Guild Wars 2

I know the title is a bit odd, and I don’t mean as in some kinky S&M kind of punishment, but the kind where things like “death” had consequences that mattered and real skill showed itself simply by the fact that you leveled?

I’m not saying anything like “omg. punish me!”. Please don’t take it that way.

But I was talking to a mate today about why we just don’t care about games anymore, and it came down to, “they’re just too forgiving. Even if you have skill, you can’t show it.”

The talk came round to original Everquest. Loss of experience on death, potential loss of all your gear, ridiculous danger in basic travel, “meditation” to regain mana meant looking at a book on your screen for 15 minutes while you couldn’t move, mobs didn’t have “leashes” and could/would chase your through an entire zone if you kitten them off, no instant travel, no mounts, etc.

And the weird part is… as much as I hated it back then, I found that I kind of missed some of it now because every game that I’ve played recently is… dull.

Anybody else, or am I just some kind of weird old masochist who thinks that if you spend a hundred hours of your life at something, it should feel like you did something, rather than just experienced something?

Not so much, no. It’s a game that’s going to have bugs and lag, and you shouldn’t really punish someone for lagging out.

What I do miss, however, is proper risk vs reward balancing. Right now some of the best items come from crafting, which is 0 risk, while uniting Tyria and taking out an elder dragon gets you a few lv 78 greens.

ya, after EQ I played Lineage-2, where on death you could drop items, and non-consensual pvp was included. You’re really on the edge of your seat when you see an enemy clan bringing a train of mobs your way.

I do look back fondly. I think somewhat it’s like when you think back to your summer outings, you tend not to remember the mosquitos.

Another aspect of Lineage 2 and real pvp games is that your pvp happened in the actual world, not off on a different map like it is in GW2, and when my clan owned a castle it gave us access to things other people couldn’t get unless they paid us. Oh, and we collected taxes from everyone else, too.

This consequence-free style of pvp (what do they call it, an e-sport now?), people call it carebear or whatever. But fact is, the US market really can’t tolerate real pvp in mmos.

bwillb.2165:

Not so much, no. It’s a game that’s going to have bugs and lag, and you shouldn’t really punish someone for lagging out.

What I do miss, however, is proper risk vs reward balancing. Right now some of the best items come from crafting, which is 0 risk, while uniting Tyria and taking out an elder dragon gets you a few lv 78 greens.

Hey, it used to get you lvl 20 blues.

Yeah, I miss that.

Games like UO, where you didn’t run around in your best gear unless you were fairly sure you had enough friends around you.

Or FFXI, XP loss and possible leveling down if you died too much. Couldn’t play that game much though, the UI was just too terribad.

DAoC had some XP loss too, loved that game. Till they ruined it. I wish this game had some of the stuff it had.

I liked that every time I left a city there was a chance I’d be PK’d and lose an item. Actually it could happen in the cities too (safe zones are lame). Most modern MMORPGs have absolutely no danger in them.

Anet Forum Manager: Gamers complain its too dull
Anet Dev: I’ll add in permanent death system and the only way to get back your character is via a 5000gem Rez Stone, that’ll spice up their gameplay…

I think the problem is people cant seem to make a proper diet of games. For a meal most people dont just eat just the steak. You have your Potato and some vegies.

My point is different games satisfy different wants gw2 is my relaxing game. I dont have to take it to serious. For my more engaging game i have planetside 2. And for cruel games there is Monster hunter and dark souls. Put more on your plate then just the steak.

bwillb.2165:

Not so much, no. It’s a game that’s going to have bugs and lag, and you shouldn’t really punish someone for lagging out.

What I do miss, however, is proper risk vs reward balancing. Right now some of the best items come from crafting, which is 0 risk, while uniting Tyria and taking out an elder dragon gets you a few lv 78 greens.

Agree about lag, and that was truly frustrating (and still is), but I mean… death doesn’t really mean anything in this game. It’s not “bad”, its just inconvenient. It’s almost as if lack of any understanding of the game and/or you character’s abilities is just… fine. Yet it’s an MMO, so if you , and everyone else you encounter, don’t know anything about anything and just rush in… well, ok then. Just keep doing that and you’ll win eventually.

And if you damage your stuff, you just have to pay in “time spent” to repair it.

It’s just flat to me. Add to that the fact that no matter whether you truly bother to know your part or not, if you just put in the hours, you’ll eventually be geared up enough to be “average” and therefore capable and you have a game (not just this one but seemingly all of them these days) that is an enforced gear check.

Sure, there’s no grind for gear here. I get that, and in some ways even enjoy it. But in the end, if all you have to do is spend the hours to get the gear, and the gear basically automatically overcomes the content… why bother?

Don’t get me wrong, this is the most beautiful game world ever built. But to me that just isn’t mattering any more. All I have to do is wait and my gear will win for me if I can mash a few buttons in sequence (at least in pve).

That’s exactly the problem with WoW.

and as for pvp… well, I’m inexperienced if I’m honest, but the reason for that is that pretty much any 3 on 1/2 will win, especially if part of the “3” is one of the holy trinity of THIS game.

I’m not directly opposed to the idea of the trinity, but I admit to hating to wait for groups when one is missing. Having said that, I’m also opposed to groups failing because nobody knows what they should/can do.

Anyway tl;dr: lag sucks, but games with zero consequence for sucking suck too.

In ffxi it took me a year to get my first character to max level, which at the time was pretty much par for the course. It was quite an experience, but one I’d never do again. If I miss anything, it’s the free time I used to have for MMO’s!

Nostalgia goggles all around! You miss loosing out on hours of time just because you lost a random number generator roll? Do you all remember what good MMO population was? 100k subs was considered a AAA MMO.

Taking an hour of travel time to get to a group to grind the same mobs (Which wasn’t a challenge by any means) for two hours to gain a single level? I look back and ask myself why I spent hours a day to outclaim another group for a world spawn that took forever to spawn. If it’s one thing I don’t miss about older games is the amount of time required for anything.

Agree about lag, and that was truly frustrating (and still is), but I mean… death doesn’t really mean anything in this game. It’s not “bad”, its just inconvenient. It’s almost as if lack of any understanding of the game and/or you character’s abilities is just… fine. Yet it’s an MMO, so if you , and everyone else you encounter, don’t know anything about anything and just rush in… well, ok then. Just keep doing that and you’ll win eventually.

This is less about needing a harsher death penalty and more about needing content that requires more than just a zerg attack.

the only thing they made easier is when you die in story you can retry from a checkpoint instead of restarting the mission over like in gw1

Currently my main MMO is EVE Online. I love the fact that if you lose a ship you lose it for good (although I don’t love losing ships.) Add that to the fact that you are never really completely safe while in space, even in high sec.. your decisions matter that much more, and blowing up someone else’s ship also means that much more.

I do not miss some of the super grindy RPGs I played in years past, though. For me, it’s not about how much time I spent playing the game as much as what I did with my time.

Aristio.2784:

Nostalgia goggles all around! You miss loosing out on hours of time just because you lost a random number generator roll? Do you all remember what good MMO population was? 100k subs was considered a AAA MMO.

Taking an hour of travel time to get to a group to grind the same mobs (Which wasn’t a challenge by any means) for two hours to gain a single level? I look back and ask myself why I spent hours a day to outclaim another group for a world spawn that took forever to spawn. If it’s one thing I don’t miss about older games is the amount of time required for anything.

Partially, maybe.

I do enjoy some challenge out of my games, and excitment. With no fear of loss or anything, there’s a lack of excitement.

I’m a big fan of Dark Souls because it’s challenging(less so now that I’ve played it a lot), and there’s the sense of loss if you screw up repeatedly.

Feeling rewarded for your time spent is a big one too. This game lacks that. But I still play for fun, that’s where WvW comes in. Some sort of very drawn out rewards system would be pretty cool though(see: DAoC realm points).

Derpinator.2894:

I know the title is a bit odd, and I don’t mean as in some kinky S&M kind of punishment, but the kind where things like “death” had consequences that mattered and real skill showed itself simply by the fact that you leveled?

I’m not saying anything like “omg. punish me!”. Please don’t take it that way.

But I was talking to a mate today about why we just don’t care about games anymore, and it came down to, “they’re just too forgiving. Even if you have skill, you can’t show it.”

The talk came round to original Everquest. Loss of experience on death, potential loss of all your gear, ridiculous danger in basic travel, “meditation” to regain mana meant looking at a book on your screen for 15 minutes while you couldn’t move, mobs didn’t have “leashes” and could/would chase your through an entire zone if you kitten them off, no instant travel, no mounts, etc.

And the weird part is… as much as I hated it back then, I found that I kind of missed some of it now because every game that I’ve played recently is… dull.

Anybody else, or am I just some kind of weird old masochist who thinks that if you spend a hundred hours of your life at something, it should feel like you did something, rather than just experienced something?

The problem, at least what I perceive as the problem, is that there was some good ideas in other games which would help you avoid a lot of the tedium of the game on a second run-through.

But lets look at what you said more closely:

“But I was talking to a mate today about why we just don’t care about games anymore, and it came down to, “they’re just too forgiving. Even if you have skill, you can’t show it.”

I can understand this, most games don’t offer up sufficient content for players that are tuned for tiers, and when they do. Then the self entitlement brigade claim they can’t blindly fumble their way through endgame content even if it’s pug-able, and demand nerfs, so that content not designed for them, becomes new content for them and at the cost of those that were bothered with it before this.

“The talk came round to original Everquest. Loss of experience on death, potential loss of all your gear, ridiculous danger in basic travel, “meditation” to regain mana meant looking at a book on your screen for 15 minutes while you couldn’t move, mobs didn’t have “leashes” and could/would chase your through an entire zone if you kitten them off, no instant travel, no mounts, etc."

Loss of experience on death has been twisted to help sell protection from it in badly tuned “pay2win” mmo’s, believe me it’s a horrid mechanic that should STAY gone as it’s counter productive, if players are punished too hard for minor mistakes, they simply will in most cases, just stop playing instead of focusing on not making the mistakes, honey catches more flies than vinegar

Mana is a dead concept as well mostly as at endgame it is only truly important for caster dps and healers, so with no healers they’re way less inclined to need it, cooldowns being king essentially changes the rules of a lot of things

and the issues with kiting a boss into low area’s and then dropping aggro or letting their aoe’s annihilate people has been known to happen when mobs don’t reset.

Just play Dark Souls if you want a game that has that kind of thing done right.

You also need to keep in mind that a lot of those mechanics aren’t really punishing, but bad design. Losing all of your gear means that I lose a lot of time and is a griefers paradise. No fast travel is just stupid, why do I want to run through the same location 100 times? Lack of a ‘leash’ is pretty much a griefer tool and makes no real sense. Staring at a book for 15 minutes to regain mana is just wasting my time, which is valuable.

I also like Guild Wars 2 because of how easy it is. The game was never meant to be super punishing or difficult outside of the higher levels of PvP. The PvE is meant to be something you pick up and just play as a co-op game or a singleplayer game in the case of personal story.

There are full loot hardcore PvP games around if you wish. Guild Wars 2 is never going to be like that.

I only find the events weird. Is there any real way to fail them aside from 1 or 2 people doing them? All I’ve seen is that there is no real challenge in them. In cases of big bosses I just move not to stand in red circles and… that’s that. Gold medal, reward, yaaay. No feel of challenge, no feel of acomplishment. Just move on.

Meaningful in-world PvP with objectives like castles in Lineage II were awesome. What wasn’t awesome is the grind model in conjunction with xp loss on death. It should either be one or the other. But maybe the fact that 98% of the server wasn’t at max level and had no guarantee to stay at max level gave the game staying power.

Now WvWvW and PvP in general feels detached from the overal experience, PvP moreso than WvWvW. Yet I find WvWvW meaningless – only people on 80 would bother with it realistically not to get oneshoted, but why? What do they gain? Title? No. Temporary “Master of Castle X” title? No. Achievements? No. Raid benefits? There are none.

It’s simple – stretching the “end-game” across all 80 levels means that level 80 is a game over. You can farm a bit for dungeon or karma cosmetic gear, but you don’t have any motivation to do so (at least I don’t). Where would I show it off? In Wv3 zerg that I have little motivation to participate in aside from an hour or two similar to why I play counterstrike? To own a couple of people, get owned a couple of times and move on?

I am sentimental towards the old times, but I know they ain’t coming back. GW2 isn’t the game to have these. There is no point in expecting that to happen. It’s just a different kind of game. Think Counterstrike or League of Legends but with more solo PvE content and feel of continuity on your character.

GW1 had a death penalty which maxed out at 60% reduced stats for your character and that was rough. I was so happy when they decided to do away with it for GW2.

Its easy to make it hard for yourself. Just self impose the punishment. Each time you die, you can delete the character or destroy the piece of equipment that was damaged. That way you get to enjoy your punishment while other people enjoy their fun game.

For me it’s one of those things when I look back there are things that I am fond about. I agree that tougher penalties did heighten tension and there was a certain feeling of accomplishment after grinding something out. Then I remember the lows between those ‘yeah go me’ times as well as how long the mundane stuff took.

I’m older now and my life is quite different. I just don’t have the time or the inclination to play that way anymore, with time being the big one. I just can’t justify walking for an hour, through the same place and staying up into the wee hours to fight for some spawn. I also know that my idea of ‘fun’ has changed over time. If I think about it as a whole I wouldn’t have fun if I started those games now. Things I found fun then would probably seem stupid and annoying now when I get down to it. lol

As some have said there are games out there that still have that sort of stuff. I appreciate that many games have evolved in design to offer a choice. If they were the same as they were then I probably wouldn’t be playing much anymore.

I played original EQ – both carebear and PvP servers. It was an amazing game for it’s time and only really designed to appeal to old-school pen & paper RPG players, I think. The real sense of danger, the neccessary teamwork and the extraordinary circumstances it took to get ahead made for a gaming experience unlike any other I have had.

One thing people forget about EQ was that the long downtimes for healing, mana regen and travel were purposely designed into the game to allow players time to chat with each other and get to know each other. Often times such chat sessions were used to plan strategy and exchange advice.

Would I go back? I don’t know. I’ve often thought that modern MMORPG’s would benefit from having different servers with different rules built into them for higher or lower risk / reward gameplay… the same way you can choose a difficulty level in a single player game. Heck, you could make it an option for players on the same server. Players playing by harder, less forgiving rules concerning death and xp loss, for instance, would be rewarded with better and distinctive gear for their efforts… and everyone would be able to see it.

Aristio.2784:

Nostalgia goggles all around! You miss loosing out on hours of time just because you lost a random number generator roll? Do you all remember what good MMO population was? 100k subs was considered a AAA MMO.

Taking an hour of travel time to get to a group to grind the same mobs (Which wasn’t a challenge by any means) for two hours to gain a single level? I look back and ask myself why I spent hours a day to outclaim another group for a world spawn that took forever to spawn. If it’s one thing I don’t miss about older games is the amount of time required for anything.

Uh… no. Not really.

I miss things like knowing that if I managed to kite a mob to 10% health over 10 minutes, but messed up my timing even by one second and died. I’d have to pay a price for my lack of concentration. But if I managed to stay focused I’d see a noticeable portion of a level be achieved.

Case in point: Butcherblock Mountains dwarf kiting. It was great xp, but there was a faction penalty to pay for the opportunity that mattered, even if just a little bit.

It wasn’t random at all (except for lag which you can’t predict/control). If you knew the method, and executed it, perfectly (within certain tolerances of course) the reward was experience and loot.

If you didn’t know the mechanics, or didn’t execute them with skill, you died. And that sucked because you couldn’t just click on the waypoint and start again, or “ressurect” and keep going. There were real penalties for being incompetent.

I’m not a fan of penalties vs. rewards. It’s a game after all. But every minute I spent in Butcherblock felt like a reward when I won. BECAUSE when I failed, I knew it was my own fault (except for lag which does/still sucks).

Yes, an hour of travel time to get to a group sucked and I wouldn’t want that back. But the insta-port sucks too. If for no other reason than you CAN’T build a group of people you like to group with. I’ve tried in games like wow. “Hey, you seem to be kinda cool. Want to group again?”

“Sure. But it’s easier/faster to just pug. Nice to meet you though because this is stupidly easy. I can join any group and get by.”

/silence

And you said, “for two hours to gain a single level”.

Are you serious? These games took weeks, sometimes months to gain “a single level” and because you had done it, other people KNEW WITHOUT A DOUBT that you knew your class. Because it wasn’t possible to advance if you didn’t.

These days LITERALLY all levels mean is “you spent time”.

They mean nothing. And that sucks. Why have them at all? Oh, I know. Because everyone deserves to be as strong as everyone else. Well… you decide. And if that’s true, I ask again, why have levels at all?

Yes, I know what a “good” mmo population was. And I know that 5,000,000 people who like clam and goat cheese ice cream doesn’t mean that clam and goat cheese ice cream is actually good. It just means that a lot more people like clam and goat cheese ice cream than me.

Finally, yes, claiming world spawns sucks. As does claiming crafting node spawns, or tagging random zone mobs.

that can be fixed. And a STRONG argument exists that THIS game did that for the first time.

But that doesn’t make this game hard, or challenging, or rewarding.

Want a punishing game? Play DayZ. You die, you lose EVERYTHING and start over from the beginning. And things aren’t doled out willy-nilly. You gotta HUNT.

sorry but reading that last one screamed to me of

“nostalgia goggles”

You wanna know how I know my class? you ask me, because you should know it yourself, because there’s no real harm in creating a level 1 alt, going to heart of the mists and being auto 80 with full traits unlocked and skills and going “hmm 2+2”
Getting the 4 that you should inevitably and simply get and going that could combo with x, and y etc. the game is simple enough to get rid of that rubbish “let’s force the players to sit down for 15 minutes at a time”

What I WOULD love to see in gw2 was more areas with fun things to do, like the inns are great and full of npc fun, but you can’t like pick up a set of darts and play a minigame with friend or enjoy a few drinks that make you bleary eyed and slur your words, the kinda semi RP fun that gets people in a light hearted mood and chatting.
If they were way more fun and had more in them players would be DRAWN into them naturally and you’d get a slightly better sense of immersion, as it is we’ve a massive massive MASSIVE world with many area’s and yet we lack hubs that draw people to them

This is the kind of thing that would make me forget all about the “lack of Nintendo hard challenge” in the game and give a nice sense of nostalgic “this is always good in a game and familiar”

I do miss the old days of death meaning something. Death used to be something I feared more then…. uh.. death!

EQ1, I lost lvl 65 like 10 times lol. I would be mad of course because I died, but not really mad about losing the level. I just had to go camp a spot I liked with a group and get it back.

NexusTK, you die and all your armor/weapons that were worth a kitten would break on death.

Those games back then made it severe because they were trying to make the playing experience more exciting and to deter people from zerging kitten.

Sadly those days/games will NEVER EEEEEEEEEEEEVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRR happen again. The mmo crowd now is fat lazy and stupid, anything besides mashing their hotkeys is to much work and they rage quit at the drop of a hat, or pizza box for them.

GO GO WOW KIDS!

EATtheDEAD.4768:

I do miss the old days of death meaning something. Death used to be something I feared more then…. uh.. death!

EQ1, I lost lvl 65 like 10 times lol. I would be mad of course because I died, but not really mad about losing the level. I just had to go camp a spot I liked with a group and get it back.

NexusTK, you die and all your armor/weapons that were worth a kitten would break on death.

Those games back then made it severe because they were trying to make the playing experience more exciting and to deter people from zerging kitten.

Sadly those days/games will NEVER EEEEEEEEEEEEVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRR happen again. The mmo crowd now is fat lazy and stupid, anything besides mashing their hotkeys is to much work and they rage quit at the drop of a hat, or pizza box for them.

GO GO WOW KIDS!

And the lack of tact and respect to any sort of progress in any sort of decent unbiased analytical sense, shows that you’re EXACTLY the type of “wow kid” you claim to despise, the self entitlement and need for it all to be handed to you might not be there, but the contradictory attitude of

“I hate the bad attitudes of others in regards to mmo games, but I will show this hatred by showing a different paradigm of bad attitude”

Is not much better than those that would have this game turned into an interactive movie, cos they can’t complete it in one sitting and never play the game again.

By all means, cast those stones of blame, but do so without sitting in a glass house first.

Whiteblade.1504:

Just play Dark Souls if you want a game that has that kind of thing done right.

You also need to keep in mind that a lot of those mechanics aren’t really punishing, but bad design. Losing all of your gear means that I lose a lot of time and is a griefers paradise. No fast travel is just stupid, why do I want to run through the same location 100 times? Lack of a ‘leash’ is pretty much a griefer tool and makes no real sense. Staring at a book for 15 minutes to regain mana is just wasting my time, which is valuable.

I also like Guild Wars 2 because of how easy it is. The game was never meant to be super punishing or difficult outside of the higher levels of PvP. The PvE is meant to be something you pick up and just play as a co-op game or a singleplayer game in the case of personal story.

I’ll check it out, but my point wasn’t that those things should still be: my point was that easy feels easy and we can’t really feel good about doing what’s easy.

Griefers means pvp and I never mentioned that.

Running through the same content implies that that content isn’t interesting. That’s bad design and imo EQ only suffered from that occasionally. when content became irrelevant and uninteresting, porting past it was easy. Not true here.

No fast travel IS stupid. I never defended it because it was slow. I mentioned it because it was actually interesting (up to a point) and that point seems to have been lost here. Fast travel is a gold sink now due to “economies” in games, rather than a perk for having earned the right to bypass kitten you’ve already done, as it was in older games.

Lack of a leash is gerally only a griefer tool in a forced pvp environment. I never mentioned pvp. But I admit that trains sucks in pve. However, aggro management outside the “leash” range is easily implemented: if you didn’t attack, and you are outside the “leash” range, you don’t get trained/attacked. It’s a bad compromise to role playing, but it’s viable.

Yes, I agree. Your time is valuable. So is mine. I’m not arguing for meditation. I’m arguing for things that make our decisions have consequences. In this game, there is no mana, and your health basically instantly regenerates. So… when you end a fight with the 2 or 3 mobs the game always throws at you (or 6 in Orr, or 16 whatever), you instantly regain all health, and there is no skill resource pool.

So basically you just keep going forever like some kitten Energizer bunny.

I prefer, personally, to have a slightly limited pool of resources that can run dry and refill less-than-instantly.

Why?

Because it makes sense, even if a fake world.

If I have almost unlimited power, why not just give me actual unlimited power?

As things stand I constantly feel the hand of humans involved in keeping me bouncing from thing to thing. It’s all so… timed. So… predicatable. So… formulaic.

If you don’t feel that, more power to you and enjoy.

For me, it destroys the entire experience to have no choices.

Think about it. Do you have a choice to be a destroyer of everything nearby? And do you pay a price for that choice?

No and no.

You are, and always will be moderated. But you’ll never be weak. You’ll always be average.

Does that really, truly make you happy?

So, my assertion is: to feel powerful, you have to have moments of weakness. And most games fail on part two. They make everyone feel average at the expense of anyone having the option to feel powerful.

And this is just one instance. Let’s not even talk about impactful, different, important, useful, evil, stealthy or any of the 1,000 other possible things people could feel while playing games their way.

Most MMOs these days have a permadeath community who plays by unofficial permadeath rules. With how easy it is to get resurrected in this game I’m not sure how hard it would be, but that’s always an option.

I just finished my “chicken run” of Straits of Devastation…

Guardian with complete MF set (so no toughness), armed with Retreat! and Save yourselves!.

Died 1 time.

Tell me that’s not punishment. (though i kept losing my weapon MF stacks)

This game can be as hard as you want to make it. Its “instinctive” to old gamers like ourselves to have forethought and prepare for the min-maxing, it probably has never occurred to us that if we die too many times by taking on too much too fast, we’d run out of copper and we’d be scratching the bottom of the barrel for repairs. THEN it gets to insanity mode. The fact that you already have foresight of how to do things makes it so that the game doesn’t seem punishing… wear only stuff you craft, do a run solo, raid a supply camp on your own (i tried this with a small degree of success but never managed to completely capture) if you really want to be punished.

For me, “not punishing” means free revives on the spot you died on with no stat/exp penalties. that’s not the case in GW2.

Hellkaiser.6025:

EATtheDEAD.4768:

I do miss the old days of death meaning something. Death used to be something I feared more then…. uh.. death!

EQ1, I lost lvl 65 like 10 times lol. I would be mad of course because I died, but not really mad about losing the level. I just had to go camp a spot I liked with a group and get it back.

NexusTK, you die and all your armor/weapons that were worth a kitten would break on death.

Those games back then made it severe because they were trying to make the playing experience more exciting and to deter people from zerging kitten.

Sadly those days/games will NEVER EEEEEEEEEEEEVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRR happen again. The mmo crowd now is fat lazy and stupid, anything besides mashing their hotkeys is to much work and they rage quit at the drop of a hat, or pizza box for them.

GO GO WOW KIDS!

And the lack of tact and respect to any sort of progress in any sort of decent unbiased analytical sense, shows that you’re EXACTLY the type of “wow kid” you claim to despise, the self entitlement and need for it all to be handed to you might not be there, but the contradictory attitude of

“I hate the bad attitudes of others in regards to mmo games, but I will show this hatred by showing a different paradigm of bad attitude”

Is not much better than those that would have this game turned into an interactive movie, cos they can’t complete it in one sitting and never play the game again.

By all means, cast those stones of blame, but do so without sitting in a glass house first.

psshh.. kitten please. my house is made of steel. my attitude is bitter not bad, I’ve been part of this genre of games since it started and all I’ve seen since WoW has been poor attempts at recreating WoW.

psshh.. kitten please. my house is made of steel. my attitude is bitter not bad, I’ve been part of this genre of games since it started and all I’ve seen since WoW has been poor attempts at recreating WoW.This game doesn’t really fall into that category to me considering what it has to offer but the lack of death consequences as the op was stating is something I can agree on. And agree on with any mmo post-WoW.

psshh.. kitten please. my house is made of steel. my attitude is bitter not bad, I’ve been part of this genre of games since it started and all I’ve seen since WoW has been poor attempts at recreating WoW.This game doesn’t really fall into that category to me considering what it has to offer but the lack of death consequences as the op was stating is something I can agree on. And agree on with any mmo post-WoW.Anyone unable to see that is either blind or stupid. If I had been used to drinking the finest Whiskey and then someone handed me a glass of Whiskey that had been watered down with a handful of ice I’d be like WTF IS THIS?! That’s pretty much whats been happening yearly since WoW wkitten out Blizzard’s womb.

ostracize.8316:

Most MMOs these days have a permadeath community who plays by unofficial permadeath rules. With how easy it is to get resurrected in this game I’m not sure how hard it would be, but that’s always an option.

So… I have to pretend in the pretend world that when I “die” I’m “dead”?

Interesting. I’ll be honest, I’m a little disturbed by the necessity for communities like this to exist, but I also truly get hardcore modes in other game.

I generally don’t do them because the main reason I die is bad design or internet issues, but… I get the desire.

I’ll look into it.

Thank you.

exp loss
gold loss
gear loss
perma death
ect

these were put in to games for one ultimate reason and had nothing to do with punishing players. Was to slow progression down because, was little to NOTHING to do at end game. It was designed to superficially lengthen titles.

At end of the day they didnt really add to the game, and not even a sense of entitlement, its kind of like…giving a kid a tootsie pop, waiting till ALMOST get to tootsie part and then taking it away, and giving them another brand new tootsie… rinse and repeat. It lengthens the experience, of getting to what matters, but never really added to the experience and in most cases ends up more of an annoyance then anything else.

So no i dont miss them, i’m glad they are gone… and i hope they never make a return…if want a hardcore experience go buy torchlight 2, play it on elite and play hardcore… enjoy your stay because, those kinds of mechanics don’t belong in mmos anymore, we have evolved past them.

I don’t miss them either. Good for you if you like that stuff, but we all knew it wasn’t gonna be in this game. At least those of us who opted to, you know, learn about the game we were buying, anyway.

I miss difficulty coming from game design rather than coping with bugs.

DusK.3849:

I don’t miss them either. Good for you if you like that stuff, but we all knew it wasn’t gonna be in this game. At least those of us who opted to, you know, learn about the game we were buying, anyway.

By learn I assume you mean being exposed to “The Manifesto”?

Or do you mean that sacred responsibility of consumers to study the products they buy? I assume this means you research the facilities of the cheeses you eat for quality and safety ratings. And that you don’t by dental hygiene products without visiting the manufacturing plants.

Get off your high horse. Of course I checked out the game. I bought it based on the “Manifesto” and what was delivered was nothing like what was contained therein. Ok it was “like” the Manifesto. Just like phlegm is “like” oysters. Same basic consistency, but not the same thing at all.

So I don’t “miss them” or I wouldn’t have bought this game. I miss what they represent which is why I put “punishing” in quotes. To indicate the ironic nature of the word.

And I truly hoped this game would provide the same SENSE of accomplishment, of challenge, of being a part of a world that my examples illustrate. It doesn’t. At all.

So thanks for your valuable input. I know that I for one feel much different about my entire experience here due to your input. It’s almost as if you never existed. That’s so much different than I felt before I was completely unaware of your existence.

Losing 21 silvers before the new patch was punishing enough
11 silvers for a whole fix of every single item broken, is atleast acceptable

Rizzy.8293:

Losing 21 silvers before the new patch was punishing enough
11 silvers for a whole fix of every single item broken, is atleast acceptable

I agree that this is painful, but it’s not really consequential. 21s at level 80 is a few minutes of “work”. It’s just irritating, not meaningful. And that’s actually the reverse of my problem.

Those few minutes don’t MEAN anything except a few minutes. If you hadn’t died, what would your reward be for those same real-life minutes spent?

Nothing. 21s doesn’t actually mean anything positive in this game. That’s the problem.

Losing 21s sucks. Gaining 21s is… just gaining 21s.

See what I mean?

Orson.8034:

I miss difficulty coming from game design rather than coping with bugs.

I +1’d this. Not sure if that’s actually a verb, but I did it. And since I have no idea if you know that I agree:

I agree.

EATtheDEAD.4768:

psshh.. kitten please. my house is made of steel. my attitude is bitter not bad, I’ve been part of this genre of games since it started and all I’ve seen since WoW has been poor attempts at recreating WoW.

I have to ask, with all respect, wtf are you smoking? I love that you (seem to) agree with me, but… you seem to be on a whole different plane than me.

Derpinator.2894:

Rizzy.8293:

Losing 21 silvers before the new patch was punishing enough
11 silvers for a whole fix of every single item broken, is atleast acceptable

I agree that this is painful, but it’s not really consequential. 21s at level 80 is a few minutes of “work”. It’s just irritating, not meaningful. And that’s actually the reverse of my problem.

Those few minutes don’t MEAN anything except a few minutes. If you hadn’t died, what would your reward be for those same real-life minutes spent?

Nothing. 21s doesn’t actually mean anything positive in this game. That’s the problem.

Losing 21s sucks. Gaining 21s is… just gaining 21s.

See what I mean?

I understand the problem, if its Arah exp you’re talking about where a path takes 3 hours minimum with 60 tokens at the end, still not as bad, but recently I did Arah for the first time and it gave me 30 tokens and everyone else 60 tokens, that was bs.

That was punishment for me :|

What? 21s for a few mins? Tell me how to do it.

Rizzy.8293:

Derpinator.2894:

Rizzy.8293:

Losing 21 silvers before the new patch was punishing enough
11 silvers for a whole fix of every single item broken, is atleast acceptable

I agree that this is painful, but it’s not really consequential. 21s at level 80 is a few minutes of “work”. It’s just irritating, not meaningful. And that’s actually the reverse of my problem.

Those few minutes don’t MEAN anything except a few minutes. If you hadn’t died, what would your reward be for those same real-life minutes spent?

Nothing. 21s doesn’t actually mean anything positive in this game. That’s the problem.

Losing 21s sucks. Gaining 21s is… just gaining 21s.

See what I mean?

I understand the problem, if its Arah exp you’re talking about where a path takes 3 hours minimum with 60 tokens at the end, still not as bad, but recently I did Arah for the first time and it gave me 30 tokens and everyone else 60 tokens, that was bs.

That was punishment for me :|

Well, it’s the whole game I’m talking about, but this is a great example.

I want to run dungeons, and craft, and explore and pvp.

But my experiences with all of these have lead me to believe that they are all broken, contrary to the manifesto and unsatisfying because I expected them to as the Manifesto promised.

And that’s not even getting to the “punishing” part of my post (which I now realize should have been “consequential” instead). That’s just bugs.

Even if they worked, it’s really hard for someone to matter in any of these activities. There are a few self-proclaimed leaders in wvwvw for example. Maybe they’re really good at what they do. I don’t know and don’t care much at this point. My entire experience of wvwvw so far has been “leader A: zerg here, leader b: zerg there. leader C: wtf is wrong with you people??”

There are no tools built into the system to allow actual leaders to be promoted/demoted by the led. That’s just stupid. I’d lead but… lol. I tried to make sense a few times through the chatter. Not even trying to lead, just trying to understand. Result: same 5 leaders babbling/kittening about one another. Word of mouth is awesome, if you have time to use it, which with queue times, no casual player does.

I could go on, but I think it’s fair to say that the game is unfinished, and even when finished, it might not live up to the hype that sold it to me.

And I doubt seriously that I’m alone, so for whatever “we” are worth in terms of buyers, a chunk of the player base is not happy and probably won’t be back.

Hope that helps clarify.

FateOmega.9601:

What? 21s for a few mins? Tell me how to do it.

Um… go to any midlevel zone (50+) and follow a chain of events for half an hour? If between actual cash and sellable items you don’t make 21s I would be… truly surprised.

Oh, maybe our definition of a few minutes is different. Sorry.

I didn’t mean 3 minutes, but something like 15 to 30 minutes depending on the business of the zone etc. should be easily doable

Let me grab my Domination Mesmer…..

while i do miss UO and its systems, how it was designed absolutely wouldn’t fly now-a-days, simply because MMOs are much, much more popular and not obscure, niche titles. back during the EQ/UO days, 100k subscription was comparable to WoW’s peak of 12 million.

look at GW2. people consider it a “failure” and “its dying” because its not holding millions of people. i don’t care where you come from, two million plus units sold is a success.

honestly, if mortal online wasn’t a buggy piece of kitten, i’d be playing it all day.

i got into the beta for it, and, i absolutely loved what they were trying to do… but there were simply too many bugs/glitches. it’s gotten much, much better, but… it’s not there yet. maybe in a few years, it’ll be polished enough for me to purchase it.

if UO was released, today, in its T2A/Renaissance state, but modernized (i.e. controls like a game released in 2012, not 1997), i’d abandon GW2 immediately, but that’s a lofty, lofty goal. it won’t happen. tbh, i can’t stomach UO’s clunky, awkward controls/combat/netcode anymore after playing polished titles. back in ‘97, it was acceptable, but now? i can’t stomach it. i have fond memories of the game, however, and played it from ’97 to ’04 and then quit when they ruined it via trying to compete with EQ.

I’m drinking not smoking. I agree with you on the death penalties in games being so wimpy now a years. I kinda have a sore spot though about the genre as a whole. That’s probably what your wondering about.

I do really love gw2 though so far. I just have to keep from playing it too much so I don’t hit the wall before the first month.

Has it been a month yet? lol

@EATtheDEAD:

Cheers. Tipping a Newcastle at ‘ya. And it’s been close to a month, but I’ve stopped playing for a while. I’ll definitely come back… some day. But it’s just too buggy and annoying this week.

nvmvoidrays.2158:

while i do miss UO and its systems, how it was designed absolutely wouldn’t fly now-a-days, simply because MMOs are much, much more popular and not obscure, niche titles. back during the EQ/UO days, 100k subscription was comparable to WoW’s peak of 12 million.

look at GW2. people consider it a “failure” and “its dying” because its not holding millions of people. i don’t care where you come from, two million plus units sold is a success.

honestly, if mortal online wasn’t a buggy piece of kitten, i’d be playing it all day.

i got into the beta for it, and, i absolutely loved what they were trying to do… but there were simply too many bugs/glitches. it’s gotten much, much better, but… it’s not there yet. maybe in a few years, it’ll be polished enough for me to purchase it.

if UO was released, today, in its T2A/Renaissance state, but modernized (i.e. controls like a game released in 2012, not 1997), i’d abandon GW2 immediately, but that’s a lofty, lofty goal. it won’t happen. tbh, i can’t stomach UO’s clunky, awkward controls/combat/netcode anymore after playing polished titles. back in ‘97, it was acceptable, but now? i can’t stomach it. i have fond memories of the game, however, and played it from ’97 to ’04 and then quit when they ruined it via trying to compete with EQ.

Agreed that “as they were” not one of those games would survive today. Some of their mechanics were kitten, no doubt about it.

But just a few of them made the games feel different than anything that has come since, and I think an actual death penalty was one of them. “Dying” in modern games means kitten. It’s a few seconds of irritation because you have to run back or pay a toll. BARF.

I’m not pining for the “glory days”, but some things made a difference. In EQ if you died you lost xp, had to run naked back and collect your corpse (even if it was in the bottom of a respawned dungeon), from your bind point (which could – if you were unlucky be literally hours away) or lose xp AND all your gear.

You didn’t kittening want to die in that game. It SUCKED. And you worked really, really, REALLY hard not to.

And just that feeling… that, “Omg, I’m about to die!!!! Run! Run! Oh please let me live long enough to escape!!!! Omg! I’m gonna die!!!!!!!!”

On a level 10 character had more impact than this entire game, and all the years of WoW combined.

That. One. Moment.

Sad to see it go, I am.