Guild Wars 2

It has nothing to do with MMOs actually. It has to do with RPGs as a genre.

I see lots of pointing at MMOs, old and new, for this type of training. However, RPGs as a genre have always had, as a staple, story telling and character progression. Most often, this progression came from a leveling up, new gear, etc.
This began with PnP D&D – A good DM always knew how to reward his/her players after a good play session. It kept players interested, not only his the story, but in their characters.

How well MMOs do this depends on each persons’ point of view.

Just thought I would toss out, that it’s not MMOs, rather, RPGs that gave birth to this thinking.

Personally: I was rolling for that +2 Soul Drinking Dagger long before the Atari 2600 came around.

MMO games have a second part to that acronym, RPG.

Meaningful character progression has been the hallmark, one of the foundational pillars of role playing games since Dungeons and Dragons really got everything going.

This is not going to change. GW2 basically guts this entire pillar of RPGs and is suffering drastically for it.

Do not throw the baby out with the bath water when you innovate. Its as simple as that. Honestly, at this point, I have to say better luck next time.

Schurge.5194:

I think that these players who continue to say that “Guild Wars 2” is about fun are missing the fact that people don’t repeat dungeons for fun. For most people leveling is not fun after the first go ’round.

This is exactly the kind of thing I meant. If you aren’t having fun with the gameplay, why in the world are you playing to begin with? I’m not saying quit, but have you seriously evaluated why you’re spending time on something you consider to be “not fun after the first go’round”?

Which I mean, that’s fine. Not everyone’s going to like the gameplay, but why would you want incentive to keep playing a game you aren’t having fun with? This makes no sense to me.

Anyway, a couple of the more recent posts mentioned that progression is an RPG staple, to which yes, I agree. And it’s very enjoyable to see one’s character grow stronger. I said this. I make no attempt to claim otherwise. My thing with this thread is that lately MMO players seem to play only for progression and not because they enjoy the actual playing part.

Now, you PnP roleplayers didn’t gather over a table for loot written in different-colored pens. You gathered over that table with your friends because it was a fun way to spend an evening, whether things went right or wrong, whether you progressed or didn’t. Don’t even pretend otherwise; I will call you a liar to your face if you tell me you were into PnP RPGs solely for gear upgrades and wouldn’t play without them. So, what happened to that mindset where having a fun time with your friends was good enough, for those of you that want to evoke your PnP experience? Where’d that go, and why is it no longer acceptable?

Speaking more on subject to the game, I would challenge each of you to ask yourself and answer honestly whether or not you are enjoying the gameplay of Guild Wars 2? And if the answer’s no, I’m wondering why people who aren’t having fun would think gear progression fixes the problem. Why not suggest changes to the gameplay and combat to make it fun instead?

And if you are having fun, well… isn’t that what’s important?

Hidon

I think that GW2 is the first MMO in a while that emphasizes the journey more than the destination.

EvE Online is quite current and it does that.

In a certain, sick sense (the game’s broken in many ways), Warhammer Online too does the same.
You take a year+ to get to RR100 and then the game “ends” and all you can still grind for will be visual gear set (in a future expansion).

Just look at how much “monkey trainer” traditional games affect mindsets. I wrote “all you can still grind for…”.
Why people would even want to “grind for”, since they have already a miserable real life where to do such despised, repeating activities?

Daniel

Not once did I feel it necessary to group with someone or even talk with someone in this game from 1-80.

GW2 gave you options.
You can play like an hermit or you can join a medium (150 people) guild like I did and have a blast together.

Just because you were given the choice to solo does not mean the game does not provide ways to multi-play.

knightblaster

because increasingly this is how people have used the internet and how most people find more convenient to play

I call this “fragmentation of playerbase”.
The first MMOs were hardcore, close knit communities of very dedicated, often young-ish players.

Today the same players aged, formed families, can’t be online for the umpteenth big guild operation, they turned into “casuals”.
It’s why my first WoW guild had 120 members (I was guild leader) to safely cover two x 40 men raids, while my last had like 30 members.

You just won’t find people for the old times epic operations any more.

Ceallach

In GW2, I like just randomly helping people, knowing I can’t “kill steal”.

I love this feature. In WoW you’d see a guy ninjaing a mineral node under your nose while you aggroed the usual nearby mob. Then 5 minutes later you see him swarmed by mobs trying to dig another node and the first reaction is to laugh to his face and let him die.
In GW2 I have saved (and have been saved) dozens and dozens of time and then proceeded going on and killing stuff together with the random guy for 15 minutes and then ended doing an event before parting ways.

Anishor

GW2 is moving back toward a virtual world rather than a themepark. Yes there’s direction but it still acts more like a Virtual world than a progression themepark ( ala SWTOR and WoW ).

Yes, those who played EvE Online and similar find themselves well in GW2.
They are accustomed at creating their own story and placing their own objectives.

I love NOT having a canned “future” planned for me but to be able and log in 5 minutes and do whatever I care to do.

Elthurien.8356:

Rpg players have been slowly conditioned over time to expect monetary and item rewards for the majority of their adventurea. This isn’t just MMOs, if you go all the way back to tabletop RPGs, PC games like Bards Tale, Ultima, AD&D gold box, Final Fantasy, these games started over 30 years ago, progressed into games like Baldurs Gate, Diablo, Neverwinter and MUDs to make the and EQs and UOs and all the other MMOs we see today.

As far as I’m concerned, it was the introduction of token currency to buy loot that killed MMO dungeons for me. I’ve been conditioned over 30 years of RpGs to be excited about downing a boss and taking his loot, not saving up foodstamps to buy gear.

Personally, I would rather see actions like killing major enemies result in influencing the actions of the world itself, as my “reward.” Unfortunately, video games are limited in their scope due to the need to pre-program a finite number of responses to any given action. So, until the day comes around with artificial intelligence can be designed to dictate the actions of an MMO world, I’ll have to settle for being rewarded with shiny new items.

So until then, yes, I want to be rewarded with loot for killing things and defeating progressively harder encounters.

Corian.4068:

Schurge.5194:

I think that these players who continue to say that “Guild Wars 2” is about fun are missing the fact that people don’t repeat dungeons for fun. For most people leveling is not fun after the first go ’round.

This is exactly the kind of thing I meant. If you aren’t having fun with the gameplay, why in the world are you playing to begin with? I’m not saying quit, but have you seriously evaluated why you’re spending time on something you consider to be “not fun after the first go’round”?

Which I mean, that’s fine. Not everyone’s going to like the gameplay, but why would you want incentive to keep playing a game you aren’t having fun with? This makes no sense to me.

Anyway, a couple of the more recent posts mentioned that progression is an RPG staple, to which yes, I agree. And it’s very enjoyable to see one’s character grow stronger. I said this. I make no attempt to claim otherwise. My thing with this thread is that lately MMO players seem to play only for progression and not because they enjoy the actual playing part.

Now, you PnP roleplayers didn’t gather over a table for loot written in different-colored pens. You gathered over that table with your friends because it was a fun way to spend an evening, whether things went right or wrong, whether you progressed or didn’t. Don’t even pretend otherwise; I will call you a liar to your face if you tell me you were into PnP RPGs solely for gear upgrades and wouldn’t play without them. So, what happened to that mindset where having a fun time with your friends was good enough, for those of you that want to evoke your PnP experience? Where’d that go, and why is it no longer acceptable?

Speaking more on subject to the game, I would challenge each of you to ask yourself and answer honestly whether or not you are enjoying the gameplay of Guild Wars 2? And if the answer’s no, I’m wondering why people who aren’t having fun would think gear progression fixes the problem. Why not suggest changes to the gameplay and combat to make it fun instead?

And if you are having fun, well… isn’t that what’s important?

Corrian, I won’t say otherwise because we did huddle together for the fun of it. It wasn’t for the loot but for the experience , with friends.

However, neither would we run the same dungeon day in and day out. We’d move to new areas, dungeons, new threats. It was and still remains a more dynamic world in pen and paper than it is in a MMORPG and because of that, the experience is nearly always new. Also, a good GM could make mundane things really fun.

In an MMORPG and even computer (single player) RPG, the wall to that is the technical block. There is only so much that can be humanly built (physically and digitally) that simply cannot cater to that level. It’s a big technological constraint that is largely dealt with by designing the game to be more open (ala UO). Building theme parks play exactly to the very limitations that effectively force the game into a narrow focus.

Everyone has fun the first few times through, but as a perpetual world, it simply can’t be on par with pen and paper and Ultima Online. When the game is designed to be truly open world, we no longer feel the artificial funnel that the latest gen of MMORPG have moved into.

If you have a bunch of good friends, anything can be fun, but I’m not going to attribute that to Anet (or any single company). That’s because my friends are fun not because the game was designed that way. It wasn’t. If anything, GW2 was designed so we don’t even really benefit being with our friends much – If we’re having fun, it’s despite Anet’s design, not because of it.

If we have a bad GM that puts us in a rubbish, ill thought out encounter/world, it, too stops being fun. Even on pen and paper, you can have a group of happy people verykitten off when the GM starts making random, half-arst decisions… If that Gm continues to be a poor GM, we’ll just nominate or find another GM – preferably if he came with his own wizard robe and hat.

You are asking the wrong question. The MMO part is not (THAT) important. Although it is a bit, I’ll get back to it after I tell you this.

It’s the RPG (as in MMO*RPG*) part that matters, as it is based on progression and personalization. Always has been.

Also, the MMO part is not far off either – in the world where a mass of players participates, people like to compare themselves against others and excell – or at least work their butts off to succeed in that intention.

So arguing against progression/customization in an MMORPG genre is like raising a question why we have a ball as a part of a soccer game.

Vaerah.4907:

GW2 gave you options.
You can play like an hermit or you can join a medium (150 people) guild like I did and have a blast together.

Just because you were given the choice to solo does not mean the game does not provide ways to multi-play.

But this is true of every single MMORPG in existence. It’s not unique to GW2 in the slightest, and the mechanics that Anet worked into their game don’t actually encourage socializing. Which is sort of the point, I think.

One day a few years ago, when I was extremely bored, I went googling for a free MMO to play. I stumbled across a little-known gem called Fiesta, published by Outspark. This little game didn’t do anything particularly impressive with its combat, its classes, its gear, leveling, questing, crafting, mounts, or even pvp (hell, I don’t think it even had pvp). But there was one thing that, to this day, still sticks out to me: Kingdom Quests.

Kingdom Quests were instanced quests that were recruited for, once every two hours. So, every two hours, you check a board in town, and queue up for this quest, and once the instance you’ve queued up for is full, you’re whisked away into the instance itself, with a group of other people who also queued for the same instance.

The beauty of these quests is that they’re hard. They’re limited to a specific number of players, so they don’t have to be scaled up or down for some random number of people, which allows the developers to micro-tune it perfectly. It forces the players to not only work together as a unit, but also to manually form groups for quest credit, discuss strategy with other players, and take the time to teach new players the basics of the more difficult fights.

And you know what this all does? It encourages socialization among complete strangers.

That’s the point. When all your content can be steamrolled by tossing enough warm bodies at it, there’s no sense of community, and no reason to socialize with anybody. At the end of your average DE, you may as well have been playing alongside a dozen (or more) NPCs, for all the social interaction it encourages.

Probably the most social parts of the game are dungeons and pvp, neither of which are going to be especially attractive to your average casual player, who just wants to explore the world and take the content as it comes.

But you’re not insisting that RPGs have progression, because you’re right; they do.

No, what you’re trying to claim is that every RPG has limitless progression and an endgame, and both are, in cases beyond counting, false.

The progression aspect is there between 1-80. Then it caps off. Many RPGs do this. There doesn’t need to be some gear treadmill or other such crap to qualify it as an RPG.

DusK.3849:

But you’re not insisting that RPGs have progression, because you’re right; they do.

No, what you’re trying to claim is that every RPG has limitless progression and an endgame, and both are, in cases beyond counting, false.

The progression aspect is there between 1-80. Then it caps off. Many RPGs do this. There doesn’t need to be some gear treadmill or other such crap to qualify it as an RPG.

MMORPGs are unique as a sub- (or possible super-?) genre of RPGs, in which the player character reaches the level cap before finishing in-game content. Most RPGs finish their story long before ever reaching the level cap, so the feeling of progression stays linear throughout the entirety of the game. But since MMORPGs are the exact opposite in structure, they create a unique problem for themselves, in which the feeling of progression has to be maintained past the point of the level cap.

Developers, evidently, believed the best way to do this was the gear treadmill.

Whether this is right or wrong is up for debate, but it should be accepted, at least, that this inverted sense of progression from single-player RPGs doesn’t free MMOs from delivering a sense of continued progression at all steps of the game.

ounkeo, the friends thing is a good point and I’ll certainly give you that. I would point out that a GM can imagine a new dungeon to explore or a new monster to kill a whole lot faster than people can create the same experience in video game form, but otherwise what you have to say is fair enough.

As for the soccer thing in Raging Bull’s post, I would point out that soccer is played with a ball and two goals on a field. If we’re going to compare progression and content complaints to soccer, it would be like soccer players complaining that the ball is always spherical, or that there’s always two goals, or that they don’t get a new jersey made of stronger material or cleats that make them run faster and kick farther every time they play.

The “world” in which the soccer players play is the same. Their “gear” is equivalent. They don’t petition FIFA or whoever to design new styles of soccer fields.

Anyway, my point is that I’m not arguing against progression/customization. I’m saying that having fun with the gameplay and the experience of it is by far the more important thing. And if fun isn’t being had, feedback should be provided to make the game more fun, and not simply longer.

Elthurien.8356:

Rpg players have been slowly conditioned over time to expect monetary and item rewards for the majority of their adventurea. This isn’t just MMOs, if you go all the way back to tabletop RPGs, PC games like Bards Tale, Ultima, AD&D gold box, Final Fantasy, these games started over 30 years ago, progressed into games like Baldurs Gate, Diablo, Neverwinter and MUDs to make the and EQs and UOs and all the other MMOs we see today.

As far as I’m concerned, it was the introduction of token currency to buy loot that killed MMO dungeons for me. I’ve been conditioned over 30 years of RpGs to be excited about downing a boss and taking his loot, not saving up foodstamps to buy gear.

This is a great point. Huge mistake putting all the rewards on vendors. It was the only way to make it a grind I w/o having the random factor I suppose. Though they could’ve made it so you have to hunt down certain mobs/bosses for the components for your gear.

I for one hope they utilize their massive world/zones to put mobs that you need to hunt down for new skins or even skills (if/when they do add more).

Greyfeld.7104:

Vaerah.4907:

GW2 gave you options.
You can play like an hermit or you can join a medium (150 people) guild like I did and have a blast together.

Just because you were given the choice to solo does not mean the game does not provide ways to multi-play.

But this is true of every single MMORPG in existence. It’s not unique to GW2 in the slightest, and the mechanics that Anet worked into their game don’t actually encourage socializing. Which is sort of the point, I think.

One day a few years ago, when I was extremely bored, I went googling for a free MMO to play. I stumbled across a little-known gem called Fiesta, published by Outspark. This little game didn’t do anything particularly impressive with its combat, its classes, its gear, leveling, questing, crafting, mounts, or even pvp (hell, I don’t think it even had pvp). But there was one thing that, to this day, still sticks out to me: Kingdom Quests.

Kingdom Quests were instanced quests that were recruited for, once every two hours. So, every two hours, you check a board in town, and queue up for this quest, and once the instance you’ve queued up for is full, you’re whisked away into the instance itself, with a group of other people who also queued for the same instance.

The beauty of these quests is that they’re hard. They’re limited to a specific number of players, so they don’t have to be scaled up or down for some random number of people, which allows the developers to micro-tune it perfectly. It forces the players to not only work together as a unit, but also to manually form groups for quest credit, discuss strategy with other players, and take the time to teach new players the basics of the more difficult fights.

And you know what this all does? It encourages socialization among complete strangers.

That’s the point. When all your content can be steamrolled by tossing enough warm bodies at it, there’s no sense of community, and no reason to socialize with anybody. At the end of your average DE, you may as well have been playing alongside a dozen (or more) NPCs, for all the social interaction it encourages.

Probably the most social parts of the game are dungeons and pvp, neither of which are going to be especially attractive to your average casual player, who just wants to explore the world and take the content as it comes.

This is such a good post. This is exactly why I want DE’s to be more complex/challenging and have multiple objectives. People should have to actually be working together and communicate like in WvW when trying to push Event Chains and even to beat bosses.

DusK.3849:

Greyfeld.7104:

the feeling of progression has to be maintained past the point of the level cap.

I take it you’ve never played GW1.

I only played between the Prophecy-Factions time period. But this is the thing I would like to know, considering I’ve heard multiple people that have played and enjoyed GW1 PVE for years yet find something wrong with GW2’s “endgame”, is what that difference was.

DusK.3849:

Greyfeld.7104:

the feeling of progression has to be maintained past the point of the level cap.

I take it you’ve never played GW1.

Not enough of it to matter.

But here’s the problem: You read “progression” and in your mind, you substitute it with “gear treadmill from hell,” without stopping to consider that I may not be specifically about gear grinding.

Greyfeld.7104:

But here’s the problem: You read “progression” and in your mind, you substitute it with “gear treadmill from hell,” without stopping to consider that I may not be specifically about gear grinding.

Well then by all means, make a suggestion.

Noone says that MMORPGs have to give you ‘infinite’ progress (which is near to impossible anyway, as stated before).
Some end sooner, some later. GW2 is one of the former, if you don’t like what you can do at lvl 80.

About the socializing part… do you need a game to tell you to talk to other people? Can’t you do that on your own? A few days ago, I saved someone from a veteran mob. I ran into the same guy an hour later at a waypoint and we talked for like 2 hours. There was no benefit in it. We didn’t need to communicate, we just did. Why do people think, the game has to give you challenges in order to socialize with other people. You can very well do that on your own. Or do you not care to play with others, just because you can do all content on your own (except dungeons)?

Again I say, that people need to understand that, just because most other MMORPGs have it, GW2 needs to have the same thing. It is still an MMORPG. You are free to play another game, if you don’t like how things are in ‘endgame’ of GW2. Noone forces anyone to stay.
I played WoW a long time for example. With breaks, then again… I was bored of it after I saw all dungeons. Then I just STOPPED. But I didn’t go into the forums and cried how bad the game is. It is just not a game, I enjoy playing much anymore. And just like that, GW2 does not HAVE to be a game, you enjoy playing.

RPGs are about progression in the story sense. I played The Dark Eye a while (PnP). And it was fun. I did not care about ‘shinies’. Sure, was nice to get em but not required. I see it the same way with GW2. I enjoy playing through it. Possible that I will stop, once I have seen everything but then so be it. I love how people think, GW2 can’t be successful just because it doesn’t give you something ‘worth it’ once you have seen everything one time. Overall, all games are a huge waste of time anyway. And yet here we all are, playing them hour over hour, day over day.
It should be up to everyone, what they enjoy doing. People who enjoy itemgrinds will, at least for the time being, not be happy in GW2. I know that I am having a great time here, as do many others.

DusK.3849:

Greyfeld.7104:

But here’s the problem: You read “progression” and in your mind, you substitute it with “gear treadmill from hell,” without stopping to consider that I may not be specifically about gear grinding.

Well then by all means, make a suggestion.

Story*, achievements, skins, pets, minis, collectables, rare crafting materials, etc etc.

There are literally dozens of ways you can reward players for their effort, without implementing a gear treadmill. Many of them require the developers to create diversions that don’t involve killing stuff and looting the corpse, so it’s hard to be more specific until Anet actually moves beyond fixing bugs and making sure combat works properly.

*I believe story to be the ultimate form of progression in any game, where your actions influence the world around you. Unfortunately, story in MMOs is finite and slow in development. Most companies seem content with pumping out new story at a maximum of 1-2 times per year.

Corian.4068:

Schurge.5194:

I think that these players who continue to say that “Guild Wars 2” is about fun are missing the fact that people don’t repeat dungeons for fun. For most people leveling is not fun after the first go ’round.

This is exactly the kind of thing I meant. If you aren’t having fun with the gameplay, why in the world are you playing to begin with? I’m not saying quit, but have you seriously evaluated why you’re spending time on something you consider to be “not fun after the first go’round”?

Which I mean, that’s fine. Not everyone’s going to like the gameplay, but why would you want incentive to keep playing a game you aren’t having fun with? This makes no sense to me.

Anyway, a couple of the more recent posts mentioned that progression is an RPG staple, to which yes, I agree. And it’s very enjoyable to see one’s character grow stronger. I said this. I make no attempt to claim otherwise. My thing with this thread is that lately MMO players seem to play only for progression and not because they enjoy the actual playing part.

Now, you PnP roleplayers didn’t gather over a table for loot written in different-colored pens. You gathered over that table with your friends because it was a fun way to spend an evening, whether things went right or wrong, whether you progressed or didn’t. Don’t even pretend otherwise; I will call you a liar to your face if you tell me you were into PnP RPGs solely for gear upgrades and wouldn’t play without them. So, what happened to that mindset where having a fun time with your friends was good enough, for those of you that want to evoke your PnP experience? Where’d that go, and why is it no longer acceptable?

Speaking more on subject to the game, I would challenge each of you to ask yourself and answer honestly whether or not you are enjoying the gameplay of Guild Wars 2? And if the answer’s no, I’m wondering why people who aren’t having fun would think gear progression fixes the problem. Why not suggest changes to the gameplay and combat to make it fun instead?

And if you are having fun, well… isn’t that what’s important?

This argument comes up alot.

People WANT to keep playing, they love the game, the combat, etc. They want it to be more fun, more rewarding. w/e

And no I doubt anyone doing PnP were in it JUST for the upgrades. It was for, well all of it, the story, the loot, the general fun-ness of it.

Same here, if a dungeon isn’t very exciting, not enough to keep you doing it after the first time w/o rewards, atleast if there ARE rewards and it does feel like you’re progressing, then it doesn’t feel as bad, it’s atleast a little fun because of that. Granted that’s not good for the most part, it’s pretty much the definition of grind, but that means it should be made, more fun.

If something’s not fun, but rewarding, it’s ok.

If something’s fun, but not rewarding, it’s ok.

If something’s fun AND rewarding, it’s excellent.

I’ve done some challenging puzzles/crazy fights that gave me crap afterwards, dissapointing, but it was pretty fun so I’m content.

I’m just grinding a DE or mobs and it’s getting pretty boring quite fast, but hey after 20 minutes or so I’ve gotten a bunch of loot, a pretty rare drop, materials etc, it feels good.

Now if only the there was more challenging/fun stuff (like most of the boring DE’s being made more interesting/challenging), as well as said challenging/fun stuff being as rewarding as the boring stuff. Things would be fantastic.

However, on topic of gear progression or w/e, like I said before if Anet can fill that gap with something else, it would be quite amazing.

Draennon.8576:

About the socializing part… do you need a game to tell you to talk to other people? Can’t you do that on your own? A few days ago, I saved someone from a veteran mob. I ran into the same guy an hour later at a waypoint and we talked for like 2 hours. There was no benefit in it. We didn’t need to communicate, we just did. Why do people think, the game has to give you challenges in order to socialize with other people. You can very well do that on your own. Or do you not care to play with others, just because you can do all content on your own (except dungeons)?

I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I think this is a poor argument. You can blame the player for anything wrong with a game, but it’s still about good or poor game design.

A game “encouraging” social behavior is usually part of good design. No one is saying that the game has to be forcing people to interact or should be 100% responsible.

If you look at games such as Skyrim or Dark Souls, you will find that they direct the attention of the player to the moment. They are spectacles which have their length, but they are also very self-conscious about having an end. Apoint where content depletes.

Games such as Diablo or MMOs direct the attention of the player towards the future. The action you undertake is not what is the center of the experience, rather than their effect on your spread sheet’s growth.

Diablo 3 struggled with this, since it could only progress to 60 and the progression afterwards is rather complicated and not easily understood. Hence Blizzard fixed this by introducing Paragon Levels, a new progression which fixes the perspective of the player. Hopefully, the player does not look at the mediocre gameplay of the present and returns to look at the future value of a stat again.

Player Type 1: In the moment player
ArenaNet focuses on depletable content and advertises the quality of this depletable content every chance they gets. Yet the content has not reached a state where it “remixes” itself to provide enough variation and instead hedges its bets on the players creating a lot of twinks. And although you can have different active events on a map, there aren’t different scenarios really. The map is static, at least when compared to 4X games such as Civ5, at best the GW2 map has one worst case and one best case state. It is not like the centaurs suddenly invade Caledon Forest ad the steam creatures show up in Queensdale.

Player Type 2: Grind Target Player
If you are in it to grind it, you will run out of steam. GW1 does not have that collectible card game element when unlocking skills in the same way GW1 had, so the first time the grind diminishes in value is around Level 30. When you hit 80, you are not directed towards a fashion grinding goal. Legendaries are a proper grinding target, but the process of getting them is obfuscated by the game. Smaller fashion grinding targets are hidden away in menus. There is also no equivalent to paragon levels, or anything measuring pure XP gained over total character lifetime. By comparison, PVP has its ranks, which seem to be more clear, easier to understand and stretch out further in time.

Greyfeld.7104:

Vaerah.4907:

GW2 gave you options.
You can play like an hermit or you can join a medium (150 people) guild like I did and have a blast together.

Just because you were given the choice to solo does not mean the game does not provide ways to multi-play.

But this is true of every single MMORPG in existence. It’s not unique to GW2 in the slightest, and the mechanics that Anet worked into their game don’t actually encourage socializing. Which is sort of the point, I think.

I take it, you are one of those players that would not even breath if the game wouldn’t “encourage” you to and possibly stick a carrot for pushing you to do it.

I have always been part of “public in game chats” and similar that foster a community even just talking about random things. I don’t get a “reward” nor the game “encourages” that stuff, but I take initiative and play an active role.
If people prefer to be passive guinea pigs pushing the red button only because there’s food at the end of it, it’s not my – or the developers – fault.

Greyfeld.7104:

But there was one thing that, to this day, still sticks out to me: Kingdom Quests.

Kingdom Quests were instanced quests that were recruited for, once every two hours. So, every two hours, you check a board in town, and queue up for this quest, and once the instance you’ve queued up for is full, you’re whisked away into the instance itself, with a group of other people who also queued for the same instance.

The beauty of these quests is that they’re hard. They’re limited to a specific number of players, so they don’t have to be scaled up or down for some random number of people, which allows the developers to micro-tune it perfectly. It forces the players to not only work together as a unit, but also to manually form groups for quest credit, discuss strategy with other players, and take the time to teach new players the basics of the more difficult fights.

It looks quite alike to GW2 PvE 5 men instances. They are hard for most, are limited to a specific number of players and force (how I hate that word, in a game, another sign of accepting to be treated like labor animals) to discuss strategy etc.

Never the less, people manage to whine against this content as well.

“WHAAAA THERE’S NO REWARD WHAAAA!”

The reward is in managing to finish them, getting a decent amount of gold (I have made 1.5G in one run, lost 6s for 3 repairs…) and eventually a fashion set of choice.
Isn’t it enough?

What’s enough? A purple pony, “autopwnsauce” daggers to 1 shot people in arena and a dedicated achievement: “today you breathed 2500 times, you are PRO!” for the epic effort of killing lolPvE?

Vaerah.4907:

But this is true of every single MMORPG in existence. It’s not unique to GW2 in the slightest, and the mechanics that Anet worked into their game don’t actually encourage socializing. Which is sort of the point, I think.

I take it, you are one of those players that would not even breath if the game wouldn’t “encourage” you to and possibly stick a carrot for pushing you to do it.

I have always been part of “public in game chats” and similar that foster a community even just talking about random things. I don’t get a “reward” nor the game “encourages” that stuff, but I take initiative and play an active role.
If people prefer to be passive guinea pigs pushing the red button only because there’s food at the end of it, it’s not my – or the developers – fault.

It looks quite alike to GW2 PvE 5 men instances. They are hard for most, are limited to a specific number of players and force (how I hate that word, in a game, another sign of accepting to be treated like labor animals) to discuss strategy etc.

Never the less, people manage to whine against this content as well.

“WHAAAA THERE’S NO REWARD WHAAAA!”

The reward is in managing to finish them, getting a decent amount of gold (I have made 1.5G in one run, lost 6s for 3 repairs…) and eventually a fashion set of choice.
Isn’t it enough?

What’s enough? A purple pony, “autopwnsauce” daggers to 1 shot people in arena and a dedicated achievement: “today you breathed 2500 times, you are PRO!” for the epic effort of killing lolPvE?

Someone’s had a bad experience from the looks of it. lol

It’s obvious you didn’t actually read his posts or atleast understand it. z.z

Corian.4068:

Schurge.5194:

I think that these players who continue to say that “Guild Wars 2” is about fun are missing the fact that people don’t repeat dungeons for fun. For most people leveling is not fun after the first go ’round.

This is exactly the kind of thing I meant. If you aren’t having fun with the gameplay, why in the world are you playing to begin with? I’m not saying quit, but have you seriously evaluated why you’re spending time on something you consider to be “not fun after the first go’round”?

Because persistent gameplay is what we expect from an MMO. If we want a “play it once and drop it” type of game we’d be playing a single player title, probably outside of the RPG genre. With MMOs the expectation and desire is to have something with some personal investment and attachment over a very extended period of time. That isn’t to say it has to be based on the +1 stat progression grind, but GW2 fails in this regard in that most of us aren’t getting the sort of attachment or sense of personal investment in their character.

Edit: At this point I feel they have one of two routes, where faltering in between either won’t work.

1) Go the traditional gear grind route.

2) Move more in the direction of a high intensity, high difficulty action game. Despite what many players say about GW2 combat I really don’t find it all that complex. Combat lacks a certain nuance that even MOBAs have, the lack of build customization that GW1 had, and the sheer number of abilities (even factoring out the useless ones) that traditional MMOs have, the twitch reflexes that shooters have, etc. It’s trying to combine too many aspects of different genres without going far enough in any of them to achieve enough depth to make combat truly engaging.

Greyfeld.7104:

Story*, achievements, skins, pets, minis, collectables, rare crafting materials, etc etc.

There are literally dozens of ways you can reward players for their effort, without implementing a gear treadmill. Many of them require the developers to create diversions that don’t involve killing stuff and looting the corpse, so it’s hard to be more specific until Anet actually moves beyond fixing bugs and making sure combat works properly.

*I believe story to be the ultimate form of progression in any game, where your actions influence the world around you. Unfortunately, story in MMOs is finite and slow in development. Most companies seem content with pumping out new story at a maximum of 1-2 times per year.

Now all that stuff is definitely something I could get behind.

Though I also think this is stuff that’s on ANet’s plate anyway.

Corian.4068:

Schurge.5194:

I think that these players who continue to say that “Guild Wars 2” is about fun are missing the fact that people don’t repeat dungeons for fun. For most people leveling is not fun after the first go ’round.

This is exactly the kind of thing I meant. If you aren’t having fun with the gameplay, why in the world are you playing to begin with? I’m not saying quit, but have you seriously evaluated why you’re spending time on something you consider to be “not fun after the first go’round”?

Which I mean, that’s fine. Not everyone’s going to like the gameplay, but why would you want incentive to keep playing a game you aren’t having fun with? This makes no sense to me.

Anyway, a couple of the more recent posts mentioned that progression is an RPG staple, to which yes, I agree. And it’s very enjoyable to see one’s character grow stronger. I said this. I make no attempt to claim otherwise. My thing with this thread is that lately MMO players seem to play only for progression and not because they enjoy the actual playing part.

Now, you PnP roleplayers didn’t gather over a table for loot written in different-colored pens. You gathered over that table with your friends because it was a fun way to spend an evening, whether things went right or wrong, whether you progressed or didn’t. Don’t even pretend otherwise; I will call you a liar to your face if you tell me you were into PnP RPGs solely for gear upgrades and wouldn’t play without them. So, what happened to that mindset where having a fun time with your friends was good enough, for those of you that want to evoke your PnP experience? Where’d that go, and why is it no longer acceptable?

Speaking more on subject to the game, I would challenge each of you to ask yourself and answer honestly whether or not you are enjoying the gameplay of Guild Wars 2? And if the answer’s no, I’m wondering why people who aren’t having fun would think gear progression fixes the problem. Why not suggest changes to the gameplay and combat to make it fun instead?

And if you are having fun, well… isn’t that what’s important?

To answer your challenge … yes, I am enjoying GW2. But not so much as I’ve hoped to. One of my biggest complains is combat system. And the other is lack of “growth”.
There is a gear progression in game. But to me it’s only cosmetic gear progression. Which to me means that ArenaNet thinks we value our looks most of all. Do you?

Now my challenge to you … What do you do to have fun in GW2? What do you do to enjoy it?
To put it differently … if this game had gear progression … how would that stop you from having fun? You simply choose not to follow that progression, do your own thing and enjoy the game in the way you want.

I really don’t want to insult anyone but it just boggles my mind that people see lack of added options as something better.

The problem with gear progression is that it becomes NECCESSARY to do it, if you want to see all the content the game has to offer. GW2 gives you all its content without requiring you to do dungeon X several times before you can do dungeon Y. Only requirement is to get to lvl 80.
You didn’t ask me directly, but I wander around in GW2 to have fun. I enjoy it alot. I have still yet to see the lvl 35+ areas and it’s not like I didn’t play alot.

Why I prefer, having only cosmetic gear at max level? Because then the ones with simply more time don’t get preferred. Everyone is equal, strength wise. All it depends on then is the skill. Everything else is just style. And GW1 shows, that there are quite some people, to whom that matters ALOT. I know, it does to me. I rather have a good looking crappy gear than a crappy looking good gear.
Maybe Anet does not think, we value looks most over all. But they want everyone to be on equal ground, when they are on the same level.
I don’t mind, giving more options. But giving more powerful items to the players wouldn’t be another option to add. It would become a anecessity to get them, to keep up with everyone.

symke.3105:

I really don’t want to insult anyone but it just boggles my mind that people see lack of added options as something better.

The same people who argue that gear progression is terrible and shouldnt be in the game, are often the same people who would feel driven to run the gear treadmill if it existed. They would rather it not be an option, so they do not feel obligated to use those options in order to keep up with their fellow players.

Right now players can reach max level, get decent gear, and not have to worry about being vastly inferior to other players who have run the treadmill longer than them. In a way it seems that progression is the goal of both parties, they just disagree on how far progression should go and how much a gap it should create.

10-15 years ago people played mmo`s and complained they were too hard. They complained they couldn`t devote the time to develop a character that was trong enough to do this or that. Warp back to present day and now everything is handed to you. Get to 80 in 2-3 weeks and buy an entire kit of rare gear on the tp for less then 2 gold. Congratulations! You beat the game! What now?

The best part of progressing in past games was the way to the top. Well in gw2 the way to the top only takes 2 weeks. Took me a year to lvl to 60 in everquest. But because it took so long you made friends and everyone knew everybody because we were all side by side everyday. We would actually sit and talk to each other while we played. I remember the name of every guy I talked to back then. Everything happens so fast nowadays and everyone around you ingame is a blur and they fade away as fast as you see them.

Now I can understand people with limited playtime and whatever. But in order to compensate for that the lvling is super fast. I can understand the people who hated looking for healers or tanks for groups and were sick of waiting. Now they did away with the trinity type system and you are free to play how you like when you like. I can understand the people who weren`t in raiding guilds but still wanted loot to feel like they were accomplishing something with thier time. Now everything is dirt cheap and handed to you almost. The community asked for all this through the years and they got it. Now look at the state of games today. The thrill of treasure seeking is gone and the excitement of the next ding means nothing.

I think you are partly right, Colton.
When you want to play with your friends or guild and there is gear progression involved, you often don’t have another chance than to ‘go with it’. Better gear is necessary to get to higher content -> friends and guild want to do that higher content -> the player has to obey and ‘endure’ the grind to get better gear as well.
Sure, you could look for a guild that suits your needs better. But who does not want to play with their friends as well, when those play the game too? And among friends are very often different mindsets. At least I don’t tend to choose my friends depending on how they tend to play MMOs.

Edit
After reading your post, Banewrath something else came to mind. Not necessarily as a reply to you.
But I, personally, don’t see the progress of GW2 as much of an MMO. The speed of prgogress is more that of a single player RPG. Overall it feels alot like one (pace and story and all), that you as well play with others.

I have to agree with you in one point though, Banewrath. Nowadays, games tend to shove everything up the players *. I have seen the development of WoW from the beginning and it became more and more like this… you get everything without having to do too much.
That is okay, if that is what you are looking for. It is as well okay if you look for something ‘harder’. But if you only like certain things about the genre, then it might be an idea to stick to the games that offer those certain things.
I played alot MMOs over the past years and GW2 is the first one in which I had that much fun to just play it. Without even really looking for progression.
In many other MMOs when I leveled an alt I felt like “kitten 3 more levels till the next area… lame”. I don’t have that feeling here, because it is just fun to play.

I don’t understand why progression is being touted as a negative here. I only play MMORPGs and sRPGs because of, you guessed it PROGRESSION mechanics. This can entail a lot more than just gear by the way. It entails storyline progression, level progression, zone progression, skill progression and so forth. Take all that away and you have a boring lobby based game with no definitive reason to play. Imagine taking away the Championship games or Superbowl from professional football. Would people still be as interested in watching them? Some might, sure. But those are a rare breed of people. People like competitive progression, hence why we have PVP with ranks. Now whether some are trained to enjoy progression at all costs, even enjoyment of a game, I think they are rare as well and are the type of people who just like to be kept busy no matter the situation. Me? I don’t play a game if I’m not immersed or having fun but I also won’t play the game if I feel my progression has stopped. I have far too many other important things to do than waste time not getting anywhere. I think GW2 is a great game, BUT, if they can’t add more systems of progression to help with longevity, it’s going to become that game that I fire up once every few months and not the true MMO experience I was expecting to enjoy for years on end.

I’ll finish with one final though. FFXI was my very first TRUE mmorpg and it has a TON of progression systems in place. So many in fact, that one could not really do all that is available in the game in just one month let alone 3 or more. But I never felt I had to rush either as there was just so much to do. From fame levels, to leveling for each job, to unlocking the storyline for each nation, then each expansion pack, to doing side quests that unlocked inventory or access to certain areas, to artifact armor quests, to level break quests, chocobo riding quest, sub job quest, the list goes on and on. I want to see this type of progression come back but with today’s graphics, combat mechanics and exploration mechanics, especially with how GW2 does everything. It has the perfect base game to grow from, I truly hope they add to it exponentially and suck up my gaming time for the next decade the way a truely GOOD MMORPG should and yet hasn’t since 2003.

If the game was lots of fun this wouldn’t be an issue. It wasn’t that big of a deal in GW1.

GW2 is too simple and as a result, gets old fast. That’s the real reason people are struggling to find reasons to play. It’s simply not that fun of a game after a while. Don’t get me wrong, it’s worth the cost and you’ll get a good amount of hours out of it. But the reason for discussions like this is not really progression, it’s lack of depth.

IDK if its progression or direction, but once you hit 80 in this game your left with the feeling of now what? The broker gear is the same stats of dungeon gear so most people feel its not worth the grind. 100% map completion is non rewarding as well. I am afraid this game is going to loose tons of players if Arenanet doesn’t fix it fast.

Of course mmo players are trained for progression. It’s just how it has always been in most games. I love gw2, but I also believe that some of the problem with mmo’s are the lack of social activities. Now, you might be thinking mmo’s are pretty social, but not all that much and not nearly as much as they used to be prior to WoW. I can still remember the names of half the members of the first guild I created in EQ1 all the way back in 2000, and quite a few that were not even in my guild. That is not to say that EQ1 was a perfect game by any means, but I think they had a formula that worked for the social aspects. Having to be in a group to do a lot of things was part of it. Long periods of being in one spot for hours with people was part of it. You tended to get to know the people you were hanging out with when you had to camp mobs for a specific purpose. I myself didn’t always like the wait time, but when it worked out, you felt like you accomplished something great, even if it was small by game standards.
Then there was the leveling. Back then there was no such thing as lvl 80 in a week or less. It could take well over a year to get to max level depending on the play time you had available. Was it a grind? Heck yeah it was a grind, but we all felt like it was worth it back then. Would I want to do the grind again? Not really, but it was one of those things that was just a means to an end, and while you were doing it you were making friends while waiting on spawn timers. No one really knew what hardcore was back then because everything about that game by todays standards was hardcore. I guess hardcore in eq1 back when played meant being able to raid the plane of time, but we didn’t really think in those terms. It was more like, “Wow, they have a good guild.”
Loot was mob specific. Bone chips fell from skeletons etc etc. Dragons had their own loot table that no other monster had, and when you went up against it, there was no guarantee that the loot that dropped would be for you. This makes people think like someone with a gambling addiction btw. It’s what made people want to play more.
Do I like how it used to be? I liked it then, but I can’t say that I’d like it as much now, although I do believe that the level cap should take more time to reach (even though in this game it doesn’t really matter that much) and more things should be added in (player housing, the rest of the activities, repeatable holiday events etc. etc.) And gear specific to the mobs it comes from. Sorry, I’ve just always liked that system, but I know I’ll never see it again.
I’ve played alot of games including eq, eq2, WoW, SWG, Rift, The Old Republic, Star Trek Online, D&D Online and a few others, I think that GW2 is the game I’ve had the most fun in since EQ1 and EQ2. Sorry if this was a long useless trip down memory lane from me, and probably don’t contribute to the topic at all, but I’m tired.

MMOs trade gameplay for progression. You can’t compare the gameplay of a shooter, action, sportgame, even adventure game with an MMO. In mmos you dont aim and dodge (no, gw2 dodge is not really dodging yourself, it’s like using a skill). You just target and use abilities. That gameplay can’t compete with other types of games.

In return, we get character progression. So yes, mmos need char progression. Otehrwise they would be like a totally dumbed down adventure game.

It’s not that players have been trained. Game designers and makers have made games that players want . Humans want instant gratification it goes back to. Do you want $100.00 now or 1 cent doubled every day for 20 years. If you take the time to think about it then you take second choice. At first reaction is take money and run.
We humans are not used to having to be forced to take second option. So when a game makes that choice for us we cry.

i enjoy progression in an MMO…

idc if i was trained to enjoy progression in an MMO or not, the fact that i enjoy progression in an MMO makes me happy…

so if i am happy enjoying progression in an MMO, why would i bother to stop enjoying progression in an MMO?

/confused

Schurge.5194:

I think that these players who continue to say that “Guild Wars 2” is about fun are missing the fact that people don’t repeat dungeons for fun. For most people leveling is not fun after the first go ’round.

We know that is what you are claiming, but because you claim it to be true, doesn’t make it so. You don’t know what is fun for “most people”. Neither do I. However, there are already plenty of games on the market that are built for those who have your view of what is fun and what is not fun. Out of the latest AAA additions to the MMOG market – TERA, RIFT, AION, SWTOR, etc., only GW2 is obviously not designed to be marketable to the people that need progression grinds as their main form of fun in an MMOG.

I’ve put 168 hours in the game. My highest level character is 35. My highest “map completion” (as far as dingable-map points) is 20%. My highest crafting skill is @150. I have 2 humans, 1 sylvari, 1 norn and 1 asura, and one of each of: guardian, warrior, ranger, thief, elementalist. Obviously, they have each been taken down different story paths. I have favorite hangouts and favorite enemies to fight. The last time I had this much fun in an online game was when EQ vanilla first came out, and this is more fun than that BY FAR!

I never play to level or gain a reward – I play to experience the world of Tyria. I find new things in zones I’ve been in multiple times all the time. ANET said they had a team ready to hit the ground running adding new things and changing old things, so I don’t know if I"m seeing new stuff or original content I didn’t see the first few time through the zone.

Just figuring out how to use various weapon switch combos for various professions is going to take me months and months. I just started noticing that there are like interwoven and overarching story elements throughout the game. Characters in my Sylvari storyline talk about stuff, and the other day I’m running around with my human gladiator and I find content (not dingable or something you can mark off a checklist) that builds on that. I find other conversations in the world that don’t lead to anything else that builds on it, journals and books that reference it.

I’m daring to hope that this continues to build, that you really can discover very interesting, connected story that runs throughout the game. No other MMOG has the power to stop me dead in my tracks as I’m going through town just so I can listen to a NPC conversation between two NPCs because they just said something that actually pertains to ongoing story I’ve been uncovering. They weren’t marked by anything – I just happened to be going by them.

The idea that anyone playing GW2 has been through “all” the content is absurd – there’s so much content in GW2 it’s staggering. The problem for some is that only a relatively small portion of it is “dingable” in linear terms for a single character, or contributes to one’s sense of single-character linear power advancement.

For the rest of us who are exploring, as ANET put it, “a deeply customizable role-playing experience”, there is more content available already than we could explore in a lifetime of doing nothing but roaming around in Tyria in various character guises.

Is there progression in guildwars2?

Yes, theres leveling
Yes, theres equipment treadmill, though not as much as an mmo like wow which keeps coming up with bigger numbers, the gear treadmill in gw2 is comparable to that of City of Heroes/villains, Champions Online, DC Universe Online, which are also games focused on pvp and in guildwars gear progression stops at exotic.
Yes, theres gear aesthetic progression.

are these the things that motivate people, to some people yes.
As for me, Id prefer to get max level as soon as I can but in no way do I rush because as soon as i finish one form of progressio i can take on the easier ones like gear aesthetics

But however the main thing that drew me onto guildwars2 was the game mechanics, which, sorry to be so blunt, didn’t fully live up to expectations.

Boss fights are cheap mechanics which often = 100xhp and 2 – 4 shot kills.
Trash mobs in dungeons follow the same mechanic
I mean there are some unique fun things in dungeons like carrying a corrosive light orb and having to toss it at another party member, but those are far in between.

If i have to compare the mechanics of guildwars2 to any other game ive played, it would be diablo 2. You can work together as a team but ultimately survival depends on how good you are and how good the other person is at causing and negating/evading damage.

Corian.4068:

Are MMO players trained to play for progression rather than for enjoyment?

Subscription MMOs have, over the years, used inflating gear rewards to keep players in the game, because progression is exciting. There’s no denying that, I think everyone likes seeing their character get stronger.

However, I think in recent years we’ve come to a point where we see a growing number of people who play solely for the purpose of seeing their progression. Once they have the strongest gear with the prettiest text color or whatever, many of them simply stop playing until there’s even stronger gear to progress towards again. We all know players like this.

I question if these players even like the game they play as opposed to the feeling of getting something newer and shinier.

And why I bring this question up, is because I also question whether or not this kind of player is worth attempting to retain in the GW2 community as they are.

I would hate to see hard work on the part of the developer go into content that only a small fraction of the community will do, and even then only for about a week until they’ve progressed past it and go back to complaining.

To answer my own question in the title bar, I think the modern MMO player is trained to play games they don’t enjoy as long as there’s progression. So here’s another question: how do either the developers—or us as a community—break players of this mindset, and remind them that, well, gameplay can actually be enjoyed on its own? That exploring and playing the game IS doing content, even if there’s no gear progression? How do we make these players get it about Guild Wars 2?

Or can we at all?

Nature of the beast I’m afraid. Those types of players will always exist, and I’ve seen it since the UO and EQ days, however…

What continues to accelerate the problem is that most modern MMO’s are not MMORPG’s. Since WoW released, MMORPG’s have become more like MMOG’s (massive multiplayer online games) since there is very little roleplaying in them. You don’t have to eat, you don’t have to pay rent, or maintain your equipment. There are no pets to feed, you can’t really be a dedicated crafter because mats require killing monsters – you can’t harvest cotton or flax and spin it into yarn, etc.

As amazing as GW2 is, it’s painful for me to say that GW2 is feeling more like an action game to me, and what else is there to do in an action game than to “get to the next level” right? Therein lies the problem.

As I’ve stated in the Suggestions section of the forums, I’d like to see all this action in GW2 offset with some roleplaying mechanics. Visually and technically GW2 is such an achievement. I’d like to see it live up to it’s full potential as an MMORPG rather than just being a MMOG. A very good MMOG mind you, but still a MMOG.

Greyfeld.7104:

Most RPGs finish their story long before ever reaching the level cap, so the feeling of progression stays linear throughout the entirety of the game.

Honestly I was going to say not many modern, but in all honesty, I can go back to Baldur’s Gate and Fallout and safely say I hit level cap long before I got to the end of the game.

Action/Adventure games are the only ones that really gated the experience, Super Metroid probably the most obvious requiring you to find a particular weapon or armor upgrade before you could progress. No matter how many enemies you killed you still needed the missile upgrade to get past the missile locked gate.

But with any RPG (defining characteristic being exp gaining for leveling) then you could just kill clear a level and out level the content. In a single player environment most RPG’s were never about the gear (you got that too) but the abilities and power gained thru leveling. It was when I started playing MMO’s, that all the sudden gear was the goal. I like that GW2 plays more like the single player RPG’s I’m used to (only been playing MMO’s for the last 4 years of my 20+ year gaming life).

The best thing GW2 does is remove stat progression from sPvP. It would take an amazingly, ridiculously good game to get me to ever play sPvP with gear progression again.

Honestly, I wish they could have found a way to seamlessly remove stat progression from PvE as well so that the dungeons could be tuned even more tightly. As it is, my goal is to complete all the dungeon paths once, but I doubt that’ll take very long. If they had tuned some of the paths to require perfect play (and maybe even a little luck on top) just to complete, they probably would have held my interest longer.

Corian.4068:

Schurge.5194:

I think that these players who continue to say that “Guild Wars 2” is about fun are missing the fact that people don’t repeat dungeons for fun. For most people leveling is not fun after the first go ’round.

This is exactly the kind of thing I meant. If you aren’t having fun with the gameplay, why in the world are you playing to begin with? I’m not saying quit, but have you seriously evaluated why you’re spending time on something you consider to be “not fun after the first go ’round”?

People repeat content that they don’t enjoy after the first go ‘round for several reasons. One is so that they can then do the bits they do enjoy. I will be running “Citadel of Flame” several times a week so that my Necromancer can look cool when he ineffectively beats other people’s faces in in WvW. I also want the 13% damage boost – I do PvP for fun, PvE is just a means to an end. For others the gear treadmill is actually an series of achievements that they get satisfaction out of even though they may be sick to death of a given dungeon long before they get the gear from it.

What I really don’t get is when people justify the high token prices of dungeon skins by saying that dungeons are about fun… because once again… most people don’t find doing the same dungeon dozens of times fun. I’m not complaining, as I’ve already said I’m going to suck it up and accept the fact that it will take me a month to get my exotics (I hate crafting).

Tradewind.6913:

CJAncients.6907:

The progression focused player base is not worth retaining, at least for this game.

GW2 is a one time purchase, to expect it to have regularly added progression after initial purchase is ridiculous.

Except for that one-time price you’re going to get free content updates for the life of the game.

This.

kal.4350:

MMOs trade gameplay for progression. You can’t compare the gameplay of a shooter, action, sportgame, even adventure game with an MMO. In mmos you dont aim and dodge (no, gw2 dodge is not really dodging yourself, it’s like using a skill). You just target and use abilities. That gameplay can’t compete with other types of games.

In return, we get character progression. So yes, mmos need char progression. Otehrwise they would be like a totally dumbed down adventure game.

I think this is the way a lot of players perceive it, too. When they say “I don’t play MMOs for fun”, what they mean, I think, often, is that the gameplay, per se, of MMOs outside of challenging instance group content, is subpar compared to other game genres, and therefore that isn’t why they are playing — the gameplay isn’t “fun”, it’s the progression that is fun and lets them have fun “in spite of” the gameplay. Gameplay outside of challenging group instanced content is more to be endured than to be enjoyed in itself — I think that’s a very common mindset among MMO gamers.

It’s easy to just blame the players rather than the designers, especially if you’re a fan of the game, and most especially if you aren’t experienced with any of the content people are concerned over.

Firstly, the fault of response never lies with the viewer. It’s always the designer. If a designer wants the audience to have a response, crafting the things to create that response is what he DOES. That’s what design theory is. So right away, you cannot blame the player. It doesn’t matter if they’re “trained,” or whatever excuse you need to use. Untrain them. Reteach them. That’s your job, as a designer, if necessary.

Furthermore, I don’t think players are bad players that have been trained towards certain things. Sure, there are some MMO conventions that people seem to have a hard time to get around. But humans don’t go out and buy a game with the intent of doing spreadsheets and crunching numbers and grinding. They WANT to have fun. Everyone wants to have fun. All the tedium associated with MMOs is the result of bad design.

The way I see it, you can have extremes of games. Take a game like Myst, for example. No items, upgrades, you can say. It was just wandering around an environment, solving puzzles. People obviously loved that. You can’t say all games need “carrots” (as fanboys have seemed to enjoy calling everything lately). They don’t. What games do need is renewing progression.

After you beat many games, you stop playing them. Why? Because you beat the game. You may play through it again, but if it’s the same exact experience, there’s no reason to. You don’t want to; you’ve had that experience once. Fun in general is a human instinct to compel us to have new experiences and explore the world around us. When we feel an experience is no longer compelling, it stops being fun. So, how do games keep us playing? Numbers, upgrades, advancements of any kind. Also, changing the way you play the game, as you play it. Difficulty modes. Secrets. Doing the same content, but with an entirely new skillset that makes the experience new again.

(cont)

Guild Wars 1, starting out in Prophecies, achieved replayability but didn’t do so by having nightmarishly long grinds. Getting to level 20 was just a tutorial for playing the game, wherein in taught you various mechanics until you knew everything that would come up in the game afterwards. Perfect gear was very easy to get. 1.5k sets were in Droknar’s Forge as soon as you hit level 20. A whole set would cost about 15k gold (probably about 1g 50s 0c in GW2 parlance). Very easy. The most beautiful sets cost around 15k per piece, but this was still easily affordable. The only exception could be Obsidian armor, at the time, which I think was the ONLY real grind in the game of any kind. Point being, people played GW1 for years without any grind at all. How? Two things: expansions and a robust combat system. Both of these things result in renewing content, and renewed experience. The new content is obvious, but the combat system was so rich, rewarding and expansive that you were constantly on the hunt for new skills to make a new kind of build. This alone kept people in the arenas for literally almost a decade.

So, what does GW2 have in terms of renewing content? Scaling, leveled zones you can go back to any time. Tiered rarities to stretch out the time you spend trying to get the weapon and armor you want. A focus on aesthetics to give players new things to desire. Traited combat to encourage new builds, and new ways to play. These sorts of things just keep going. You get the idea. There’s a lot in GW2 that is designed to try to encourage this sort of renewing content.

Now, the problem players are having with GW2 isn’t that they have carrots to chase. This is a gross oversimplification of what it, at its heart, the core issue with all game design. It’s a disservice to design to treat it so absent-mindedly. The issue GW2 has is that its renewing content is not being effective. Once players finish all the zones and beat the story, there’s not much left. Which I imagine makes no sense to the designers of the game, but it is what it is. Why? Well…

(cont)

Let’s go back to the things GW2 is trying to do. The downleveling system, for one. Sure, you can go back to these areas. But if you’ve already 100% them, why would you? Sure, you may have missed a DE, as ANet has told us, but you aren’t going to wander around the zone for hours and hours with this one goal in mind, especially when you aren’t even sure if it’s there. Unless play content really is always being updated (and it’s not), there is no designed incentive to return other than farming materials, possibly looking for (very common) low level skins you can probably find in the TP, or helping friends repeat an area of content you no longer have interest in.

Similarly, let’s take a look at the gear progression we have. In other games, sure, the only thing left to do is to get that weapon with the slightly higher number on it. In GW2, getting such a weapon is fairly easy (not as easy as in GW1, but still easy), so your objective ends up being looks. Right now, there aren’t very many looks in the game. Sure, if you tally up them all, across all weapons and skins, that’s a lot of work. But if you’re a human thief, or a norn warrior, or so on, your choices just became much more limited because you obviously can’t use them all. Also, coupled with this, most of the skins are things you see all the time, for the sake of diversity as you level up. True “endgame” skins that are not common to the world are incredibly rare, and when you consider the limitations of what you can actually wear, there aren’t very many of them at all that you can use. As a result, you see hundreds of people wearing Citadel armor, or Orrian karma armor, or so on. Everyone is trying to look unique, but there’s not much to choose from to MAKE them look unique. As such, you have a lot of people scrambling for legendaries, because there’s simply nothing else left for them, in terms of appearance. (And of course there will always be the “FIRST” people who just want to be big shots and have reddit talk about them for a couple days, but I consider them a small minority, although that sort of meta is also part of designing renewing content.) This is a problem with a lack of viable aesthetic content, which is mainly a release issue. Most games get around this with traditional grind for numbers. GW1 had a similar problem for quite a while, until the incredibly rapid rate of campaign releases resolved it (as there was no number treadmill and the only thing left to search for were rare drops). In GW2, coupled with this problem is the problem that most of the actually unique looks in the game have intense grinds associated with them. Tier 3 cultural armor. Orrian karma armor. Legendary weapons. All of these take an obscene amount of time to get (some more than others), yet they are the only truly unique look in a sea of chainmail armors, acolyte’s armor, and so on. So, naturally, people who don’t want to look like everyone else will naturally get irritated when they so far have 1) no new content to play and experience and 2) no other choices for aesthetics.

This compounds on itself, as the only way to circumvent these grinds is to replay the same areas in Orr, over and over again, because Orr offers the highest incomes and most frequent chances to increase income. You could go play in Queensdale or Sparkfly Fen, or wherever, but what you’ll make there is a drop in the bucket compared to Orr. You could play it for the experience, but remember, players have cleared these areas. They won’t go back for less money, more time wasted, just because there MIGHT be something new there.

Perhaps the biggest long term problem is combat in GW2. GW1 players will understand this a lot better than other MMO players, as most MMOs just offer millions of skills you never use on gigantic toolbars. ANet, during their marketing, stated that GW1 skills were not unique from one another, which was true in some cases, but was definitely exaggerated. Most abilities in GW1 were very distinct – perhaps not in animations or behavior, but very much so in effect. Being able to use them in conjunction with one another was THE single biggest factor in renewed content across the entire game, in my opinion. This alone kept me playing PvP for years, constantly trying new profession combinations and new build types. The combat was amazingly diverse and rich, and incredibly rewarding. The ability to change your attributes at will in any town, along with the ability to use any skill in the game, made GW1 a game you could never “finish.”

(cont)

Now consider GW2’s combat system. Weapons have five skills for your profession. No more, ever. You get a healing slot, and an elite slot that you may rarely use, depending on the quality of your elite (and most are rather unimpressive). That leaves three slots for an actual build of your own design. For these slots, there is a tiny handful of skills to choose from, some of them doing the same thing but on different cooldowns or with a passive effect, etc. Also, coupled with some of the innate problems with combat in general (heavy need to counter CC, inability to supplement some key behaviors or secondary skills with primary weapon skills, and so on), you end up having to use the same skills, all the time. There’s not much renewing content going on, on your skillbar. There’s some, but very, very little, especially compared to a game like GW1. This is a massive step down. Also, unlike GW1, you cannot alter your attributes at any time in town, for free. It costs money, which is hard to come by due to the grind required to change your non-unique look. So, you end up stuck in the same skill trees for the entire lifespan of your character, VASTLY limiting your replayability. Also consider that many traits do not greatly alter how the game is played or how skills behave, to begin with. Some do, but these are not common, especially in some professions that are plagued with boring traits that do nothing but raise an invisible number. Some weapons also will naturally behave better in general gameplay than others, meaning there’s no reason to use one kind or combination. You can think of your own examples. You may want to use another weapon type, but it’s ineffective against hoards of enemies, or it’s another melee weapon and you already have a set for that and need a ranged set, or so on – many reasons. Even preferring the aesthetic of being a greatsword mesmer over being a sword mesmer, or preferring being a rifle warrior over using a bow, just because you like the appeal of it, limits you because you can’t change that weapon’s skills. You can’t play the game your way. All of these problems compound to make general combat in GW2 incredibly redundant. Content is stretched too thin for what little there is, and much of it is either locked out most of the time or impossible to use without neutering yourself. This is especially a problem in sPvP, where already certain build types have proven the most effective, and cookie cutters have emerged faster than they do in other games. The very problems GW2 wanted to avoid, it has created in spades, simply because ANet wished to avoid the balancing issues it had in GW1 by reducing the combat in GW2 to a handful of preapproved build types. This alone destroys renewing content, as it affects everything in the entire game.

To sum things up, GW2’s problem isn’t that players are stupid. (Don’t be stupid yourself, saying something like that.) The problem is that the game, right now, does not have much depth. There’s no reason to return to old experiences, experiences do not change, combat rarely changes, your build is fairly static, there are too many goldsinks at the endgame designed to try to keep your bank account as close to 0 as possible, there’s very little skill variety, very little aesthetic variety and for what is there, it will take a very long time to achieve which stretches everything too thin. That’s the problem. Not carrots, but the natural desire to keep playing – needing variation on experiences to make the experience fun.

As I see it, some things need to change.

For one, more content is needed. This will come naturally. Specifically, we need art. A lot of it. We need a LOT more endgame armor sets and weapons. Furthermore, people who craft them need a LOT more sets to craft at 400 skill. Not one. Not all the cruddy ones you see everyone wearing because they’re what you make as you level to 400. Just more max level sets. This should, again, all naturally happen over time. Similarly, with maps, the rewards for completing them should be even but distinct. Playing in Orr should be as profitable as playing in Queensdale (and indeed profitable, not just the same pocket change), just with different materials and skins involved. There should also be longer term reasons for returning to these zones, like earning another secondary currency unique to those areas of the world, similarly to dungeon tokens, with the rewards they link to overlapping with other currencies to flush out problems with grinding but allowing achievements in other sectors of the game to compound on one another for a global return. Even tiny things like making chests, champions and bosses of most kinds drops things that don’t insult the player’s experience by crapping all over it with commons and uncommons. These are simple changes; the only reason to avoid them is the looming fear of messing up the economy, which unfortunately seems to be the source of many problems in the game.

(cont)

(concluded)

For another, which is my primary concern because I doubt ANet will ever change it, is there needs to be more skills available for your weapons (at least two per slot), and there need to be a lot more secondary skills, better elites (the current ones are too “safe” in design to avoid potential balancing problems ANet doesn’t want to deal with and do not behave as elite skills in most cases, and often do not synergize with your build…), and most importantly, counters for basic problems in combat like CCs need to be handled to various degrees by more than a single skill to ensure that one skill is not welded to your skillbar. In GW1, sure, you had to have a hard counter, but across all professions, your choices for that counter were numerous and all had different synergies. Not so in GW2 at all. Paying for rerolls also needs to go. It was not tolerated in GW1 and it should not be tolerated here. Find a gold sink elsewhere. People do not use the feature often, if at all, because of the expense, resulting in static, boring gameplay that feels stale well before you hit 80, much less before. These things worry me because, having dealt with ANet for years, they are a very “safe” company that is responsive to basic needs (especially if they’ve already been working on them the whole time before players even noticed the issue) but when faced with a major design flaw, will drag their feet for years. (Charm Animal, anyone?) I’m not sure if these very basic flaws in the design of the game will ever be fixed, but they have a very big impact on the player’s ability to renew content as they play. They need to be changed for the health of the game, overall.

Again, the problem is never the consumer, when it comes to design. Your job is to make something that makes money, and keeps making money. If your consumers decide to take their money somewhere else, you don’t stab your finger at their back as they walk into the sunset and tell them they don’t know how to enjoy your product. That’s your failure. You are the failure. Not them. You are the bad designer. If you can’t respond to that failure, all the worse for you. The consumer will just move on, leaving you only with a collection of fanboys eager to stroke your ego and agree with one another that everything is perfect, except for all the problems they can’t bring themselves to address.

PS I write as a hobby, forgive me.

To be honest though…. this game doesn’t exactly do a good job at teaching people with this “trained MMO mindset” what GW2 is all about until you hit a dungeon (which I think is too late given some of the dungeon mechanics). GW1 did a better job at getting players acclimated to it’s mechanics before they even hit dungeons, GW2 almost takes it for granted that the player is familiar with this song and dance.

No offense but I’m not reading that. I read some of it and it just sounds like you didn’t actually know what the game was about before buying it.

Plague.5329:

Again, the problem is never the consumer, when it comes to design. Your job is to make something that makes money, and keeps making money. If your consumers decide to take their money somewhere else, you don’t stab your finger at their back as they walk into the sunset and tell them they don’t know how to enjoy your product. That’s your failure. You are the failure. Not them. You are the bad designer. If you can’t respond to that failure, all the worse for you. The consumer will just move on, leaving you only with a collection of fanboys eager to stroke your ego and agree with one another that everything is perfect, except for all the problems they can’t bring themselves to address.

The problem with your analysis is that it assumes a customer not liking your product makes you or your product a failure, when it could be just as simple as a bad fit (not every product is for everybody).

ANet has never said get on board or get out, but by the same token just because they didn’t get every single human on the planet to like their game doesn’t mean the capitulate to their desires. It just means that you except that the customer didn’t purchase the right product for themselves, either from lack of knowledge or because of a smooth talking salesman (buyer beware).

Customer expectation is a problem the designer can’t fix and is not their problem. Unfortunately we live in a society where the consumer has been given to much power in the seller/purchaser relationship. Granted this is in reaction to when the seller had to much power, but imbalance the other way never makes up for the original imbalance.