Design Philosophy: Then and Now
As I said THOSE events are not fun now, but many OTHER events are fun. Did you somehow get from the manifesto that every single second you play will be fun or equally fun? Because you’re losing credibility by the second.
I realise that you are a professional editor and therefore don’t presumably need niceties such as these, however I went to the trouble of looking up the dictionary definition of “game” and it is as follows: “activity engaged in for diversion or amusement”. So yes, it is not unreasonable to expect most, if not all, activities present within said “game” to be entertaining. That they are or not is entirely in the eye of the beholder.
The combat system isn’t just swinging a sword, since you can dodge in this game (and you can’t in most others).
You can in fact dodge in EVERY single MMO I have ever played, you just can’t “dodge roll”. In fact in every single MMO I have played dodging is a key factor in staying alive. Avoid the red circles, move out of the bosses telegraphed attack etc etc. There is nothing new here except an animation.
So dodging isn’t swinging a sword. Using environmental weapons isn’t swinging a sword either. He’s talking about making combat fun, and whether you personally like it or not, enough people think the combat in this game is fun, compared to the combat in most MMOs.
And enough people don’t. Your opinion (like all of your opinions and equally all of mine) is subjective and whether or not “many” people agree with you, equally as “many” do not. You are losing credibility here.
Colin (paraphrased): We want people to have fun with the combat. We want them to start having fun earlier in the game instead of grinding to get to the fun stuff. We want to change the way people view combat.
Personally, for me, me alone and not “many” or even “others”…this is not what they have achieved. Your opinion is obviously different and I respect that. Respect mine.
You personally may not like the combat, but that’s not a broken promise on the part of the devs. That’s a matter of personal taste.
Indeed it is a matter of personal taste, as is your support of the system. What IS a broken promise on the part of the developers is a lack of a persistent world in which you make a difference and a general statement that “we don’t make grindy games”, which, however you choose to interpret it….has A LOT of people stating that in fact in many ways this game is “grindy”.
Clearly, we are never going to agree. However you are no more right in your opinion than I am in mine. So stop acting like the voice of the people when you are in fact, exactly like I am, merely stating your own personal opinion.
[quote=2365427;pricer.5091
You can in fact dodge in EVERY single MMO I have ever played, you just can’t “dodge roll”. In fact in every single MMO I have played dodging is a key factor in staying alive. Avoid the red circles, move out of the bosses telegraphed attack etc etc. There is nothing new here except an animation.
No sorry you’re wrong on this one. The dodge roll is not just an animation, it doesn’t just move you. It actively negates incoming attacks. This is not something that can be done in many MMO’s.
In World of Warcraft when someone launches a fire ball at you, or shoots and arrow at you, you are hit by it. You can run as far as you want, you can jump, you can spin, but if you are in range and in line of sight when the attack is fired it tracks your characters movements and hits you.
In many games as long as you are in line of sight and range when the attack is launched you can not even ‘line of sight’ the attack as it is in the air.
The dodge roll in GW2 allows you to react and prevent attacks already launched at your character. Very different from ‘staying out of the red circle’.
The dodge roll in GW2 allows you to react and prevent attacks already launched at your character. Very different from ‘staying out of the red circle’.
You are talking about PvP. I am not talking about PvP. Either way, other games present multiple options for negating, deflecting or avoiding attacks. They are admittedly, different in this game…but new? No.
The dodge roll in GW2 allows you to react and prevent attacks already launched at your character. Very different from ‘staying out of the red circle’.
You are talking about PvP. I am not talking about PvP. Either way, other games present multiple options for negating, deflecting or avoiding attacks. They are admittedly, different in this game…but new? No.
It is not PvP specific, have you ever been multi-fired on by one of those inquest golems? When you dodge, even though you are still ‘hit’ by the animation, evade comes up. You are not just moving out of the way.
Yes all games have damage midigation, but it is not the same as this. This is as close to a target-less system as I have seen a mainstream MMO go.
Do you know that in WoW when you swing your big 2-hand axe around you only hit the target you have selected unless specifically using an AoE ability?
All ranged boss attacks that don’t involve the red circle are homing. They can not be dodged. In guild wars you can walk behind a pillar a rock even another player and he will get hit instead of you. That is very different then most MMo combat systems.
Yes all games have damage midigation, but it is not the same as this. This is as close to a target-less system as I have seen a mainstream MMO go.
TERA was a mainstream AAA MMO and it is target-less.
Yes all games have damage midigation, but it is not the same as this. This is as close to a target-less system as I have seen a mainstream MMO go.
TERA was a mainstream AAA MMO and it is target-less.
Did you play it? ( I didn’t.), did you also play a target dependant system like WoW? What do you think about the differences between the two systems?
Did you play it? ( I didn’t.), did you also play a target dependant system like WoW? What do you think about the differences between the two systems?
In one you aim yourself, making the combat far more action packed and making it easier to miss, on the other one you just lock on and press buttons.
Age of Conan isn’t target-less, but it had realistic AE arcs and dodging and more in 2008, heh.
[AS] Tarnished Coast
Did you play it? ( I didn’t.), did you also play a target dependant system like WoW? What do you think about the differences between the two systems?
In one you aim yourself, making the combat far more action packed and making it easier to miss, on the other one you just lock on and press buttons.
Yeah it seems like GW2 kind of went half and half. I don’t know that I would like to aim all my abilities in an MMO myself, but the few targets we do have to lay down are fun and add some dynamics to the combat.
We don’t aim our auto attacks and such, but we can dodge them which makes that side of it fun. To me its a good mix.
It really isn’t the actual combat in itself that I have a problem with. Its the application of it. CC is practically meaningless, conditions are stack limited, dodging is on an endurance basis (you can swing a sword bigger than your body all day long but you can only roll twice before you’re a bit tired?) and most, if not all fights against champions and bosses are meaningless, repetitive, far too long and far too easy. Also, the zerg is apparent everywhere…this is not something I have seen in other MMOs and I, personally, dont like it. You have no role. You are merely a cog in a big machine of zerg fighting and rezzing. That is my biggest problem with this game…you can be a bad, average or good player and it makes no difference to the outcome of most fights. Whether I’m on my Guardian, my Thief, My Warrior or my Ele there is not much in the game to challenge me in open world pve and there is not much to challenge me in dungeons…even if I play badly, my team will pick me up.
I totally understand the fact that this game is meant to be “casual”, but unfortunately in its desire to achieve this it has become mundane.
dodging is on an endurance basis (you can swing a sword bigger than your body all day long but you can only roll twice before you’re a bit tired?)
Going off on a tangent, it would seem to me that dodging should be the province of light and medium armor users – it seems (to me) particularly appropriate for the thief/assassin profession – whereas one would think the heavy armor types would dodge less (not that they can’t dodge, but that they shouldn’t have to – isn’t that the point of heavy armor?) and withstand more. All the one-size-fits-all dodging just seems very (ahem) dodgy to me.
Right, then. Carry on.
The table is a fable.
It’s still B2P.
2/10 for the effort.
Expansions are B2P format.
Anet just confirmed they’re not even planning Expansions right now
2/10 for intentionally misleading on the definition of B2P.
dodging is on an endurance basis (you can swing a sword bigger than your body all day long but you can only roll twice before you’re a bit tired?)
Going off on a tangent, it would seem to me that dodging should be the province of light and medium armor users – it seems (to me) particularly appropriate for the thief/assassin profession – whereas one would think the heavy armor types would dodge less (not that they can’t dodge, but that they shouldn’t have to – isn’t that the point of heavy armor?) and withstand more. All the one-size-fits-all dodging just seems very (ahem) dodgy to me.
Right, then. Carry on.
I wore a suit of armor once, at a medieval reenactment fair. Lets just say…I wasn’t going to be doing any forward or backwards rolls, thats for sure.
In other news…magic not real.
Though the animation does not change I would argue a heavy armor wearing could ‘shrug off’ the same damage that a medium or light armor wearer would be dodging.
As for dodging being limited by endurance, there has to be some limitation to it considering it gives you full immunity to new damage source while you are dodging.
I can’t comment on the GW1 point as I’ve never played the game.
But I agree with the number 2 and 3. I don’t think it’s a matter of GW2 not putting in resources or failure in design. It’s more along the line of overpromising and then underdelivering as a result. but hey – if it’s too good to be true, it most likely is.
I’m simply not naive enough to take MMORPG’s developers claims of “30 million registered players” at face value, considering how most of those have left their games. Although I guess people gullible enough to believe grind is a good thing are going to fall for anything.
They have to present numbers of box sales, of active subscribers and of gem store sales. They can’t go out there and claim, because every MMO developer has to answer to investors.
The fact that we DO see an increased amount of MMOs alone shows that the genre is profitable enough to develop for. If it was suicide for the company nobody would do it.
Score is kept for the investors by sales. Dollars and cents or in this case South Korean Won. As long as those numbers stay high, the game is a success if it has 10,000 active players or a million because continuing income is based on Cash shop sales not active players. And since the game is B2P, it doesn’t matter if players leave and never return, NCSOFT/ANet has already booked the game sale.
And yes everyone and their grandma is making an MMO so there is money out there. However how many make $30 million in a quarter? How many release monthly story content?
As for the whole manifesto says this/no it didn’t. First everyone sees what they want to see. Therefore of course people get disappointed when they see the final product. Just look at Iron Man 3, WWZ or any Hollywood movie that’s based on a popular novel but diverges greatly from that work. I’m not saying that it can’t still be entertaining but it’s not what fans expected.
GW1 fans were expecting GW2 to be GW1 but bigger, they were disappointed. Gamers who only dabbled in MMOs but hated the linear and grindy nature were mostly satisfied by how GW2 ended up. GW1 fans (and NCSOFT investors) want big paid expansions every year because that’s what GW1 did. ANet decided they want to tell new stories in their world every month and rely on Cash Shop sales rather than expansion box sales.
So GW1 players walk away yet return to the forums every week to lament how anyone can still be playing this game. Sort of like sports fan who hold a grudge against team management for trading away the fan’s favorite player and calls into sports talk radio every night to complain about it.
What annoys me more than anything is my belief that these rejected players are actively coming back to post a continuing stream of criticism in an attempt to drive away new players in hope the game fails or that ANet management will overhaul the game to make it more GW1 in an attempt to save it (well that’s a bit of a run on sentence).
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
(edited by Behellagh.1468)
With the exception of Final Fantasy XI, the Final Fantasy games are not MMO’s. They are single player games, they run through a stream lined story from beginning to …yes, you guessed it, END. Oh and one more thing, there is plenty of grinding in many of the Final Fantasy games, you grind expirience, and certainly currency and you earn rewards for each and every kill.
Wrong about Final Fantasy, for the records. And the difference between single player games and MMOs is huge – reaching the level cap in single player games is often not intended, and it always (pre-WoW) isn’t the goal. In MMORPGs, to keep the addiction going, the level cap becomes the goal, to the detriment of everything else.
You are working from the flawed assumption that there being an end is a bad thing. It’s not. It used to be a bad thing from the point of view of pay to play games, for very obvious reasons (none of which is good for the players). In other MMORPGs, that’s not an issue; rather, it’s something ArenaNet already knows a way around.
“I think that players are starting to mature past the point of wanting to be on that
treadmill, of being in that obvious pattern of every time I catch up you are going to
put another carrot in front of me” – Mike O’Brien right before Ascended weapons
treadmill, of being in that obvious pattern of every time I catch up you are going to
put another carrot in front of me” – Mike O’Brien right before Ascended weapons
Expansions are B2P format.
Anet just confirmed they’re not even planning Expansions right now
2/10 for intentionally misleading on the definition of B2P.
Did you get to play this game for free without buying it? No? Then it’s not F2P.
Do you play a subscription fee? No?
Okay, so then did you buy the game to play it and can play it for forever? Yes? Well then it IS B2P.
@Raine
Precicely.
I really like alot of things about Guild Wars 2.
I believe it managed to successfully stand out amidst the concept of MMO.
I particularly like the style of the world, art and UI.
I like the semi-targetless system and dodge.Still, alot of it feels unpolished, but I won’t get into details here.
Instead, I want to voice my concerns on ANet’s current design philosophy, comparing to their claims in the Guild Wars 2 Manifesto Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1EEverything ANet said in the Manifesto was spot on what I wanted to see in an MMO, but they seem to have gone the opposite direction on some of it.
a) “Guild Wars 2 takes everything you love about Guild Wars 1, and puts it into a persistent world.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E#t=0m48s
I greatly disagree here. Apart from the world, Lore and nomenclature of game systems, most of GW1 is gone.
GW1 was greatly renowned for its extreme customizability.
You could effectively build your equipment exactly the way you wanted; you could play around with builds anytime; there was no gear treadmill and no one missed it.
There was very little randomness in combat.
There was no trash loot – everything was either useful for crafting, or for collectors.
Your superiority over someone else was mostly defined by your skill and strategy, not gear.
GW2 threw away alot of great, solid concepts from GW1 to – apparently – meet halfway with popular MMO standards.b) “In most games, you go out, and you have really fun tasks – occasionally – that you need to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff. I swung a sword, I swung a sword again, hey, I swung it again, that’s great. We just don’t want players to grind in GW2.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E#t=1m26s
Isn’t that exactly what we do when we get to max level?
We repeat the same content endlessly for the sake of obtaining certain items.
In fact, isn’t the Magic Find stat proof that you intend players to grind?c) “As a structure, the MMO has lost its ability to make the player feel like a hero. Everybody around you is doing the same thing you’re doing, the boss you just killed respawns 10 minutes later. It doesn’t care that I’m there.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E#t=1m46s
Isn’t this precicely what happens throughout the whole game?
The same enemy, boss or event repeating every 5-20 minutes?
The process of retaking or defending a point should take longer, last longer and be alot more worthwhile.Furthermore, the personal story makes you feel like something of a hero for a little while, but in the end the true Hero is Trehearne.
He’s the one who does everything worth mentioning, and then just tells you “he couldn’t have done it without you.”
I didn’t feel like a hero at all in the last half of the personal story.
—-I think the game has a great potential and I hope ANet keeps up at full steam.
I have to agree, they said they wanted to make a game not focused on grinding and we got just that, a game were we have to grind to get gear, which is really the only real reward in the game.
They said they got rid of the traditional side quests where a npc has a ! over their head because they usually follow, go kill a certain amount of enemies, go collect a certain amount of whatever or do the same action over and over again. What we got in it’s place was the Renown Hearts npc that make you do just that, go kill a certain amount of enemies, go collect a certain amount of whatever or do the same action over and over again. Only difference is instead of a ! over their head it’s a heart.
Dynamic events you complete will cause npcs to remember you and will change the game world for a few hours, a day, days or longer. Honestly when I heard that it sounded to far out there, it was like listening to Peter Molyneux talk about Fable. Dynamic events don’t change anything in the game world since they reset every 10 to 15 mins.
I can go on.
Exactly.
They went in the exact opposite direction compared to several of their initial intentions.
Hey, being cynical as I am, a game that is doing well doesn’t have to bribe people with goodies to get 1 million likes on facebook. It just occurs.
Hey, being cynical as I am, a game that is doing well doesn’t have to bribe people with goodies to get 1 million likes on facebook. It just occurs.
Then most MMOs aren’t doing well, since most of them have similar tactics. Actually, what MMO do you think IS doing well?
Expansions are B2P format.
Anet just confirmed they’re not even planning Expansions right now
2/10 for intentionally misleading on the definition of B2P.Did you get to play this game for free without buying it? No? Then it’s not F2P.
Do you play a subscription fee? No?
Okay, so then did you buy the game to play it and can play it for forever? Yes? Well then it IS B2P.
Really really? You also want to give it a try..? Well guess what, then subscription-based games are also B2P as you need to buy playtime.. you see you then buy 2 play.
And most F2P times aren’t really playable until you buy some ingame stuff so those are then also Buy 2 Play.
Yes if you read it and don’t understand the meaning of it you might expect all those games are Buy 2 Play. But if you do know the meaning of B2P, F2P and subscription-based then you know B2P has the focus on box-sales (game and expansions) a F2P game has focus on ingame cash shops and a subscription based game has a focus on ingame subscriptions / playtime.
You do know the meaning of F2P and subscription-based so I must expect you also know the meaning of B2P what results in the conclusion that you are indeed ‘intentionally’ playing with the words to make it look different. I put intentionally in between ‘’ because you see it a lot in discussions and sometimes it’s there own mind playing tricks with them because something needs to be a certain way for them to fit there believes so then the brain just makes it that way even if they really know better.
It’s still B2P.
2/10 for the effort.
I look at the TERA store and then I look at the GW2 store and the only difference that I can find is the fact that you have to purchase a BOX so that you can access the GW2 store.
Sad.
You can define Buy 2 Play any way you want but for the industry Buy 2 Play means you must pay for the game and then you can play for free.
Free to Play means you don’t need to pay for anything to play. It may not be enjoyable to play. You may be highly restricted with a very tiny inventory, limited class and race selection and limited access to advance content. All of which can be alleviated with cash shop purchases.
It’s simple. Can you play the game (not a demo of the game) with out paying any money (playing someone else’s doesn’t count)? If you can it’s F2P, if not it’s either B2P or subscription based.
If anyone is playing loose and fast with definitions you are Devata.
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
You can define Buy 2 Play any way you want but for the industry Buy 2 Play means you must pay for the game and then you can play for free.
Free to Play means you don’t need to pay for anything to play. It may not be enjoyable to play. You may be highly restricted with a very tiny inventory, limited class and race selection and limited access to advance content. All of which can be alleviated with cash shop purchases.
It’s simple. Can you play the game (not a demo of the game) with out paying any money (playing someone else’s doesn’t count)? If you can it’s F2P, if not it’s either B2P or subscription based.
If anyone is playing loose and fast with definitions you are Devata.
Or, they could implement box sales for you to gain access, and a cash shop for you to enjoy playing.
As I said THOSE events are not fun now, but many OTHER events are fun. Did you somehow get from the manifesto that every single second you play will be fun or equally fun? Because you’re losing credibility by the second.
I realise that you are a professional editor and therefore don’t presumably need niceties such as these, however I went to the trouble of looking up the dictionary definition of “game” and it is as follows: “activity engaged in for diversion or amusement”. So yes, it is not unreasonable to expect most, if not all, activities present within said “game” to be entertaining. That they are or not is entirely in the eye of the beholder.
The combat system isn’t just swinging a sword, since you can dodge in this game (and you can’t in most others).
You can in fact dodge in EVERY single MMO I have ever played, you just can’t “dodge roll”. In fact in every single MMO I have played dodging is a key factor in staying alive. Avoid the red circles, move out of the bosses telegraphed attack etc etc. There is nothing new here except an animation.
So dodging isn’t swinging a sword. Using environmental weapons isn’t swinging a sword either. He’s talking about making combat fun, and whether you personally like it or not, enough people think the combat in this game is fun, compared to the combat in most MMOs.
And enough people don’t. Your opinion (like all of your opinions and equally all of mine) is subjective and whether or not “many” people agree with you, equally as “many” do not. You are losing credibility here.
Colin (paraphrased): We want people to have fun with the combat. We want them to start having fun earlier in the game instead of grinding to get to the fun stuff. We want to change the way people view combat.
Personally, for me, me alone and not “many” or even “others”…this is not what they have achieved. Your opinion is obviously different and I respect that. Respect mine.
You personally may not like the combat, but that’s not a broken promise on the part of the devs. That’s a matter of personal taste.
Indeed it is a matter of personal taste, as is your support of the system. What IS a broken promise on the part of the developers is a lack of a persistent world in which you make a difference and a general statement that “we don’t make grindy games”, which, however you choose to interpret it….has A LOT of people stating that in fact in many ways this game is “grindy”.
Clearly, we are never going to agree. However you are no more right in your opinion than I am in mine. So stop acting like the voice of the people when you are in fact, exactly like I am, merely stating your own personal opinion.
With every post you become more and more disingenuous. The post above is riddled with logical errors and opinions that don’t even call to the conversation.
As I have said numerous times, fun is subjective. No game will be fun for everyone. Looking up game in the dictionary is irrelevant to this conversation. For some people chess is fun for some people chess is boring. What does any of this have to do with the definition of game. That’s not even apropos enough to be a strawman argument.
Anet said long before release that the open world is persistent but not permanent and that’s exactly true. Anyone who followed the game as you claim to have would have known this. They gave chapter and verse on dynamic events, down to including specific examples of them. They’ve always said event chains would ping pong back and forth along a track. They never said you’d change something in the world permanently, only persistently. Your personal story is the permanent part (so much so that you can’t even repeat it). Once you make a decision you’re locked into that decision and you can’t go back and redo it.
They also said pre-launch there would be things to grind for. It’s nice that you can take a single quote to prove your point and ignore all other quotes, but that’s not really how arguments are supposed to work.
And anyone that’s played Guild Wars 1 would know that the kind of grind that exists in Guild Wars 2 more or less existed in Guild Wars 1 as well. You had to grind for rep in Guild Wars 1 to make your PvE only skills more powerful, grind for titles, that gave you better percentage chance of retaining a lockpick without breaking it or a better chance of salvaging a rune off armor without breaking it.
So when a dev says, more than once, that there would be stuff to grind for in the game but that it wouldn’t be mandatory, why do you ignore that?
Edit: Oh and enough people don’t? How many is enough? It doesn’t work that way. Enough people have to like it. I believe enough people do. Anet does too or they wouldn’t be doing it this way.
You can define Buy 2 Play any way you want but for the industry Buy 2 Play means you must pay for the game and then you can play for free.
Free to Play means you don’t need to pay for anything to play. It may not be enjoyable to play. You may be highly restricted with a very tiny inventory, limited class and race selection and limited access to advance content. All of which can be alleviated with cash shop purchases.
It’s simple. Can you play the game (not a demo of the game) with out paying any money (playing someone else’s doesn’t count)? If you can it’s F2P, if not it’s either B2P or subscription based.
If anyone is playing loose and fast with definitions you are Devata.
Yeah right. I also love this part "but for the industry Buy 2 Play means you must pay for the game and then you can play for free. ". You know why I love this part? Because you say “the industry”. The industry will want to make money and so there is no such thing as play for free. Thats why you can’t ‘really’ play a F2P game for free and thats why B2P games also need to rely on expansions. And thats also why B2P does not means you only need to buy the game but also need to buy expansions.
And yes I was playing loose and fast with definitions, that was to show that with playing loose and fast with definitions (like the person I commented on was doing) i could turn any payment model into being a B2P model.
Your definition for B2P would be correct for a non-mmo because they do not require ongoing income, but because mmo’s do and companies (the industry) do need to make money thats not the case for an MMO where B2P means a focus on box-sales / game and expansions.
But heey, if you are correct then let them just rip out the whole gem-store. No need for that. B2P means you need to buy once and then play for free forever right? So also no need for a gem-store then. That while the discussion here was about the focus on gem-store vs focus on expansions but they don’t need any of it. Thats great.
(edited by Devata.6589)
Re: manifesto/grind
“When you look at the art in our game, you say ‘Wow, that’s visually stunning. I’ve never seen anything like that before,’ and then when you play the combat in our game, you say ‘Wow, that’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like that.’ In most games, you go out, and you have really fun tasks, occasionally, that you get to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff. ‘I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again.’ That’s great. We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun. We want to change the way that people view combat.”
Okay. So.
They didn’t intend for us to wander around aimlessly fighting random things over and over, swinging our swords and swinging them again and hey, whoop tee doo and all that to level up in order to get to the hypothetical ‘fun stuff’. Which hearkens back to older MMOs, I guess, where evidently people killed lots and lots of rats for lack of anything better to do until they reached a level which offered stuff that was ostensibly more fun than killing rats. ‘Mindless’ combat, that is. Drudgery. GRIND.
Instead, here we have all these Dynamic Events and Renown Hearts and jumping puzzles and mini-dungeons and whatever, which are meant to be the fun stuff that we do while (incidentally) leveling up, and which of course feature plenty of combat (incredible or not) but also lots of non-combat stuff so that it’s not all combat all the time and we don’t have to rely solely on the sword swinging to make progress towards the next plateau of fun stuff, we’re relying on fun stuff to get to even more fun stuff, thereby changing the way we view combat from ‘Aw, man, I gotta kill at least 500 more rats to level up so I can unlock The Greatest Danged Mission in the Whole Danged Game’ to ‘Holy kitten, I’d rather kill 5000 rats than have to do this kitten jumping puzzle to get to the vista I need to complete this kitten zone.’
That’s the way it looks to me.
The table is a fable.
Don’t be a doofus, F2P and B2P income models require only some, but not all, players to buy from a cash shop to keep a game in business. Nexon states (who has over a billion dollars in sales with this model) publicly that they only need roughly 10% of the active game population spending on average $15 a month for a game to be considered successful. Doesn’t have to be the same 10% every month. Could be 5% spending $30 a month or 50% spending $3 a month. That amount needs to support the monthly expenses as well as initial and continuing development costs and of course sweet, sweet profit.
Now with B2P, the number of players who have the game is smaller but the initial development cost is paid off at the moment of purchase. A smaller player base likely means that a larger percentage needs to buy from the cash shop (or the same amount but spending more).
Guild Wars 2 is unique as far as I can tell because it’s B2P but it doesn’t have a premium subscription tier since it was never subscription based. It relies only on it’s cash shop and any future paid expansions.
And Devata – and I am only saying this because I care – there are a lot of decaffeinated brands on the market today that are just as tasty as the real thing.
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
@Vayne
They specifically say:
“We just don’t want players to grind in GW2.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E#t=1m40sI’m not twisting their words.
I’m not quoting them out of context either.We grind dynamic events. Cycles of dynamic events, even.
We grind dungeons.
We grind fractals.
We are encouraged to repeat tasks.And to clarify, grinding becomes more apparent when all your effort is poorly rewarded, such that you must repeat the task.
If I want a certain item skin, I must do a certain Dungeon X times, a different path each time.ANet doesn’t need White Knights, they need people to properly help them improve the game as much as possible.
If ANet gives in to the requests of fickle players who move to the newest MMO, they will get nowhere.@Devata
With or without the ( ), what you posted has nothing to do with the differences between what ANet promised vs what they gave us.@Siphaed
1) What I loved about GW1 is a matter of gaming concept.
Trash loot being a given in MMOs is utter nonsense. It just introduces coin into the game at no cost and hurts the economy.
Trash loot is called Trophies in GW2.
Trophies existed in GW1. They could be sold as trash to vendors.
However, there were collectors. So there was no item with the sole purpose of being vendored.
It is a silly concept that no game needs.2) Grinding is not a matter of content.
It’s a matter of activity.
As an example, fights that require you to do more than bash enemy skulls, are a good thing.
The current combat system is built in a way that makes it very difficult for the game to not feel grindy.
A few professions break this mold due bundles, etc, but for the most part, it’s extremely repetitive combat, both from the character’s and encounter’s perspective.3) Hypocritical?
I am criticizing the fact that the way dynamic events are balanced encourage grinding.
The fact there are “dynamic events with phat loots” is part of the problem.
I refuse to rotate/grind the “phat loot” DEs.I want every activity to present itself as more than viable – to be attractive in terms of effort vs time vs investment vs risk vs reward.
Anything you do, if you do it well, should feel rewarding.
I agree with you honestly Vayne has taken what he’s said out of context. What he considers fun is the grind apparently and continues to support the arguments that A: the game doesn’t have grind despite what’s obvious to everyone else and B: one should play the game for the fun of it, who needs rewards.
What he fails to realize here is by having such a stranglehold on the economy, by making the rewards system less than, and by not allowing even their most basic drops have any value (greens, blues) they are doing just that causing a grind.
Further he uses the quote talking about combat being boring by swinging a sword, and swinging it again, well having played since launch I can assure you and him that this is exactly what’s happening with their skill system. So much emphasis is being placed on the #1 skills and nothing else. They need to increase the overall damage of the 2-5 skills and make a #1 skill a finisher at most to fix this problem. In other games one has lots of choices to use for skills, when you shorten that skill list down you have to make sure the skills balance properly so that we’re not doing #1 #1 #1 so not only is it a grind to repeat events in the lack-o-rewards system they have now but the combat is also severely lacking due to the #1 skill focused design.
Balance Team: Please Fix Mine Toolbelt Positioning!
I agree with you honestly Vayne has taken what he’s said out of context. What he considers fun is the grind apparently and continues to support the arguments that A: the game doesn’t have grind despite what’s obvious to everyone else and B: one should play the game for the fun of it, who needs rewards.
What he fails to realize here is by having such a stranglehold on the economy, by making the rewards system less than, and by not allowing even their most basic drops have any value (greens, blues) they are doing just that causing a grind.
Further he uses the quote talking about combat being boring by swinging a sword, and swinging it again, well having played since launch I can assure you and him that this is exactly what’s happening with their skill system. So much emphasis is being placed on the #1 skills and nothing else. They need to increase the overall damage of the 2-5 skills and make a #1 skill a finisher at most to fix this problem. In other games one has lots of choices to use for skills, when you shorten that skill list down you have to make sure the skills balance properly so that we’re not doing #1 #1 #1 so not only is it a grind to repeat events in the lack-o-rewards system they have now but the combat is also severely lacking due to the #1 skill focused design.
Vayne hasn’t taken anything out of context, he just pointed out that the line in the manifesto that everyone trots out (“We just don’t want players to grind in GW2,”) has nothing to do with rewards, reward structures or vertical progression.
And it doesn’t. Period.
Case closed, next topic please.
“I didn’t buy into GW2 being the second coming of christ.
I just wanted a AAA MMO with no sub made by ArenaNet. And it’s awesome.”
I just wanted a AAA MMO with no sub made by ArenaNet. And it’s awesome.”
Don’t be a doofus, F2P and B2P income models require only some, but not all, players to buy from a cash shop to keep a game in business. Nexon states (who has over a billion dollars in sales with this model) publicly that they only need roughly 10% of the active game population spending on average $15 a month for a game to be considered successful. Doesn’t have to be the same 10% every month. Could be 5% spending $30 a month or 50% spending $3 a month. That amount needs to support the monthly expenses as well as initial and continuing development costs and of course sweet, sweet profit.
Now with B2P, the number of players who have the game is smaller but the initial development cost is paid off at the moment of purchase. A smaller player base likely means that a larger percentage needs to buy from the cash shop (or the same amount but spending more).
Guild Wars 2 is unique as far as I can tell because it’s B2P but it doesn’t have a premium subscription tier since it was never subscription based. It relies only on it’s cash shop and any future paid expansions.
And Devata – and I am only saying this because I care – there are a lot of decaffeinated brands on the market today that are just as tasty as the real thing.
Not sure what the first part has to do with anything. Even if they only need 10% to pay they still need to try and make them pay and the other 90% is then not so important so that seems totally irrelevant.
And no the decaffeinated brands taste horrible.
Not sure what the first part has to do with anything. Even if they only need 10% to pay they still need to try and make them pay and the other 90% is then not so important so that seems totally irrelevant.
And no the decaffeinated brands taste horrible.
Because in a F2P/Cash shop model getting more people playing, because the entry cost to play is non-existent, translates into a larger pool of potential cash shop users. Also having a lot of people playing, again because the entry cost to play is non-existent, is a different form of MMO content. That’s the reason for guilds/friend lists, a means to structure the social content.
After all, it’s disheartening to play an MMO when it looks as it nobody is around, so other players are a form of MMO content, probably on of the cheapest. So Nexon doesn’t really mind the 90% that aren’t interested in paying that month to help defray the costs because their presence helps to keep the 10% who are paying excited because there are all these other players to play with.
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
Yes all games have damage midigation, but it is not the same as this. This is as close to a target-less system as I have seen a mainstream MMO go.
TERA was a mainstream AAA MMO and it is target-less.
Did you play it? ( I didn’t.), did you also play a target dependant system like WoW? What do you think about the differences between the two systems?
Yea, I played WoW for about 5 years, Rift for 1.5, and a few other tab targetting games for a little less than those. I played TERA for about 6 months. I’d say all together TERA played more like a third person shooter than an MMO. While MMOs are all about stats and gear, TERA was more about player skill and low latency. Not as much about player skill as some other games, considering the NPCs telegraphed their next moved in over exaggerated ways to let the player know what was coming, but still enough that you actually had to get the NPC in your crosshairs while moving around and dodging like mad.
All together it was enjoyable and I do miss it.
@Vayne
They specifically say:
“We just don’t want players to grind in GW2.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E#t=1m40sI’m not twisting their words.
I’m not quoting them out of context either.We grind dynamic events. Cycles of dynamic events, even.
We grind dungeons.
We grind fractals.
We are encouraged to repeat tasks.And to clarify, grinding becomes more apparent when all your effort is poorly rewarded, such that you must repeat the task.
If I want a certain item skin, I must do a certain Dungeon X times, a different path each time.ANet doesn’t need White Knights, they need people to properly help them improve the game as much as possible.
If ANet gives in to the requests of fickle players who move to the newest MMO, they will get nowhere.@Devata
With or without the ( ), what you posted has nothing to do with the differences between what ANet promised vs what they gave us.@Siphaed
1) What I loved about GW1 is a matter of gaming concept.
Trash loot being a given in MMOs is utter nonsense. It just introduces coin into the game at no cost and hurts the economy.
Trash loot is called Trophies in GW2.
Trophies existed in GW1. They could be sold as trash to vendors.
However, there were collectors. So there was no item with the sole purpose of being vendored.
It is a silly concept that no game needs.2) Grinding is not a matter of content.
It’s a matter of activity.
As an example, fights that require you to do more than bash enemy skulls, are a good thing.
The current combat system is built in a way that makes it very difficult for the game to not feel grindy.
A few professions break this mold due bundles, etc, but for the most part, it’s extremely repetitive combat, both from the character’s and encounter’s perspective.3) Hypocritical?
I am criticizing the fact that the way dynamic events are balanced encourage grinding.
The fact there are “dynamic events with phat loots” is part of the problem.
I refuse to rotate/grind the “phat loot” DEs.I want every activity to present itself as more than viable – to be attractive in terms of effort vs time vs investment vs risk vs reward.
Anything you do, if you do it well, should feel rewarding.I agree with you honestly Vayne has taken what he’s said out of context. What he considers fun is the grind apparently and continues to support the arguments that A: the game doesn’t have grind despite what’s obvious to everyone else and B: one should play the game for the fun of it, who needs rewards.
What he fails to realize here is by having such a stranglehold on the economy, by making the rewards system less than, and by not allowing even their most basic drops have any value (greens, blues) they are doing just that causing a grind.
Further he uses the quote talking about combat being boring by swinging a sword, and swinging it again, well having played since launch I can assure you and him that this is exactly what’s happening with their skill system. So much emphasis is being placed on the #1 skills and nothing else. They need to increase the overall damage of the 2-5 skills and make a #1 skill a finisher at most to fix this problem. In other games one has lots of choices to use for skills, when you shorten that skill list down you have to make sure the skills balance properly so that we’re not doing #1 #1 #1 so not only is it a grind to repeat events in the lack-o-rewards system they have now but the combat is also severely lacking due to the #1 skill focused design.
Out of context means taking one line from the whole and assigning it a definition. I’ve done that nowhere. But people quoting the line “we don’t want people to grind in Guild Wars 2” are most certainly taking that line out of context. How do you know?
Because they’re ignoring the reset of the paragraph around the sentence. That’s the definition of taking something out of context.
If I said to you: In most games you have this boring grind to get to the fun stuff and shortly after say: We don’t want people to grind in Guild Wars 2, there’s clearly a link here. I’d be saying we don’t want people to have to go through a ton of boring stuff to get to the fun stuff. That’s ALL that means.
You can argue till you’re blue in the face and it won’t change the fact that the language is supporting what I’m saying.
There are other interviews you can quote where Anet talked about other things, maybe, but the “grind” quote in the manifesto is Anet talking about not going through the boring stuff to get to the fun stuff. It’s not about gear grind or end game grind or any other grind.
And yes, I can produce interviews were Anet has said that there would be things to grind for for people who enjoy that play style.
Out of context means taking one line from the whole and assigning it a definition. I’ve done that nowhere. But people quoting the line “we don’t want people to grind in Guild Wars 2” are most certainly taking that line out of context. How do you know?
Because they’re ignoring the reset of the paragraph around the sentence. That’s the definition of taking something out of context.
If I said to you: In most games you have this boring grind to get to the fun stuff and shortly after say: We don’t want people to grind in Guild Wars 2, there’s clearly a link here. I’d be saying we don’t want people to have to go through a ton of boring stuff to get to the fun stuff. That’s ALL that means.
You can argue till you’re blue in the face and it won’t change the fact that the language is supporting what I’m saying.
the language doesn’t support what your saying, you don’t even support what your saying from post to post you say It’s not about certain grinds , but also that fun is subjective and they don’t want you to grind to get to the fun.
So either fun is subjective and it is in fact about all grinds to get to the fun or fun isn’t subjective and its about the grind to get to what you personally consider fun. please clarify what you mean as you are contradicting yourself.
Throughout this thread you’ve been arguing the definition of grinding in the video
as you claim to be an editor, which actually has no bearing on this discussion and does not support your arguments in any way, you should have a dictionary on hand which should give something similar to the following:
noun grinding; colloquial hard dull work
4. Informal A laborious task, routine, or study
laborious adj.
1. requiring much work, exertion, or perseverance: a laborious undertaking.
2. characterized by or exhibiting excessive effort; labored.
3. industrious.
4: drudge; especially : to study hard <grind for an exam>
drudge
intransitive verb
: to do hard, menial, or monotonous work
transitive verb
: to force to do hard, menial, or monotonous work
You can try to redefine it all you like it the definition stands. grinding is not just combat or leveling. grinding is ANY task that fits the definition, and many of the monotonous tasks that gate progress fit the definition. kill hundreds of X or “gather 100,000 candy” as an example.
Just because you personally find it fun and it doesn’t feel like grinding to you, does not mean it is not a grind.
There are other interviews you can quote where Anet talked about other things, maybe, but the “grind” quote in the manifesto is Anet talking about not going through the boring stuff to get to the fun stuff. It’s not about gear grind or end game grind or any other grind.
I see so according to you gear cant be fun or end game etc? they were talking about Any grind. Anything that can be fun which as you say is subjective can have a grind to get to, not everything does, thankfully, but its featuring more and more along with time gating to artificially extend the amount of time it takes to do anything.
And yes, I can produce interviews were Anet has said that there would be things to grind for for people who enjoy that play style.
Please do and link to all those "Clarifications " you mentioned previously if they exist,
there is a BIG difference between grinding for an optional title that saves you money on lock picks or improves some optional skills from hundreds that are available. and grinding for best in slot gear that is also time gated and not available without some form of grinding.
i wish the devs had a consistent vision and didn’t push out content they know is flawed
Out of context means taking one line from the whole and assigning it a definition. I’ve done that nowhere. But people quoting the line “we don’t want people to grind in Guild Wars 2” are most certainly taking that line out of context. How do you know?
Because they’re ignoring the reset of the paragraph around the sentence. That’s the definition of taking something out of context.
snip
You can argue till you’re blue in the face and it won’t change the fact that the language is supporting what I’m saying.
the language doesn’t support what your saying, you don’t even support what your saying from post to post you say It’s not about certain grinds , but also that fun is subjective and they don’t want you to grind to get to the fun.
So either fun is subjective and it is in fact about all grinds to get to the fun or fun isn’t subjective and its about the grind to get to what you personally consider fun. please clarify what you mean as you are contradicting yourself.
snip
noun grinding; colloquial hard dull work
4. Informal A laborious task, routine, or study
laborious adj.
1. requiring much work, exertion, or perseverance: a laborious undertaking.
2. characterized by or exhibiting excessive effort; labored.
3. industrious.4: drudge; especially : to study hard <grind for an exam>
drudge
intransitive verb
: to do hard, menial, or monotonous work
transitive verb
: to force to do hard, menial, or monotonous workYou can try to redefine it all you like it the definition stands. grinding is not just combat or leveling. grinding is ANY task that fits the definition, and many of the monotonous tasks that gate progress fit the definition. kill hundreds of X or “gather 100,000 candy” as an example.
Just because you personally find it fun and it doesn’t feel like grinding to you, does not mean it is not a grind.There are other interviews you can quote where Anet talked about other things, maybe, but the “grind” quote in the manifesto is Anet talking about not going through the boring stuff to get to the fun stuff. It’s not about gear grind or end game grind or any other grind.
I see so according to you gear cant be fun or end game etc? they were talking about Any grind. Anything that can be fun which as you say is subjective can have a grind to get to, not everything does, thankfully, but its featuring more and more along with time gating to artificially extend the amount of time it takes to do anything.
And yes, I can produce interviews were Anet has said that there would be things to grind for for people who enjoy that play style.
Please do and link to all those "Clarifications " you mentioned previously if they exist,
there is a BIG difference between grinding for an optional title that saves you money on lock picks or improves some optional skills from hundreds that are available. and grinding for best in slot gear that is also time gated and not available without some form of grinding.
Sorry that I have to provide a basic English lesson here, but this had NOTHING to do at all with the definition of grind. It does have to do with the definition of fun. Obviously to anyone, fun is subjective. No game can make something fun for EVERYONE. It’s not possible. There’ll always be someone who finds something unfun that others find fun, so the subject if fun is not on trial here.
That leaves us with grind. Grind has lots of different definitions. Therefore, I don’t try to define it once it’s ALREADY defined in a piece of writing. That’s because it’s up to the writer to define how he’s using it. That was done here. It’s very specific and it’s very obvious. The only people who can say otherwise are people who are trying to overlay their definition of grind over the type of grind that Colin is talking about. There’s no mystery here. Most people get this. The people who don’t are starting off with an attachement to what they think grind is.
If Colin says: In most games there’s this boring grind to get to the fun stuff, then when he mentions grind a few seconds later, he’s talking about that grind. The boring grind to get to the fun stuff. He’s not talking about gear or end game. He’s talking about the boring grind to get to the fun stuff.
You don’t have to be an editor to understand this. You shouldn’t have to be an editor. The ONLY people who say it means otherwise are people taking it out of context.
The more you post about it, the more obvious the truth becomes. Feel free to keep going.
If Colin says: In most games there’s this boring grind to get to the fun stuff, then when he mentions grind a few seconds later, he’s talking about that grind. The boring grind to get to the fun stuff. He’s not talking about gear or end game. He’s talking about the boring grind to get to the fun stuff.
You don’t have to be an editor to understand this. You shouldn’t have to be an editor. The ONLY people who say it means otherwise are people taking it out of context.
The more you post about it, the more obvious the truth becomes. Feel free to keep going.
I read the whole thread, and I’m with Vayne with this. And I’m actually surprised why people keep on nitpicking on that grind thing.
I played a couple of grinding MMOs before where you literally have to spend at least 3+ hours in a single spot with a cash shop exp booster just to get 10% of the experience you need to level up. And it isn’t optional too. You HAVE to grind because there’s NO other content available for you other than leveling up.
And there’s the grind-slash-farm. I think majority of the MMOs out there requires you to grind your kitten off so you could farm enough gold just to experience the ‘end-game’ content.
GW2 is really different by not being that kind of MMO. You don’t do that kind of grind, there are a lot of things you can do just by playing casually. In that context, don’t you think the grind statement in the manifesto has already been fulfilled?
Sorry that I have to provide a basic English lesson here, but this had NOTHING to do at all with the definition of grind. It does have to do with the definition of fun. Obviously to anyone, fun is subjective. No game can make something fun for EVERYONE. It’s not possible. There’ll always be someone who finds something unfun that others find fun, so the subject if fun is not on trial here.
That leaves us with grind. Grind has lots of different definitions. Therefore, I don’t try to define it once it’s ALREADY defined in a piece of writing. That’s because it’s up to the writer to define how he’s using it. That was done here. It’s very specific and it’s very obvious. The only people who can say otherwise are people who are trying to overlay their definition of grind over the type of grind that Colin is talking about. There’s no mystery here. Most people get this. The people who don’t are starting off with an attachement to what they think grind is.
If Colin says: In most games there’s this boring grind to get to the fun stuff, then when he mentions grind a few seconds later, he’s talking about that grind. The boring grind to get to the fun stuff. He’s not talking about gear or end game. He’s talking about the boring grind to get to the fun stuff.
You don’t have to be an editor to understand this. You shouldn’t have to be an editor. The ONLY people who say it means otherwise are people taking it out of context.
The more you post about it, the more obvious the truth becomes. Feel free to keep going.
your reading comprehension is terrible, read what i wrote, not what you think i wrote
this isn’t so much a basic English lesson as a rant that doesn’t address any of the points.
if this is the quality of your lessons, I’m glad your not employed as a teacher.
He does not define grind, if you look at my post you can see several instances of the definition of grinding in this context, unless your arguing hes using the definition “To crush, pulverize, or reduce to powder by friction” or similar then its clear hes using the definition i cited from 3 separate sources. that is the definition PERIOD. he uses combat as an example of grind not the definition. he broadly referred to grind in other games. as what you do to get to the fun stuff. that is also not the definition of grind, it is a statement of where you find grind in other games.
if fun is subjective that means gearing and endgame can be fun too, understand?
that means when hes talking about grinding to get to the fun stuff hes also talking about fun in those instances. and any other instance where there may be a grind to get to the fun stuff, he does not at any point in the video state he is excluding areas of the game from this statement. you are projecting that.
where are the sources you cite? do they even exist? you repeatedly state you have them on hand yet when i asked you for them you have failed to provide them. if you have the links please do post them.
Being an editor has nothing to do with this, as i stated before that has ZERO bearing on this discussion, it does not support your arguments despite what you may think. it actually gives the appearance that your arguments cant stand on their own merit so you need to use that as a crutch. to attempt to convince readers you may know what your talking about. i have yet to see any evidence that you are a reliable authority on this in even the most miniscule sense of the term. so kindly stay on topic and stop giving irrelevant details of your personal life to strangers on the internet
If you’d said you were a Lexicographer that might have had some bearing on this but your not. so i will reiterate; look in the dictionary, you will find something similar to the examples i gave.
Repeatedly broadly stereotyping everyone who disagrees with you isn’t helping your argument, it just makes you look petulant.
Your attempts to derail this topic into arguments on semantics aside the OP is correct in the 3 statements indicating that the design philosophy has veered sharply, this is easily seen in the repeated use of monotonous repetitive tasks that you have to grind through to progress living story meta achievements which are further exacerbated by time gating.
i wish the devs had a consistent vision and didn’t push out content they know is flawed
Sorry that I have to provide a basic English lesson here, but this had NOTHING to do at all with the definition of grind. It does have to do with the definition of fun. Obviously to anyone, fun is subjective. No game can make something fun for EVERYONE. It’s not possible. There’ll always be someone who finds something unfun that others find fun, so the subject if fun is not on trial here.
That leaves us with grind. Grind has lots of different definitions. Therefore, I don’t try to define it once it’s ALREADY defined in a piece of writing. That’s because it’s up to the writer to define how he’s using it. That was done here. It’s very specific and it’s very obvious. The only people who can say otherwise are people who are trying to overlay their definition of grind over the type of grind that Colin is talking about. There’s no mystery here. Most people get this. The people who don’t are starting off with an attachement to what they think grind is.
If Colin says: In most games there’s this boring grind to get to the fun stuff, then when he mentions grind a few seconds later, he’s talking about that grind. The boring grind to get to the fun stuff. He’s not talking about gear or end game. He’s talking about the boring grind to get to the fun stuff.
You don’t have to be an editor to understand this. You shouldn’t have to be an editor. The ONLY people who say it means otherwise are people taking it out of context.
The more you post about it, the more obvious the truth becomes. Feel free to keep going.
your reading comprehension is terrible, read what i wrote, not what you think i wrote
this isn’t so much a basic English lesson as a rant that doesn’t address any of the points.
if this is the quality of your lessons, I’m glad your not employed as a teacher.He does not define grind, if you look at my post you can see several instances of the definition of grinding in this context, unless your arguing hes using the definition “To crush, pulverize, or reduce to powder by friction” or similar then its clear hes using the definition i cited from 3 separate sources. that is the definition PERIOD. he uses combat as an example of grind not the definition. he broadly referred to grind in other games. as what you do to get to the fun stuff. that is also not the definition of grind, it is a statement of where you find grind in other games.
if fun is subjective that means gearing and endgame can be fun too, understand?
that means when hes talking about grinding to get to the fun stuff hes also talking about fun in those instances. and any other instance where there may be a grind to get to the fun stuff, he does not at any point in the video state he is excluding areas of the game from this statement. you are projecting that.where are the sources you cite? do they even exist? you repeatedly state you have them on hand yet when i asked you for them you have failed to provide them. if you have the links please do post them.
Being an editor has nothing to do with this, as i stated before that has ZERO bearing on this discussion, it does not support your arguments despite what you may think. it actually gives the appearance that your arguments cant stand on their own merit so you need to use that as a crutch. to attempt to convince readers you may know what your talking about. i have yet to see any evidence that you are a reliable authority on this in even the most miniscule sense of the term. so kindly stay on topic and stop giving irrelevant details of your personal life to strangers on the internet
If you’d said you were a Lexicographer that might have had some bearing on this but your not. so i will reiterate; look in the dictionary, you will find something similar to the examples i gave.
Repeatedly broadly stereotyping everyone who disagrees with you isn’t helping your argument, it just makes you look petulant.
Your attempts to derail this topic into arguments on semantics aside the OP is correct in the 3 statements indicating that the design philosophy has veered sharply, this is easily seen in the repeated use of monotonous repetitive tasks that you have to grind through to progress living story meta achievements which are further exacerbated by time gating.
You’re reaching. He defines grind by saying that you have this grind to get to the fun stuff. The stuff you do to get to the fun stuff is the grind. This isn’t a theory. It’s not an opinion. It’s a fact, backed up by countless other interviews Anet have done where they’ve gone into detail about this.
They’re talking about leveling up to get to exciting encounters nothing more. You can insist it’s not defined till the cows come home, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was, nor the fact that it was subsequently backed up in other interviews.
Give it up….because this is one battle you can’t win.
Grinding is pretty much a dead term, really. It still gets used to complain about certain aspects of an MMO but I haven’t played a proper grinder since AO and I can’t say I didn’t love it, until they bugged the game to hell…
The proper definition of grind, is finding an area with blue/yellow mobs and kill them ad nauseam until you level. To put that into perspective, I spent about 4 years playing AO and by the end I was only level 150 out of 220 when I finally left. Around when I left that game, they added 9 ‘alien’ levels for guilds to grind. That effort took the first player to earn, almost two years!
Giving players stuff to do =/= a grind, at all. Nothing in GW2 is a grind. Anet did screw up a bit by thinking players would go back to the idea of level not making a huge difference by adding midlevel dungeons and downleveling, but the mentality has changed. It’s a race to top level and farm gear now. I really don’t know if that’s a bad thing though. It just has to be a balance of compelling gear, that takes skill to farm Vs. dunking $20 for gems-to-gold, to deck my fresh 80 out in full AH exotics.
I think MMO players and developers are completely confused now and that’s why this genre is falling to crap.
@Devata
With or without the ( ), what you posted has nothing to do with the differences between what ANet promised vs what they gave us.
Oow is has a lot to do with it. They promised a B2P game while now it is getting more and more the characteristics of a F2P game.
Not sure what the first part has to do with anything. Even if they only need 10% to pay they still need to try and make them pay and the other 90% is then not so important so that seems totally irrelevant.
And no the decaffeinated brands taste horrible.
Because in a F2P/Cash shop model getting more people playing, because the entry cost to play is non-existent, translates into a larger pool of potential cash shop users. Also having a lot of people playing, again because the entry cost to play is non-existent, is a different form of MMO content. That’s the reason for guilds/friend lists, a means to structure the social content.
After all, it’s disheartening to play an MMO when it looks as it nobody is around, so other players are a form of MMO content, probably on of the cheapest. So Nexon doesn’t really mind the 90% that aren’t interested in paying that month to help defray the costs because their presence helps to keep the 10% who are paying excited because there are all these other players to play with.
Well they have more then 10 servers so they can close some and throw the gem-buyers together. But yeah you would say they still want the other people. I do not disagree on that, but that does not mean that the gem-store focus does not damage the game. It’s like all the subscription-based game. They would also just need to keep the people happy to make there money yet all of those mmo’s in the last years failed. I take that example to show that something the wrong focus on money may lose you money. What if those game where B2P from the start? Maybe they would have been way more popular and the people behind it would now have already made much more money. So, yes you would expect them to also want to keep the other 90% happy but the wrong focus might mean the don’t..
And it is now like we are talking about some hypothetical possibility. But we already see it. The first months where fine but look at the forums and you see many complains about RNG, temporary content and the gold-driven system. Those things can all be directly liked to a gem-store focus. So it’s not like we discussing a possibility it is already happening. And if they would stop with this but still need the gem-store for there main income it will simply shift to something else.
Thats why they should go back to the real B2P model with the focus on expansions.
About the grind.. Well it’s more about farming but I think the definitions are close:
Grinding: Repeated battles for the sole purpose of increasing party level, stats, etc.
Farming: Repeated battles for the sole purpose of finding a rare item drop.
I see them the as the same because one person gets his joy out having better stats and another person finds his joy out of finding a rare drop.
Is the problem not that there are not enough ways to farm? Everything works with currencies with gold being the most important currency of them all. You can not really farm for mats, mini’s, skins and so on, you will always need to farm for a currency and then but what you want. Thats the most boring way of farming.
For the grind thats basically the same.. You do grind directly for a higher level but for the armor (stats) you farm for currency.
About the question if there is a need to grind because there are so many other thinks to do. Yes I think there is a need. I am now leveling some alts and there are some thinks I like to do in the game. In the PvE world that is mainly jumping puzzles. In WvW I like to mainly play tactical. However the only real way to level is to do hearts / map completion, craft (what cost money so require a gold-grind) or run in zergs in WvW. I can however not level my alts with jumping puzzles.
So maybe the solution to this would be to make the other possibilities there are also more rewarding.
In addition the achievements should maybe be more based on quality then on quantity. That would reduce the grind on those. As long as they are not also temporary that should be no problem.
your reading comprehension is terrible, read what i wrote, not what you think i wrote
this isn’t so much a basic English lesson as a rant that doesn’t address any of the points.
if this is the quality of your lessons, I’m glad your not employed as a teacher.He does not define grind, if you look at my post you can see several instances of the definition of grinding in this context, unless your arguing hes using the definition “To crush, pulverize, or reduce to powder by friction” or similar then its clear hes using the definition i cited from 3 separate sources. that is the definition PERIOD. he uses combat as an example of grind not the definition. he broadly referred to grind in other games. as what you do to get to the fun stuff. that is also not the definition of grind, it is a statement of where you find grind in other games.
if fun is subjective that means gearing and endgame can be fun too, understand?
that means when hes talking about grinding to get to the fun stuff hes also talking about fun in those instances. and any other instance where there may be a grind to get to the fun stuff, he does not at any point in the video state he is excluding areas of the game from this statement. you are projecting that.where are the sources you cite? do they even exist? you repeatedly state you have them on hand yet when i asked you for them you have failed to provide them. if you have the links please do post them.
Being an editor has nothing to do with this, as i stated before that has ZERO bearing on this discussion, it does not support your arguments despite what you may think. it actually gives the appearance that your arguments cant stand on their own merit so you need to use that as a crutch. to attempt to convince readers you may know what your talking about. i have yet to see any evidence that you are a reliable authority on this in even the most miniscule sense of the term. so kindly stay on topic and stop giving irrelevant details of your personal life to strangers on the internet
If you’d said you were a Lexicographer that might have had some bearing on this but your not. so i will reiterate; look in the dictionary, you will find something similar to the examples i gave.
Repeatedly broadly stereotyping everyone who disagrees with you isn’t helping your argument, it just makes you look petulant.
Your attempts to derail this topic into arguments on semantics aside the OP is correct in the 3 statements indicating that the design philosophy has veered sharply, this is easily seen in the repeated use of monotonous repetitive tasks that you have to grind through to progress living story meta achievements which are further exacerbated by time gating.
If you don’t understand linguistic coherence, you’ve got no authority to call someone out on their reading comprehension.
“I didn’t buy into GW2 being the second coming of christ.
I just wanted a AAA MMO with no sub made by ArenaNet. And it’s awesome.”
I just wanted a AAA MMO with no sub made by ArenaNet. And it’s awesome.”
People constantly want to hold WoW up as the epitome of grind culture in MMO’s
Because that’s exactly what it is. Blizzard’s greatest achievement was fooling gullible people into believing that all this grind was actually a good thing, hence all the “WoW was SO great!” comments we have today. But WoW’s model, to reward time spent more than skill, and continuosly add more time sinks to keep people p(l)aying the game forever doing little more than raw grind, is one of the main reasons why MMORPGs are almost always very mediocre games.[/quote]
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EDIT;
Okey I have returned, btw the comment ABOVE ME In this comment ^^^^^^ was a quote from another guy in this thread, but somehow the reply system on the forums buggerd up and the quote signs dissapeard. I didn’t say the above comment ^^
Just to clarify, Im defending wow, not bashing it like the rest of you diehard blind guild wars fans.
I also recognize and see why people have left and feel what they feel about wow.
Like in my comment below I mention one of the reasons why I quit wow.
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I think you are mean to wow, wow is nice.
People quit it cause they are tired of it, I played since vanilla, the time before cross-realm pvp even, the begining of the 20hour long Alterac Valley battleground matches, everyone was a noob, man those times were fun.
But im not going to defend it with nostalgia.
Wow being great is everyonce own opinion, I myself got burned out when i was raiding dragon soul – too easy of an raid and it felt like a lackluster end to a lore character like deathwing.
I’ll return to my reply later – I g2g go now.
(edited by An Oak Knob.1275)
That’s super unfair, Noobkaka.
In World of Warcraft, you have a depth of gameplay, both in PvE and PvP, specially in PvP, that wasn’t – and arguably still isn’t – found in any other MMO out there.
In terms of graphics, animations – eye candy – it doesn’t prevail, but that’s not what counts.
Most games that came after WoW – specially the so-called WoW-clones – tried to copy the “supposed” qualities from WoW – like catering to casuals, dungeon finders, etc – but those aren’t qualities. And thus the clones failed.
Salvaging Revamp || Combo Concepts || Expansion Concepts || Condition Stacking
Endurance 2.0 || Attributes, Traits and Conditions || Skill Variants
Endurance 2.0 || Attributes, Traits and Conditions || Skill Variants
(edited by Nurvus.2891)
That’s super unfair, Noobkaka.
In World of Warcraft, you have a depth of gameplay, both in PvE and PvP, specially in PvP, that wasn’t – and arguably still isn’t – found in any other MMO out there.In terms of graphics, animations – eye candy – it doesn’t prevail, but that’s not what counts.
Most games that came after WoW – specially the so-called WoW-clones – tried to copy the “supposed” qualities from WoW – like catering to casuals, dungeon finders, etc – but those aren’t qualities. And thus the clones failed.
This is like revisionist history, written by the winning side in the war. Let’s look at some facts about why WoW succeeded and those other clones “failed”.
First WoW came out at a time when the amount of competition is had to face was small. Really small. And Blizzard at that time, on the back of it’s very popular RTS games had a ton of money. They were a resource rich company.
So WoW piggybacked off the success of Warcraft and Starcraft and people bought it..but WoW also had a ton of money to advertise, something most companies can’t do. Because of this, WoW was uniquely positioned to get 12.4 million people.
Do you think WoW had more “depth” of gameplay than say Guild Wars 1 which came out about the same time…I don’t. But then, Guild Wars 1 was a first product from a company that didn’t have an advertising budget. There was no way they could throw the resources to beat WoW.
And because WoW at that point had millions of subscribers at $15 a month (do the math one day) they ALWAYS had a financial advantage over any competitor, particularly because of the head start in content.
Games like Warhammer and AoC didn’t do badly because they were worse than WoW or had less depth than WoW. They did badly because they ran out of money and had to launch early when they were full of bugs. WoW was also full of bugs, but there was no WoW to go back to when WoW launched. Everyone was full of bugs.
WoW is successful for two reasons. First it was in the right place at the right time and two, it was so rich compared to other companies it could advertise it’s kitten off.
You can believe it’s a superior game all you want, but it certainly wasn’t that good at launch. They just had the money and income to fix it. Other games didn’t stand a chance.
Later on new games failed because of how many people never wanted to go back to WoW again.That ship had sailed.
For people who like it no one can catch up, but there are very likely far more people who dislike WoW than like it.
WoW had at it’s peak 12.4 million subscribers across the entire world. You may think that’s a lot of players, but it’s actually a pretty small percentage of gamers. There are a whole lot of people who would rather gnaw off their own leg than play WoW.
Saying WoW is popular because it’s a good game or it has depth is like saying McDonalds is fine dining because it’s so successful.
I see the definition of grind is up for grabs again.
Oh, yeah. But then, it always is in every MMO. Grind is a subjective term that also has a generally understood meaning. It’s the subjective part that everyone disagrees on. Fanboys will always claim their fave game has no grind and disgruntled players usually have it as a major complaint. Even when the context usage is clear, there will be differences of opinion because that subjective sense is always there. The ability to be truly, completely objective is extremely difficult, if not impossible. Everyone has perceptions and biases that are always in play whether or not this is consciously realized.
i popped up only to say that when some people come to age for voting they will be doomed to be utterly disappointed^^
also the nay sayer in this forum are reaching a level so low that i don’t even understand where the bottom is.
if you are so disappointed, stop playing and move on! my god you all are like stalker ex-boyfriends!
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