static content, if it took ‘two whacks’ to kill something yesterday the exact same two whacks will kill it any other time. In GW2 different professions offer some slight variation – (for example it might take 4 ‘whacks’ with a Ranger Pet) but in the end it all boils down to DPS and health bars.

On paper over 2/3 of GW2 is unscripted ‘dynamic’ content. The PvP and WvWvW battles are constantly changing based purely on the number, skill and build of the players involved.

Think about for a moment how it would play out, if (for example) Veterans, Champions and Boss’s had completely random abilities and weaknesses that were different with each encounter. Would it play out any differently? No. The same dodge/condition removal/high DPS strategy can be used effectively with anything (other than ‘agony’) that these beasts can toss at us.

Right here’s the flaw.

Using ‘Skyrim’ as an example, there were/are a number of condition damage ‘types’ that a player had to have resistance to as well as be able to deal out in their arsenal. If a ‘Fire Dragon’ happened by you’d better have a set of Fire resistance gear and be able to hit it with ether Frost or Electric elemental damage or you were more than likely ‘toast’. The same could be said of the ‘Frost Dragon’, you’d better have a resistance to it and a Fire/Electric damage dealing weapon or you’d be reduced to an ice cube in short order.

While the ‘electric’ weapons were generally enough to combat most targets with I had to carry a subset of gear that had ether fire/frost/electric elemental resistance as well as a selection of potions at all times to be able to deal with whatever I happened across.

Presently most equipment in GW2 is pretty much the same. There really is little to no reason to have more than 1 set of ‘Exotic’ gear for your toon. If however one dungeon allowed you access to ‘fire resistance’ gear while another had ‘freeze resistance’ gear and (much like AR is today) the gear offered a way of mitigating a specialized risk having more than one set would make more sense.

Here’s where Anet really dropped the ball with not only equipment but with professions. Different professions ought to be specialized in mitigating or dealing different types of damage. Sure, we could still have the dodge/condition removal/DPS method, but allow us to (for example) take a specialized Ranger/Pet+Engineer to mitigate/deal with specialized damage a viable alternative. Allow the ‘less popular’ professions to combine their abilities to create viable alternatives to simple ‘high DPS’ models.

In Skyrim, it took me months of playtime to collect/craft all the specialized gear sets I wanted to be able to handle any situation and while others will surely jump in and speak on why these elements should not be added to GW2, I think the added depth of play would be worthwhile.

I’m confused; How does doing that adding resistances in armor add replayability? Thats just adding more stats for a dungeon or such you play once, and then everytime after it is a repeat. That doesn’t fix replayability, thats just another condition to deal with in dungeons; adding more content and delaying completing the end game goals, is it not?

For one, games gotta meet casual or hardcore gamers somewhere in the middle! So not everyone’s gonna wanna have to make multiple sets of armour, plus where you gonna store it since it will take up inv or bank space.
Want end game content? Help guildies, do guild events like a jumping puzzle night, or help others through dugeons.
Ppl need to think less about material gains and more about helping guildies or even new players. Not all games are about the loot, that wows crap model.

xCrusadentx.2784:

I’m confused; How does doing that adding resistances in armor add replayability? Thats just adding more stats for a dungeon or such you play once, and then everytime after it is a repeat. That doesn’t fix replayability, thats just another condition to deal with in dungeons; adding more content and delaying completing the end game goals, is it not?

Having more then one viable solution to a problem allows a player more than one play though. Granted (much like Skyrim) once all the solutions have been played out your still in the same boat (done with all the content). However having more than one solution would be infinitely more interesting than what we have today.