Guild Wars 2

(note to mods – this is a thread more about MMO design philosophy than specifically the ascended gear – its just used as an example)

“If you hate MMOs, you’ll love Guild Wars 2, and if you love MMOs, you’ll love Guild Wars 2”

This is the central thesis of Anet’s original Manifesto. It may not seem like the central thesis, but Anet’s design decisions show that it is. Anet is set on making a game that appeals to the broadest possible swath of MMO players as possible.

Now, Anet, I think you guys are amongst the most talented in the MMO industry, especially on the technical and art sides. Game design itself, is fundamentally a voodoo art, and not a science. The task you’ve set yourselves is too giant – you want to please everyone: hardcore progressionists and gear-grinders, hardcore PvPers, hardcore open world PvPers, and then all the casual versions of those, and finally everyone in between.

This Ascended Armor silliness is just another example of ad hoc, poorly thought out game design. First, you guys seemed to totally ignore or forget what you learned in Nightfall. There, you corrected one of GW1s biggest mistakes, making armor and weapons completely modular with insignias and inscriptions. But, you threw that out of the window to make more MMO generic “baked in” stat’d armor. Combine this with the flaws of the transmutation system, and you’ve made a game that’s very grindy unless there’s only 1 set of stats and 1 look you ever want to have. The modularity of the system is almost zero.

Now, you take away even that with this Infusion Slot hack. And a hack it is. Its not a new slot, its the old upgrade slot re-purposed and renamed. This is your long term goal for gear progression – a ham handed hack?

And this isn’t the only issue, but I’ll keep this post short – Anet, you can clearly see in all the other posts and forums the conflict between the different desires of your too-large intended MMO audience.

Truth is, if GW2 is to survive, it can’t try to please everyone and end up pleasing very few with all the ad hoc, hybrid attempts to make one system to somehow magically unify everyone’s desires.

Finally, I just want to link something you guys seem to have forgotten, even though its on your own site:

http://www.guildwars.com/events/tradeshows/gc2007/gcspeech.php

Truth is, you are trying to make WoW 2.0 and I’m not saying that to be insulting. WoW appeals to a certain kind of player, not me, and those players aren’t “wrong” – they just like a different kind of game, and that game exists for them. GW2 needs to be a different game – but you won’t do that by trying to appeal to both the WoW-style gamer and the non-WoW style gamer.

Turns out, there’s no restaurant that serves every kind of food from every culture, and does it well. You’re going to have to narrow your choice of player base. Are you going to go with the progressionists, or with something a little less mainstream?

Very emotional, but obviously a minority opinion, as I doubt they would introduce this without a strong customer desire. To put it simply, adding in improvable armor is about the ONLY thing the game could do at this point to make my friends and I play again, and none of us have ever played WoW, period, for the record. They tried to please the “no grind” crowd, and it seems obvious that it’s not as big a crowd as they thought. I think they’re “narrowing” their choice of player base to, “as many as possible” based on feedback, sorry.

The no grind crowd was big enough to substance GW1… so what point are you making?

If GW2 starts to introduce vertical progressions, sure some people like the above poster will come back for a while. But what happens when they got their shiny new gear. Guess what, they will leave again.

By that time, all the no gear grind people would have also have left. So yes, I believe the OP is quite correct.

Loxias.2375:

Very emotional, but obviously a minority opinion, as I doubt they would introduce this without a strong customer desire. To put it simply, adding in improvable armor is about the ONLY thing the game could do at this point to make my friends and I play again, and none of us have ever played WoW, period, for the record. They tried to please the “no grind” crowd, and it seems obvious that it’s not as big a crowd as they thought. I think they’re “narrowing” their choice of player base to, “as many as possible” based on feedback, sorry.

The thing is, I might even be fine with this (and quit MMOs altogether) – if we had any reliable statistic on how much of the GW2 playerbase really desires a gear treadmill. But we don’t – and as long as I hear more negative voices about this, I can’t quite believe that the majority is in favour of the carrot on a stick.

Although I am favorable towards gear progression (but I’m not crazy about it or anything), I agree with the OP. This form of progression does not interest me at all. It is clear to me that ArenaNet is suffering with the “kneejerk” syndrome – applying hack-jobs, nerfs, and disabling content instead of going for the tougher, but permanent, solution of the problem (‘content disabled’ for Grubs because people were farming them, DR because people were farming Orr, ranger shortbow nerf, etc). There were ways to add longevity to the game without adding gear progression, but what ArenaNet decided to do, is in my opinion a lazy cop-out – “Draw 3 from a bag of 9, and get better loot”. The fact that some things, like infusions, rely on the Mystic Forge doesn’t help either.

If they wanted vertical progression in their game thats fine, just don’t call it guild wars 2 and don’t make us think we wont need to do it.

Really, people, what is wrong with vertical progression? It’s an absolutely wonderful thing when implemented right, or have none of you ever played and got addicted to countless offline RPGs in the market?

If GW2 had none of it, you would have started the game maxed, at level 80, with all the best gear, and no means to statistically grow at all. The lack of vertical growth only makes sense in pvp, and even then, it has its kind of ranking system, and it NEEDS to develop its ranking system, for better matchmaking in the future.

Vertical progression is good, and GW2 and GW1 had plenty of it. But apparently, a lot of think that vertical = grinding.

Let me tell you one little piece of shocking information: GW2 has grinding in form of horizontal progression. It’s called the heart quests, and most of them are mindless, repetitive and same-y as much as vertical gear grinding usually is in other MMOs. Shocking, I know.

Conclusion: It all depends on the implementation. It can be fun, or it can be grindy, repetitive and monotonous. if they ever make this vertical progression fun, it’s already a step ahead to the horizontal progression repetitive grind that the current heart quests are.

Loxias.2375:

Very emotional, but obviously a minority opinion, as I doubt they would introduce this without a strong customer desire.

Considering the majority of customer desire since the announcement would be now closer to “poking forks in the eyes of anyone involved in this idea”, I would not really be using that as any form of defence.

The game was marketed for months as a MMO with no gear treadmills. If you honestly think the majority of customers are people who wanted the exact opposite of what this game was sold as being then I don’t know what to tell you.

Think of Ascended Armor as Greens from GW1. Slightly better, but Golds (aka Exotic) were often used instead simply due to their ability to be customized. Let’s weather this initial storm of not knowing how this will turn out and then come out afterwards with a true idea of what’s a good or bad idea with the full picture in mind.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Really, people, what is wrong with vertical progression?

It promotes power and repetition over everything else.
To make It more clear: Forces a player to repeat a specific content over and over again for a single goal: obtain more power, promoting elitism.

Loxias.2375:

Very emotional, but obviously a minority opinion, as I doubt they would introduce this without a strong customer desire. To put it simply, adding in improvable armor is about the ONLY thing the game could do at this point to make my friends and I play again, and none of us have ever played WoW, period, for the record. They tried to please the “no grind” crowd, and it seems obvious that it’s not as big a crowd as they thought. I think they’re “narrowing” their choice of player base to, “as many as possible” based on feedback, sorry.

Just because you declare it emotional doesn’t make it so. Let’s look at this new “improvable” armor. It has a new slot. But its not a new slot, its the old rune slot converted into an infusion slot. And the rune slot has been turned into yet another baked in value.

Look, I’m not against adding new shinies to the game that players can go for. However, this new system is a hack. If Anet wants to design a game with some long term measure of “progression”, they’d continue with the horizontal progression – and it could be more than just appearance.

What they should do, imo, is make all the mods on armor modular and swappable. Then Anet would have a better path forward to create PvE “grind” mods like infusions which gate specific areas of content.

A solution of baking in more stats (and thus needing to create a huge variety of stat variants of each armor) seems to be taking a lot of steps backward. It just leads to more and more grind.

Anet needs to reread the essay from Jeff Strain I linked, and realize they should be innovating, not regressing back to generic MMO mechanics. There are MMOs that do that already.

GustavoM.7605:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Really, people, what is wrong with vertical progression?

It promotes power and repetition over everything else.
To make It more clear: Forces a player to repeat a specific content over and over again for a single goal: obtain more power, promoting elitism.

the “repetition” part is the sad part.
such a beautiful world, but instead of having lively content that make us actually travel the land once we are 80, we end up on a treadmill :/
dont get me wrong; story mode + all dungeon story mode + pvp some and wvw some; this is still easily 200-300h of content, and thus, GW2 is a good game, i love it.
but im not at endgame yet, i think i wont be able to cope with the repetition.
same reason i quit wow and d3.

GustavoM.7605:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Really, people, what is wrong with vertical progression?

It promotes power and repetition over everything else.
To make It more clear: Forces a player to repeat a specific content over and over again for a single goal: obtain more power, promoting elitism.

You’re wrongly associating “grinding” (the act of repeating a monotonous task over and over) with “vertical progression”.

I’m not sure if you have ever played a RPG outside of the MMORPG genre, but there’s plenty of rpgs out there where you become stronger by simply following the storyline, finding a new town and buying new stuff from the weapon’s shop, or finding a treasure chest in a dungeon for a shiny new sword, or even getting rewarded with that shiny sword for killing the boss at the end of the dungeon.

That is not grinding. But it’s vertical progression. And it’s very fun and rewarding. The entire RPG genre is build around a few concepts, one of them being (statistical) growth.

The big question here is, will the new equipment tier for GW2 require grinding? If so, it’ll be boring and repetitive. Will it be a proper reward for beating difficult content? If so, it’ll be fun and fair.

Vertical progression does not automatically means grinding. It depends on the implementation. Likewise, horizontal progression can also be a grind when it’s monotonous and repetitive, like most heart quests in this game.

IMO, a RPG is at its best when it has a healthy combination between horizontal and vertical progressions.

GW2 is at its best when you progress vertically through horizontal progression instead of grinding. When you get better gear, or better means to get that gear, by doing a lot of different tasks that keep the game diverse and prevent it from being a grind. I hope the devs never forget that.

arenatnet/ncsoft had an endgame design problem.

its really weird they couldnt see this on the drawing table..
there would have been many ways of doing nice horizontal progression.

i am actually a bit " ? " by this failure and regression.

[quote=714667;DiogoSilva.7089:]

That’s an own personal opinion.

I beg to differ.
Forum doesn’t reflect the majority of the community. Only like few hundreds visits it? I see a human nature that people usually only come forum to complain. Only a small amount of people come by to forum solely to give good feedbacks. This is why forum doesn’t reflect the majority opinions – but act as a plague to influence another gamer to think negatively.

The update pleases quite a number of in-game people. Today, I spent my time crafting and selling. I saw quite positive chat of anticipation towards the ascended equipments. Same goes for cursed shore while I was doing DE. I see a rise of people doing DE today. I guess the anticipation got them excited for them to farm gold as a preparation measure.

The game knows what’s best. Imo, progression is vital in mmorpg.
It shouldn’t end up limited like a console game.

DiogoSilva.7089:

GustavoM.7605:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Really, people, what is wrong with vertical progression?

It promotes power and repetition over everything else.
To make It more clear: Forces a player to repeat a specific content over and over again for a single goal: obtain more power, promoting elitism.

You’re wrongly associating “grinding” (the act of repeating a monotonous task over and over) with “vertical progression”.

I’m not sure if you have ever played a RPG outside of the MMORPG genre, but there’s plenty of rpgs out there where you become stronger by simply following the storyline, finding a new town and buying new stuff from the weapon’s shop, or finding a treasure chest in a dungeon for a shiny new sword, or even getting rewarded with that shiny sword for killing the boss at the end of the dungeon.

That is not grinding. But it’s vertical progression. And it’s very fun and rewarding. The entire RPG genre is build around a few concepts, one of them being (statistical) growth.

The big question here is, will the new equipment tier for GW2 require grinding? If so, it’ll be boring and repetitive. Will it be a proper reward for beating difficult content? If so, it’ll be fun and fair.

Vertical progression does not automatically means grinding. It depends on the implementation. Likewise, horizontal progression can also be a grind when it’s monotonous and repetitive, like most heart quests in this game.

IMO, a RPG is at its best when it has a healthy combination between horizontal and vertical progressions.

GW2 is at its best when you progress vertically through horizontal progression instead of grinding. When you get better gear, or better means to get that gear, by doing a lot of different tasks that keep the game diverse and prevent it from being a grind. I hope the devs never forget that.

Your own argument basically invalidates itself. Yes, there are plenty of RPGs (MMO or single player) that have vertical progression. Why does GW2 have to be Yet Another Vertical Progression Game? Anet made and continues to make noise about how innovative it is. Yet your argument is, well, everyone else does it, so GW2 should do it too?!?

Innovation means doing something new and interesting. Not rehashing what other games have already done, with a slightly different look and feel. Anet’s “innovation” seems to be devolving into “let’s do what other games do, but some how we’ll make it better” – and in fact, they make it mostly the same, and not really better at all.

Sadly I fear Anet’s innovation mostly went over to Undead Labs. Unfortunately I don’t like the zombie genre…

The ascended items have not been even added yet and thus players do not know for certain how they work, how to obtain them, recipes, and how hard or easy to get them. So people who are already complaining are basing it on speculations at this point.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Really, people, what is wrong with vertical progression? It’s an absolutely wonderful thing when implemented right, or have none of you ever played and got addicted to countless offline RPGs in the market?

If GW2 had none of it, you would have started the game maxed, at level 80, with all the best gear, and no means to statistically grow at all. The lack of vertical growth only makes sense in pvp, and even then, it has its kind of ranking system, and it NEEDS to develop its ranking system, for better matchmaking in the future.

Vertical progression is good, and GW2 and GW1 had plenty of it. But apparently, a lot of think that vertical = grinding.

Let me tell you one little piece of shocking information: GW2 has grinding in form of horizontal progression. It’s called the heart quests, and most of them are mindless, repetitive and same-y as much as vertical gear grinding usually is in other MMOs. Shocking, I know.

Conclusion: It all depends on the implementation. It can be fun, or it can be grindy, repetitive and monotonous. if they ever make this vertical progression fun, it’s already a step ahead to the horizontal progression repetitive grind that the current heart quests are.

The difference with single player games is that this there you can max everything out, put the game down for a while, pick it back up a few months later, and you’re still maxed out. If GW2 keeps adding vertical progression you can’t do this, because by the time you get back to the game all your previous work is probably rendered useless, and instead of jumping right into the stuff you want to do, you have to go and get your gear up to par again first. That’s where it becomes grinding.

Joiry.2504:

Your own argument basically invalidates itself. Yes, there are plenty of RPGs (MMO or single player) that have vertical progression. Why does GW2 have to be Yet Another vertical Progression Game? Anet made and continues to make noise about how innovative it is. Yet your argument is, well, everyone else does it, do GW2 should do it too.

Vertical progression is not a mechanic. It’s an essence of videogaming.

I’m going to give an example from a different medium: storytelling.
A writer can also decide to write a story without characters (yes, some have “done” it) to be original, but does that means it’ll be any good? Does that means that any story that has characters in it is cliché and a cheap rip-off of any other story ever writen? Nope, the originality behind a story has little or nothing to do with it having characters or not, but how those characters (and how other storytelling elements) are told.

The existence of vertical and horizontal progression do not make a game less or more original. What truly defines its originality is in how those elements are executed.

I don’t know if GW2 will do it right or not with the next patch, but some people’s hate with an essencial aspect of videogaming is incredible.

If GW2 keeps adding vertical progression you can’t do this, because by the time you get back to the game all your previous work is probably rendered useless, and instead of jumping right into the stuff you want to do, you have to go and get your gear up to par again first. That’s where it becomes grinding.

GW2 is an online game. Nothing can change that. But as long as getting the better stuff is fun, it’s not a grind. If the game forces you to kill 1000 rats to get the loot you need, it’s a grind. If you can get it simply by knowing how to play (= horizontal progression) and exploring (=horizontal progression) and beating hard content (dungeons), then it won’t be a grind, unless you must do it countless times too.

Let’s first wait to see how fun and diverse it is to get this new gear tier, before claiming it’ll be a grind.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Joiry.2504:

Your own argument basically invalidates itself. Yes, there are plenty of RPGs (MMO or single player) that have vertical progression. Why does GW2 have to be Yet Another vertical Progression Game? Anet made and continues to make noise about how innovative it is. Yet your argument is, well, everyone else does it, do GW2 should do it too.

Vertical progression is not a mechanic. It’s an essence of videogaming.

I’m going to give an example from a different medium: storytelling.
A writer can also decide to write a story without characters (yes, some have “done” it) to be original, but does that means it’ll be any good? Does that means that any story that has characters in it is cliché and a cheap rip-off of any other story ever writen? Nope, the originality behind a story has little or nothing to do with it having characters or not, but how those characters (and how other storytelling elements) are told.

The existence of vertical and horizontal progression do not make a game less or more original. What truly defines its originality is in how it’s executed.

I don’t know if GW2 will do it right or not with the next patch, but some people’s hate with an essencial aspect of videogaming is incredible.

If GW2 keeps adding vertical progression you can’t do this, because by the time you get back to the game all your previous work is probably rendered useless, and instead of jumping right into the stuff you want to do, you have to go and get your gear up to par again first. That’s where it becomes grinding.

GW2 is an online game. Nothing can change that. But as long as getting the better stuff is fun, it’s not a grind. If the game forces you to kill 1000 rats to get the loot you need, it’s a grind. If you can get it simply by knowing how to play (= horizontal progression) and exploring (=horizontal progression) and beating hard content (dungeons), then it won’t be a grind, unless you must do it countless times.

Equating vertical progression with having or not having characters in a story is a ridiculous analogy. You’re just declaring vertical progression is as inherent as verbs in a language. How are you even making such declaration?

Yes, GW2 is an online game. But you somehow seem to think vertical progression is the only way an online game can work? How completely defeatist are you? Its like saying a torch burns wood to produce light, therefore the only way to produce light is by burnign wood.

See, I can make any old analogy as well, and just declare it to be a true representation of the topic of discussion – gets us no where.

What it comes down to is innovation. You are clearly happy with how most MMOs/RPGs do things. That’s great – there’s nothing wrong with that. But not all of us are. There are plenty of games for you, games that provide the experience you want with vertical progression.

However, that’s not what Anet claims their game is. So, either they can live up to their claims, or be honest about the experience they intend to provide. Which is fine, so long as they are clear about things.

Personally, I hope they choose innovation instead of rehashing what all other games (by your own admission) already do.

Joiry.2504:

Equating vertical progression with having or not having characters in a story is a ridiculous analogy. You’re just declaring vertical progression is as inherent as verbs in a language. How are you even making such declaration?

Vertical progression is an element of gaming, from where you can create countless different mechanics. The originality lies in the mechanics themselves.

In other words:

What it comes down to is innovation. You are clearly happy with how most MMOs/RPGs do things.

That’s not what I said. Other MMOs/ RPGs have their own mechanics to achieve vertical progression. How innovative they are or not depends on said mechanics. GW1, for example, has titles, content unlocked by storyline (the biggest one), skill merchants, levels (even if only to 20), etc.

Personally, I hope they choose innovation instead of rehashing what all other games (by your own admission) already do.

I hope they make fun mechanics instead of rehashing old, dry mechanics. Vertical progression can be there either way without affecting originality.

Diogo, I have yet to see any argument from you that actually backs up the claim vertical progression is necessary. All you’ve done is assert it is, and use as proof other games use it.

Yes, you can base a game around vertical progression. You can innovate within that box. Doesn’t change the fact its still a box, and a small box.

I get it, you like vertical progression. However, you can’t seem to understand not everyone else does. And no, its not necessary, its not integral to gaming.

If its the path Anet wants to take, then fine, its their company, their game, and their revenues. They just need to be upfront and honest about it.

Furthermore – even within your own paradigm of vertical progression – I don’t see how you can think that baking in the rune/upgrade slot as an unmodifiable stats and repurposing the slot as an infusion slot is somehow innovative. Its a total hack, and will end up getting dead-ended in not too long. What’s the next step – baking in the infusions and freeing up the slot for yet another upgrade?

Joiry.2504:

Diogo, I have yet to see any argument from you that actually backs up the claim vertical progression is necessary. All you’ve done is assert it is, and use as proof other games use it.

Yes, you can base a game around vertical progression. You can innovate within that box. Doesn’t change the fact its still a box, and a small box.

I get it, you like vertical progression. However, you can’t seem to understand not everyone else does. And no, its not necessary, its not integral to gaming.

If its the path Anet wants to take, then fine, its their company, their game, and their revenues. They just need to be upfront and honest about it.

Furthermore – even within your own paradigm of vertical progression – I don’t see how you can think that baking in the rune/upgrade slot as an unmodifiable stats and repurposing the slot as an infusion slot is somehow innovative. Its a total hack, and will end up getting dead-ended in not too long. What’s the next step – baking in the infusions and freeing up the slot for yet another upgrade?

I agree that Anet needs to be more honest and clear about their (new) intentions, and may add that they haven’t exactly convinced me with the new patch changes. I want to wait and see first, and I don’t even expect the new changes to be perfect at all.

The thing is, I’ve seen a lot of people that convinced themselves that vertical progression = tedious MMORPG grinding, and i was simply trying to show that it’s much more than that.

I don’t mind horizontal progression (I love pvp), and I think this kind of progression still needs to be perfected in this game (events and hearts should have more diversity, although events have been going that route since halloween; and I think pve should generally be harder to require more skill), but I don’t mind seeing statistical progression as long as it’s well implemented. Which I don’t know if it’ll be or not yet.

P.S. If GW2 ever became a gear-grinding mindless game, I would give up on its pve aspect too, because I have lost my patiente for grinding-driven games years ago.

Wait and see might be an option, if Anet didn’t go ahead and say what the new mechanic is.

New content mobs get new condition. No amount of player skill can get around the condition, you have to get the new gear to mitigate it. So, once you have the gear, you’re fighting the same difficulty fights you were fighting before, just with the new attack negated (or nearly so).

How is that innovation? How is making gear even more baked in and unmodifiable innovation? What new mechanics is any of this introducing? Seems a redo of what a lot of other MMOs offer.

There’s so many options, yet Anet goes with this. If it was some new skillset to master to deal with these new mobs, I could see it. Or new mechanics where fighting them involved certain movements and tactics (like there being safe areas you had to navigate between) – pretty much anything that might involve player skill.

But no. Mobs get new attack type X, players must get gear Y to mitigate. Everything else stays the same.