Guild Wars 2

pretty interesting article from the formerly ever-positive Ravious:

http://www.killtenrats.com/2013/01/14/gw2-core-event-density/

As I get it he finds the game lacking content bigtime, events pop up very rarely in most areas of the game.

I hate avoiding areas because there is a dearth of events. I love roaming around to fill out my daily on alts or my main, but I hate feeling like I am in a desert of events. Perhaps, looking at Southsun Cove, my understanding of Guild Wars 2 PvE has been always fatally flawed. Perhaps events are meant to be too special. My gut feeling is that the starting areas were supposed to be the norm.

Sounds quite depressing for me, I always loved his articles for his optimism, I hope it’s not gone for good.

He’s right, though. The starter maps clearly were supposed to be the norm in terms of design: Good, unique content. A variety of events with a variety of enemies and a variety of goals. And tons of events that trigger often enough for players to not feel like the area is abandoned.

Yet the level of creativity involved in later maps drops off rather rapidly, and by the time you hit Orr, you’re either defending Location X from Risen or you’re attacking Location Y which is full of Risen. And the events in later maps were far more buggy than those in starter maps primarily due to a lack of testing in those later maps.

This is what happens when you rush a game out the door so as to compete with TOR and TERA, instead of just taking another few months (maybe even another year) to polish the late game content. They had an ample supply of beta testers telling them to hold off on release because the game wasn’t ready. This is one thing that I wish the devs had stuck to: the “when it’s ready” approach to design pretty much vanished as the year got closer and closer to ending. Honestly, what’s the better move: making sure your game’s end content is the best it can be, or making sure your game releases in the “Year of the Dragon” on the Chinese calendar? I don’t understand why they pushed an incomplete product to market and expected this reaction…it’s because they rushed it out the door back in August that they’re having to sit down now in Jan/Feb/March to fix it all. >.<

To be fair to ANet, Colin did state in a recent post that for Jan/Feb/Mar they are looking at including a lot more new content in existing maps. I haven’t read the KTR article, but if the author was using Southsun Cove as his example, that’s a flawed perspective; Southsun Cove is far from finished, and ANet has said they will be adding more content to it.

Zaxares.5419:

To be fair to ANet, Colin did state in a recent post that for Jan/Feb/Mar they are looking at including a lot more new content in existing maps. I haven’t read the KTR article, but if the author was using Southsun Cove as his example, that’s a flawed perspective; Southsun Cove is far from finished, and ANet has said they will be adding more content to it.

I really loved the launch of this game, 400 hours of solid entertainment. Sadly it has gone down hill and is snowballing out of control. This game needs tonnes of fixes, tonnes of content, tonnes of reward for PLAYING and meaningful gemshop items, not just a shortcut to legendary items, but at this point I think it’s one of those kitten if you do, kitten if you don’t situations for Arenanet.

i actually prefer PVE in the later levels. i think DE’s and their chains as just as creative, except there’s way more of them. my 2 favourite zones, Lornar’s Pass and Frostgorge Sound are of vastly different levels.

There are some good mid level areas. I quite like Herathi Hinterlands and Dredgehaunt cliffs for example. I started a thread yesterday regarding Southsun Cove and how I visited there for the first time on the weekend since the event and was surprised at how there was basically nothing happening there apart from karka shell, orichalcum, passion flower and ancient wood farming.

Ore is still a better area than Southsun, because at least it has events, but its a constantly annoying area with constant aggro from risen. You deal with it, but why bother being there when the rewards are no better than other easier areas.

I think GW2 development team has changed there focus and now want to move people over to dungeons/WvW and drop working on the open world. Thats my impression right now.

Zaxares.5419:

To be fair to ANet, Colin did state in a recent post that for Jan/Feb/Mar they are looking at including a lot more new content in existing maps. I haven’t read the KTR article, but if the author was using Southsun Cove as his example, that’s a flawed perspective; Southsun Cove is far from finished, and ANet has said they will be adding more content to it.

I recommend reading it, his blogarticle is a direct response to Colins statement about the Jan, Feb, Mar-content update.

Game Director Colin Johanson recently stated that this year they are going to make their core game as strong as possible. He was specifically talking about bosses and creatures, but it made me wonder. Here was the game director saying that he wanted to refine the base. Colin could have just plugged all the wonderful new features and content. The big brass only have so many dev hours a day, and to send even a lone dev (the one that didn’t refill the coffee) at creatures that could be “working as intended” gives me pause. Perhaps I am too jaded from Guild Wars 1 as I expect what we got at launch to be it.

Four hundred plus hours of entertainment is a bad release? When is the last time you got that much game for 60 dollars? People act like they are still paying for this game or something, it’s astounding.

sostronk.8167:

I think GW2 development team has changed there focus and now want to move people over to dungeons/WvW and drop working on the open world. Thats my impression right now.

I certainly hope that’s not the case. The open world is the best part of this game.

I don’t mind the WvW part of the game but if they focus on getting everyone into Dungeons I’ll be super disappointed. That would probably spell the end of the game for me at least.

This guy is many things but wrong is not one of them. This game instead of having more metas now has a single dungeon. as it stands right now it’s 180 from the manifesto and the prelaunch design interviews.