Guild Wars 2

ArenaNet mentioned over and over how they were proud about their Dynamic Event system, and how it would allow players to experience fun and interesting content. Then, the game was released, and what did players do?

Dynamic events? Well…

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We are listening. Not only to what you’re saying but also to what you’re not. The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative.

…Nah. People went to farm. Today, the most popular activities in the game appear to be farming Champions for their chest, farming World Bosses for their chest, farming dailies, and farming Fractals (somewhat ironically, notice how none of those things were in the game by release).

ArenaNet wanted to make Guild Wars 2 an e-sport. However, sPvP has never been that popular. And despite all its flaws, it appears a large number of players has not even tried sPvP at all.

ArenaNet described WvW as something that would allow squad-based tactical play, with multiple teams tagging multiple objectives at once. However, most of the time players find it easier to just zerg around the maps.

ArenaNet mentioned how they wanted to have a fun game, instead of one focused on grind. Yet, today a player here (I won’t mention his name) posted this:

That’s the difference. I play for shinies. Fun may be a factor but only when I get shinies as a reward. Fun is a by product. A side effect. It’s never the prime motivation. At least for me.

I’m like a donkey. I need a carrot in front of me to make me do anything.

ArenaNet said they wanted to make a game for people who don’t like MMOs. Considering all of the above, looks like Guild Wars 2 has been filled with players of classic MMORPGs.

Imagine ArenaNet were chefs. They will open a new restaurant, based on experimental cuisine, bringing exotic ingredients from all around the world to cook unique and hand-crafted recipes. Oh, and they will include a small menu for kids, with hambuger and fries. When the opening day comes, their restaurant is a success, it’s filled with people… But everyone is ordering hamburgers and fries. All the experimental recipes and unique ingredients are left to rot in the kitchen, because no customer is asking for any of those.

I wonder, is ArenaNet disappointed by the customers they got?

Well, it’s not really the customers fault if they don’t implement functions to promote what they want their game to play. For example, WvW, there can be SO many additional changes to the commander tag function which could greatly improve the tactical variety. For example, different tag colours, commanders allowed to mark certain spots, so many excellent suggestions in the suggestion box. What do we get instead? buggy living stories.

The game at the moment is far from the most grindy but it also isn’t considered NOT grindy. Just think about the current living story, why is there tickets which are soulbound, waypoints which cost money, and require us to either farm for money to buy the sprocks to convert to tickets or grind for them with the train. If anet truly didn’t want a grindy game, they could have made any of these changes, remove tickets, make it cost 1s per entry instead of farming tickets, put a cooldown on how fast you can reenter a arena. So many other options than making us farm tickets to do an arena.

As for the events, I don’t believe a lack of positive negative feedback is bad. When you lack in feedback, it means that people didn’t hate it. That is already excellent feedback already, because it means you did something right, people enjoyed the implementation and are enjoying the game. So it’s really the amount of negative feedback you should be looking at and not the positive feedback since we all know, people will complain about bad things but not always commend good things i.e. silence is good.

I think anet is taking the cheap way out by using living story to force/attract players to play their content instead of focusing on perfecting their core elements of the game.

You can’t blame people playing the game for how they play. They will play the way you reward them to play. The reason they zerg instead of perform team tactics is because due to design, it is -more effective- to zerg than to perform team tactics. It is more effective because unlike real combat or high end structured PvP, you do not have perfect command line authority over your subordinates and it is impossible, even properly coordinated, for a 20 person group to overcome a 50 or 80 person group.

People were not as enthralled by the events because the events gave them nothing. Movies are an experience. The first time you complete an event it’s like a short story movie. Once you’ve done it once, twice, maybe three times, the excitement of the experience is gone and all that remains is the question of whether or not it is rewarding.

This is why you will never, never outpace the player with content. It can’t be done. People made fun of Guild Wars 1 (or just lovingly poked at it) calling it Build Wars. That’s kind of the point though, they hit on a solution to the content chase. You put it in the build. Like Magic the Gathering or other card games. Your content is the build variety you can introduce by bringing in new skills. All your content, far more expensive to build than new abilities, is then fresh again. You have a new way to conquer it.

Players are not to blame for what they do, what they do is something you can know very easily in advance. The design is to blame if its not reaching its goals. Events would be wildly popular if they added stacks of magic find stacks for their completion, no matter where they are, you would have a group chasing them down before doing their champ runs. WvW would be more tactical if there were friendly fire damage for players not inside a party together (increase party sizes in WvW to compensate). Design can solve these things, players will be who they are.

Lafiel.9372:

As for the events, I don’t believe a lack of positive negative feedback is bad.

Keep in mind that the feedback thing is what they told us. But ArenaNet knows how many players do each kind of content. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have learned that no one is doing the events, excluding those that are farmed.

Erasculio.2914:

Lafiel.9372:

As for the events, I don’t believe a lack of positive negative feedback is bad.

Keep in mind that the feedback thing is what they told us. But ArenaNet knows how many players do each kind of content. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have learned that no one is doing the events, excluding those that are farmed.

Well that and maybe some small guilds helping a guildmate level up a character in the starter area by accompanying them as they run about enjoying the place. Not sure if that’s what I’ve been observing every now and again, but I like to think so.

I think back to this a lot too. And I also find myself playing primarily towards where things are rewarded rather than things that would in theory be more ‘fun’.

And I think this has, in part, largely to do with the combat system. After going through 80 levels of the combat system, it starts to get bland for me — sure, it is better than other MMO’s because of being able to be mobile and dodge, but other than that it doesn’t keep my interest.

I always wish for more action-oriented combat. I wish they would have made a truly action-based system, where you aim with a crosshair and have to actually aim with your skills. That would be way more fun to me, and would have truly broken the typical mmo mold. The coding for this seems to already be in place as if you aim to a certain area with nothing targeted, your character will shoot in that direction.

But instead they played it safe by design and stuck with the simple and bland ‘click to target’ system we have currently.

Erasculio.2914:

ArenaNet mentioned over and over how they were proud about their Dynamic Event system, and how it would allow players to experience fun and interesting content. Then, the game was released, and what did players do?

Dynamic events? Well…

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We are listening. Not only to what you’re saying but also to what you’re not. The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative.

…Nah. People went to farm. Today, the most popular activities in the game appear to be farming Champions for their chest, farming World Bosses for their chest, farming dailies, and farming Fractals (somewhat ironically, notice how none of those things were in the game by release).

As for this, well, at that point the game was pretty much still shiny and new. I would suspect many people had not yet, at that time, completed everything that had been in the game at launch (I most certainly had not) and might not have recognized the new DEs as ‘new’ DEs. Heck, I ran across one yesterday in Metrica Province I’d never seen before (and also found diving goggles there I’d never seen).

By the way, was the thing with the rabbits in the watermelon patch in Queensdale one of the 40 or so events he mentioned? I remember wondering, the first time I saw that one way back when, if it was new or I’d just never caught it before…

Hold up.

That’s the lesson they got from the beginning chapters of Frost and Flame? That we aren’t interested in new dynamic events? I loved the Dynamic Events, so did everyone else I’ve spoken to- what we hated was the stupid ‘Hit 40 signposts’ achievements.

And while the Dynamic events were effective they were not nearly enough of a feature to keep people interested. I leveled alts specificifically through these areas as they felt new and jam-packed and I knew that other players would also be there. But the majority of the time with the update was doing busy-work.

New dynamic events give a new view to the world, and concentrate players running alts, they are not the problem. If ANet look at this and take that as their take-away then they have no idea what really happened. No more hit 100 pinyatas, no more signposts, no more 200 fireworks- that’s the horrible thing that people keep mocking GW2 with after they quit- not “they added new dynamic events, how lame”.

As to WvW, as others have said, every single mechanic is WvW encourages zerg play.

*The ability to res from hard downed (meaning the biggest zerg will never truly die as long as they hold their current position),

*The lack of different commander colors (making on-the-fly coordination between different commanders impractical),

*The same rewards despite number of players (making the most effecient stratagy to run from place to place flipping objectives),

*The lack of objective waypoints (meaning the only real way to defend is for a zerg ball out in the field to rush past attackers and then man siege),

*And just about every other mechanic, in that there is no single mechanic in WvW that rewards, or facilitates small group play.

You think ANet are disappointed that players don’t play inefficiently? That they don’t play in a way not encouraged by the mechanics they put in to place? I suppose they might be, but that just speaks to a level of complete misunderstanding of the effect their design choices have on player behavior.

Very well said.

To be honest the whole concept for this game is getting narrowed by the players most of all. It’s all about farming, looting, chests and farming… it’s not about venturing and traveling where you enjoy the atmosphere and events along the way anymore.

Make this an example which is so obvious, one big group event is done and there you go " Another one is up, lets go" and everyone’s gone as if there are no more to do aside of hunting chests, loots, etc. Hence, repeat and repeat…waypoint and waypoint.

So again what’s the purpose of playing of like this? I don’t blame but it’s just not fun anymore and basically it’s so narrowed minded to have this kind of gameplay. One of the reason is to get what they want and of course that’s fine but in the end it will be the same narrowed gameplay you’re targeting at which is “Grinding”. Frankly speaking this kind of mindset is even worst than grinding…it’s just greedy and rotten.

Overall, it’s the new players that are going to get encouraged by doing this so in the end it’s gonna be the same or even just worse in terms of playing this game as it should be as Arenanet intended.

Peace out.

Erasculio.2914:

Keep in mind that the feedback thing is what they told us. But ArenaNet knows how many players do each kind of content. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have learned that no one is doing the events, excluding those that are farmed.

If they really base most of their decisions on such metrics they are doing a horrible job as game developers. Considering the state the game is in i m not really surprised. Or maybe NC really tightened the grip on them.

What i can say for sure is that i am disappointed by them. They took a vision of a great game and then 2 months after launch turned it into just another ordinary, average MMO. If they at least were working on an expansion i might be fine with it but apparently that isnt so. Another year of filler content, time gating and similar pathetic typical MMO techniques simply wont do.

doesn’t this shows something? PEOPLE WANT TO FARM and anet doesn’t allow it.

Thanks for this thread, it was a great read. I completely agree with you. Unlike many others, I actually really enjoy the dynamic events and all the content that’s “for fun” and not “for shinies”. I play this game for enjoyment, not for a virtual reward. I’m looking for an immersive world with a rich storyline. Guild Wars 2 could have done this much better, but it’s definitely one of the best MMOs out there IMO.

edit: the problem, imo, is that other mmos have conditioned players to look for a grind. When players hear the term “MMO” many generalise narrowly.

ArenaNet, in spite of their grand vision of creating what they hoped would be the greatest MMORPG ever created, did not take human nature into account. People will look for the most efficient ways of getting what they want, which by the way isn’t going out and seeing the world. They’re all looking for rewards. They’re looking for the materialist kind in fact. One of the most common complaints is that doing a piece of content yields poor rewards and isn’t worth the effort. Because for them, the content itself and the sense of accomplishment from completing it isn’t the real reward. People have lost sight of what rewarding meant in terms of actually playing the game.

I’m a long-time console gamer. This is the first computer game I’ve purchased in 5+ years, maybe longer.

I enjoy playing a variety of the content in the game, although I will admit I don’t regularly cycle around lower levels to do Hearts and I don’t PvP. One thing I will do is a couple of the meta-events for the chests, but this isn’t time consuming so I wouldn’t say its the bulk of my time in-game, not by a long-shot.

In WvW I don’t typically run in a giant zerg, although I will at times and I think that overpowering your enemy is a great tactic in warfare. However, you will find that even when there are zergs there are also disruption groups and other smaller groups attacking other targets. So I think the OP may have simplified this point.

So did ANet create a game that’s different than other MMOs and that attracts nontraditional MMO players? At least in my case the answer is a resounding YES. My PS3, and the 15+ games I own for it, has been collecting dust now since I purchased GW2.

Do I farm, grind, and run WvW karma-trains? Absolutely not. While there may be times when I go for easy-reward content, I’m still focused on enjoying playing the game.

I would have thought it’s the other way around, Players disappointed with Arenanet personally..

Just have to enter the game, go to any Lions Arch and ask what people think of Arenanet to see its the other way round these days.

Not Hyperbole login and ask to see what people think.

I remember seeing a qoute by Ghostcrawler (one of WoW’s lead devs) when asked what was the biggest suprise he has had in developing MMOs.

He said that what suprised him is players choose efficency over fun. They would, by choice, doing something boring but more rewarding than something entertianing but less rewarding.

Its players that are disappointed by ArenaNet

I think this is a miscatagorization so I disagree with the premise. Lots of good thoughts and suggestions here, nonetheless.

Anet are the one to blame, too. They killed CS farming in the first time with their 25 minutes+ waiting time between events.

This all started back in November 2012 when ANet decided to abandon its vision and cater to a small group of whiners on the forums.

Fractals and Ascended gear brought this crowd of players here, now they’re here to stay.

I think its a bit of both.

Anet was hoping for players to play the game and do things in game simply because they are “fun,” regardless of rewards. This mentality can be seen in all aspects of the game, PvE, WvW and sPvP. Unfortunately (perhaps other than sPvP,) we have seen that this is a very flawed concept, and it has turned out that players enjoy getting rewards as well. This, coupled with the absolute failure of the game when it comes to general PvE mechanics makes the game neither “fun,” nor “rewarding,” at all.

All in all, I do believe that the game requires a complete balance overhaul. Not so much class balance, but more regarding infrastructure and mechanics. Rewards and balance for dynamic events need to be re-calculated and redone. Some “core” PvE game mechanics and designs need to be thrown out the window (Defiant) etc. And get rid of shared loot/rewards. Honestly this is the single biggest reason why the game’s PvE is stale. This in and of itself is the reason why zerging even occurs, and zerging simply trivializes anything and everything that can be done in PvE. Remove it.

I do think that with some of the newer PvE things, specifically Liadri, that Anet is finally getting the picture. IMO, all bosses in this game should be similar to Liadri in terms of “difficulty.” From the Shatterer, to the wurm in Twilight Arbor.

Peetee.9406:

This all started back in November 2012 when ANet decided to abandon its vision and cater to a small group of whiners on the forums.

Fractals and Ascended gear brought this crowd of players here, now they’re here to stay.

This crowd was here to begin with. The difference is the novelty of the game wore off. They all got their level 80s. Then they all got their exotic gear. The crafters completed their crafting of all professions to 400.

Now. They all have other goals. All these things cost in game coin to get. They are also designed to be long term. Obtained while playing though the game. But they want them now. So they do what is most efficient. Farm. They were not getting the drops that got them what they wanted fast enough so they complained about bad drops.

Now ArenaNet is trying to cater to two types. Those that wanted the vision that ArenaNet had. Wants to see the beauty in the world wants to play the events and live the story. And those that want a game that will help them achieve goals.

There’s a limit to what a game designer can impose, especially in mmorpgs. And that is the beautiful thing about mmorpgs, compared to single player or team games – there is always some kind of uncontrollable emergent quality that is brought about by the gaming population as a whole, that no one man or one body can dictate, even the developers. Simply, you can’t completely force the gameplay according to the design intent, however noble they are.

That is why the best approach in terms of design is always to just give players options. And then let the players decide. It doesn’t mean that they should take away or disregard completely those things that most players don’t play, they are still options to some players after all. Like PvP, even if the majority doesn’t play PvP, there are still players who mainly play PvP.

In this sense, saying things like “ANet wanted….” doesn’t really work. It’s not their role to dictate the gameplay beyond a certain extent.

Lutinz.6915:

I remember seeing a qoute by Ghostcrawler (one of WoW’s lead devs) when asked what was the biggest suprise he has had in developing MMOs.

He said that what suprised him is players choose efficency over fun.

Maybe that’s because most developers idea of what constitutes fun is somewhat different to most players. I can’t speak for other players, of course, but I find nothing remotely wonderful about being CC’d to death, having to fight the same mobs over and over due to insane respawn rates, being one-shotted by massive bags of hitpoints that need a thousand hits to take down, etc.

Point here is Anet promised to make a game they never delivered. They promise something new, creative, different and blablabla. They delivered a generic MMO.

toafarmer.8401:

Point here is Anet promised to make a game they never delivered. They promise something new, creative, different and blablabla. They delivered a generic MMO.

This is as much I think player overexpectation as anything else. I mean pretty much every MMO Ive ever seen launched has had people say the exact same thing about it. All the ‘GREAT MMOS’ that come out always seem to fall short of many peoples expectations and lead to them talking about how said MMO will fail the moment the next ‘GREAT MMO’ comes out. Every single MMO Ive seen released in the last 5 years that Ive followed.

Currently Wildstar, Elder Scrolls Online and, particularly recently, EQNext are getting that treatement. Almost without fail I can be certain that people will be accusing them of being boring, stupid and generic within a year of their release.

I think GW2 has done pretty well for itself. Then again I generally dont expect to much from a game before I play it. Its certianly has a different feel to most of the other MMOs Ive played.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Its players that are disappointed by ArenaNet

^This.

I go where the difficulty is. Lots of people in the dungeon forums went there too.
And not long after release, no one but Hrouda was listening to them until he was moved out of that department as well. So this is really a chicken and the egg of “Who gave up on who”…

And now look what they’ve done… they’ve completely RUINED ORR. Seriously, go fight some of the more broken D.E.‘s in orr with a 12+ man group. Theres’ some Rehash Champion corruptor that’s like Kohler on 9000+ supersaiyancrack. He’ll AOE-pull everyone at BEYOND longbow range and then insta-kill them while they’re getting back up. And yes he spawns on an Escort where when the NPC’s die, it FAILS. It’s almost impossible to fight him much less beat him before all the NPC’s insta-die.

Then there’s a bunch of other ridiculous crap like Subjugators and PlagueBearers on the final Balthazaar push dropping massive AOE wells all over the place like they have no Cooldown on them and they last way longer than 10 seconds.

Oh and Jester Champions spawning on other Escorts too. It’s like these changes were made out of spite which makes even less sense since barely anyone was even doing the DE’s anymore in Orr. And now there’s even fewer people willing to put up with all that crap above. I still try, b/c that’s where the difficulty still is. But I’m sure everyone else who’s seen this stuff in action lately is scratching their heads wondering why Anet suddenly HATES them so much :p

They’re some of my favourite events, just because I don’t run them frequently or make forums praising them, doesn’t mean I didn’t like them. I think that’s a pretty poor response.

Risingashes.8694:

Hold up.

That’s the lesson they got from the beginning chapters of Frost and Flame? That we aren’t interested in new dynamic events? I loved the Dynamic Events, so did everyone else I’ve spoken to- what we hated was the stupid ‘Hit 40 signposts’ achievements.

You misread, I think, they meant the first content update which was around Halloween last year or so? Wasn’t it the one that added the “mini dungeons” which were fun for me to poke at but unfortunately nobody else was?

As for me, I don’t hate those stupid “Repeat until ding” achivements, but I don’t really think of them either . . . nor did I actively pay attention to the number until I was close to earning it. I mostly just hung around in the area and did things, gathered lower-level materials to feed to my Crafting practice, and had a blast finding “Snow/Dirt-covered objects” for folks.

Those achievements / content were much appreciated by me, as was the Whispers Secret Drops. Those were fun to read.

Any good company should do some marketing research to get a good understanding of their customers before they create their products. In the example of the Anet Chefs (OP’s scenario) and their failed restaurant offering exotic dishes, here’s where they made their mistake. Before deciding what dishes should be served, they should have done their homework to find out what types of foods people in their community enjoyed the most. Then they would have known that exotic dishes would not be successful in that particular community.

If a company wants to be successful, then it is up to them to do their research and offer a product that will sell. You can’t make a product and then complain about the customers if people don’t want to buy or use a product that doesn’t fit their needs.

So no I don’t think Anet is disappointed in the players. If people aren’t doing the events as Anet intended, then that’s feedback that they can use to improve the game.

I think this is more an example of Anet trying to find what players want but their dynamic event system isn’t exactly impacting on the player base. Everything we do is reset within the hour of doing it so nothing we do in a dynamic event feels like it has an impact on the world. Thus it wouldn’t matter how many dynamic events they added players wouldn’t notice because sooner or later that event is gonna repeat and all the work they did will be gone so the next group of players can do the event. Players don’t think about the impact they are making because their is none thus they don’t think about the dynamic event they are doing because it’s just another dynamic event to them.

Not exactly bad just shows that their events aren’t actually fully dynamic more quests on loop. If they want to make it so people have interest in dynamic events they need to allow them to go a little crazy sometimes. Allow entire zones to be taken and kept by enemies forcing players to get involved if they want their zones back to normal. Allow enemies and allies to fortify these bases they take and over time the longer they keep them the harder they are to retake or to be captured. You could then make it so the more fortified a base is the stronger the army is that attacks it. So players actually want to fortify and protect these bases so that more champions spawn across the map giving them more loot. If they lose a zone to they will still want to take it because chaining all the dynamic events together will net them some nice gold/karma and some champion spawns.

The living story is how Anet is impacting their world but their isn’t a lot of tools in game for the players to do the same while Anet is off working on updates. So working on dynamic events this way or in some form like this would allow more impact on the world by the players. It would definitely take a good amount of time to pull off but It wouldn’t be impossible and they could start out slow by adding to the current meta’s/dynamic events involving the major enemy factions of the game(son’s of svanir, centaurs, nightmare court, etc)seeing if players enjoy the impact and extra rewards for sticking around and fortifying or taking back an outpost. Adding choice on how players can go about a dynamic event not in how they perform it but how the outcome turns out(like buring down/seiging a base destroying all the buildings/walls/supplies making it worthless so humans don’t capture it, or going in and killing all centaurs causing a champion or two to spawn giving a better reward and a new base to help fortify)

Emmet.2943:

I think this is more an example of Anet trying to find what players want but their dynamic event system isn’t exactly impacting on the player base. Everything we do is reset within the hour of doing it so nothing we do in a dynamic event feels like it has an impact on the world. Thus it wouldn’t matter how many dynamic events they added players wouldn’t notice because sooner or later that event is gonna repeat and all the work they did will be gone so the next group of players can do the event. Players don’t think about the impact they are making because their is none thus they don’t think about the dynamic event they are doing because it’s just another dynamic event to them.

I think it’s more like players in general would lean towards doing what is easiest while at the same time yields the most profit. Dynamic events in Orr used to be farmed a lot for karma and tier 6 mats. Then people realized karma wasn’t all that useful and didn’t farm them as much. It was probably also because ANet introduced diminishing returns.

They don’t care about whether they’re making an impact. The achievement system also makes it so that ANet needs to reset dynamic events to make them more available for people. Most DEs follow this system although the ones in Orr actually don’t. Waypoints that are contested will stay contested until certain DEs are completed. You could say that this should encourage players to actually go out and do them but you don’t see very many people around for them. This is especially evident in Straits of Devestation, where more than half of the waypoints are contested. These DEs have a long lasting impact on the game world or at least the zone but no one really cares.

Not exactly bad just shows that their events aren’t actually fully dynamic more quests on loop. If they want to make it so people have interest in dynamic events they need to allow them to go a little crazy sometimes. Allow entire zones to be taken and kept by enemies forcing players to get involved if they want their zones back to normal. Allow enemies and allies to fortify these bases they take and over time the longer they keep them the harder they are to retake or to be captured. You could then make it so the more fortified a base is the stronger the army is that attacks it. So players actually want to fortify and protect these bases so that more champions spawn across the map giving them more loot. If they lose a zone to they will still want to take it because chaining all the dynamic events together will net them some nice gold/karma and some champion spawns.

The idea with the forts getting stronger is a good one. The problem is that if players find it too challenging then they’ll move to areas that are easier. No, the real problem is actually people that just want to farm. They will never do something just because it is challenging or that it is fun. On the contrary, they would avoid this content if they deem it inefficient. For them, the only things to consider are risk and time vs reward. Even if the reward is great, if the risk is too high they won’t bite.

The living story is how Anet is impacting their world but their isn’t a lot of tools in game for the players to do the same while Anet is off working on updates. So working on dynamic events this way or in some form like this would allow more impact on the world by the players. It would definitely take a good amount of time to pull off but It wouldn’t be impossible and they could start out slow by adding to the current meta’s/dynamic events involving the major enemy factions of the game(son’s of svanir, centaurs, nightmare court, etc)seeing if players enjoy the impact and extra rewards for sticking around and fortifying or taking back an outpost. Adding choice on how players can go about a dynamic event not in how they perform it but how the outcome turns out(like buring down/seiging a base destroying all the buildings/walls/supplies making it worthless so humans don’t capture it, or going in and killing all centaurs causing a champion or two to spawn giving a better reward and a new base to help fortify)

I think ANet is trying to figure out how to give players the ability to make meaningful impacts on the world. They already experimented on this with Cutthroat Politics, where players got to decide the direction the Living Story would take. I think changing the existing regions too much could have unforeseen consequences. Look at how most of Orr, with the exception of Cursed Shore, is abandoned. Look at how Southsun Cove is abandoned. Anything experimental would require a new zone where they can minimize the impact of any problems that may occur.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Its players that are disappointed by ArenaNet

Some certainly are. Some are not. Half the story is not the story.

You’re always going to have people disappointed. This is the way of the masses.

As for that post about people being disappointed by A-Net. The only thing about A-Net that REALLY kittens me off is that Gemcards are still not available in Australia. Otherwise I’m pretty happy with GW2.

ArenaNet disappointed their original fan base on launch, so they left after about 3 months (a vast majority of the original top GvG guilds and players). Now they are left with whatever has decided to try the game instead of the hardcore following they once had. If they want that hardcore following again then they are going to have to step up and make some major overhauls to their systems/game mechanics to what the original manifesto stated/promised.

Just some quick suggestions:
-Get rid of all the cheesy builds (heavy passive builds, stealth, one shot, etc)
-heavily reduce the grind needed for the ascended items (it shouldn’t take more than 2 days to redo every piece of equipment with new stats) so you can actually try different builds. (in guild was 1 it took less than 30 minutes for a casual to completely redo their build)
-make achievements actual achievements. No more of this grind mentality. Stop with the kill 100 of this, now run over here and kill 100 more. Those are not achievements. (Kill the tier three boss in the gauntlet is a step in the right direction, as well as the gambit system. Those are achievements as it takes some slight skill to accomplish).

Well I know I love the extra world events that were added. Just need more stages to the backand forth ones, actual town destruction so builders have to come from the capitals to rebuild if all is lost.

What I liked in Gw1 was sometimes you would explore the world to capture a skill from a champion.

There’s no incentive to revisit previous area in Gw2, except maybe for dailies and gathering. I noticed a nice recipe which required Kale Leaf, to make a Bowl of Garlic Kale Sautee. I went to Ebonhawke, gathered 7 leaves, then went to a cooking station to discover I need 30 of them :-/
So yeah, here goes my motivation to do that again, better farm Orr to get some truffle like everyone else.

And yeah, the fact the world feels empty because sometimes you don’t know if there’s someone else in the area, you can’t really complete those “group event” by yourself. After asking in /map if someone wants to help but no one replies, you just leave.

Vanthian.9267:

ArenaNet disappointed their original fan base on launch, so they left after about 3 months (a vast majority of the original top GvG guilds and players). Now they are left with whatever has decided to try the game instead of the hardcore following they once had. If they want that hardcore following again then they are going to have to step up and make some major overhauls to their systems/game mechanics to what the original manifesto stated/promised.

Just some quick suggestions:
-Get rid of all the cheesy builds (heavy passive builds, stealth, one shot, etc)
-heavily reduce the grind needed for the ascended items (it shouldn’t take more than 2 days to redo every piece of equipment with new stats) so you can actually try different builds. (in guild was 1 it took less than 30 minutes for a casual to completely redo their build)
-make achievements actual achievements. No more of this grind mentality. Stop with the kill 100 of this, now run over here and kill 100 more. Those are not achievements. (Kill the tier three boss in the gauntlet is a step in the right direction, as well as the gambit system. Those are achievements as it takes some slight skill to accomplish).

Anet disappointed a portion of their original fan base…maybe most, maybe not. Certainly they kitten ed off a vocal part of the forums. But how much of the fan base is that?

I’m not sure anyone is qualified to say. I do see a ton of people wandering around with the GWAMM title active.

Only the most blind fanboy would still defend Anet at this point.
The game is a mess on most fronts. From SPvP, WvW to the PvE side. Not properly tested updates and badly designed content is running rampant.

Not sure it is worth saying anything now that Vayne has swaggered in, but i suspect ANet honestly thought a larger portion of the player base were explorers. Maybe it was the nature of the last game, maybe it was some designers delusion (the game sometimes seems to have been made on some artsy notions more than the claimed statistics they are supposed to be tracking).

In any case, if the events can’t be reached by asura gate they are less likely to be found and done. This simply because waypoints cost money, and so using them for traveling on a lark is a expense.

IMO, the game has a serious issue with discoverability. To locate a event, you have to be sitting virtually on top of it. The new aetherblade events are discoverable, as they announce themselves with sound and a airship way beyond the event range. But discovering that some centaurs are rampaging just beyond the next height is virtually impossible unless one take the time to climb said height.

Take Rift as a comparison. Zone wide events are noted on the world map with a bright red marker. And in the zone, every wandering mass off mobs, every foothold, every rift, is clearly marked as long as that part of the map has been previously uncovered.

Yes, ANet claimed that the map got noisy when they allowed all events to show for a zone. But at least that also tell the players that something is actually going on, without having to run a the map in a repeating search pattern.

Back when i was playing Adventure games, a sign of bad design was that i had to pixel hunt for some item or switch. This meant dragging the points back and forth across the screen to see if it would light up on a interactive element that was hiding in the background art. To me, running back and forth across a zone to look for events is the GW2 equivalent of a pixel hunt.

Conner.4702:

Only the most blind fanboy would still defend Anet at this point.
The game is a mess on most fronts. From SPvP, WvW to the PvE side. Not properly tested updates and badly designed content is running rampant.

There’s only one defense I’d dare muster:

“They mean well. They really want people to enjoy the game. "

. . . sure, there’s a lot of messes and a lot of things which people can’t agree on if it’s bad or good (some people enjoy it, some people don’t, some people don’t care . . . ), and there are a lot of things which sometimes make me facepalm.

But on the other hand, the last game I got invested in actually feeling about in the MMO genre was my first and I still sometimes miss it.

digiowl.9620:

But discovering that some centaurs are rampaging just beyond the next height is virtually impossible unless one take the time to climb said height.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that’s kinda harder if it’s just centaurs because they’re less notable than a giant gaudy airship swooping to park itself over a land feature and start shelling the balloon stands

The good news is there are NPCs in a lot of areas which will run up to players and go “hey, got a moment?” to let them know there’s an event going on not far from there. The bad news is you still don’t often find events without that help or randomly wandering into one.

Vayne.8563:

Anet disappointed a portion of their original fan base…maybe most, maybe not. Certainly they kitten ed off a vocal part of the forums. But how much of the fan base is that?

I’m not sure anyone is qualified to say. I do see a ton of people wandering around with the GWAMM title active.

Considering Guild Wars 1 was a PvP game and given that Guild Wars 2 PvP is dead…. I would wager a good sum to say that most of the Guild Wars 1 crew left. I know my guild did, along with a many other guilds.

What I have learnt about MMO’s is that you cannot dictate how players play the game. ANet has done that to the fullest. Making money is fun to me, yet I feel punished doing it for multiple reasons. Living story is hurting GW2 for the very reason why it’s unique, It’s temporary content. Temporary content is no way bad, when used right, but in GW2 I feel none of it is special because it’s all that is being offered.

I came here for WvW and It’s been a very big disappointment. Unlike other games, like one of my old favorites, Warhammer Online, I was scared to die, the long run back, the fact that if you did die and the group had to retreat, you could very well be killed again on the way to your group due to smaller tactical zerg groups. In GW2 you’re nudged into the big zerg, in which you have a big chance to be resurrected, revived when downed or if their zerg is bigger you’re more likely going to meet up regardless. I don’t care about dying in GW2 which makes it far less exciting.

I really like GW2 and some of the directions it’s going, but I think if anything, the players are disappointed in ANet.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

digiowl.9620:

But discovering that some centaurs are rampaging just beyond the next height is virtually impossible unless one take the time to climb said height.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that’s kinda harder if it’s just centaurs because they’re less notable than a giant gaudy airship swooping to park itself over a land feature and start shelling the balloon stands

The good news is there are NPCs in a lot of areas which will run up to players and go “hey, got a moment?” to let them know there’s an event going on not far from there. The bad news is you still don’t often find events without that help or randomly wandering into one.

The NPCs are a bandaid, and usually so close to the event that you may as well wander into it (unless it is at the other end of a escort). What is hilariously sad is that we have all these scouts. But once you have the map portions revealed, and the related hearts done, they clam shut. If we could talk to them and get a highlight of everything going on, it would greatly improve. As this provide a NPC that you can spot and navigate to, rather than the off chance that you wander into something.

Also, any big battle should result in smoke and noise.

digiowl.9620:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

digiowl.9620:

But discovering that some centaurs are rampaging just beyond the next height is virtually impossible unless one take the time to climb said height.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that’s kinda harder if it’s just centaurs because they’re less notable than a giant gaudy airship swooping to park itself over a land feature and start shelling the balloon stands

The good news is there are NPCs in a lot of areas which will run up to players and go “hey, got a moment?” to let them know there’s an event going on not far from there. The bad news is you still don’t often find events without that help or randomly wandering into one.

The NPCs are a bandaid, and usually so close to the event that you may as well wander into it (unless it is at the other end of a escort). What is hilariously sad is that we have all these scouts. But once you have the map portions revealed, and the related hearts done, they clam shut. If we could talk to them and get a highlight of everything going on, it would greatly improve. As this provide a NPC that you can spot and navigate to, rather than the off chance that you wander into something.

Also, any big battle should result in smoke and noise.

Hmmm, yeah, that would help if the Scouts would show events on the map like they show Hearts.

As far as “big battles”, I would prefer the minimap’s crossed swords to migrate to the PvE world for groups of 25+ combatants mixing it up. Probably because I’m running on low graphics settings and clouds like that would probably impact performance greatly.

I find I’m repeating the same events not because I want to farm them, but because… well, I know where they are, and I know if I go there I’ll have something to do.

Exploring is more fun for me than repeating, but if I wander off in a random direction I may not get my dailies done, and if I waypoint off in a random direction I’ll also be spending money.

ANet could significantly improve my willingness to stop repeating events by making it more clear where on the map I could go to find different ones.

There’s absolutely nothing dynamic about events.
They’re renamed quests which you can repeat again if you want to.

Anakita Snakecharm.4360:

I find I’m repeating the same events not because I want to farm them, but because… well, I know where they are, and I know if I go there I’ll have something to do.

Exploring is more fun for me than repeating, but if I wander off in a random direction I may not get my dailies done, and if I waypoint off in a random direction I’ll also be spending money.

ANet could significantly improve my willingness to stop repeating events by making it more clear where on the map I could go to find different ones.

Queensdale is awesome for that because almost every notable feature in the region has some sort of event which happens near it, or an alternate attraction/reason to be there. (For instance, Beetletun doesn’t have any events but it does have a skill challenge and the entrance to the manor dungeon. And Eastern Divinity Dam has the entrance to the bandit cave.)

And some other areas have this going on too. But then there are some where there seems to be often some “dead air” going on. Interesting things to see but no events. Or, alternatively . . . events which no lone player probably should attempt.