It’s great that they’re trying new stuff, but there seems to be a new, poor design philosophy revolving around their wallets. This is a game, obviously they want/need as much income as they can wrangle, but there’s a reason some of the best games ever came from Blizzard North Pre-WoW. They had a design philosophy of ‘Making Games for Gamers’. When they lost that? They started losing almost all of their quality and talent.
GW2 is it’s own game and a living work of art, but its been one long struggle to make a valid alternative to the usual theme park MMO. Changes to accommodate new players are a good idea, though the new trait system is actually antithetical in that it makes new players have to wait even longer to play with the system. WoW made the same mistake of one talent point every million levels. However, they at least made levels fun because you got some really impressive abilities as you went; some of which used to be talents from the old system.
While new players should be given necessary considerations, the first would have to be ‘All players are gamers delving into an experience they are hoping will be amazing and fun’. Not ‘simple’ or ‘easy’ or ‘free’. Amazing. And, Fun.
Games need challenges, the more profound and fun the better. I see game after game go down this same path when they start scrabbling for money and they always end up trying to appease children, rather than provoking us into trying and thinking.
Kids stop being the kind of foolish child these games think they’re catering to by the time they’re 8 or 9. They want to be big kids, they want to emulate, and they are perfectly capable of outperforming most adult gamers, which is partly why simplifying is the wrong choice 99% of the time. Because, the rest of the players aren’t helpless babies either.
Besides, there are very few genuinely stupid people. Most are lazy or uninformed/uneducated. If you make it smarter, they will adapt. That is if Anet has confidence in their abilities to make their product alluring, as well as smart.
Living Story doesn’t seem to be very successful, as I only ever hear it in conjunction with complaints and facepalms and the like.
I like the idea of unique events that we get to participate in that no one else ever will. However, this game needs to take them to a whole different, more complicated level imo. The things that happen need to leave scars on the face of the planet, quests should change to accommodate new history, new permanent dungeons should be left after about 30-50% of the events, terrible new creatures and gods should stake claim on territory and form new factions to set against the good people of Tyria or help them or even just to try and take back / claim a new homeland.
I’d love to see a return of old gods or the rise of new! Deities walking among us, granting new paths to walk in our war against the Dragons would be a beautiful next step in the game. Interacting with their heralds, seeing miracles and environmental effects/events – storms and tsunamis and brilliant celestial events like a hyper-focused/super detailed Galaxy-Rise or the alignments of planets, etc.. -, curses and plagues and other plights unleashed across the lands, reactionary stories and councils held with the world leaders, etc…
Some permanent content is what this game reaaaallly needs, imo. A mix of Living Story and Raids, maybe even open-world Raid like events that happen on a timer or when enough people enter the zone. There’s so much that can be done with GW2 and it’d be a shame if the pursuit of individuality ended up being it’s bane. There’s no reason to shun permanent content just because every other MMO has it. Fractals and Dungeons aren’t enough for a lot of people, which is largely why every guild I’m in has hundreds of players who haven’t logged in for more than six months.
Let’s compromise and use the Living Story to start truly changing Tyria. Plan every third/fourth story to permanently change that region, or even just it’s history, leaving displaced peoples or newly re-imbued tribes who have had their lost power restored with the rediscovered temple or artifacts or whatever.
One symptom of change could be Raids or Dungeons or some new kind of PvE or mini-Raid. Another could be vandalism or battle sign – dead bodies, armor, arrows, burnt swathes of land being removed and replaced with fresh top soil by refugees looking to rebuild their homes. A lost Asura colony or city could be discovered or could return to the surface world by means of big lasers or drills, maybe even laser drills. It could be a glowy, techno-magical beacon of hope and could act as a staging ground for underground Living Stories and Dungeons.
“How’d that happen?”
“He doesn’t talk about it.” – Stephen Fry
I love this game and I want to see it live up to it’s potential more than my own enjoyment of it. Hopefully, they’ll be able to excise the ephemeral quality of it’s end game soon and give players a greater sense of permanence and substance in their gameplay