Guild Wars 2

Excellent post, Vayne. I logged in specifically to plus one your story. You’ve echoed my sentiments, and we seem to have similar backgrounds from the pinball to GW2 road we’ve taken. I really enjoyed the lower levels of this game when it was new, doing hearts and dynamic events. Later, when I started to not enjoy where the story was going (mostly because I didn’t appreciate a few of the B-iconics, but did enjoy others), I started wandering around WvW for the enjoyment it gave me. It sure wasn’t a story, but more of a “dungeon crawl” in an open world, with great fights when enemies were around and taking towers and keeps with siege when they weren’t. Yeah, its sort of like PvP in WvW, but there’s a goal there where there isn’t in PvP.

I really like your closing paragraph. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Not a fan of raids- I might do one with some guildies or friends just to experience the story, but I sure don’t want to grind them for any specific rewards the way I grinded (ground? What’s the past tense of “grind”?) PvP for that ascended trinket.

The only real RPG’s left are Dragon Quest, Hyperdimension Neptunia, and Final Fantasy and even Final Fantasy desperately wanted to get away from its RPG roots starting with 12 and 14 and 15 aren’t RPG’s at all. Skyrim is in real time so it’s an action game that tries being an RPG but with level scaling doesn’t really work. If you wanna be an action game go all the way, a full action game is funner than a half RPG.

What made RPG’s great was that they had unique mechanics in a separate screen that gave a sense of scale to the world while the overworld maps weren’t to scale and represented how far your character went. They were either hella easy or hella hard depending on the particular RPG and getting killed after forgetting to save lead to frustration. You also had optional yet challenging content specifically there to challenge the player. It was a great experience. However, in current games most of the content is optional creating a glut.

What happened to the RPG? Some of its elements creeped into other genres (usually undesirably such as Mass Effect in the third person shooter genre) while everything went to “real time”. Instead of traveling the entire world on a mission to save it you just travel one are (such as Skyrim) where you have a character that isn’t nearly as free as Link is in action and movement yet still lacking battlescreens and other fundamental RPG features that make an RPG good. RPG’s when done right have the potential to have deep intricate gameplay. In very old school RPG’s for example conditions like poison were utterly useless on a boss while in simply old games like Final Fantasy 13 poison was a welcome edition because it chips away at 1% HP and works on bosses. Now, 1% HP doesn’t sound like a lot but if you consider how tanky some bosses can be that 1% adds up quite a bit over a long period of time.

From a narrative standpoint however how does an RPG separate itself from other genres? Characterization? Fighting games have some of the best characters. Story? All genres such as some shooters, fighting games, and action-adventure have good stories. Is Dark Souls an RPG? No, but it contains vague elements of one.

Agemnon.4608:

The only real RPG’s left are Dragon Quest, Hyperdimension Neptunia, and Final Fantasy and even Final Fantasy desperately wanted to get away from its RPG roots starting with 12 and 14 and 15 aren’t RPG’s at all. Skyrim is in real time so it’s an action game that tries being an RPG but with level scaling doesn’t really work. If you wanna be an action game go all the way, a full action game is funner than a half RPG.

What made RPG’s great was that they had unique mechanics in a separate screen that gave a sense of scale to the world while the overworld maps weren’t to scale and represented how far your character went. They were either hella easy or hella hard depending on the particular RPG and getting killed after forgetting to save lead to frustration. You also had optional yet challenging content specifically there to challenge the player. It was a great experience. However, in current games most of the content is optional creating a glut.

What happened to the RPG? Some of its elements creeped into other genres (usually undesirably such as Mass Effect in the third person shooter genre) while everything went to “real time”. Instead of traveling the entire world on a mission to save it you just travel one are (such as Skyrim) where you have a character that isn’t nearly as free as Link is in action and movement yet still lacking battlescreens and other fundamental RPG features that make an RPG good. RPG’s when done right have the potential to have deep intricate gameplay. In very old school RPG’s for example conditions like poison were utterly useless on a boss while in simply old games like Final Fantasy 13 poison was a welcome edition because it chips away at 1% HP and works on bosses. Now, 1% HP doesn’t sound like a lot but if you consider how tanky some bosses can be that 1% adds up quite a bit over a long period of time.

From a narrative standpoint however how does an RPG separate itself from other genres? Characterization? Fighting games have some of the best characters. Story? All genres such as some shooters, fighting games, and action-adventure have good stories. Is Dark Souls an RPG? No, but it contains vague elements of one.

I think you’re using a different definition of RPG than I was. I mean my pen and paper RPGs played a lot more like skyrim than they did as something like Baulder’s gate.

A lot of that has to do with drama/story vs strategic turned based combat. You’d think a pen and paper RPG was about turn bsaed combat, but the way we ran our compaigns, combat went very fast, and it was turn based in name only. We didn’t care as much about combat or dice rolls. Hell we went through large swathes of time with no combat at all. We had political intrigue and mystery.

The kind of differences you’re talking about don’t resonate with me. Not to say you’re wrong, we’re just approaching the genre from different directions.

Sinbold.8723:

Excellent post, Vayne. I logged in specifically to plus one your story. You’ve echoed my sentiments, and we seem to have similar backgrounds from the pinball to GW2 road we’ve taken. I really enjoyed the lower levels of this game when it was new, doing hearts and dynamic events. Later, when I started to not enjoy where the story was going (mostly because I didn’t appreciate a few of the B-iconics, but did enjoy others), I started wandering around WvW for the enjoyment it gave me. It sure wasn’t a story, but more of a “dungeon crawl” in an open world, with great fights when enemies were around and taking towers and keeps with siege when they weren’t. Yeah, its sort of like PvP in WvW, but there’s a goal there where there isn’t in PvP.

I really like your closing paragraph. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Not a fan of raids- I might do one with some guildies or friends just to experience the story, but I sure don’t want to grind them for any specific rewards the way I grinded (ground? What’s the past tense of “grind”?) PvP for that ascended trinket.

I do a lot more WvW if it weren’t server based. My issue with WvW isn’t WvW itself, because I still enjoy it. My problem is it’s the only server based part of the game left. As we expanded our guild, more and more people aren’t on TC anymore and as a result, I don’t like to run WvW events, because I don’t like to leave people out.

Hopefully one day Anet will find some kind of solution to let guildies play together, but until then, I run WvW only occasionally and mostly when no one in the guild is on (the middle of the US night).

Thanks for writing that Vayne. I am from the same era. I came into gaming via D&D when I arrived in college. It was the stories and interaction that kept me coming back week after week. And that is what still draws me into these (RPG) games. Having the combat be fun to watch and interesting character models are all great eye-candy but it is the story that will keep me involved for the long haul.

I joined my current pen & paper gaming group 31 years ago. The core of the group remains and we have been playing ever since. We often go an entire game session with no combat at all. Just lots of RP with each other and the GM for that night. It’s all about the story and the interaction.

This post hits the issue I’m experiencing with the recent game direction head on.

The developers have moved further away from the idea of an online world that was continually changing (eg, giving us something new to do on a regular basis) and more toward the same tired model every other AAA MMO uses.

It is now less about the player’s story (“This is my story”) than it’s ever been and that is disappointing.

The developers need to read Vayne’s post closely and, in my opinion, realize they are rapidly drifting away from their core customers – and trying to force fit tired content models they have seen bring customers into other MMOs into a game they were never designed to be a part of. In summary, they need to get back to the basics and philosophy that made this game amazing.

+1

Count me as another one in the pinball (Twilight Zone powerball OP!) to GW path. All time favorite game is still Dragon Warrior for NES. (You didn’t have to grind the axe knight for Hauksness tokens to buy Erdrick’s armor…but I digress) . There are piles of “real” MMOs with all the raiding, scheduling your life around being online at the right time, etc. and I have no interest in any of them. Never even considered them and probably never will.

In oldschool fantasy pen and paper RPGs, DnD in particular, the most potent rewards were expected by design to be earned in the equivalent of the most difficult raids/dungeons. That Hackmaster +12 would be taken from the hoard of the biggest, baddest, most challenging boss at the end of a series of increasingly difficult encounters.

The repetition thing…yeah, but a GM in a pen and paper game, in general, has more ability to write new, “playable content”, that doesnt involve repeating last week’s adventure for his weekly group to enjoy. Some posters on these forums have listed play times that equate to 8-10 hours a day, 7 days a week, since launch over 3 years ago. I have never met a pen an paper GM, myself included, who could meet that demand with new content.

Ashen.2907:

In oldschool fantasy pen and paper RPGs, DnD in particular, the most potent rewards were expected by design to be earned in the equivalent of the most difficult raids/dungeons. That Hackmaster +12 would be taken from the hoard of the biggest, baddest, most challenging boss at the end of a series of increasingly difficult encounters.

The repetition thing…yeah, but a GM in a pen and paper game, in general, has more ability to write new, “playable content”, that doesnt involve repeating last week’s adventure for his weekly group to enjoy. Some posters on these forums have listed play times that equate to 8-10 hours a day, 7 days a week, since launch over 3 years ago. I have never met a pen an paper GM, myself included, who could meet that demand with new content.

When I GMed I did a lot of stuff on the fly. Obviously programmers can’t do this, so your point is valid.

But I’m quite tired of people assuming that because I don’t want to raid, I’m lazy. It’s not my thing because it was NEVER my thing.

As for the most potent rewards, that’s not a rule at all and never happened with our games. You could get anything anywhere, in much the same way you could get a precursor killing a deer in Queensdale.

That was how the game was originally designed. Sure you had to do dungeons to get legendaries, but you didn’t have to devote huge amounts of time to get through a dungeon. What the program is asking for here is to do something that requires quite an investment in time and energy to get something. Dungeons really didn’t do that. It’s taken the commitment level to new heights.

Some might find that fine, but I don’t. Not three years into a game.

LyricDawnhagen.7803:

Thanks for writing that Vayne. I am from the same era. I came into gaming via D&D when I arrived in college. It was the stories and interaction that kept me coming back week after week. And that is what still draws me into these (RPG) games. Having the combat be fun to watch and interesting character models are all great eye-candy but it is the story that will keep me involved for the long haul.

I joined my current pen & paper gaming group 31 years ago. The core of the group remains and we have been playing ever since. We often go an entire game session with no combat at all. Just lots of RP with each other and the GM for that night. It’s all about the story and the interaction.

Unfortunately, I moved 10,000 miles away from my pen and paper group, but we were playing for decades as well. 10,000 miles is a bit of a long commute to play a game though.

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

In oldschool fantasy pen and paper RPGs, DnD in particular, the most potent rewards were expected by design to be earned in the equivalent of the most difficult raids/dungeons. That Hackmaster +12 would be taken from the hoard of the biggest, baddest, most challenging boss at the end of a series of increasingly difficult encounters.

The repetition thing…yeah, but a GM in a pen and paper game, in general, has more ability to write new, “playable content”, that doesnt involve repeating last week’s adventure for his weekly group to enjoy. Some posters on these forums have listed play times that equate to 8-10 hours a day, 7 days a week, since launch over 3 years ago. I have never met a pen an paper GM, myself included, who could meet that demand with new content.

When I GMed I did a lot of stuff on the fly. Obviously programmers can’t do this, so your point is valid.

But I’m quite tired of people assuming that because I don’t want to raid, I’m lazy. It’s not my thing because it was NEVER my thing.

As for the most potent rewards, that’s not a rule at all and never happened with our games. You could get anything anywhere, in much the same way you could get a precursor killing a deer in Queensdale.

That was how the game was originally designed. Sure you had to do dungeons to get legendaries, but you didn’t have to devote huge amounts of time to get through a dungeon. What the program is asking for here is to do something that requires quite an investment in time and energy to get something. Dungeons really didn’t do that. It’s taken the commitment level to new heights.

Some might find that fine, but I don’t. Not three years into a game.

To be clear, I do not consider a lack of interest in raiding to be an indication of laziness. I dislike the implementation of pvp in GW2 so I dont play it. Not because I am lazy, but because it isnt fun for me. This has the unfortunate side effect of meaning that I will (according to current design) never get the only medium torso armor skin in the game that I actually like (for my main.).

Oldschool PnP codified treasure drops through drop tables tied to montser power level. Getting the most powerful loot (or in excessive quantity) otherwise had a derogatory term associated with it that survives to this day. Monty Haul rewards, where you could get that Hackmaster +12 from anything in game, at essentially any level, notoriously by killing a single kobold, was within a GM’s power, but outside of the codified rules of the genre’s original examples.

I agree with Vayne.

This reminds me of why City of Heroes was such a good game.

I really enjoyed your post Vayne. I come from a pencil and paper rpg background as well. While reading your post, I began to realize why I enjoyed season 1 living story so much more than season 2 living story. Season 1 was filled with exciting world events that changed the world. Season 2 seemed to be more about grinding AP points by repeating each story chapter ad nauseam.

I also think this is what turns me off about HoT. The Meta event map idea focuses on one story over and over map wide. Most of the core gw2 maps have multiple stories going on that are totally unrelated. There seems to be more discovery and story awaiting in the core maps than in the HoT maps to me.

It just seems like content from Anet whether it be maps, achievement points, and story is relying more and more on the “rinse and repeat” philosophy. It may be cheaper to produce content like that but it seems dull and tedious.

If you’re craving old-school pen and paper RPG style gameplay, I have two recommendations. Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall Director’s Cut,, and Shadowrun Returns: Hong Kong. They are really old school in how they work, and the writing, world building, and choices you have to make on your first few playthroughs are enthralling. I like the series so much that now, as I am playing through the hong kong campaign blind, I’m narrating all of the characters in character to my sis as we go through.

I suppose that is where I come from. Long before I played games online, playing a videogame was a social thing. My father would play top gun and airplane games on the NES, my siblings would sit down and try to think of ways to find hidden dungeons in Legend of Zelda, and we’d come up with elaborate fantasies together on the game itself. I suppose that’s why I like lets-plays so much, long before they were popular. A lot of it was childhood bickering, but the fact that me and my brother beat Ocarina of Time by alternating dungeons was something beautiful.

But if I were to summarize my earliest true “mutliplayer” experiences in RPGs, that would come three examples: Phantasy Star Universe, Runescape, and City of Heroes.

I had played PSO, but not online. PSU, I managed to play before the servers shut down. For quite some time, too. And, the thing with PSO and PSU was that, though it used many systems that would be archaic by today’s standards, there’s was one simple truth to the game that I have not seen since, and I miss the fact that this is no longer true. Let me pose it as a question:

You are in a game with no scaling whatsoever. You’re level 100. A random level 60 player joins your instance. Do you:
A) Yell at him because he is lower level until he leaves.
B) Kick the n00b without saying a word.
C) Be totally cool with him joining anonymously.
D) Keep him around but lament that he’ll leech rewards from you.

In every single MMO I’ve played since PSU, the answer was never C. But the way phantasy star handled stats and equipment, it wasn’t such a big deal if your teammates were lower level than you. There was no “min/maxing”, only level. The challenges were hard and didn’t scale, so every body you had helped. It was an action game after all, so if the lower level guy could handle himself, you were happy to have him around, at least to be a decoy.

So many games I’ve played are built to be the exact opposite. City of Heroes, even GW2 have systems built in that discriminate specifically against level itself, to avoid the pratfalls of a system that inadequately handles stat progression and open world challenges. With the way events scale, you can’t have lower level players joining and scaling up, because then they’re a detriment to the whole thing. The levels are superficial. But, I miss that. I miss both being the new guy everyone welcomed. I miss being the experienced guy who helps the new guy out.

The challenges of the game weren’t accommodating. They existed, whether you had a full party or not, if you had the levels or not, or if you had the gear or not. Seriously, for anyone who still has the old game, try a low level rush to ultimate difficulty in PSO going through both episodes, and suddenly it is one of the most tense and entertaining things you’ve done. You’ll learn that the first time an invisible robot one shots you with a flying head-bash out of stealth.

Second is Runescape.

Now, runescape is a very old game, and it is a very simple game. An utter grindfest. Built out of Java, it is literally a point and click adventure. You click somewhere, then your toon walked there. You clicked on a thing, then your toon did a thing. Very simple. Some would say very boring. They’re right, of course, but there was an advantage to this system. Because the interface was so simple, nearly anything could happen. The range and diversity of skills and minigames and environments, the general interactivity of the world is unlike anything I have seen since.

Want to manage your own kingdom? You could do that. Host an international port for trading and exploration? Got it. Hunt reptiles for voodoo witchdoctor potions? Got it. Manage a multi-person industrial sized blast furnace? Had that. Grow tomatoes and make pizzas? Do that, too. Delve into a roguelike randomly generated dungeon? Got it. Wander a dangerous PVP wasteland? It was there. Command armies in a turn based strategy game? Had it. And the quests… the storyline and the quests in the game are great. They’re funny, they’re interesting, they’re tense, and they add just a bit of mystery, and doing them gave you rewards other than “loot”. I still quite vividly remember having to navigate a parkour maze of a shanty town that was ruled by flying vampires who would demand blood tributes if they saw you in the open.

Nearly anything could happen, because it is just point and click. I miss that open diversity. Though the playerbase was young and the community was hostile, it still had that “the challenge exists, whether you’ve got enough people or not” system, and sometimes when a random dude ran by, you were glad he happened along. But modern MMOs aren’t like that anymore. If anything happens in GW2, 99/100 times it’s just going to be combat, where nameless loot rains from the sky, and the only thing that is important is that you survive the encounter.

The last one is City of Heroes.

Now, City of Heroes had level restrictions (and a way to bypass them eventually), a slightly shallow loot system where drops rained from the sky (but not as randomly), and a crafting system that was basically a components check. But there is something that City of Heroes did that other MMOs don’t, and that is character customization.

I’ve talked about it numerous times in the past. But basically, the character and build customization, both functionally and aesthetically, was exponentially higher than any other MMO I’ve ever played. Exponential is not an exaggeration. By today’s standards, it was literally a hundred times deeper. Every single skill was highly customizable, every skill set was highly customizable, every class had a highly customizable list of skill sets. You didn’t just pick your class. You picked your class, the skill sets that were available to that class, the skills that were in those skill sets, and then every little facet of every single skill could be customized. To top it off, after making each toon you could write a character bio and a catchphrase.

Also, you could completely design your own instanced missions and stories from scratch, and then put them up for the public to play, using either established characters or your own designs. Never has their been a game where I was more attached to the player characters than in CoH. Each one was truly unique, and many were extremely memorable. One of my favorites was a gigantic African-American guy named Hare Splittor (or Douglass Bane). He was dressed up as a gigantic pink and purple bunny with a battleaxe, and his origin story is that he is just a normal tough guy on a crusade to make it socially acceptable for men to like bunnies and tea parties by being the most aggressive and frightening vigilante possible. Anytime anyone would say anything, I’d RP a pseudo social-commentary conflict where I’d aggressively demand people be accepting of men dressed as pink bunnies. You can’t get that in experience in most games.

I’m going to paraphrase Arin Hanson here: Though videogames are covering more and more adult subject matters, by design they are catering more towards kids. They are being streamlined and simplified, and that isn’t a good thing. GW2 is not a complete “MMORPG” in the sense that I grew up with and am familiar with. It is an MMOG that stripped away a lot of the features that I’m familiar with, and it happened to take away enough of the right ones to resemble a playable game that has other people running around.

And that is it. “People running around”. I am a nameless (insert class here) using one of 3 peak builds as I traverse the world filled with people I will never remember, who will also never remember me. Whether someone is nearby or not doesn’t matter. The systems the game is built upon seem like vestiges of previous designs where those archaic systems actually mattered. Raids are more of a build check than anything else, having rigid structural requirements instead of an experience you can go through. Yes, the combat is solid, but that’s all there is.

Dashingsteel.3410:

I really enjoyed your post Vayne. I come from a pencil and paper rpg background as well. While reading your post, I began to realize why I enjoyed season 1 living story so much more than season 2 living story. Season 1 was filled with exciting world events that changed the world. Season 2 seemed to be more about grinding AP points by repeating each story chapter ad nauseam.

I also think this is what turns me off about HoT. The Meta event map idea focuses on one story over and over map wide. Most of the core gw2 maps have multiple stories going on that are totally unrelated. There seems to be more discovery and story awaiting in the core maps than in the HoT maps to me.

It just seems like content from Anet whether it be maps, achievement points, and story is relying more and more on the “rinse and repeat” philosophy. It may be cheaper to produce content like that but it seems dull and tedious.

This is why I dont actively pursue AP. Repetition for the sake of being able to say, “I repeated something”, just isnt interesting.

To me S1 was filled with annoying and/boring world events, characters, and story that led me to take a break from the game until it was over. It actively detracted from the game as a whole for me.

S2 still had characters I disliked, and it required my character to become a murderer, and required me to play a character, race, profession, and build that didnt interest me…..hmmm, never mind. As much as some of the instances were fun from a gameplay standpoint, comparing the two seasons is like trying to determine which puddle f horse urine smelled better.

I enjoyed the marionette and save Lion’s Arch events…… I can’t remember anything in season 2 that I liked

I too am from the “old days” of PnP RPG. I play for the enjoyment of the story and world, not being a cost accountant and use reward per hour of play to dictate what aspect I play.

I prefer games where teaming is NOT mandatory because if you are forced to team, the team lets one member dictate that play session. Of course I’m talking about PUG teams, friends can debate and agree, in PUGs the dissenters are kicked. It was worse in older MMOs with traditional quest logs and nobody wants to help you with yours vs theirs but that’s not the issue here.

In the three years, 2700+ hours prior to HoT I essentially soloed which means no dungeons, no fractals, no large organized events (TTW, Teq) that you couldn’t simply wing it. So I’m quite disappointed that so many core Tyria master points are tied up in the activities I never had the motivation to do. This includes the personal story because I like to make up my own head cannon although I do enjoy the LW stories.

I’ve only stepped into HoT at launch and it was a lot more, intense, than anything I experienced in core Tyria. Waypoints are few and far apart, there are virtually no “safe” areas you could hold up in to go AFK for a few minutes without returning to a body, which means another trek from one of those few waypoints to get back to where you were.

I don’t mind the improved AI and some difficulty but it’s night and day from core Tyria. It’s intense and not relaxing with the lack of lulls in action. Plus HoT is less about flash mobbing events than running in a group simply to transverse the map.

But I never harbored resentment for Raiders, PvPers, Dungeon speed runners. Those are legit communities and I can see why they occasionally need dev love.

I’ve seen friendly guilds who enjoy raiding as an activity to be done weekly and not as an efficiency exorcise. Nobody is punished for messing up, nobody is ejected for not running a specific load out on specific professions or elites. That isn’t always the case and some raid teams, like dungeon teams before them are quite militant about maximizing their performance. And those groups aren’t for me.

The issue on the forums is players believe that “everyone” plays the game just like them and if you disagree or downplay that aspect of the game is a personal affront. Lighten up Francis. Just realize not everybody is as much of a zealot for X or dismissive of Y as you are and everybody can get along.

Dashingsteel.3410:

I enjoyed the marionette and save Lion’s Arch events…… I can’t remember anything in season 2 that I liked

Ahh, perhaps I missed out then. By the time those were up the previous chapters had driven me from the game.

I still think that the living world is a truly great concept and really hope that Anet will, someday, be able to live up to its potential.

I am very glad for those who enjoyed either of the seasons though. My own dislike is not meant to be taken as a claim that they lacked merit, only that they were offputting to me.

Vayne.8563:

LyricDawnhagen.7803:

Thanks for writing that Vayne. I am from the same era. I came into gaming via D&D when I arrived in college. It was the stories and interaction that kept me coming back week after week. And that is what still draws me into these (RPG) games. Having the combat be fun to watch and interesting character models are all great eye-candy but it is the story that will keep me involved for the long haul.

I joined my current pen & paper gaming group 31 years ago. The core of the group remains and we have been playing ever since. We often go an entire game session with no combat at all. Just lots of RP with each other and the GM for that night. It’s all about the story and the interaction.

Unfortunately, I moved 10,000 miles away from my pen and paper group, but we were playing for decades as well. 10,000 miles is a bit of a long commute to play a game though.

There are low cost online tools so you can play pen and paper games with your friends no matter how far away they are. TS is also an option – I play a Rifts campaign bi-weekly using TS and the GM making all the rolls. Unlike video games I have never regretted my time spent playing RPG’s.

bloodletting wolf.2837:

Vayne.8563:

LyricDawnhagen.7803:

Thanks for writing that Vayne. I am from the same era. I came into gaming via D&D when I arrived in college. It was the stories and interaction that kept me coming back week after week. And that is what still draws me into these (RPG) games. Having the combat be fun to watch and interesting character models are all great eye-candy but it is the story that will keep me involved for the long haul.

I joined my current pen & paper gaming group 31 years ago. The core of the group remains and we have been playing ever since. We often go an entire game session with no combat at all. Just lots of RP with each other and the GM for that night. It’s all about the story and the interaction.

Unfortunately, I moved 10,000 miles away from my pen and paper group, but we were playing for decades as well. 10,000 miles is a bit of a long commute to play a game though.

There are low cost online tools so you can play pen and paper games with your friends no matter how far away they are. TS is also an option – I play a Rifts campaign bi-weekly using TS and the GM making all the rolls. Unlike video games I have never regretted my time spent playing RPG’s.

There are even some freeware online dice rolling programs out there where everyone logged in to your “room” can see the rolls. Free online whiteboard programs can help too.

Try Roll20. I don’t know if it’s free for the GM but it certainly is for the players. It comes with 5E templates that do a lot of the math for you and offer one-button die rolls for your various skills along with customizable emotes for your spells etc. I’ll be playing another session of it tonight, with a kick-rear GM who has us in an amazing story and gives us plenty of RP time. I know it takes him a while to build the maps and create the monster counters for the combats, but the end result is so worth it.

Even in single player RPGs rewards are “locked” behind specific content. Putting specific rewards behind specific content is how every RPG work, and that’s how MMORPGs work (Because they are RPGs)

Ashen.2907:

In oldschool fantasy pen and paper RPGs, DnD in particular, the most potent rewards were expected by design to be earned in the equivalent of the most difficult raids/dungeons.

That’s because original DnD started less as a real RPG, and more as dungeon-runner hack’n’slash. The more complex it became with the latter editions, the less of that were present, but still it’s one of the most loot-dependant RPGs out there.

Compare that to, for example, Chaosium’s Runequest from that same time, that put much greather emphasis on personal improvement and quests. Look at White Wolf’s Exalted, where the loot is generally just part of your story, and you can quite possibly go the whole campaign using the same gear you started it with. Look back to Chaosium, to Call of Cthulhu, which is completely story-driven and “loot” is generally used only as a story device.
You are using as a standard the worst the RPG has to offer.

maddoctor.2738:

Even in single player RPGs rewards are “locked” behind specific content. Putting specific rewards behind specific content is how every RPG work, and that’s how MMORPGs work (Because they are RPGs)

In pen and paper RPG that content is always tailored for the players. As a good GM, you’d never put a reward one of the players might care about behind a content/quest that player would dislike. And if you found out this was the case mid-adventure, you’d redesign on the fly to avoid that problem.

RPGs are way more than you make them, dungeon hack’n’slash campaigns are practically the lowest, most crude form of it.

If you want role playing games closer to the pen and paper of days passed and with the emphasis on roleplaying you can not do much better than play some of the text based games that are still out there. Some have been around for decades. These have GMS that will moderate unique storylines that do not repeat over and over again.

Now it a hard thing for many people to go from graphics to such types of games but the “Roleplay” with emphasis on role. character and story is much easier to convery is text.

I miss the days of tabletop gaming. I cant imagine devs keeping content constantly fresh like a gm in a good table top game can. I think some games have tried different things in the past, but the bottom line is cost vs reward. So they do what makes money, after all thats how you stay in business. Maybe gw team should release a d20 based set of books.

Astralporing.1957:

Ashen.2907:

In oldschool fantasy pen and paper RPGs, DnD in particular, the most potent rewards were expected by design to be earned in the equivalent of the most difficult raids/dungeons.

That’s because original DnD started less as a real RPG, and more as dungeon-runner hack’n’slash. The more complex it became with the latter editions, the less of that were present, but still it’s one of the most loot-dependant RPGs out there.

Compare that to, for example, Chaosium’s Runequest from that same time, that put much greather emphasis on personal improvement and quests. Look at White Wolf’s Exalted, where the loot is generally just part of your story, and you can quite possibly go the whole campaign using the same gear you started it with. Look back to Chaosium, to Call of Cthulhu, which is completely story-driven and “loot” is generally used only as a story device.
You are using as a standard the worst the RPG has to offer.

The options you present are of limited, if any, relevance because MMOs (generally), even pre HoT GW2, use loot as part of character advancement. This is precisely why I referenced DnD. The comment responded to was about the best gear loot. Such is not applicable in a game where there is no such thing.

Personally I prefer character development, not loot upgrade advancement, in my PnP RPGs. Call of Cthulhu, Hero System (personal favorite), GURPS, Storyboard (an unknown yet really good super simple, extremely versatile system…look it up), Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, and so on are all fun games where the focus is on the character’s abilities not what he took off the body of a foe. But I was responding to a point about where the best gear loot might be found…

I agree with, somewhere along the lines that all content should be rewarding whatever you do, and the rewards shouldnt be locked behind for example raids that not all players can succed at. I dont like raids at all, yet legendary armor items are locked behind them and theres no other way to get it. I miss the living world events because they were very casual and appriciated and respected your time so you werent forced to spend ages to get the item you wanted.

+1 this was a nice post, and I’m glad someone else remembers back when all there was, was pinball, foosball, or just a pool table, and how it all evolved. Do you recall how people back then thought RPG was some kind of cult activity? laughs….

Good times and I also find myself where you are. Games might start off great but for one reason or another they all seem to turn into a cookie cutter of repetition with little spark or magic to immerse oneself into. After so many changes I’m wore out, and tired of complaining about game changes.

Perhaps its just time for me to hang up the mouse and find another hobby.

Oooh I love this thread.
I don’t come from a PnP RPG background, though I played some Stormbringer and Metabarons (and even FFRPG) 10 years ago, but I too like to play MMOs and games generally for their story, and how I can include my character in it, more than the games offer at first sight. And I’m generally not interested in PvP or grind-induced content.
So I add my voice to the choir here, because this isn’t the GW2 I loved anymore.

By the way, thanks Blood Red Arachnid.2493 for bringing back such good memories, PSO was so great! Another thing it did quite well is social interaction. with shortcuts to personalizable speech bubbles and a nice load of emotes, it was really complete, and would easily help add some personality to our avatars

Just to finish, a suggestion for Vayne.8563 : a game series I’d recommend you to try, if you don’t already know them, is Dark Souls, and their cousins Demon’s Souls and Bloodborne, if you own a PS3 or PS4. Because these are games that tell quite a story, though not by usual means (you get it from the world design, the item descriptions, and even the few npcs, but they all leave many things to your own interpretation).
They are mostly solo action rpgs, but with multiplayer functionnalities. Oh, and they offer a nice challenge based on your skills and observation capabilities. ^^

Kamara.4187:

Do you recall how people back then thought RPG was some kind of cult activity? laughs….

I do. To my eternal shame I and my brother were a research source on how D&D worked for the author of Mazes and Monsters. In my defense I was a pre-teen and I thought she was genuinely interested in my hobby, she didn’t say it was for a book about how PnP games drive people suicidally crazy ><

Vayne, I’m with you to a great extent in this, though I do enjoy raids so long as they are with laid back people that don’t go FLAME ON if anyone goofs a little. I like learning them, chewing the glass, having great moments of teamwork. I just see no way for the devs to provide constantly tailored content. My solution in MMO’s has been to RP the heck out of them. I’m not always even in game for the RP, since GW2 has such limited chat log saving (to wit: screenshots, with a chat box that over-scrolls so it’s fiendishly hard to get just the set of lines you want, and then having to upload the screens to share with friends, bah) and sometimes I’m running a few NPC’s for the scene. Yet the world provides a stage and an internal consistency on which we RPers may frame our tales, and GW2 at least does offer occasional world-affecting events that can then ripple into the PC’s lives.

bloodletting wolf.2837:

Vayne.8563:

LyricDawnhagen.7803:

Thanks for writing that Vayne. I am from the same era. I came into gaming via D&D when I arrived in college. It was the stories and interaction that kept me coming back week after week. And that is what still draws me into these (RPG) games. Having the combat be fun to watch and interesting character models are all great eye-candy but it is the story that will keep me involved for the long haul.

I joined my current pen & paper gaming group 31 years ago. The core of the group remains and we have been playing ever since. We often go an entire game session with no combat at all. Just lots of RP with each other and the GM for that night. It’s all about the story and the interaction.

Unfortunately, I moved 10,000 miles away from my pen and paper group, but we were playing for decades as well. 10,000 miles is a bit of a long commute to play a game though.

There are low cost online tools so you can play pen and paper games with your friends no matter how far away they are. TS is also an option – I play a Rifts campaign bi-weekly using TS and the GM making all the rolls. Unlike video games I have never regretted my time spent playing RPG’s.

Yeah but there are very few old school tools that can make the time different convenient for all my friends also.

Kamara.4187:

+1 this was a nice post, and I’m glad someone else remembers back when all there was, was pinball, foosball, or just a pool table, and how it all evolved. Do you recall how people back then thought RPG was some kind of cult activity? laughs….

Good times and I also find myself where you are. Games might start off great but for one reason or another they all seem to turn into a cookie cutter of repetition with little spark or magic to immerse oneself into. After so many changes I’m wore out, and tired of complaining about game changes.

Perhaps its just time for me to hang up the mouse and find another hobby.

Remember the movie Mazes and Monsters? lol That was all about that. I think D&D was actually illegal in Utah for a while.

Fun times.

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

Even in single player RPGs rewards are “locked” behind specific content. Putting specific rewards behind specific content is how every RPG work, and that’s how MMORPGs work (Because they are RPGs)

In pen and paper RPG that content is always tailored for the players. As a good GM, you’d never put a reward one of the players might care about behind a content/quest that player would dislike. And if you found out this was the case mid-adventure, you’d redesign on the fly to avoid that problem.

RPGs are way more than you make them, dungeon hack’n’slash campaigns are practically the lowest, most crude form of it.

Obviously I was talking about video game RPGs, which is what MMORPGs are. GMs can’t exist in video games

Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I agree with Vayne.

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

Even in single player RPGs rewards are “locked” behind specific content. Putting specific rewards behind specific content is how every RPG work, and that’s how MMORPGs work (Because they are RPGs)

In pen and paper RPG that content is always tailored for the players. As a good GM, you’d never put a reward one of the players might care about behind a content/quest that player would dislike. And if you found out this was the case mid-adventure, you’d redesign on the fly to avoid that problem.

RPGs are way more than you make them, dungeon hack’n’slash campaigns are practically the lowest, most crude form of it.

Obviously I was talking about video game RPGs, which is what MMORPGs are. GMs can’t exist in video games

GMs can exist in online games at least, because they do, but in essence you are right. However, I used to have a conversation with new GMs back in the day when I was considered sort of a well known GM back in high school. What I said back then and maintain to this day is the the success of the game will be based on the GM’s ability to tailor the content to the group.

That means that if you make it too hard so no one will succeed, you won’t be a popular GM. If you make it so easy that it’s a cake walk and there’s no chance of not succeeding your players will get bored.

There’s always a middle ground. The problem is, as you’ve pointed out, there is no GM here, but the devs have to work with the same guildlines reguardless

If the game is too easy people get bored and if 70% of the game can’t or won’t (it really doesn’t matter) participate in an area of the game where they give exclusive rewards, then the devs have to prepare for backlash.

This isn’t about being fair. It has nothing to do with fairness. Everyone paid for the core game and the core game didn’t have raids, and futhermore had nothing remotely like them. We all bought the expansion based on what he knew from the core game. Where the game has significantly diverged for that the company has paid the price in the good will of veteran players.

Basically the happier you were with the game before the expansion the less likely you are to forgive the changes that made the game less enjoyable for you.

Now, having hit the level cap for achievement points and having nothing but long term goals left, I’ve hit the point of diminishing returns. I don’t think I should be forced to play content I don’t enjoy and I don’t think giving players like me nothing to work towards is really the best alternative to keep us playing.

You can say it’s not fair if you like but that doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things. If I feel disenfranchised I’m going to feel that way, fair or not.

Tailoring a game to 4-5 people is really easy, in an MMORPG you have loads of players so what do you do? Tailor it to some unofficial “majority”? Anything that isn’t doable or desirable by that “majority” should be removed or tweaked so they can do it?

If I feel disenfranchised I’m going to feel that way, fair or not.

And anyone who bought the game for the instanced based content has been disenfranchised for years. When was the last dungeon added to the game?

Honestly, I wish they would add more skills to the game (that would be more unique, not copies with a slight variation like in GW1).

I want to customize the my weapon attacks, different shouts, signets, stances, cantrips, traps, etc. I am even at the point that yes, I want race abilities to be decent because it at least lets me feel more like that race when playing.

And I know I know. It takes time and money to make these things work with coding and getting the animations correct.

But I feel the major reason is pvp and esports. And yeah, balance is important, but everything is so streamlined and simplified its BORING.

As for RP itself and options, I know its stupid but…its 2016 and we still can’t sit in a chair…

For my DnD days, I was lucky to have some open minded DMs that would let me play some of the more benign monster races, my favorite being the kobold. Sure, they had weaknesses to overcome, but the fun came where it was “what was I gonna make him do?”

Frenzied berserker kobold? Hilarious to see this little thing foaming at the mouth and taking of an opponents leg with a single hit, only to lose his weapon the next round, so just grabbed the leg and used that.

Kobold Sorcerer who’s dream was to become a real dragon? Poor guy had to kept yelling at people he was a real dragon and get into shouting matches….

Thief that was useless in combat, yet great with almost any skill? Pretty much just ran around the battlefield screaming his head off, yet somehow still charmed the ladies…

Nowadays, I get my customizing itch from Path of Exile and their system. Unless I am making a character to go max map diving, then i can basically build my character however I want and test its limits. If it dies a lot, then its not a good build, and I have to think of another.

Not to say that isn’t a bad thing. If the game stays at one difficulty, and the build fails, its the build, not the game’s fault. Though, the other side is bad too, where if only one or two builds work, then something needs looked at. There needs to be a healthy number compared to what is available.

And again, I’m not getting this with GW2. I do believe, there has been too much homogenization now between the classes.

maddoctor.2738:

Tailoring a game to 4-5 people is really easy, in an MMORPG you have loads of players so what do you do? Tailor it to some unofficial “majority”? Anything that isn’t doable or desirable by that “majority” should be removed or tweaked so they can do it?

If I feel disenfranchised I’m going to feel that way, fair or not.

And anyone who bought the game for the instanced based content has been disenfranchised for years. When was the last dungeon added to the game?

Anyone who bought the game for the instanced content paid very little attention to the advertisements prior to the game’s launch. The words living breathing world were mentioned over and over again. What part of that makes you think instanced content.

Yes there was a page devoted to dungeons but most of the rhetoric was about dynamic events and living breathing worlds. I knew it was the focus long before the game launched.

They also said there was no dedicated healer class, which changed a bit with raids, considering the ranger’s elite spec is a healing spec and if you don’t want to heal, well too bad.

The game was never sold to be focused on instances. Where as Anet did say repeatedly that the game centers on dynamic events.

As for tailoring a game to 4-5 people of course that’s impossible. But then, putting in something for say 20% of the people and locking rewards behind it isn’t exactly going to make you a hero either.

Raids with multiple difficulties but must lower rewards for the lower ones and special skins for the higher ones would have solved the problem.

I mean Guild Wars 1 had a normal mode and a hard mode for every dungeon, so we know this company can do that.

The question is why they decided not to do that.

If I recall the term “living breathing world” appeared later in the game’s lifetime and not at release, or even during the first couple of months. The “Living World” came later on and part of the game that was sold included instanced content. All the early releases included instanced content, Ascend to Madness, Trix’s mini-dungeon etc It’s not like they hated instanced content

Druid is an excellent DPS and offensive support option, enhancing the damage of the entire group with multiple buffs. They have both power and condition damage builds that have nothing to do with healing.

Hard mode option was added much later in GW1 lifetime, at that point it was much needed to keep the older content relevant.

We don’t even have ONE complete Raid, we don’t know what exactly will be needed to craft the complete Legendary armor, and yet people are asking for a reduced difficulty setting already.

I pretty much come from the same background Vayne describes for himself. I played pinball when pinball machines still had black on white tumbling plates to keep score and no fixed zero at the end of your score. I was there when the first kittentail-table pong games arrived. Space Invaders, a few years later. I played and still play table top RPGs. Anyway, not important.

I’ve been very critical about HoT on here. Very. I’m not going to be arguing about the raid thing, because I don’t care about raids. Easy mode? Don’t care, I won’t play it unless they make it single player or fractal-like and that won’t happen. I just can’t be bothered to find 9 other players.

So what’s the point of this post? I don’t know… Maybe I can add that HoT wasn’t what I wanted out of a GW2 expansion. Not by a long shot.

maddoctor.2738:

If I recall the term “living breathing world” appeared later in the game’s lifetime and not at release, or even during the first couple of months. The “Living World” came later on and part of the game that was sold included instanced content. All the early releases included instanced content, Ascend to Madness, Trix’s mini-dungeon etc It’s not like they hated instanced content

Druid is an excellent DPS and offensive support option, enhancing the damage of the entire group with multiple buffs. They have both power and condition damage builds that have nothing to do with healing.

Hard mode option was added much later in GW1 lifetime, at that point it was much needed to keep the older content relevant.

We don’t even have ONE complete Raid, we don’t know what exactly will be needed to craft the complete Legendary armor, and yet people are asking for a reduced difficulty setting already.

They mentioned that the game would feature a living, breathing world before launch.

August 9th, 2011

My name is Angel Leigh McCoy, and I’m one of several writers on the Guild Wars 2 design team. We’ve been molding Tyria into a living, breathing world, and I’m here to share some audio clips of in-game dialogue and give you some insight into the sylvari, Tyria’s newest race.

As to raids and reduced difficulty setting. The people who are asking for that paid just as much money as you did and they have as much right to ask for what they want as you do to ask for what you want. At that point it’s up to ANet to decide which side to do content for but they need to be able to hear what everyone wants, not just the people who want raids for raiders.

Vayne.8563:

There are a number of different ways to play an MMO.

Yes there are.

But one thing, sadly, that all MMOs have in common is repetition (some call it farming, some call it grinding, some call it progression) of content.

Vayne.8563:

Actually single player games are more suited to my personal taste than MMOs. Because when we got together as a group to RP, with a real life GM, we didn’t play for dice rolls, or trying to the same D&D module over and over. In fact, we didn’t have modules at all. We had a dungeon master who created a world/story that we moved through. It was much more like a single player game, but with friends.
(…)
Here we are, now, 40 years later, and I still want to capture that experience, and for a long time, that’s precisely the experience Guild Wars 2 delivered for me. A living, breathing world I could move through, with friends, exploring, hanging out, having a great time.

Never in all my years of Rping did we fight the same battle over and over again until we beat the boss. That simply wasn’t the game. I guess I’ve sort of thought of MMORPGs as a massively multi player RPG, rather than a massive multiplayer war game (PVP), or a massively multiplayer dungeon crawl, because my D&D group wasn’t really about dungeon crawls. Dungeons were never an end in themselves. Dungeons were a way of telling a story that furthered the campaign we were playing. The Fellowship of the Ring didn’t repeatedly try to get through Moria until they made it. They got through Moria as part of the story. This is why I come to MMOs. I want to play through a story with my friends.

As such, it’s less about putting in effort to beat a single boss over and over and more about enjoying a living breathing world, as much as that’s possible in a computer game.

When you had, back in the days, our “own” GM for your group he had the tools and created the world/content for you, in “real time”, or at least before every play of your group.

That luxury, I believe, is not possible with a MMORPG / computer game, because making content for a MMORPG is a very costly and time consuming task.

Thats why PvP is so fascinating for a game company, because the game developer just has to provide a “playing field” and then the players can play with/against themselves
and generate their “own content”, including drama and so on.

So for players that enjoy a “living breathing (open) world” and that want to “progress through a story” and that do not want to repeat the same content over and over there was a lot when GW2 started but after that, it was most of the time: “waiting for the next (small) content update and then play a little”.

I think we are coming to a sad realization.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

They mentioned that the game would feature a living, breathing world before launch.

August 9th, 2011

My name is Angel Leigh McCoy, and I’m one of several writers on the Guild Wars 2 design team. We’ve been molding Tyria into a living, breathing world, and I’m here to share some audio clips of in-game dialogue and give you some insight into the sylvari, Tyria’s newest race.

I guess I should’ve said “they wouldn’t only deal with a living/breathing world”, since a lot of the earlier releases had a dungeon somewhere. Better now?

Zok.4956:

Vayne.8563:

There are a number of different ways to play an MMO.

Yes there are.

But one thing, sadly, that all MMOs have in common is repetition (some call it farming, some call it grinding, some call it progression) of content.

Vayne.8563:

Actually single player games are more suited to my personal taste than MMOs. Because when we got together as a group to RP, with a real life GM, we didn’t play for dice rolls, or trying to the same D&D module over and over. In fact, we didn’t have modules at all. We had a dungeon master who created a world/story that we moved through. It was much more like a single player game, but with friends.
(…)
Here we are, now, 40 years later, and I still want to capture that experience, and for a long time, that’s precisely the experience Guild Wars 2 delivered for me. A living, breathing world I could move through, with friends, exploring, hanging out, having a great time.

Never in all my years of Rping did we fight the same battle over and over again until we beat the boss. That simply wasn’t the game. I guess I’ve sort of thought of MMORPGs as a massively multi player RPG, rather than a massive multiplayer war game (PVP), or a massively multiplayer dungeon crawl, because my D&D group wasn’t really about dungeon crawls. Dungeons were never an end in themselves. Dungeons were a way of telling a story that furthered the campaign we were playing. The Fellowship of the Ring didn’t repeatedly try to get through Moria until they made it. They got through Moria as part of the story. This is why I come to MMOs. I want to play through a story with my friends.

As such, it’s less about putting in effort to beat a single boss over and over and more about enjoying a living breathing world, as much as that’s possible in a computer game.

When you had, back in the days, our “own” GM for your group he had the tools and created the world/content for you, in “real time”, or at least before every play of your group.

That luxury, I believe, is not possible with a MMORPG / computer game, because making content for a MMORPG is a very costly and time consuming task.

Thats why PvP is so fascinating for a game company, because the game developer just has to provide a “playing field” and then the players can play with/against themselves
and generate their “own content”, including drama and so on.

So for players that enjoy a “living breathing (open) world” and that want to “progress through a story” and that do not want to repeat the same content over and over there was a lot when GW2 started but after that, it was most of the time: “waiting for the next (small) content update and then play a little”.

I think we are coming to a sad realization.

I agree there is the repetition factor to mmos, but I’ve found that if classes are good and varied then content can be made more enjoyable.

A couple of people besides myself mentioned city of heroes, and in that game I had like 22 (or something) different characters to play…

Sure in GW2 we have some variety, but there is very little variation compared. GW1 was apparently much better when it came to classes so I don’t know why anet would intentionally drop the ball in this area.

This thread confuses me.

So what is the issue here? The suggestion?

From what I can figure, you’ve had a past experience with some fashion of RPGs and you want an MMO to recapture that?

To me, my most interesting and influential RPG experiences were via online thread/skype. The story was partly within each character and the reward was revealing more about characters and how they fit in the world. No armor, trinkets, baubles, etc (although if you wanted them for your character you could certainly seek them). Could there be another online game that accomplishes the same? Maybe…only 1 I can think of off the top of my head, but even then, it’s only approaching similarity. It won’t ever reach those thread/skype sessions.

Taking what games like GW2 are, they’re just experiences. Different ones. I never seen the point of affording effort to discussing what something isn’t. Save the effort discussing what something could be…or just creating that ‘could be’ outcome yourself…but then I consider myself a creator. I think I enjoy creating a ‘thing’ more than I like getting in that ‘thing’ and test driving it.

If everyone was given the best stuff Just for participating there would be no progression, nothing to work for and would be very boring for the majority. Once you finish the story, then what?? The game is over?? Trying to get your niche experience from a game not designed for it is kind of crazy Tbh.

Vayne.8563:

Basically the happier you were with the game before the expansion the less likely you are to forgive the changes that made the game less enjoyable for you.

Thank you, for your post Vayne. This sentence particularly nailed it for me. When I came to GW2 three years ago after nearly 7 years of WoW-raidhealing it was like a breath of fresh air.

I delved into the personal story, did hearts to understand more about this world, participated in events if I wanted a bit of action. I still love to watch cut scenes in dungeons and drove my comrades crazy with my discussions about this or that lore twist and turn. I even liked LS 1 and 2 and had a lump in my throat when I experienced a certain story decision in HOT. Stories and background, this keeps me going, this entices me, raises my curiosity.

When anet announced they would start an era of raids, my heart sank and a lot of bad memories (WoW) cropped up. But… well, I guess, some love this turn

I see a game as an offer, and I am the one deciding: will I take this offer or not. Pve is my way, so it was logical to not accept WvW or Pvp. It’s ok, if I pay the price for this = no specific loot. It’s not ok for me that I can’t experience the lore behind raids though.

Yes, I was happy in the pre-HOT era, now I am not. After finishing what I wanted to in HOT, I turned my back to the Magus Falls and am currently enjoying the personal story variations on a race I had neglected so far: Charr.

i kinda see reduced difficulty Raids ending up like story mode dungeons xD (unless they gave the same rewards this actually worked well in GW1. hardmode just gave you alot higher % chance at the rewards)

i dont really play games with rewards in mind. not much has actually changed for me
i think many missed how awsome the GW2 world was rushing to 80 (my whole guild mentality at lunch was gogogo move move move get to 80!) i seen this same thinking from people out in the open world at the time also.
im honestly not surprised that we are where we are now.
i can see why people would become irritated at Endgame=The Game (i dont want that myself and not why i play GW2)

/IMO a world3 SAB should have came with Raids as a alt thing to do! /or even world2 again!

I think part of the issue is the change of direction ANET made when they decided to go the expansion route.

I saw this mentioned in another thread, but thought it fit well in this discussion instead – what if, instead of selling us expansions, ANET sold season passes instead – that gave you access to everything developed in the next 18 months (that followed a specific story arc), freeing up all of their developers (and giving them the resources needed) to continue fleshing out the living world rather than the content drop → content drought → content drop → content drought – ad infinitum we are seeing now?

I think it would be a much much better method than what we are seeing now.