Guild Wars 2

When I read the following statement from the game’s lead designer,

“The answer can be found in the mechanics and choices made in subscription-based MMOs, which keep customers actively playing by chasing something in the game through processes that take as long as possible. In other words, designers of traditional MMOs create content systems that take more time to keep people playing longer. If this is your business motivation and model so you keep getting paid, it makes sense and is an incredibly smart thing to do, and you need to support it.

When your game systems are designed to achieve the prime motivation of a subscription-based MMO, you run the risk of sacrificing quality to get as much content in as possible to fill that time. You get leveling systems that take insane amounts of grind to gain a level, loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end, raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play, thousands of wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support, the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn, etc.

But what if your business model isn’t based on a subscription? What if your content-design motivations aren’t driven by the need to create mechanics that keep people playing as long as possible? When looking at content design for Guild Wars 2, we’ve tried to ask the question: What if the development of the game was based on…wait for it…fun?"

I thought, “now there’s an MMO I can get behind. The developers want to make a game that’s fun, not one that concerns itself with stringing players along with things like gear-treadmills or time-gated rewards.” A year latter, now that I’ve seen what the Living Story is all about, I’ve had a change of heart. The Living Story is essentially doing exactly what subscription-based MMOs do…keeping players logging often for the sake of “chasing something in the game”.

The Living Story introduces temporarily-available content. Tied to this content is temporarily-available in-game rewards and – not coincidentally – temporarily-available items in the cash shop. The developers are resorting to the exact kinds of tactics they intended to avoid…“wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support, the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn.” Between the Living Story and the time-gating of things like ascended weapons, we’re pretty much exactly where we would have been with a subscription fee.

The article goes on to say,

“If we chose fun as our main metric for tracking success, can we flip the core paradigm and make design decisions based on what we’d like to play as game players? Can we focus our time on making meaningful and impactful content, rather than filler content meant to draw out the experience? Can we make something so much fun you might want to play it multiple times because it’s fun, rather than making you do it because the game says you have to? It’s how we played games while growing up. I can’t tell you how many times I played Quest for Glory; the game didn’t give me 25 daily quests I needed to log in and do—I played it multiple times because it was fun!”

This is the part that gets me the most. I have no doubt the developers were passionate about making a fun game that got away from the genre-norms when they made this game. But with the Living Story, it’s clear they completely abandoned most of their core principles. I don’t think there’s anyone who would argue that the Living Story hasn’t been mostly filler designed to “draw out the experience.” I don’t think there’s anyone who would argue menial tasks such as breaking pinatas, collecting kites, and riding in hot-air balloons are “fun”. But that’s what we’re getting with each new installment of the Living Story.

A subscription fee, at this point, might have been the lesser of two evils. If I’m going to get a bunch of “filler content meant to draw out the experience” I’d rather get it i one large chunk (as many other MMOs offer in content updates) than in bite-sized portions fed to us one at a time over the course of months. At least with a large content update the developers can work to ensure the content is polished and story (where applicable) is coherent and presented to the players in a way that makes sense, and the players can usually consume the content at their own pace. There’s no pressure to “do it now lest you miss it forever”, and there’s no “guess we’ll have to wait a few months to see where this goes.”

The point of this wasn’t to say that I prefer subscription fees to buy-to-play models, I don’t. The point was to say that I hope it’s not too late for the developers to get back to the ideals they had in mind when they set out to make this game (those expressed in the linked article). If they’re “all in” with type of content we’ve been getting in the Living Story, then so be it. But I don’t feel it’s too late to get back to what I feel made this game special in the first place. And so long as I feel that way, I think its worthwhile to voice my opinion here, in a constructively critical manner, in hopes that we can get away from the design philosophy of “spending all this time racing to add as much filler content as possible to keep players chasing the carrot” and back to the business of “creating fun”.

As always, I invite you to share your thoughts on the subject; but I ask that we keep our discussions civil and our criticisms constructive.

Hype, lies, whatever you wanna call it.

This part specifically makes me lol because this game is littered with daily crap.

I can’t tell you how many times I played Quest for Glory; the game didn’t give me 25 daily quests I needed to log in and do—I played it multiple times because it was fun!”

and

Can we focus our time on making meaningful and impactful content, rather than filler content meant to draw out the experience? Can we make something so much fun you might want to play it multiple times because it’s fun, rather than making you do it because the game says you have to?

No, apparently you cannot, ANet.

What? You don’t find sitting at a crafting station, fun?

I think what we need to consider here is that ‘fun’ is subjective. If you watch the Twitch streams, the developers do very much seem to enjoy their game. They are having fun with what they’ve made. They are happy with it, and this is probably somewhat how they gauge what is fun and what is not. Which is fine.

That said, what is fun for one, is not necessarily fun for someone else. Which from the hollering on the forums, is very very obvious. So while they are potentially creating a ‘fun game’ to them, it doesn’t suit some of your tastes, so you take what they said and throw it back them claiming they are lying.

I don’t feel they were (or are) lying. I think it’s a matter of perspective.

I think ANet have a very skewed view of fun since they dropped GW1.

Mindless grinding for example does not = fun.

If grinding isn’t fun then why are so many people doing it? I sit here as a casual player and read one post about how ArenaNet has sold out and introduced mindless grinds for every post I hear about someone who has finished the game and only logs in for Living Story content.

The truth is that I enjoy having something (for me, exotic gear) to work towards, but I also enjoy the game as I’m working towards those rewards. Not only that, when I log in, I feel like I have many options of things I could be doing.

That, to me, is fun.

People are grinding now, because there isn’t anything in the game that they haven’t see too many times. Even if you do your daily and some dungeons, that leaves little left to do. Of course you can revisit the same old zones in the form of living story, so that you can grind out achievements.

Mathias.9657:

I think ANet have a very skewed view of fun since they dropped GW1.

Mindless grinding for example does not = fun.

As much as I enjoyed the first GW, that had mindless grinding in as well after doing the content once. Just like GW2.

OT:

I always found that blog post kind of odd. Fun is subjective, and has no unit as to measure it by. You’ll never get all content to be fun for everyone.

Mathias.9657:

Hype, lies, whatever you wanna call it.

This part specifically makes me lol because this game is littered with daily crap.

I can’t tell you how many times I played Quest for Glory; the game didn’t give me 25 daily quests I needed to log in and do—I played it multiple times because it was fun!”

and

Can we focus our time on making meaningful and impactful content, rather than filler content meant to draw out the experience? Can we make something so much fun you might want to play it multiple times because it’s fun, rather than making you do it because the game says you have to?

No, apparently you cannot, ANet.

That’s what my thoughts are! Quit stealing my thoughts! LOL

Yeah it’s really bad. I went back to other titles that I was playing before because their system of advancement, their content patches, and their rewards systems are well established and improved upon other games (which is what I’d expected from this title) even tho they are F2P and B2P they and have slower output of content, when they do put out content it’s BIG filled with lots to do, permanent and it actually has great rewards. These other titles also have a section of their company that works directly with their dev teams that researches the history of the problems they face in their development for combat, rewards, etc and uses history in every patch to make sure they don’t make the same time-honored mistakes other companies made in the past (companies that usually went bankrupt because those mistakes were terribad btw!).

darkace.8925:

When I read the following statement from the game’s lead designer,

“The answer can be found in the mechanics and choices made in subscription-based MMOs, which keep customers actively playing by chasing something in the game through processes that take as long as possible. In other words, designers of traditional MMOs create content systems that take more time to keep people playing longer. If this is your business motivation and model so you keep getting paid, it makes sense and is an incredibly smart thing to do, and you need to support it.

When your game systems are designed to achieve the prime motivation of a subscription-based MMO, you run the risk of sacrificing quality to get as much content in as possible to fill that time. You get leveling systems that take insane amounts of grind to gain a level, loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end, raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play, thousands of wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support, the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn, etc.

But what if your business model isn’t based on a subscription? What if your content-design motivations aren’t driven by the need to create mechanics that keep people playing as long as possible? When looking at content design for Guild Wars 2, we’ve tried to ask the question: What if the development of the game was based on…wait for it…fun?"

I thought, “now there’s an MMO I can get behind. The developers want to make a game that’s fun, not one that concerns itself with stringing players along with things like gear-treadmills or time-gated rewards.” A year latter, now that I’ve seen what the Living Story is all about, I’ve had a change of heart. The Living Story is essentially doing exactly what subscription-based MMOs do…keeping players logging often for the sake of “chasing something in the game”.

The Living Story introduces temporarily-available content. Tied to this content is temporarily-available in-game rewards and – not coincidentally – temporarily-available items in the cash shop. The developers are resorting to the exact kinds of tactics they intended to avoid…“wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support, the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn.” Between the Living Story and the time-gating of things like ascended weapons, we’re pretty much exactly where we would have been with a subscription fee.

The article goes on to say,

“If we chose fun as our main metric for tracking success, can we flip the core paradigm and make design decisions based on what we’d like to play as game players? Can we focus our time on making meaningful and impactful content, rather than filler content meant to draw out the experience? Can we make something so much fun you might want to play it multiple times because it’s fun, rather than making you do it because the game says you have to? It’s how we played games while growing up. I can’t tell you how many times I played Quest for Glory; the game didn’t give me 25 daily quests I needed to log in and do—I played it multiple times because it was fun!”

This is the part that gets me the most. I have no doubt the developers were passionate about making a fun game that got away from the genre-norms when they made this game. But with the Living Story, it’s clear they completely abandoned most of their core principles. I don’t think there’s anyone who would argue that the Living Story hasn’t been mostly filler designed to “draw out the experience.” I don’t think there’s anyone who would argue menial tasks such as breaking pinatas, collecting kites, and riding in hot-air balloons are “fun”. But that’s what we’re getting with each new installment of the Living Story.

A subscription fee, at this point, might have been the lesser of two evils. If I’m going to get a bunch of “filler content meant to draw out the experience” I’d rather get it i one large chunk (as many other MMOs offer in content updates) than in bite-sized portions fed to us one at a time over the course of months. At least with a large content update the developers can work to ensure the content is polished and story (where applicable) is coherent and presented to the players in a way that makes sense, and the players can usually consume the content at their own pace. There’s no pressure to “do it now lest you miss it forever”, and there’s no “guess we’ll have to wait a few months to see where this goes.”

Welcome to October 2012.

Ordin.9047:

People are grinding now, because there isn’t anything in the game that they haven’t see too many times. Even if you do your daily and some dungeons, that leaves little left to do. Of course you can revisit the same old zones in the form of living story, so that you can grind out achievements.

Speak for yourself please.
There is plenty to do.
People are grinding now because they are trying to get ascended weapons asap and because the last couple of living stories have been literally raining gold on people who farm for it.
People in MMo’s are sheep, sorry to say.
There is plenty to do in the game- you don’t have to be a hamster really.

darkace.8925:

…with the Living Story, it’s clear they completely abandoned most of their core principles.

I think what you have to realise is that they abandonned most of these principles upon launch. Check out the GW2 manifesto vid, my fave quote from that is in my sig.

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

darkace.8925:

…with the Living Story, it’s clear they completely abandoned most of their core principles.

I think what you have to realise is that they abandonned most of these principles upon launch.

During Beta and launch, the game was actually enjoyable. It was around the time the LS elements began repeating and Fractals came into the mix that it started showing signs that GW2 was heading on the path that most MMOs tread.

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

darkace.8925:

…with the Living Story, it’s clear they completely abandoned most of their core principles.

I think what you have to realise is that they abandonned most of these principles upon launch. Check out the GW2 manifesto vid, my fave quote from that is in my sig.

Funniest thing about that quote is Colin left Anet because of what we’er complaining about, GRIND.

Galphar.3901:

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

darkace.8925:

…with the Living Story, it’s clear they completely abandoned most of their core principles.

I think what you have to realise is that they abandonned most of these principles upon launch. Check out the GW2 manifesto vid, my fave quote from that is in my sig.

Funniest thing about that quote is Colin left Anet because of what we’er complaining about, GRIND.

Unless its just happened Colin is still at anet I thought. It would be really great to see how the devs would reconcile articles like this with the game they have now which is clearly completely at odds with those initial ideals.

Anthony.7219:

If grinding isn’t fun then why are so many people doing it?

For the carrot, I’ve just finished grinding my way to 500 artificer via collecting mats rather than buying them and I felt like gouging my eyes out at the end. It wasn’t fun but they have made it so that its the only reliable way of getting ascended weapons.

morrolan.9608:

It would be really great to see how the devs would reconcile articles like this with the game they have now which is clearly completely at odds with those initial ideals.

While I agree with you, it will never happen, because it can’t happen. So instead, please enjoy watching them jam their fingers in their ears and ignore the issue as hard as they possibly can.

They don’t seem very eager to engage in transparency or communication on the subject.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I think what we need to consider here is that ‘fun’ is subjective. If you watch the Twitch streams, the developers do very much seem to enjoy their game. They are having fun with what they’ve made. They are happy with it, and this is probably somewhat how they gauge what is fun and what is not. Which is fine.

That said, what is fun for one, is not necessarily fun for someone else. Which from the hollering on the forums, is very very obvious. So while they are potentially creating a ‘fun game’ to them, it doesn’t suit some of your tastes, so you take what they said and throw it back them claiming they are lying.

I don’t feel they were (or are) lying. I think it’s a matter of perspective.

“chasing something in the game through processes that take as long as possible”
“sacrificing quality to get as much content in as possible to fill that time”
“raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play”
“the need to create mechanics that keep people playing as long as possible?”

These are not statements about “fun.” These are statements about the direction of the game. These things are painted as negatives in the quoted article. And GW2 has all of them.

These statements may not be lies. They may not even be deceptive, because ANet may have had every intention of following through on them. Whatever happened, the game has changed. However, if these statements were high on the list of reasons for buying the game, then the change was not one for the better.

The ironing is delicious.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I think what we need to consider here is that ‘fun’ is subjective. If you watch the Twitch streams, the developers do very much seem to enjoy their game. They are having fun with what they’ve made. They are happy with it, and this is probably somewhat how they gauge what is fun and what is not. Which is fine.

That said, what is fun for one, is not necessarily fun for someone else…

I honestly can’t imagine anyone would find charging Quartz Crystals at a rate of one per day fun. I honestly can’t imagine anyone found running around Lion’s Arch breaking dragon pinatas fun. The list goes on for quite some time, so I’ll spare us all and get right to the point: there are so many things being implemented via the Living Story that fly in direct contradiction to the spirit of what was said in that article.

IndigoSundown.5419:

“raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play”

Good that they don’t start with something like that now.

Oh .. wait ..

Morrigan.2809:

People in MMo’s are sheep, sorry to say

Nah-uh

The type of game you make will reflect in you playerbase.

If you dont want sheep, dont make game for sheep.

OTOH, if you play game for sheep, what does that make you?

morrolan.9608:

Galphar.3901:

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

darkace.8925:

…with the Living Story, it’s clear they completely abandoned most of their core principles.

I think what you have to realise is that they abandonned most of these principles upon launch. Check out the GW2 manifesto vid, my fave quote from that is in my sig.

Funniest thing about that quote is Colin left Anet because of what we’er complaining about, GRIND.

Unless its just happened Colin is still at anet I thought. It would be really great to see how the devs would reconcile articles like this with the game they have now which is clearly completely at odds with those initial ideals.

Why do you think theres not ONE comment from ANet on this whole topic while they make crapton of worthless posts otherwise.

darkace.8925:

I honestly can’t imagine anyone would find charging Quartz Crystals at a rate of one per day fun. I honestly can’t imagine anyone found running around Lion’s Arch breaking dragon pinatas fun. The list goes on for quite some time, so I’ll spare us all and get right to the point: there are so many things being implemented via the Living Story that fly in direct contradiction to the spirit of what was said in that article.

I don’t bother with the quartz, I don’t need it for anything. I made a few obviously. There where in my inventory and I was at a skill point, so wasn’t a hassle. But I don’t make a list of “chores” to do unless I’m working towards a specific goal that requires those chores, at which point this game isn’t any different than GW1 or any other MMO.

I did enjoy hunting for the pinatas. I enjoyed the pumpkin carving too. It was a good chuckle for me. Some people do find that type of hide and seek fun/enjoyable. You may not, that’s fine. Different people like different things. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. It’s really that simple. No one is holding a gun to your head and saying you have to.

“But the achievement points!” Really? 5AP causes you that much stress? I would say you might need to reevaluate your priorities. If AP hunting is your priority, I would recommend buckling in for a long tedious ride because this isn’t any more or less tedious than title hunting in GW1.

So many people look at that article (and many others) and proclaim anet has lied to us and I shake my head. With the exception of Ascended (which is whole different can of worms), GW2’s play options are not that different than GW1. You want a title? You grind for it. You want a shiny? You grind for it. You want some elite thing-a-ma-bob? You grind for it. It was the same way in GW1… You want a title? You grind for it. You want elite armor? You either grand the materials, or you grind money to buy the materials. You want that special FoW skin? Plan on running it a few thousand times. You want that boss’ green? Grind the gold and hope someone is selling it in LA or Kamadan or farm the boss repeatedly until it drops. The only parts of either game that aren’t grind are the story progression, the leveling and from what they’ve said that’s all they really promised whether you ‘interpret’ what they said that way or not.

Remember, communication is not black and white. Everyone interprets the same thing different. Just because you interpreted what anet said to mean one thing, does not mean that’s actually how it was intended.

That said, has anet changed it course over the last year? Yeah probably. I’m sure everything they “intended” didn’t work out as planned. You know what they say about even the best laid plans. Why did they do it? Because of us, their player base. We hollered for more gear progression. We hollered that karma was useless. We hollered that dungeons weren’t hard enough. We hollered that world bosses were too easy. We hollered that we wanted raid like content. We hollered the we wanted more permanent impact from living story. We hollered that we wanted some updates to WvW. Guess what guys, you got it. They listened, they provided, and now you aren’t happy because it wasn’t exactly what you specifically wanted.

But hey, what do I know. I’m just some random fangurl. rolls eyes Carry on.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

That said, has anet changed it course over the last year? Yeah probably. I’m sure everything they “intended” didn’t work out as planned. You know what they say about even the best laid plans. Why did they do it? Because of us, their player base. We hollered for more gear progression. We hollered that karma was useless. We hollered that dungeons weren’t hard enough. We hollered that world bosses were too easy. We hollered that we wanted raid like content. We hollered the we wanted more permanent impact from living story. We hollered that we wanted some updates to WvW. Guess what guys, you got it. They listened, they provided, and now you aren’t happy because it wasn’t exactly what you specifically wanted.

But hey, what do I know. I’m just some random fangurl. rolls eyes Carry on.

The question is, who is “we” ? I personally never cried for any of the things below, and maybe ANet shouldn’t listen to what maybe only is a very vocal minority at the forums, and do things like ingame surveys, like they did in Aion.

Here it is in all its original glory:
http://web.archive.org/web/20130201042944/http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success

It is ironic to the point where it is just sad.

At release the game was as advertised. It wasnt perfect, it wasnt polished or fully finished but it had a lot of potential.

Over the course of a year ANET has systematically destroyed a huge part of this vision. The game is now just another WoW clone with a few quirks.
We have grind for stats, dailies that you have to do, horrible story that doesnt matter, terribly designed raids with zerg game play and a dead “living” world. All of this accompanied by lies such as why and how ascended gear was introduced.

I d love to hear from Colin on this article but we wont. If anything tops all of the faults, issues and other problems of the game it is ANETs utter failure of communication.

Mathias.9657:

I think ANet have a very skewed view of fun since they dropped GW1.

Mindless grinding for example does not = fun.

I think Guild Wars 1 players have a very skewed view of fun. See how that works? What a silly comment.

Fun is subjective. I can almost guarantee the stuff that I found fun in Guild Wars 1 you didn’t and vice versa. You don’t get to have a monopoly definition on what fun is.

Beldin.5498:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

That said, has anet changed it course over the last year? Yeah probably. I’m sure everything they “intended” didn’t work out as planned. You know what they say about even the best laid plans. Why did they do it? Because of us, their player base. We hollered for more gear progression. We hollered that karma was useless. We hollered that dungeons weren’t hard enough. We hollered that world bosses were too easy. We hollered that we wanted raid like content. We hollered the we wanted more permanent impact from living story. We hollered that we wanted some updates to WvW. Guess what guys, you got it. They listened, they provided, and now you aren’t happy because it wasn’t exactly what you specifically wanted.

But hey, what do I know. I’m just some random fangurl. rolls eyes Carry on.

The question is, who is “we” ? I personally never cried for any of the things below, and maybe ANet shouldn’t listen to what maybe only is a very vocal minority at the forums, and do things like ingame surveys, like they did in Aion.

It was a general ‘we.’ A lot of people on these forums did cry for those things, though not necessarily you or me . I wish the stupid search function worked. There have been numerous threads about gear progression (“Gear grind or people leave” is one I commented on a long while back. There have been plenty more), about raiding (Was just one asking if Tequatl was anets answer to raid like content in the LS forums), etc. (Starting to think I’m on here too much… but darn it, work is boring when you’re waiting for code to compile!)

I don’t know how much was asked for in game. I mean I saw requests for some of it, which started some heated debates in LA, but it wasn’t as ‘loud’ as on here.

Yes, the forum is a vocal minority, but we don’t know where else they are taking feedback from. Only they have the actual numbers and metrics.

Hi Lanfear,

You can’t find all of the “no endgame” or “gear grind” threads. Even with the search function. They seem to disappear after a while. For example, we know the ascended gear feedback thread was deleted. I tried a while ago, and many of them (especially the ones from last October / November) are gone.

Anyone who asks for proof about some topic or another has to recognize that was remains in the forums is not always a true picture of what was posted in the forums.

Vayne.8563:

Mathias.9657:

I think ANet have a very skewed view of fun since they dropped GW1.

Mindless grinding for example does not = fun.

I think Guild Wars 1 players have a very skewed view of fun. See how that works? What a silly comment.

Fun is subjective. I can almost guarantee the stuff that I found fun in Guild Wars 1 you didn’t and vice versa. You don’t get to have a monopoly definition on what fun is.

So you find mindless grinding fun.

Doesn’t really surprise me.

TooBz.3065:

Hi Lanfear,

You can’t find all of the “no endgame” or “gear grind” threads. Even with the search function. They seem to disappear after a while. For example, we know the ascended gear feedback thread was deleted. I tried a while ago, and many of them (especially the ones from last October / November) are gone.

Anyone who asks for proof about some topic or another has to recognize that was remains in the forums is not always a true picture of what was posted in the forums.

Ugh frustrating

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

It was a general ‘we.’ A lot of people on these forums did cry for those things, though not necessarily you or me . I wish the stupid search function worked. There have been numerous threads about gear progression (“Gear grind or people leave” is one I commented on a long while back. There have been plenty more), about raiding (Was just one asking if Tequatl was anets answer to raid like content in the LS forums), etc. (Starting to think I’m on here too much… but darn it, work is boring when you’re waiting for code to compile!)

I don’t know how much was asked for in game. I mean I saw requests for some of it, which started some heated debates in LA, but it wasn’t as ‘loud’ as on here.

Yes, the forum is a vocal minority, but we don’t know where else they are taking feedback from. Only they have the actual numbers and metrics.

My theory now is also that we next get instanced raiding because so much people now asked for it because of Tequatl, even since before very much people were strictly against that. But now ANet could say : hey .. you asked for that.

Anything involving the RNG is not fun!

Beldin.5498:

My theory now is also that we next get instanced raiding because so much people now asked for it because of Tequatl, even since before very much people were strictly against that. But now ANet could say : hey .. you asked for that.

Well, Mike Z, Colin, and Chris W have said that the GW2 raiding would not be like traditional raiding. So Tequatl may have been anet’s answer to the raid request (no on has said definitively), which, for people requesting raiding, should still be very doable for them. They just get a couple of people with commander tags, and squad up to take him on.

We may get instanced raiding, they may give in to it if people holler loudly, but I don’t think so at this point. Colin has stated that they don’t want to do a whole lot of instanced content, because of how it divides the player base. (Thus why we’ve been told no HM for dungeons) Honestly, I like the Tequatl changes (mind you, I still aint beat him). I’m looking forward to them making such changes to all of the world bosses. But as for not wanted to do instancing… could always change. Just give me my heroes back, and I’ll be perfectly fine with it.

Mathias.9657:

Vayne.8563:

Mathias.9657:

I think ANet have a very skewed view of fun since they dropped GW1.

Mindless grinding for example does not = fun.

I think Guild Wars 1 players have a very skewed view of fun. See how that works? What a silly comment.

Fun is subjective. I can almost guarantee the stuff that I found fun in Guild Wars 1 you didn’t and vice versa. You don’t get to have a monopoly definition on what fun is.

So you find mindless grinding fun.

Doesn’t really surprise me.

Nope, I don’t find mindless grinding fun. I neither grind, nor do I play mindlessly. I’ve posted many times that I refuse to grind. I just play and get what I need incidentally. I find hanging out with my guildies fun. I find Sanctum Sprint fun. I find Southsun Survival fun. I find jumping puzzles fun. I even find SAB fun.

Not grinding it…just beating it.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Colin has stated that they don’t want to do a whole lot of instanced content, because of how it divides the player base.

Dividing the player-base is not inherently a bad thing. Trying to keep all or most of the players together results in zergs endlessly repeating the same thing over and over and over (boring), issues with overflows, and complaints about every zone but the zone-of-the-update being empty.

However, ANet is not just avoiding instanced content to “avoid dividing the player-base.” The concept of endgame involves repetition by default, and repetition means motivation through extrinsic rewards. Intrinsic rewards (the beleaguered “fun”) usually does not survive an nth repetition. ANet is packing players into small areas of the open world by choosing where to provide rewards.

However, is the stated reason the real reason? Is it really about not wanting to divide the player-base? They seemed to have no issue with players going everywhere at launch. They seem to have no issue putting desirable rewards in instanced dungeons — not only at launch, but since.

I think the current direction is more about the war on bots. Gold farmers impact ANet’s revenue. Anyone who purchases gold from a third party is not purchasing gems to exchange for gold. If you look closely at where rewards are clustered, you see that open world content (farmable by bots) provides little reward. Temple events, dungeons, meta bosses, and champions provide the rewards. How many of those are going to be farmable by bots?

Is this scenario really the reason? I doubt we’ll ever know. However, there is a plausible motive and the hypothesis fits the facts. I’m not sure the divided player-base does.

I, too, wish I was playing the game described by Anet’s ideals as stated circa 6/2012.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Dividing the player-base is not inherently a bad thing. Trying to keep all or most of the players together results in zergs endlessly repeating the same thing over and over and over (boring), issues with overflows, and complaints about every zone but the zone-of-the-update being empty.

However, ANet is not just avoiding instanced content to “avoid dividing the player-base.” The concept of endgame involves repetition by default, and repetition means motivation through extrinsic rewards. Intrinsic rewards (the beleaguered “fun”) usually does not survive an nth repetition. ANet is packing players into small areas of the open world by choosing where to provide rewards.

However, is the stated reason the real reason? Is it really about not wanting to divide the player-base? They seemed to have no issue with players going everywhere at launch. They seem to have no issue putting desirable rewards in instanced dungeons — not only at launch, but since.

I think the current direction is more about the war on bots. Gold farmers impact ANet’s revenue. Anyone who purchases gold from a third party is not purchasing gems to exchange for gold. If you look closely at where rewards are clustered, you see that open world content (farmable by bots) provides little reward. Temple events, dungeons, meta bosses, and champions provide the rewards. How many of those are going to be farmable by bots?

Is this scenario really the reason? I doubt we’ll ever know. However, there is a plausible motive and the hypothesis fits the facts. I’m not sure the divided player-base does.

No, dividing the player base is not an inherently bad thing…depending on how much dividing you do. Colin pointed out that the issue with too much division means you can’t find anyone to play with, thus resulting in the eventual death of your game. Wooden Potatoes actually agrees with that assessment, and points out that we did see this issue in GW1 in his video posted on the 29th of Sept. Still, I say there is a very delicate balance to be had between open world and instancing content. We just haven’t found it yet.

Is this their only reason behind it? Is the war on bots the real reason? Is a combination of both of these and maybe other factors as well? Maybe, maybe not. Like you said we’re not likely to know for sure, ever.

I doubt it has solely to do with the war on bots. This paints anet to be nothing but a money grabber, which I don’t personally feel they are. Are they a business? Oh yeah. Are businesses in business to make money? Most definitely. However, they’ve not gone to the dark side in my opinion. There are no pay to win items in the gem store. There is no purchasable ‘premium’ membership which gives people access to content or items that others cannot get unless they pay. Everything the offer is essentially cosmetic, which is no different from the GW1 store. It just has a heck of a lot more options.

You touched on a lot of things which all contribute to the player base division – so many maps, increased dungeon rewards, etc. I don’t think their goal is to have everyone in the same place at the same time. Different people like doing different things, so they’re trying to offer a variety of play options, yet at the same time they don’t want to break us up ‘too much’ because then you can’t find people to do all those different things. We don’t have heroes or henchmen to offset this issue like we did in GW1. They have to find the balance between all the different styles so people can feel like the world is alive and thriving.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

No, dividing the player base is not an inherently bad thing…depending on how much dividing you do. Colin pointed out that the issue with too much division means you can’t find anyone to play with, thus resulting in the eventual death of your game. Wooden Potatoes actually agrees with that assessment, and points out that we did see this issue in GW1 in his video posted on the 29th of Sept. Still, I say there is a very delicate balance to be had between open world and instancing content. We just haven’t found it yet.

Is this their only reason behind it? Is the war on bots the real reason? Is a combination of both of these and maybe other factors as well? Maybe, maybe not. Like you said we’re not likely to know for sure, ever.

I doubt it has solely to do with the war on bots. This paints anet to be nothing but a money grabber, which I don’t personally feel they are. Are they a business? Oh yeah. Are businesses in business to make money? Most definitely. However, they’ve not gone to the dark side in my opinion. There are no pay to win items in the gem store. There is no purchasable ‘premium’ membership which gives people access to content or items that others cannot get unless they pay. Everything the offer is essentially cosmetic, which is no different from the GW1 store. It just has a heck of a lot more options.

You touched on a lot of things which all contribute to the player base division – so many maps, increased dungeon rewards, etc. I don’t think their goal is to have everyone in the same place at the same time. Different people like doing different things, so they’re trying to offer a variety of play options, yet at the same time they don’t want to break us up ‘too much’ because then you can’t find people to do all those different things. We don’t have heroes or henchmen to offset this issue like we did in GW1. They have to find the balance between all the different styles so people can feel like the world is alive and thriving.

Business decisions are most often about money. The larger the business, the more true that is. ANet is not really a large business, but NCSoft probably qualifies in that regard. Despite my disappointment with the direction of the game, I also don’t think they’ve gone completely to the dark side. Also, a war on bots is a sound decision no matter their motive. A hit to ANet’s profits from gem sales are not the only downside to the existence of third party gold sellers.

I don’t buy “not fracturing the player base” being done to give players the sense there are other players in the game. This only works on the players who are “one with the zerg.” Anyone who is not with the zerg is going to get the sense they’re playing alone precisely because so many players are being given incentives to play relatively little of the existing content.

If you’re running around in Timberline Falls, the fact that the players who are doing Teq are in an open-world instance versus a raid instance makes zero difference. If 90% of the players in the open world are either in Queensdale, Frostgorge or the zone-of-the-update, all of the rest of the open world is in that sparsely populated state they say they want to avoid.

If your goal is to have players use more of the available play areas, you don’t create incentives that funnel them into only a few of them. Now, maybe they do want to spread players out, but they don’t want to spread rewards out. However, if it comes to a choice between intrinsic rewards and extrinsic ones, which will more players choose?

I can see by the screwed up risk/reward ratios in the game that they bank on their content to be played just because it’s “fun” waaaay too much.

That’s just bad game design. Especially when said content isn’t really that amazing.

No matter how fun or boring something is, they should always balance the risk/reward well, I don’t care what any hipster (I DON’T NEED REWARD IM BETTER THAN YOU SHEEP) say, you need to have the rewards balanced, for the sake of fun.

morrolan.9608:

Anthony.7219:

If grinding isn’t fun then why are so many people doing it?

For the carrot, I’ve just finished grinding my way to 500 artificer via collecting mats rather than buying them and I felt like gouging my eyes out at the end. It wasn’t fun but they have made it so that its the only reliable way of getting ascended weapons.

someone asked about the manifesto at the last q&a session and they spent 3 minutes talking about innovation.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Beldin.5498:

My theory now is also that we next get instanced raiding because so much people now asked for it because of Tequatl, even since before very much people were strictly against that. But now ANet could say : hey .. you asked for that.

Well, Mike Z, Colin, and Chris W have said that the GW2 raiding would not be like traditional raiding. So Tequatl may have been anet’s answer to the raid request (no on has said definitively), which, for people requesting raiding, should still be very doable for them. They just get a couple of people with commander tags, and squad up to take him on.

We may get instanced raiding, they may give in to it if people holler loudly, but I don’t think so at this point. Colin has stated that they don’t want to do a whole lot of instanced content, because of how it divides the player base. (Thus why we’ve been told no HM for dungeons) Honestly, I like the Tequatl changes (mind you, I still aint beat him). I’m looking forward to them making such changes to all of the world bosses. But as for not wanted to do instancing… could always change. Just give me my heroes back, and I’ll be perfectly fine with it.

They have a gear treadmill, they may as well go whole way to actually be competitive with other titles.

“If we chose fun as our main metric for tracking success, can we flip the core paradigm and make design decisions based on what we’d like to play as game players? Can we focus our time on making meaningful and impactful content, rather than filler content meant to draw out the experience? Can we make something so much fun you might want to play it multiple times because it’s fun, rather than making you do it because the game says you have to? It’s how we played games while growing up. I can’t tell you how many times I played Quest for Glory; the game didn’t give me 25 daily quests I needed to log in and do—I played it multiple times because it was fun!”

notice how many times “can we” is mentioned?

they tried?

the problem is the players, not the developers.
the players left the game because there was not enough grind.
the players felt boring because there was not enough grind.

etc.

i do enjoy the mini games though.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

notice how many times “can we” is mentioned?

they tried?

the problem is the players, not the developers.
the players left the game because there was not enough grind.
the players felt boring because there was not enough grind.

etc.

I firmly believe that the kinds of players who stuck around for carrots, treadmills, and grinds are the exact kinds of players who are going to jump ship the moment the next flashy MMO hits the market. I doubt they were ever in it for the long haul regardless of what changes the developers made. If I’m right and they do leave, that leaves a game designed for players that no longer play. Just as bad, that leaves a portion of jaded players who otherwise would have supported the game long-term with a game they no longer enjoy.

With the next-gen consoles, several AAA MMOs, and an inevitable WoW expansion all around the corner, we’ll see soon enough whether I’m right or wrong. For ArenaNet’s sake, they’d better hope I’m wrong.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

the players left the game because there was not enough grind.

Do you people even listen to what you’re saying.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Business decisions are most often about money. The larger the business, the more true that is. ANet is not really a large business, but NCSoft probably qualifies in that regard. Despite my disappointment with the direction of the game, I also don’t think they’ve gone completely to the dark side. Also, a war on bots is a sound decision no matter their motive. A hit to ANet’s profits from gem sales are not the only downside to the existence of third party gold sellers.

Yes, most business decisions are about money; although they aren’t always just about money, but that’s sort of beside the point. We know that NCSoft has their fingers further into the GW2 pot, than they did the GW1, just due to the fact that they hired a monatizer to foist upon ANet.

Anet has had an ongoing war against bots, since shortly after launch. They hired people to form a team just for taking care of that, for building the systems to track and handle such things. (I vaguely recall a news post about it on the site) I don’t think they would simply ‘stop’ doing this stuff just because they took care of the initial instances of botting. That’s just foolish. Monitoring and combating ever smarter bot programs is an ongoing thing. Thus, I don’t think their ‘war’ ever really stopped, it’s not a ‘new’ thing. I don’t think this alone accounts for their wanting to get people together.

I don’t buy “not fracturing the player base” being done to give players the sense there are other players in the game. This only works on the players who are “one with the zerg.” Anyone who is not with the zerg is going to get the sense they’re playing alone precisely because so many players are being given incentives to play relatively little of the existing content.

The reasoning they gave was sound, I can’t argue with it. Whether you ‘buy it’ or not is completely up to you. Yes, with the loot changes (especially for champs) they did poorly in balancing out how people play. Right now it is a lot of ‘zerg this’ and ‘zerg that’ (and only these things) because people only want to play what is profitable. If they can continue to update how rewarding certain aspects of the game are, those zergs will dissipate, at least slightly. If running DE’s became as lucrative as champs, some of the champ farmers, would split off to DE hunt, because they would prefer that over the champ hamster wheel. As the dungeon paths get overhauled, and their rewards adjusted, more people may gravitate back to that, as they enjoy doing that over the other things. However, these small fractures aren’t devastating; it’s when you get 24 dungeons with normal and hard mode, 20+ game maps with normal and hard mode, etc that you start thinning out the playerbase to the point where you can’t find people to play with.

If you’re running around in Timberline Falls, the fact that the players who are doing Teq are in an open-world instance versus a raid instance makes zero difference. If 90% of the players in the open world are either in Queensdale, Frostgorge or the zone-of-the-update, all of the rest of the open world is in that sparsely populated state they say they want to avoid.

If your goal is to have players use more of the available play areas, you don’t create incentives that funnel them into only a few of them. Now, maybe they do want to spread players out, but they don’t want to spread rewards out. However, if it comes to a choice between intrinsic rewards and extrinsic ones, which will more players choose?

Right, I just don’t think they’ve gotten that far. If they make doing 15min worth of DE’s in Timberline as lucrative as winning Tequatl (which also takes 15 min) then some people will opt to simply continue in TF over going to do Tequatl, while others may opt to jump to Tequatl because he has something specific they want (like I want the kitten revolver). They simply have to balance it out, which gives people incentive to go play the parts of the world they like. There is some fracturing, but you can still find people to do stuff with. You’re not ‘always alone.’

I hope that makes sense, it’s early and I haven’t had my coffee yet. Lol.

MikaHR.1978:

They have a gear treadmill, they may as well go whole way to actually be competitive with other titles.

Every game has a treadmill, per se. It depends on how it’s implemented, how steep, and what it affects that makes the difference. Even GW1 had it, it was small and shallow, extremely simple and top tier was (as so many other gamer’s put it) laughable easy to obtain, but that’s ok. It worked with how the game was designed, and many of us preferred it.

As I’ve been saying, had GW2 launched with Ascended, we wouldn’t have anywhere near the kittening we have now simply because people would have aimed for it at the get go, rather than getting fully geared in exotics as fast as they absolutely could and then shouted ‘gimme gimme gimme.’ Had we launched with it, time gating and all, people would have worked to get ascended (which would have taken longer) and the shouting gimme gimme gimme would have been waylaid some. Perhaps enough that LS could have gotten rolling before people got too bored. However, with people shouting ‘more grind’ ‘more gear’ ‘more content’ they had to do something. We are as much to blame as anet is.

Still, while I do not like the potential precedent that ascended sets, so long as they do not add any more tiers I can accept this one. At this point, this tier is unnecessary to obtain unless you absolutely ‘must have’ bis right this very minute. There is no content barred to me because I do not have it. Even high level fractals are doable in exotic gear, with exotic weapons, and only the AR from the trinkets (which you get just from doing the fractals anyway)….people have been doing it right up to this point.

Honestly though, I think they would have been better off to simply have added the infusion slots to existing exotics, and then made the infusions the hard things to obtain. Still, that is neither here nor there, as it is not the path they chose.

At the end of the day, humans are still mammals. We need an achievement pellet for making it through the maze. We can’t appreciate the maze itself, no matter how nice or fun it is.

A pellet without a maze? Inconceivable. The maze gives the pellet meaning. The pellet gives the maze meaning.

/last20minutesof2001aspaceodyssey

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

MikaHR.1978:

They have a gear treadmill, they may as well go whole way to actually be competitive with other titles.

Every game has a treadmill, per se. It depends on how it’s implemented, how steep, and what it affects that makes the difference. Even GW1 had it, it was small and shallow, extremely simple and top tier was (as so many other gamer’s put it) laughable easy to obtain, but that’s ok. It worked with how the game was designed, and many of us preferred it.

As I’ve been saying, had GW2 launched with Ascended, we wouldn’t have anywhere near the kittening we have now simply because people would have aimed for it at the get go, rather than getting fully geared in exotics as fast as they absolutely could and then shouted ‘gimme gimme gimme.’ Had we launched with it, time gating and all, people would have worked to get ascended (which would have taken longer) and the shouting gimme gimme gimme would have been waylaid some. Perhaps enough that LS could have gotten rolling before people got too bored. However, with people shouting ‘more grind’ ‘more gear’ ‘more content’ they had to do something. We are as much to blame as anet is.

Still, while I do not like the potential precedent that ascended sets, so long as they do not add any more tiers I can accept this one. At this point, this tier is unnecessary to obtain unless you absolutely ‘must have’ bis right this very minute. There is no content barred to me because I do not have it. Even high level fractals are doable in exotic gear, with exotic weapons, and only the AR from the trinkets (which you get just from doing the fractals anyway)….people have been doing it right up to this point.

Honestly though, I think they would have been better off to simply have added the infusion slots to existing exotics, and then made the infusions the hard things to obtain. Still, that is neither here nor there, as it is not the path they chose.

If GW2 launched with instanced raids and full gear treadmill they wouldnt talk 5 years of not having it.

Fact is that that it didnt AND game became fastest selling MMO of all times based on something they turned their backs on 2 months after launch, probably chasing extra profit. Not the first or last company that did that, but most of those who did it ended with short end of the stick.